Mexican/Tex Mex

Pork Tacos with Cherry-Lime Salsa

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Pork and Cherry Tacos

Ever since I developed my recipe for fajita seasoning, I’ve been pretty lazy on the taco recipe front. The fajita seasoning is sooo versatile: virtually any taco, fajita, quesadilla, etc. can be fully-flavored with it. Plus, it’s quick to make with spices that I always have on hand. I go through batches of it at a fairly rapid clip.

But in the throes of my recent love affair with sweet cherries, I stumbled across this recipe. Pork, rubbed with a paste of garlic, lime, and ground chipotle and topped with charred onions, peppers, queso fresco, and a bright, cherry salsa studded with cilantro and lime? Um, YES.

Taco ingredients

Lime zesting

These tacos are delightfully flavorful. The smoky chipotle plays nicely with the bright, sweet, fruity cherries and limes. And while I typically look to chicken or steak for my tacos, the pork is really the best canvas here. The rub and the salsa can be made well in advance, but they certainly don’t have to. This is definitely a weeknight-worthy operation.

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Baked Tortilla Chips

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Homemade Baked Tortilla Chips

If heaven is real, then I really don’t think it’s made of puffy clouds and golden harps. I rather imagine it must be filled with endless tables, buckling under the weight of all the chips, dips, cheeses and crackers (all calorie-free, OBVIOUSLY) that a person could possibly want. Really, is there a better way to eat than scooping up succulent dips and salsas with crisp, salty shards of simple carbohydrates?

My obsession with chips is pretty severe. I’m hopeless at Mexican restaurants. Those continuously re-filling bowls of free chips and salsa at the start of the meal virtually guarantee that I’ll be in a food coma before my main course even arrives. I’m pretty shameless about them at potlucks and dinner parties, too. But unless I am hosting a party of my own, I actually avoid buying them: if I have chips in the house, there’s like a 70% chance that I’ll skip cooking dinner and simply dine on chips and salsa instead, strangely able to justify it by pretending they are vegetables. Sad, I know.

But I’ve found a little loophole. As long as I have corn tortillas in my fridge (which is pretty regular) I can make teeny batches of chips whenever I like! Satisfy my cravings without overdosing! Plus they are baked, which in the chip world, is code for healthy! (Right?)

Corn tortillas

It’s shockingly simple. Cut tortillas. Spray with cooking spray and salt. Flip over and repeat. Bake. Eat.

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Smoky Adobo Salsa

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Adobo Cilantro Salsa

Over the last few years, I’ve grown out of my delusions of I’m-young-and-can-eat-whatever-I-want and now do boring things like pack salads for lunch and box up half of my pasta when we go out for Italian. Le sigh. But there continues to be one thing that, when placed in front of me, I have absolutely no control or willpower to stop myself from eating.

Chips and salsa.

Whenever I dine at a Mexican restaurant, it’s a sure bet that I’ll eat my weight in free chips and salsa before my meal arrives. I know that I’m gonna feel like I’m dying within a few hours, but I just can’t help it. Too spicy? Doesn’t matter, I’ll cry through the pain. Not hungry? That’s literally not a thing.

Typically, when I make salsa at home, they are collections of diced vegetables and herbs. But sometimes I just want a nice, runny, completely blended, restaurant-style salsa.

The ingredients gather

This particular recipe includes a crap-ton of cilantro and a couple of chipotles en adobo. The combination of bright, herb-y flavor from the cilantro and the deep, smoky spice of the chiles creates a unique spin on the classic restaurant salsa.

Perhaps the best part of this salsa is that it’s SO FAST to put together. Once the onion and cilantro are chopped, everything else gets tossed in a food processor and whirled into salsa in just a few seconds flat.

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Not-So-Cheesy Quesadillas

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Quesadillas

For the better part of middle and high school, I was usually up in time to make breakfast for my mom and sister while they continued bustling about, getting ready for school. Most days, this breakfast consisted of “tortillas with cheese”, which is just exactly what it sounds like: three flour tortillas, each with a layer of rough slices of cheddar or colby cheese, heated in the microwave for 30 seconds or so before being rolled up in paper towels for a to-go breakfast of champions.

All the ingredients

At some point later, upon partaking the joys of quesadillas that popped up on restaurant menus all over the place, I made the connection that I’d been making quesadillas all along (freakishly simple though they were). As with most of my cooking projects, though, I’ve stepped up my game and now make quesadillas not for hurried breakfasts on the go, but for sit-down dinners at home.

And you should too.

All the little pieces

I will say one thing though, and don’t freak out: these quesadillas don’t have much cheese.

I know. I know. What sort of monster cuts the cheese so significantly in a dish that is literally NAMED after cheese? But I tell you, it’s possible to have a delightful quesadilla that doesn’t have puddles of gooey cheese oozing out the sides and sizzling on your frying pan. Trust me on this.

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Charred Corn Salsa

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Charred Corn Salsa
It felt like spring the latter half of this week. The sun was shining, the last of the snow that has persisted in our street for weeks has melted, and it was nice enough to wander about without a jacket. The thrill of the weather finally breaking is one of my favorite moments each season!

Ingredients
Perhaps associated with the first burst of warm-ish weather, I tend to also get an itch to vacation at this time of year. It might also be years of Spring Break indoctrination, but I suddenly yearn to pack my bags for some tropical adventure! Not that I actually did a lot of that growing up, but the once or twice that we did vacation somewhere warm over Spring Break were enough to permanently spark anticipation every February. Unfortunately, we have no imminent vacation plans for this spring. So! To ease my wanderlust, I’ve settled by making some charred corn salsa.

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Southwest Chicken Pasta

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Southwest Chicken Pasta

A few days ago, I escaped the humid crush of the Eastern United States with my annual return to my childhood home in Southwest Colorado. Each summer, I look forward to this return with great anticipation, but each year I continue to be humbled and amazed by how much I love this place. To be sure, living in the mountain desert has its hardships: this year’s drought is threatening to run our well completely dry, and the cool dry air that normally greats me when stepping off the plane was this year flooded with smoke from the West Fork Fire Complex, a wildfire raging in the high country just an hour away. My parents keep large stock pots in each bathroom so that we can catch the gray water from our showers, haul it outside, and attempt to help our adolescent trees survive the long, dry summer.

Despite all this, I miss the Southwest. I miss watching the summer monsoons boil over the mountains, occasionally releasing precious rain to the parched earth below. I miss the abrupt landscape shifts from spruce tree forests, the sagebrush meadows, and the bare sandstone mesas and canyons. I miss the cultures, celebrations, people, and flavors.

When I’m out to eat, I frequently seek out southwest-y meals on a menu. A few weeks ago I was pleasantly surprised by a meal at a Chapel Hill favorite that I urgently wanted to recreate at home, and after Brad and I completely consumed multiple batches, I’m sure this will remain on my own home menu often.

A Southwest Chicken Pasta

I really don’t know why I didn’t think of this pasta sooner. Perhaps because I so strongly associate pasta with Italian flavors. But friends! I urge you to release pasta from it’s bonds in tomato sauce and alfredo. It is equally at home surrounded by black beans, red peppers, and spicy red chili.

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Homemade Fajita Seasoning & Easy Chicken Fajitas

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Can we talk about bell peppers?

I don’t particularly care for them. I like a good roasted red pepper cream sauce sloshed over some pasta, I think they are super pretty cut into strips and fanned out on a tray of crudités, but I’m never one to actuallyeatthem from said tray.

I do, however, make an exception when for fajitas. Green bell peppers and red onions snuggle up in a tortilla so nicely with well-seasoned chicken, perhaps some cheese, and a healthy dollop of sour cream. I used to buy those little packets of fajita seasoning, but I found I never used it all in one go. Why accumulate half-used packets of seasoning in the pantry when I could just make my own?

Also, what better time to do a glitzy little photo shoot for my most recent kitchen obsession? THESE. My beautiful spice jars. I recently ordered an assortment of jars to make my spice and herb rack the prettiest little thing you’ve ever seen, and I still can’t fully express my delight. I know, I know: spices last longer if they are protected from the light. But my kitchen is a cave for 18 hours a day anyway. Plus, they are sooooo pretty!

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Guacamole

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I find the phrase “holy guacamole” somewhat misleading. Holy things are revered. They are viewed from afar. They are stored in stone cathedrals and world museums.

They are never scooped onto chips, dolloped onto quesadillas, or spooned directly out of the bowl.

By these guidelines, this is decidedly unholy guacamole.

Cinco de Mayo was as good of an excuse as any to buy avocados and make my favorite electric-green dip. I generally try to limit my produce purchases to those grown locally, but the convergence of both a holiday AND a dinner invitation were enough to merit an exception.

The cilantro on the porch, however, was ready to harvest! After researching HOW to harvest cilantro without killing the plant and preventing future growth, I went to the balcony armed with scissors and a bowl and voila! Really fresh cilantro!

Guacamole is one of those things that can be prepared “perfectly” in a million different ways. Some guacs are smooth and creamy, some are chunky and spicy, some have tomatoes, some don’t. Personally, I’m in the no tomato camp. If I want tomatoes, I’ll eat salsa from the other dip bowl, thank you very much.

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