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Monday, February 01, 2016

Spicy

Andrew's on a quest to perfect basic Mexican recipes—like refried beans and such—because, as he professed the other day, "We're too poor to go out to eat at authentic Mexican restaurants and Mexican food is my favourite!"

"It is?" I asked.

"Well, I forgot about Italian food," he said.

"And pancakes?" I asked.

"Oh, and pancakes."

But Mexican food is a close third. His quest has opened our pantry to many exotic ingredients, which would surely be spurned if I were to bring them home (but apparently if he chooses to bring them home himself they're okay), such as epazote and, most recently, tomatillos. We've probably eaten these things before (tomatillos are the main ingredient in salsa verde, for example, and all my Mexican friends raved on Facebook that you can't cook without epazote). We simply haven't cooked with them. Until now.

On Saturday Andrew used the tomatillos in a dish called chicken tinga.

Yes, he made chicken.

He also made beans, as a backup, in case he, uh, chickened out. And in full disclosure he didn't eat much of the chicken, but I thought it was really good although it was really spicy.

"Taste this," he said. "It's spicy!"

"That is spicy," I gasped.

"Yeah, I can't figure out why," he said, "Except that it said to to put in two to three chipotle peppers and I just dumped the whole can in. It looked like only a couple of peppers were in the can when I opened it, but I think there were about a dozen or so. They just kept plopping out. Do you think that would make that big of a difference?"

Maybe a little bit.

Benjamin and I were the only ones who ate any significant amount of chicken, so there are a lot of leftovers (and I'm the only one eating those, which I don't mind). I wonder if it would have won over a broader audience with a little less spice...

6 comments:

  1. I have made many of pots of chili that I had to eat because I loved spicy chili and made it to my taste. Mom being Canadian could and still can handle only very mild spices. We had a friend in Raymond that had a motto that I adopted, "If it doesn't bring tears to a stone idol then it's not hot enough". I don't know if you can remember, but I have won chili contests for having the hottest and mildest chili.

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  2. I have made many of pots of chili that I had to eat because I loved spicy chili and made it to my taste. Mom being Canadian could and still can handle only very mild spices. We had a friend in Raymond that had a motto that I adopted, "If it doesn't bring tears to a stone idol then it's not hot enough". I don't know if you can remember, but I have won chili contests for having the hottest and mildest chili.

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  3. Ha, that's awesome. Ryan's been trying to increase his ability to enjoy spicy food. Which I don't mind (and, honestly, mostly consists of him being willing to up the spice factor when we order takeout). But I don't think he'd throw a whole can of chipotle peppers in a dish yet.

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  4. We LOVE spicy food at our house. Even the little kids will eat just about anything. We put sriracha on our pizza and mac n' chz. You can definitely increase your tolerance for it. At any rate, I would be happy if my husband was making dinner :)

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  5. Andrew actually enjoys cooking a lot more than me, so he does dinner frequently. :)

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