By taking a simple cup of olive oil and infusing it with your favorite herbs and spices, or in this case chipotle peppers and garlic, you create a cooking base that explodes with aroma and flavor.
This chili burrito recipe is one I concocted when I first became interested in Southwestern/Mexican food over thirty years ago. Soft flour tortillas filled with smashed cheesy beans and topped with beef and bean chili. Simple, yet hardly authentic. Everyone used to rave over the dish so I made it a lot. Winning a batch of Larry’s very own homemade Chili Seasoning (see below) was a perfect excuse to drag out this recipe. It probably hadn’t seen the light of day for twenty years.
Flaky sweet Halibut is a perfect platform for this toasted cilantro and lime bread crumb topping. It’s an elegant, easy and incredibly tasty dinner.
A simple recipe of long grain rice, green bell peppers, tomatoes, onions and a sprinkling of sliced green olives livens up any Southwestern meal. Plus, toasting the rice before cooking and why.
Chile Cheese Cake, a great Southwestern appetizer recipe. It’s prepared in a spring form pan like a cheese cake, it looks like a cheese cake, but loaded up with southwestern ingredients, this appetizer served with tortilla chips is a unique and wonderful crowd pleasing recipe.
Remember my little baking adventure? The one where I made Jalapeno, cheddar, chive biscuits while following along with Joy the Baker Cookbook challenge? My floured-up kitchen mess and the time it took to restore it back to it’s pristine condition is quite clear in my memory.
Anyway, that recipe made quite a large batch, so the remainder of these muffins have been in the freezer. I decided to thaw them out and turn them into a cheesy, creamy, sausage-y southwestern style strata.
Thinking about Salisbury Steak inspired me to make this Southwestern version. I wasn’t all that impressed with my gravy, but I did love my pickled onions for a topping. I’ve blogged about these tangy sweet wonderful onions before and you can find the recipe at this link.
This post is part of the Joy the Baker Cookbook Spotlight and Cook-Off sponsored by Hyperion and hosted at GirliChef.
If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you know that I’m crazy about food that’s Southwestern, Tex-Mex, or Mexican. As long as there’s a flour or corn tortilla, fresh ingredients and those happy spices involved, I’m eating it. However, one thing I don’t usually like are fried Mexican things. Chimichangas come to mind…flour tortilla that’s been filled with everything wonderful and then deep fat fried, then smothered in melted cheese and green chili. Most of the time they end up, well…can you spell g-r-e-a-s-y? Taquitos are not so bad as it seems that corn tortillas don’t sop us the grease like flour, and if either flour or corn tortillas are used, I think they’re mostly skillet fried as opposed to deep fried. Not quite as g-r-e-a-s-y.
I haven’t made a cheese ball in years! But when I saw Lisa’s creation over at Homesick Texan, I knew the hiatus was over and this had to be included somewhere in my Holiday Menus. I decided to make this part of my contribution for a Christmas Day Dinner at our friend’s Greg and Cauleen’s. It was an overwhelming hit. The only thing that made it home was a shiny clean plate and spreader.