Lunch chilaquiles with left over pork in chile verde
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Looks amazing! That is the spirit of true Chilaquilles… easy left over stretcher. 
Comida Rendidora!
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served with corn tortillas and a salsa de mostaza, or spicy mustard salsa, plus a squeeze of lime
Anyone familiar with mustard salsa(s)? Sounds delicious with that rich suckling pig
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Mustard, actually Mustard Seed is not an uncommon ingredient in mexican cooking. My mother would use it in her Curtido (Pickled Jalapenos and Carrots) and it always added a wonderful note to the pickle… not LIKE Pickles… but added a bit more clarity to the brine and interplay with the heat. I look forward to trying this spot for sure!
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Saw this article too, super intrigued by the salsa mostaza - I immediately thought of South Carolina BBQ!
This post was also recently retweeted into my feed: Charred Salsa Verde Recipe
Not familiar with frying salsa in oil as the last step - anyone have any insight?
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That is interesting! Aside from Salsa Secas… my family really has never done this. But I can see it be done, as there is a famous tomato sauce called Salsa Frita. It’s what we put on top of Tamales, Chile Rellenos and Capeados.
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It really brings the flavors together, rounds out the flavors of that makes sense. If I do it usually dry chiles are involved or with some moles. Kinda messy and dangerous but i like that technique
Tried a new albondigas recipe today. There were a few glitches along the way but the end results was pretty good.
Albondigas en Salsa de Morita
The meatballs were super easy and really good. Equal parts ground beef and ground pork with ground chicharron as a binder along with an egg, onion, garlic, parsley and salt.
The glitches happened with the salsa…oops. Accidentally over salted it and then cooked it down too far which concentrated the salt and broke the sauce…rookie cooking mistake. Other than being too salty, the salsa complimented the meatballs really well. I’m hoping some water and a can of tomato sauce might bring the sauce back together and dilute the salt. The flavor of the chile will also be diluted as well, but I’ll be okay with that if it cuts the salt. Can’t believe I made such a stupid error 
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I love Saucy Albondigas! But tonight it was soupy Albondigas!
The abondigas are ground beef (organic from Trader Joes) and rice (Uncle Bens) mixed in with sauteed onion, baby bell peppers (I always have some) egg, garlic powder, mexican oregano and mint. Both dried. I like the Mint in this but, but not fresh.
The soup is started with onion and tomato paste. Then add in chopped veg before the broth. You can add any kinda veg chopped small. Potato, Green Beans, Zucchini. I had Yellow Squash, Carrots and some corn shaved and froze a few months ago. Bay leaf, mexican oregano along with chopped garlic and chipotle go in with the broth. Stir in some tomato knorr, I don’t like this soup to be too tomatoey, so the granules give it just the right hit of tomato and clarity without the acid. Once it starts bubbling, add the Albondigas. They cook up with the rice in 20 minutes, So it all comes together really quick! You can have the soup as is… or eat with some lovely buttery tortillas. Next time we make them, we will for sure pick up some Butter flour tortillas from La Monarca…
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Article:
Recipe:
(I am intrigued by the book series mentioned in this piece.)
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That book series does sound amazing!
The texture of that salsa (as best can be determined from the pictures) kind of reminds me of a milk based mayo Jack Bishop talked about in a Fresh Air interview. It also used a surprising amount of milk and came together with a creamy texture (enough so that we used it as the base for an ersatz alfredo once in a pinch).
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I have about half the books in the series. They were produced by Conaculta, or, The National Council for Culture and Arts. Their purpose is to preserve, promote and sponsor events that foster culture and arts. Their mission is to preserve Mexico’s cultural heritage in all it’s artistic manifestations as well as to develop and desseminate programs designed to support the creative development of the arts.
There are actually 2 series of regional books that were put out by Conaculta. Cocina Indigena y Popular, the one mentioned in the article and La Cocina Familiar, which is a much smaller series of 10 or 12 volumes focusing on an individual state. Both were the brainchild of one of the early directors of Conaculta. Most of the books were published in the late 80s to mid90s. The Cocina Indigena series are fairly easy to find in Mexico, most museum gift shops and bookstores carry them. The La Cocina Familiar series can be harder to find.
In the Cocina Indigena series the first 35-45 pages are devoted to information about the region, the people, the georgraphy, the agriculture, festivals, food, etc. You do need pretty good Spanish to get through it. It’s kind of like essays in anthropolgy. The recipes are, for the most part, not too involved, but the instructions can sometimes be woefully lacking, depending upon the cook who provided the recipe and the editor who handled the volume. Most of the recipes assume the reader is an experienced cook and familiar with Mexican cooking techniques and methods. The recipes are true comida casera (home cooking) and almost always traditional.
I have an acquaintance in New Jersey who has compiled a master spreadsheet of the bulk of the recipes in the Cocina Indigena series. He has been cooking his way through the series for the last few years. He has taken copious notes on each one he’s tried, what worked, what didn’t, if he and his wife liked it, etc. The majority of the recipes do work but many need tweaking to turn out a good dish.
And, for the record, iguana taste a lot like chicken 
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I love El Pato.
Years ago after I ended a contract for Taco Bell Express so we could start introduce our own taqueria, we were looking to put a hard shell taco on the menu becaue it had been one of the top TBE sellers. We tried all kinds of from scratch ideas but couldn’t get it just right. Finally, one of my employees brought in a can of El Pato and said “try this”. We did and it worked. Why I hadn’t thought of that I’ll never know…damn management mentality, I guess 
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I made fideos on Saturday. I had neither fideo pasta nests nor angle hair pasta, so I used regular old spaghetti. Not the top choice, but it works. I’m from the school that says saute the pasta until it is deep golden brown, and yes, I had few that went past to dark golden brown. They work too.
For the sauce I used a pound of compari tomatoes roasted and skinned, along with some white onion, garlic, toasted cumin, an ancho, 2 cascabel and 1 dried chipotle, all toasted and soaked, salt, pepper, 2 bay leaves and some chicken stock. I was out of Mexican oregano, but it would have been nice in the sauce too.
Sauteed the sauce for a while then added the fideos, more stock and cooked until the sauce had been absorbed. Fideos can be soupy or dry and I prefer dry, so that’s how I cooked them.
Sunday breakfast was leftover fideos with a poached egg. Yum-e
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Whatdaya do when you’ve got a bunch of beans - in this case RG Domingo Rojo - in the fridge that need to be used up. You make enfrijoladas. Domingo Rojos wouldn’t be my first choice, but they worked just fine for a quick dinner last night.
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Looks great!! I admit, growing up, I didn’t like Fideos… the soup was thin and greasy the way my mom prepared it. It put me off knorr suisa for decades… LOL!!
It does matter the size of the spaghetti however and I find the cheap ones work better than the fancy ones. But I love making broken pasta dishes, similar to orzo and palella in prep. I sautee garlic and then the broken spaghetti. Toast it. Then it can be as simple as broth or tomato sauce. I add shrimp or chicken breast or more veg. It’s so versatile and of course goes just as good with Cotija cheese as it does parmesan. I love a good taco de Fideo for that reason.
NICE!!! A secret tip my mom taught me about enfrijolads is to add a bit of Recado so that the bean puree tastes more like sauce. I imagine a nice scoop of mole paste would work as well. Yours look like the best kind of deconstructed Bean and Cheese Burrito. YOM!
Yep, definitely think that those skinny, cheap pastas work best for fideos.
I love your mom’s idea of putting some recado into the bean sauce. I think that would be a great addition
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Enchiladas Suizas & tossed salad
They were lighter than they look and really tasty. Probably the best version I’ve made in a while.
I’ve been doing some Zoom cooking classes with Susana Trilling of the Seasons of my Heart cooking school in Oaxaca. This was today’s menu. She used to work at Fonda San Miguel in Austin, TX many moons ago and this is the Suiza recipe she used to make when she worked there. I liked it a lot.
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