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February 18, 2007
Green Chile Heaven
Hello. I'm back, with my riveting tales of frying eggs and altering basic recipes.
I will spare you a moment-by-moment description of making the 1-2-3-4 Yellow Cake from Joy of Cooking (which should really be called 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-wtf Yellow Cake). I made it in a last-ditch attempt to make D a Valentine's Day present, and it was damned complicated. It resulted in bits of cake batter on the floor and cabinets due to several accidents with the rubber spatula and the mixer. At least it was rubber this time -- I remember an early incident involving a horrible metal-on-metal grinding sound and a mutilated metal implement. The resulting cupcakes and lemon icing were really good, although I'm still curious about why they shrank during cooking (something to do with the folded in egg white mixture, perhaps). It was certainly better than boxed yellow cake mix, but you need to have a good deal of patience and time on your hands to make the real thing.
D is on a serious green chile kick. This is good, because I've been overscheduled and too exhausted to cook meals. I spent part of this week in Boston and have also started taking an early morning marketing class on Saturdays, so I was completely beat last night and slept until nearly 1 p.m. today. When I finally dragged myself to the kitchen, coffee was made (!), and all of the ingredients for New Mexican-style huevos rancheros were ready to go. D had made a pinto bean side dish, the green chile sauce, and had corn tortillas ready to heat up in butter (I really don't deserve to be spoiled in this way). We got the eggs going, and then assembled each dish with all of the above plus some cheese, and had a decadent breakfast.
Tonight, in keeping with the green chile theme, D is made wonderful green chile hamburgers with some sort of Mexican cheese. The flavor of the chiles was really nice and they weren't too spicy for me at all. Now he is scouring the internet in the hope of finding a source of frozen green chiles in the city, as our imported tub is half gone. Whole Foods is a potential source.
Which reminds me: For my marketing class, I've picked Whole Foods as the company to study for a final report (I figured something food-related could hold my interest). They have built a great brand, so it should be interesting to take a closer look at how they did it.
Update: No photo yet, but a friend of D's who grew up in New Mexico has graciously given us canned green chiles that relatives brought to her recently. (Thanks, Adrian!) I see more green chiles in my future.
Posted by csageday at February 18, 2007 11:34 PM