Saturday, July 9, 2011

Weekend Review #13 (7/9/2011)

FUN WEEK for us!! I feel a little more fluent in hispanic cooking, good bye plain boring tacos!! HA Now my truely hispanic friends may not agree with it's authenticity but it's still good for this La Caretta fan!!!

Margarita Chicken I've had a version of this at Chili's not long ago and thought this would be a good one to try and improve this week! So here goes... I'm not a black bean fan, so I left them out. Instead I looked up spanish rice online and made that instead. It's simply brown rice cooked in chicken stock, a little water, tomato sauce, butter, minced garlic, onion and red pepper. Next time I will cut my red pepper smaller and maybe even add some chili powder or crushed red pepper. I grilled my chicken in Pampered Chef's Southwest Seasoning. I like salsa verde but instead used the fresh salsa listed below! I topped it with pico de gallo and cilantro since that's what they do at Chili's and I loved it all!! Very filling and not too bad on time if you make your pico and salsa ahead of time!!

Pico de Gallo I will make sure and chop the onion smaller next time, otherwise very good and simple garnish/ topping!! See picture above!

Cheesy Shrimp Tortillas YUM!!! The shrimp had great flavor and the chipotle had just enough heat (just remember THIN layer!!) to compliment. We ended up eating them with some of the fresh salsa (listed below). I of course used whole wheat tortillas and added very little salt, but it honestly didn't need it! This would be good with steak strips or grilled chicken as well (sans the lemon though)!!


Spicy Queso Dip Well, I've made the white cheese sauce (kinda like they serve at La Caretta) before so I knew that it would need to be thinned out since I wasn't using Velvetta like the recipe suggest. I forgot till the end and by then it just over heated the cheese and it fell apart. I think the taste would be there if I had done the recipe right!! Sigh.... maybe next time I hit the store I can try it again!! If I do I'll post an update!


Fresh Salsa Great and easy recipe (easier if I had a food processor instead of using my big blender!! hint hint JEFF!! hee hee) I did go back and add some chili powder and cumin to give it a little extra umph!



Honey Baked Tortilla Chips I tried a few with the seasame seeds, and couldn't see the point in it. The honey wasn't bad though. It was a nice balance with the salsa. I will have to try them with my red pepper hummus as well!! Once again I used a whole wheat/ low carb tortilla, these were about 35-40 calories lower than the regular tortillas!! I've used them for tacos before and the kept falling apart, but this is a perfect use for them!!




Sopaipillas with Chocolate Sauce Easy and yummy!! I used whole wheat tortillas, sprayed a little butter  non-stick cooking spray on them and baked them at 400 for about 8-10 minutes, they worked and tasted great!


Oven-Baked Churros with Coconut Sauce NICE!! Very simple and very very yummy!!I personally felt like the sauce was too heavy but everyone raved about it! I have a recipe to make the dough from scratch and may try that with whole wheat next time to see how that compliments!! If it's good I'll pass it along!!



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