Taco Tuesday and video game night :3
by NeedToDestroySo, I’ve started to schedule my weekly meals so that I have some semblance of structure during the week and can shop during the weekends with a pretty good idea of what I’ll need for everything during the week. Since Samu and I love tacos and Mexican food in general, I’ve made an effort to establish Tuesdays as “Taco Tuesday” with lots of taco makins and various other Mexican-esque foods.
Sadly, last night Samu was working late, so it was just Freedom, Scoob and me with the taco festivities. Normally I’ll Julliene some potatoes, fry them up and have a potato faux meat mixture stuffed inside of a shell or tortilla but I’d been dying to try a Chiles Rellanos recipe ever since I had a veggie one stuffed with Mexican mashed potatoes at Viva in Richmond. Since the mushed potato filling was a little mushy and less than super flavorful, I decided that I’d tweak the general recipe to just include some of my favorite Mexi-Veg food/filling.
I looked up a few recipes online for Chiles Rellanos, which is a pretty common Mexican dish. It normally involves cheese and ground meat stuffed into a skinned chili covered in cheese and tamatillo salsa, so I would just be subbing the meat and cheese portions.
According to the internet, the key to the dish food is blistering your chilies correctly, so that the skin comes off easily but the chilies don’t burn. Blistering chilies kind of sucks if you’re like me and almost guaranteed to touch the side of the outrageously hot baking dish that you’ve put your chilies in. Other than that, not really a difficult dish to make. I’ll break it down in ordered steps so that you don’t have to watch two bits of the recipe at once and risk burning something or someone.
What you’ll need for blistering:
- Baking dish (casserole dish/cookie sheet/anything to put the chilies on close to the broiler)
- TIN FOIL!!!!!!!!! (If you don’t cover whatever you’re blistering the chilies on/in with the foil then you’ll end up with this black/brown liquid from the chilies exploding from the heat that is neigh impossible to get off of your cookware. Took Scoob and me aprox 10 mins scrubbing with a steel wool pad to get most of it off.)
- Pablano chilies (or any other type of big green chili pepper you’d like)
- Move your oven’s wire rack pretty close to the top broiler. Make sure that there’s enough space to get the chili vessel in and out of the oven without you having to risk your hands, as it will be scorchingly hot.
- Grease your tin foil once it’s in place on your cookware and arrange your chilies on the foil. Nothing special about the arrangement.
- Set your oven to broil and let that preheat for a few moments. Once preheated, stick your peppers in on the rack close to the top.
- Keep an eye out on your peppers to make sure that they’re not on fire. When you can see or hear the skins cracking and popping and they’ve got charred spots on the skins pull them out of the oven and flip them over with either tongs or some kind of kitchenware that’s not your hands, as the peppers will melt your fingers off at this point.
- Once the peppers are good and blistery, wrap them in a moist paper towel or cloth and let them sit for a few moments. You could also stick them in a plastic baggy to let them steam themselves a little bit.
- When the skins seem to come off pretty easily, pull them out of the bags and start peeling. (The skins get a little sticky and the peppers will probably still be hot and possibly still full of liquid, so be careful.) The peppers might start splitting on their own, which is fine, I just made a little pepper sandwich for the ones that had split into two parts.
- Once you’ve skinned the peppers, slice them open lengthwise and cut the top bit with the seeds off. Clean out all of the seeds and ribs inside and set your peppers aside.
*I was told online to flip the peppers and let them blister on both sides, but mine were pretty blistery on both sides, so you may not need as long on the other side. I’d say that the blistering process took about 20 mins total, but every oven is different.
What You’ll Need for Pepper Stuffing
- 1-1 1/2 cups of rice
- 1/2 16 oz can of black beans
- 1 16 oz can of diced tomatoes
- 1/2 onion
- 3-4 cloves chopped garlic
- 1 tbsp cumin
- 2 tbsp (to taste) Goya Adobo seasoning
- 2 bay leaves
- Prepare the rice. Normally you’d do 2 cups of water to every cup of rice, boil, use.
- Chop and saute the onion with the garlic in a medium sized pot.
- When the onion and garlic are tender add in the tomatoes and beans. No need to drain the tomatoes.
- Add the bay leaves and spices, stir and bring to a boil. Should be slightly soupy, if not, add a little water to allow the ingredients to simmer and exchange flavors.
- Let this boil for a few moments before removing from heat and adding in the rice. Mix the two together.
At this point you’re pretty much done with the recipe components. For the topping I chose (vegan) Follow Your Heart Monteray Jack Cheese and shredded about half of a block and a green tamatillo salsa that I found at the local international grocery.
Assembly:
- Grease a cooking dish and preheat your oven to 350.
- Fill your peppers with the rice mixture and lay them in the dish, trying to close the edges of the peppers to make them into little pockets.
- Cover with shredded cheese and a little bit of the salsa and pop them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes or so.
*I had some trouble getting the cheese to melt as regular cheese would, but that’s common with the vegan cheese options. From here I’d plate and serve them. They were a great addition to tacos and nachos. They reheat pretty well for work lunches as well.
That’s really it. It seems like a lot of work but it didn’t seem like it to me. The most intensive part was the chili blistering. We had lots of delicious Mexi-Veg food and played Trivial Pursuit and Animal Crossing for the rest of the night. Overall, pretty delicious and satisfying night.