Facilities for the preparation and cooking of hot meals (7USC2014)

Now that I'm the primary food-burner in the house, I thought I should try to expand my cooking repertoire, with foreign fare that I always miss when I am not in the home country, so I can eat it whenever I want. In Costa Rica, I longed for typical Mexican and Asian foods, but most dishes require using the oven, which I was scared of. Now that I don't fear blowing up the house -- and don't feel exhausted after a long school day -- I am ready to take on new recipes.

I started by compiling a list of foods I wanted to try to make. Emphasis on try. In the name of consistency, and so I wouldn't cop out, I decided I would follow the top-rated recipe for each concoction on Food Network, no matter how difficult it was. And since I had access to the proper fixings, I thought I would start with Mexican meals. Up first is enchiladas, which Tyler Florence accompanies with roasted tomatillo chile salsa.

The list of ingredients required a special trip to the supermarket, where I bought way too many tomatillos because I couldn't remember the conversion from kilograms to pounds. So now I have a pound left over to use in my other experiment in cooking: with a crockpot. In another swing by the store, I picked up the pork to make stew next week. Thankfully, this time I was able to remember the simple 1:2 ratio.

As the recipe name suggests, the first stage is roasting. I had white onion on hand, so I used it instead of yellow onion, and I opted for a teaspoon of pre-minced garlic for each clove. So yeah, I cheated a little. But at least this time I managed to roast peppers without having to submerge my face in a bathtub full of water, as I once did after rubbing my eyes while cutting roasted jalapeños.

The food processor was brought out of a long hibernation to make the salsa. Once again, I made some adjustments. I was counting on our backyard herb garden to provide cilantro, but I didn't realize I would need ½ cup, so I filled out the measurement with some epazote. Plus, I only had cumin seed, and I didn't feel the need to pull out a mortar and pestle to grind it.

Much to my dismay, I wasn't able to take the one shortcut offered in the recipe. Most supermarkets in Tijuana don't offer pre-cooked rotisserie chickens like they do in the States. So I baked three chicken breasts instead while I made the salsa and enchilada sauce. This made me feel superior, even though many Mexicans make their chicken meat from scratch, otherwise known as the point when the bird is still alive.

With the poultry a-roastin', I was ready to make the veloute, whatever that is, to coat the chicken. For this mix, I made the same substitutions with the garlic and cumin. I also added green peppers because I had frozen some with diced onions while we were away for the weekend. Defrosted veggies always end up limp, so they were perfect for this type of reduction.

While the peppers and onions sauteed, the roasted tomatillos, onions, and jalapeños swirled with the other flavorings into a salsa verde. It didn't turn out as watery as I thought it should be, but that was actually good luck, because that made me realize I could use this part of the recipe to make a good salsa to be eaten with chips.

Apparently, a veloute involves stock, which I bought in the form of soluble bouillon cubes. I wasn't feeling authentic enough to spend a day boiling down marrow from chicken bones. In the end, the bouillon worked perfectly because 1 cube made ½ liters, which is about 2 cups, of stock.

Not knowing what a veloute was, I guessed that it would thicken up like instant soup, a product I am abundantly familiar with after many 15-minute meals during school lunchtime. Once the sauce reached that gelatinous consistency, I took it off the heat and waited for it to cool before I added it to the chicken breasts, which I had chopped into small pieces.

Perhaps my favorite part of my stove is the griddle that you can place over the burners, which is perfect for heating tortillas. Although flash-heating them over the flame of a burner or the broiler probably would've made the enchiladas crispier, I didn't feel like taking the risk of crisping my hands in the process.

I also didn’t take the time to dip the tortillas in the salsa before I assembled them for baking. The salsa didn’t seem to be thin enough to do so anyway, but mainly, I didn't want to dirty yet another dish. After all, if I don't own a big enough casserole dish to cook 10 enchiladas at once, what could've been the right size to coat burrito-sized tortillas? The sink? Upon visual inspection after 40, not 30, minutes in the oven (is it the altitude?), the lack of salsa covering didn't seem to matter.

TJ's taste test also verified that the salsa soak wasn't necessary. The result was served with sour cream, guacamole (from the store), and refried beans (from a can). I didn't want -- or need -- the carbs, so I passed on the rice. As is typical, TJ added jalapeño and chipotle peppers (from a can), for a sloppy yet spicy plate. And in a indisputable sign of success, he ate leftovers for breakfast.