Posts Tagged With: North Pole

Mexican Entree

TACOS DE RAJAS CON CREMA

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (2 tablespoons more later)
4 poblano or Anaheim chiles
1 garlic clove
1 medium onion
½ pound Oaxacan cheese or queso fresco
1½ cups crema Mexicana or sour cream
12 8″ corn tortillas

Makes 12 tacos. Takes 1 hour 10 minutes.

PREPARATION

Add 2 tablespoons oil to pan. Heat oil
on high heat until a tiny bit of tortilla starts to (We once thought the Earth looked like this.)
dance. Add poblano chiles. Stir the chiles
occasionally until the chiles blister and blacken all over. (Be careful when frying or sautéing at high heat. When stirring, hold a lid between you and the hot oil when stirring or tilt the pan away from you.) Put poblanos in plastic bags and let steam for 20 minutes. Remove from bags and rub skin off chiles. Discard skins. Seed poblano chiles and cut them into ½” wide strips.

While chiles steam, mince garlic clove and onion. Shred cheese. Add 2 tablespoons oil to, garlic, and onion to pan. Sauté on medium-high heat for 5 minutes or until onion and garlic soften. Stir frequently. Add poblano strips. Sauté for 2 minutes. Stir frequently. Add crema Mexicana. Reduce heat to medium and cook for 4 minutes or until crema thickens. Stir frequently. Add cheese, Reduce heat to low and simmer for 3 minutes or until cheese melts completely. Stir frequently.

Warm tortillas in pan on high for a few seconds or wrap them in a wet towel and microwave for 1 minute. Warming the tortillas makes them pliable enough to roll. Ladle 1/12th of the poblano/cheese sauce, about 2 tablespoons, onto each warmed tortilla. Roll up tortillas and serve.

TIDBITS

1) Before 1492, many believed the Earth was flat like a tortilla. Others, folks who ate oatmeal all day long, did not care. Then lost spice merchants from India accidentally showed up in Venice carrying peppercorns and basil. It was now possible to make the appetizer, caprese. Life was worth living.

2) Unfortunately, the land route to spice-laden India was blocked by meanies. Columbus, in the world’s first version of The Shark Tank, convinced Queen Isabella to sponsor his historic voyage of discovery. He and his brother Mercator had told her the Earth was round like a cylinder. Later Benedictine monks asserted our planet was rounded like the egg. Finally Peary, explorer and diner, after reaching the North Pole in 1909, concluded our planet is really shaped like a stuffed tomato.

– Paul De Lancey, The Comic Chef

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.