Roadside whole chicken

This is another recipe from Bayless that was very good, but not easily recognizable as a "Mexican" from my perspective. The heart of the seasoning mixture is the powdered ancho chile pepper. Note that this is one of the most mild peppers and so the chicken is really not that spicy.

Firstly, I didn't really have a functioning grill, so I used the oven to roast instead.

I roasted some sweet potato wedges along with the chicken after briefly soaking them in the same marinade. They turned out delicious and extremely healthy.

DIFFICULTIES:
First, I found the marinade/rub to be a little too runny. I think it would work better if it was more of a thick paste that wood not just run off of the sides of the chicken once applied. This could probably be achieved by simply adding less orange juice and vinegar. I tried mixing in a little bit of a cornstarch slurry to the marinade, but was very hesitant to add much at all.

Cooking chicken all the way through: although the recipe suggested leaving the chicken in the grill for 45 minutes (until the thigh temperature reached about 160°), I ended up going for close to 2 hours in my 325° oven and the breast had only reached 157° at that point. Unfortunately, I was trying to go off my" temperature rules" from memory.

Just now, I did some more research and Alton Brown takes his turkeys out when the breast temperature reaches 161°. Emeril takes his roast chickens out when the thigh temperature reaches 160°. On Yahoo Answers, people give a range of "take-out" temperatures from 160 to 170°. In the future, I will take-out the whole chicken once the breast temperature has just exceeded 160°.

The reason my cooking process took so long (2 hours) was because I only used an oven temperature of 325° as opposed to 400 or 450 as many other people do.

Swiss chard with tomatoes and potatoes

This recipe comes from "Authentic Mexican". Ironically, of all the Mexican dishes I have made recently, this is the one that tasted the least "Mexican" in my opinion. (That's probably due to the fact that the US has given me a very distorted perspective of true Mexican cuisine.) The book points out that Swiss chard is one of the most common greens eaten in Mexico.

The 2 truly characteristic Mexican ingredients in this dish are the Serrano chili peppers and the epazote leaves I couldn't really taste either in the final product, though.

I did follow the "suggested variant" of adding chunks of queso fresco -- this added a nice richness.

The one mistake I made was to use a wide skillet instead of a pot. This meant that during the stage of simmering the potato chunks, the potatoes were only partially covered with the liquid broth, which led to much slower and uneven cooking of the potatoes (as well as the broth evaporating off too quickly.)

In any event, the dish tasted healthy, and nourishing; certainly nothing spectacular, though.

Salad dressings: lime-cilantra, chipotle-basalmic

"Chicken Verde" with roasted poblano peppers

Thankfully, we decided to make this dish a 2nd time (with Nick and Maureen) and were able to get a  photo.

It was a huge success -- Maureen likes to call it the "green crack sauce".

I was worried that the boneless skinless chicken breasts would end up being dry and boring, but by cutting them up into thirds before cooking, I think it worked out well. The chicken was moist; the sauce was pungent and creamy and the peppers had that nice smoky flavor.

Tostadas

There is really no rocket science here. The fun part was frying my own tortillas to make the shells. Going against the cookbooks I consulted, I only used about 1/3 of an inch of oil to do the frying. It seemed to work okay, as long as I held down the tortilla to keep it mostly submerged and flat in the pot.

I made 2 versions, piling on combinations of: Mexican rice, homemade black beans, salsa Verde, avocado, hot sauce, chayote, chopped tomatoes, and crema. Easy, but incredibly satisfying to eat.

Enchiladas verdes (with chicken, spinach and mushrooms)

A very traditional dish with some (non-traditional?) additions. For the mushrooms, we used some wild chanterelles that my housemate Mike collected.

I must say, this dish was a huge hit with the crowd!

The only unsatisfying part was the "crema" that I used in the sauce. Crema is like a cross between crème fraîche, sour cream, and full cream -- but Mexican. I used the "Mexicana" brand, which included 2 types of stabilizer/emulsifier along with pure dairy.

Chalupas and Tortillas

After seeing all the highly processed tortillas being sold in Safeway for all these years, I decided that I had to try my hand at making some real ones from scratch. I bought some freshly ground masa (consisting of nothing but corn kernels and lime) from the local taqueria/tortilla factory in Redwood City.

See the images at the bottom of my homemade tortilla on the skillet. Without a tortilla press, it was definitely a challenge -- I used a skillet to push out my small ball of masa into the tortilla shaped (using Saran wrap as a protective/nonstick layer).

Chalupas:

The name sounds familiar, doesn't it? Apparently, though, I had no idea what it meant. It's basically a little boat (like a small quiche crust) made out of the same substance as tortillas (masa) and cooked in the same way (on the skillet).

I stuffed mine with left over shredded chicken, tomatillo salsa, chopped white onion, and queso fresco. Honestly, the flavor was mild, but certainly not ordinary.