School and Mexican food

Celebration!! I’ve survived my first week back at school. I’m in my second semester of Professional Baking and I love my teacher. She is very thorough and patient. I look forward to learning from her. I’ve already learned so many new things that I’m really excited about trying out at home. Making croissants and crème caramel (flan) are on the top of my list.  Yum!

In addition to starting back to school my friend and I threw our 2^nd annual get together to encourage our friends not to forget to actually interact face to face in the time of texts, emails and twitter. It went over perfectly! Everything was easy and effortless. We went with a Mexican themed menu and I was in charge of the food. I made Carne Asada, Grilled chicken thighs, Spanish rice, Pico de Gallo, salsa Verde and sangria, or as my friend dubbed it, The Sangria of Happiness!

The menu was really easy to prepare and the prep wasn’t bad at all. I started the night before chopping onions, tomatoes, garlic, jalapenos, green onions and cilantro. I also juiced limes and tangerines and peel tomatillos.  After I got every thing chopped, juiced and peeled I started putting together the Pico de Gallo with the tomatoes, onions, and cilantro and lime juice. I wanted all those flavors to marry overnight. Then I went ahead and lightly season the meat for the Carne Asada. I don’t use a marinade for the steak, I like to taste the meat and let the other condiments compliment its natural flavor.  For the chicken I mixed lime and tangerine juices and pour it over the chicken after I sprinkled it with a mixture of sea salt, cracked black pepper, whole cumin and ground arbol chilies. I put both into the refrigerator, clean up and was done. The next morning all I had to do was roast the tomatillos and jalapenos for the salsa Verde and the grill off the meats. I was done in about an hour and a half. I roasted the veggies first and then did the meats. Once I had the meats into to oven to keep them above 210 degrees I started on the salsa Verde. I took removed the stems and skin from the jalapeños. It was easy since I had roasted them on the grill. I just chopped the stems off and ran the whole pepper under cold water. The skin came right off. Then I just tossed all the peppers into the blender with the tomatillos, some chopped onion, whole garlic cloves, chopped tomato, and cilantro and lime juice. I puréed it all together with a tiny bit of sea salt in the end. This salsa Verde was sooooooo good with the carne asada! The flavors complimented each other very nicely. The last thing I did was make the Spanish rice. I sautéed some chopped onions and garlic until the were tender, then I added some instant rice and sautéed the rice until it was a little toasted. I added chicken broth to the rice and let it simmer until almost all of the broth was absorbed the added fresh tomatoes, cilantro, green onion and lime juice. I finished it with some sea salt and all done! I made the sangria right before the get together started using red wine, orange juice and honey liquor poured over ice in a punch bowl. I sliced oranges, limes and lemons and added then to the punch bowl in the end. The Sangria of Happiness was born!!

All in all this week was great! Even showing up for an extremely early morning class on Friday and finding out the class I registered for doesn’t actually start until October turned out well!  J

I hope all of you take some time to have good times with good friends and great food like I did. Thanks for welcoming me into your lives and taking the time to allow me to share mine with you. Until next time remember…

Make Life Delicious!

Michelle