You are here: Home / Archives for Tex-Mex

White chili: nothing seasonally appropriate here!

September 2, 2010 by 3 Comments

You know, I really had the best of intentions this summer. I was going to cook with seasonally appropriate ingredients and the blog was going to full of luscious fruit crumbles, delicately flavored salads, and other things that make you think “ooh, summer is full of tasty, tasty treats!” Alas, it wasn’t to be; call it laziness, call it still not having an installed stove, call it weeks upon weeks of 90+ weather. Whatever it is, I accept full responsibility for it [except the weather part, even I have my limitations].

Anyway, I’m back with something that you’ll be thanking me for two months from now when the weather drops below 70. I make my standby chili so much I could probably do it in my sleep and I can rattle off the full recipe to anyone that wants to listen. So I decided to spread my wings and leave my comfort zone by making …. WHITE CHILI. Okay, so maybe it’s really not that monumental. But it was delicious, so that’s gotta count for something.

White Chili
2 lbs boneless chicken (thigh or breast is fine)
3 15oz cans of cannellini beans, drained
4 cups chicken broth
8 oz of salsa verde
2 teaspoons cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon liquid smoke
8 oz frozen corn

In a slow cooker, add the chicken, spices, liquid smoke and chicken broth. Let cook 6 – 8 hours, or until chicken is tender and can be easily shredded. Remove chicken from the slow cooker and shred it. Next, add in the drained beans. With an immersion blender [or regular blender, which will undoubtedly be messier] combine the beans and chicken broth until you have a smooth, creamy consistency. Add in the salsa verde, corn, and the shredded chicken. Let that cook on low for about 30 – 45 minutes to combine the flavors and bring everything back up to temperature. Serve immediately.

This has such a warm, earthy flavor to it thanks to the cinnamon and cumin. The liquid smoke adds a good depth of the flavor and the corn adds some sweetness and texture. This would be great garnished with sour cream, maybe some avocado, and definitely cheese.

Filed Under: Tex-Mex Tagged With: , , ,

Why don't we just move to Mexico?

April 2, 2010 by 31 Comments

Seriously. I feel like I cook some sort of Mexican inspired food quite frequently, we might as well live there. We actually did discuss this briefly on our honeymoon, after we were sold some Cuban cigars by an American expat living in Cancun. Of course, we will likely spend the rest of our lives in Boston, complaining about its weather, the college students that invade our fair city every September – May, and the joys of being moderate (me) and conservative (husband) independents in a city full of liberals.

Also, I almost gave everyone at poker salmonella, as I definitely undercooked some fried chicken. In my defense, the damn chicken was only about 1/3″ thick and 1.5″ wide; it was the damn beer batter that took so long! We shoved it in the oven and all was well. Also, note to self: Cap’n Crunch chicken is not worth the effort.

Anyway, back to me. Er.. back to the topic, I mean. Riiiiight. I made more tacos and they were delicious. Next, I really need to make my own tortillas, but I’m not going to drive myself crazy in making anything labor intensive until I know for sure whether or not I have to pack up my whole kitchen.

Since the husband would probably eat salmon every day if I let him/we could afford it, I decided to try making salmon tacos instead of the normal white fish variety you see everywhere. Man, these are good. Good enough for me to reconsider my indifferent response to salmon and say we should make these often. And to prove that point, I even bought more salmon when I went to Trader Joe’s last week.

Salmon Tacos
1lb salmon, cut into 6 fillets
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 flour or corn tortillas
Salsa, optional
Sour cream, optional
Shredded cabbage, optional

Preheat oven to 250 F. Mix together the spices. Lightly coat the top of the salmon fillets with olive oil, then dredge in the spice mixture [I realized I should have done this after the fact; what I did was just sprinkle the spices over the salmon]. Place tortillas in the oven to heat, wrapped in foil. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat, then add the salmon and cook 3 – 4 minutes on each side. Once the salmon is done, remove from the pan. Remove tortillas from the oven, place a salmon fillet in each of the tortillas and use the toppings of your choice.

Personally, I like cabbage, sour cream [with lime juice] and salsa on mine. My in-laws got me a great little food processor for Christmas, so I made up a really quick salsa to go with the tacos that was pretty good. I would have used the pictures with the sour cream, but… it didn’t so much drizzle as plop onto the tacos and this is a family blog. If you know what I mean. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Seafood, Tex-Mex Tagged With: , , , ,

Chimichangas: Tex-Mex? Mexican? Delicious!

March 19, 2010 by 1 Comment

For real: I cook a lot of food that is quasi-Mexican, but I feel as if I’m insulting a whole nation by calling my recipes “Mexican.” So.. I guess Tex-Mex? Although I don’t like the sound of that either. Why is life so hard?

I have today off from work today, and my immediate plans were: go through my books and figure out what I want to bring with me on the move to the new Casa Shenanigans and go to El Pelon for some delicious fish tacos. Sadly, El Pelon is still not yet open and we had to go to another local place that wasn’t as good. So I figured I’d post about some other delicious taco-esque food I made last week.

Okay, maybe it’s a bit ignorant to say that a chimichanga [really, spell check? chimpanzee?] is taco-esque. But… it kind of is. Meat, cheese, beans, chilies, tortillas…. yup. Sounds like a taco. The big difference here is that it’s all wrapped up in a little rectangular package and then cooked. It’s typically fried, but we all know I can’t fry something that large and dense without hurting myself, so I baked mine.

The possibilities of what you can put in chimichangas is basically endless. You can opt for a vegetarian version with zucchini, cheese and beans and that would be amazing. All you’d really need to do is swap out diced zucchini [or mushrooms or any other firm vegetable] for the ground beef I used in the recipe below. I think the spices and the cooking method would work well with quite a few different options. You can also add in any vegetables of your choice; I had meant to add in roasted corn but of course forgot to do so. It’s amazing I supervise a whole department at work, no?


Baked Chimichangas

1 lb lean ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1/2 can of diced green chilies with sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon of chili powder, or more to taste
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 or 1 cup fat free refried beans
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
6 – 8 large tortillas, 10-inch diameter

Preheat oven to 400F. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add in the diced onions and cook until translucent, then add the garlic and cook just until fragrant. The ground beef can then be added to the pan and browned. Once the meat is cooked through, add in the chilies, tomatoes, cumin, chili powder and cinnamon. Stir to combine, and let that cook over low heat for several minutes for the flavors to mingle. [Oh god, now I'm the type of person that says things that douchey Food Network chefs say. I'm sorry.]

Remove the pan from the heat. Take a tortilla and spread two tablespoons of refried beans down the center. Top with the meat mixture (roughly 1/3 cup) and then shredded cheese. Fold the tortilla envelope style and place in a baking pan seam side down. Very lightly coat with oil. Continue with the rest of the tortillas; depending on what else you add in here, this can serve up to 8. Cook for about 20 minutes in the oven, until the tortilla is golden brown and everything is heated through. Serve garnished with fresh salsa, sour cream, guacamole or any other toppings of your choice.

What can I say? These are so simple and so good. The cumin and cinnamon add a warm, earthy-spicy note to the meat, and the tomatoes and diced chilies give it just enough sauciness. These are perfect for a quick week night dinner, or would be great served at a party if using smaller tortillas.

Filed Under: Tex-Mex Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The best tacos are shrimp tacos!

June 23, 2009 by 2 Comments

These tacos are delicious and not at all difficult to make. They will definitely be making another appearance in our rotation of meals, as the husband still talks about how good they were. I made them as more of a Baja-style taco, ’cause I loved the tacos at the greatly missed El Pelon and any way I can work more vegetables into what we eat is a-okay with me.

Along with the shrimp, I made some pickled cabbage, fried plantains, and corn on the cob. The pickled cabbage in particular is something I really enjoy, as the cabbage was still crisp, but had a great flavorful bite to it. I’m pretty sure I could have eaten this on it’s own, but that probably wouldn’t have made a good dinner.

The cabbage is being pickled in a mixture of a cup of rice vinegar, 2/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup water that was brought to a boil and then mixed into the cabbage along with a sprinkle of salt.

For the plantains, I sliced them kind of thick (maybe half an inch? .. actually, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t even know what half an inch looks like), then fried them in my cast iron pan until they started to brown. Then I took them out, salted them, and let them rest for a bit, and repeated the frying process again right before I was about to serve the tacos to crisp them up and warm them.

The shrimp were the easiest part, as I just tossed them with some spices (salt, pepper, cumin and cayenne pepper) and cooked them quickly in a pan. I figured they didn’t need to have overpowering flavor, since I had the cabbage and also some fresh salsa I picked up at the grocery store.

Once everything was ready (which, by the way, was a personal best of mine in getting everything to be ready at the same time – I almost always end up with something being just lukewarm by the time I’m ready to serve the meal), I set up a little taco assembly line complete with shrimp, cabbage, salsa, warm soft tortillas. And the end product? Such a perfect meal for a warm spring night:

Also, you guys? Why do people have such a hard time spelling shenanigans? It’s a word that’s bandied about occasionally by our group of friends (thus, the blog name) but for real, when I check how the stats on how people find our blog, I’m kind of amused/bewildered by the many variations of shenanigans that come up: shennanigans, shanagains, shannagians, and my personal favorite, shennanigin. The funniest part is that at least half of the misspellings came from our friends – I guess the important part is that they tried to find us?

Filed Under: Seafood, Tex-Mex Tagged With: , , , ,