Mexican Entree
OLÉ BAKED POTATOES
INGREDIENTS 
6 medium brown potatoes
14 ounces diced green chiles
2 medium white onions
3 cups grated Four Mexican cheeses
3 tablespoons butter
PREPARATION – POTATOES
Gently scrub the potatoes to remove dirt. Cut out the potatoes’ eyes. This is not an act of barbarity. The eyes are those little rooty things that grow out of the potato when you leave them in the potato bin for too long.
You might want to stab each potato a few times. (Okay, let out your aggression here.) This prevents steam from building up to the point your potato explodes. Boom!
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Put the potatoes in the oven and bake for about 50 minutes. (You do need to plan ahead. Watch two episodes of Man Versus Food while waiting.) Jab a fork into the taters. The fork should slide in easily. This step is essential. Baking with multiple potatoes or multiples of any food can increase the baking time. Also the sizes of the potatoes vary with each baking. And who knows if the temperature of the dial on your oven is accurate? My experience is that most real oven temperatures are less than what the oven’s gauges would have you believe.
Oh, don’t forget to remove those potatoes when done.
PREPARATION -SAUCE
While the potatoes bake, melt the butter. Mince onions in your food processor. Mince onions by hand and you’ll cry. Pour the minced onion and the diced green chiles into the butter. Cook on medium high, stirring constantly. Periodically taste, it’s your kitchen, and stop when you’re satisfied or as soon as the onion changes color. Add in the grated cheese and stir until it melts.
Cut the potatoes open and cover both sides with the sauce. Note, both this sauce and baked potatoes taste much better hot than cold.
Although time consuming, this dish is easy to make and tastes great. When serving this dish to guests, stress the time this dish took and omit the ease of making it.
TIDBITS
1) People from Wisconsin are often called “cheeseheads.”
2) There are about 2,000 varieties of cheese. Cheese will grow moldy. Clean your refrigerator periodically. Cheese can be made from camel’s milk. Never tried it.
– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef, Ph.D.
My cookbook, Following Good Food Around the World, with its 180 wonderful recipes, my newest novel, Do Lutheran Hunks Eat Mushrooms, a hilarious apocalyptic thriller, and all my other books, are available on amazon.com.
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