Happy Tuesday to all of my lovely readers! I'm always looking for motivation and ideas to try out new recipes, but sometimes nothing speaks to me. I don't know how that happens when there are so many delicious recipes out there, but I guess when there are so many options, it's hard to know where to start! Luckily, I have a hungry husband who I can ask for suggestions when I'm stumped as to what I should whip up in the kitchen.
I recently had a recipe brain fart and Matt suggested pizza so at least I had a starting place! There are so many directions you can go in when it comes to pizza so I started combing through my options on Foodgawker. I came across a very appealing recipe for Mexican style pizza that uses a black bean paste instead of your typical sauce. Black beans, cilantro, hot sauce and cumin? Sign me up!
This black bean paste is AMAZING. You can just eat it on its own with tortilla chips and call it a day. The paste is about the consistency of hummus, but the bits of cilantro and warmth from the cumin really make this "sauce" delicious. I would recommend making this recipe for the paste alone! I only made half of the amount called for in the recipe, which still left some extra at the end - I certainly wasn't complaining about having a yummy snack the next day!
Since my grocery store was completely out of pizza dough (I know, I'm too lazy to make my own), I went with the next best option and bought pita! Who doesn't love an individual pizza that you don't have to share with anyone? After cooking the pizza in the oven with the black bean paste and pepper jack cheese, I topped it with some shredded lettuce, diced tomato, and sour cream (just for Matt since sour cream is not my cup of tea).
These pizzas were really delicious, primarily from the black bean paste. In case you didn't get it by now, you've got to make this paste! The gooey cheese and crisp, crunchy lettuce really make this a satisfying and quick dinner to make during the week. Let me know what you think!
My husband made enchiladas verdes last week, using two new ingredients that we've never cooked with before - tomatillos and cotija cheese! We made some improvisations along the way to make the recipe work for us, but they are turned out very delicious!
We cooked the tomatillos, serrano peppers and garlic in our cast iron Dutch oven, lined with aluminum foil, since we didn't have a griddle pan. It worked really well, blackening the veggies until they were ready to be blended into a delicious sauce. We only used 2 cups of chicken broth for the sauce, which already made the sauce pretty watery. We ended up adding several scoops of cornstarch to thicken it because it wasn't doing it on its own once we started heating it up.
We also decided to lightly crisp the corn tortillas in a pan instead of frying them, which worked out well, but took longer than frying. I think next time we would want to fry them, just to see if there is a difference.
The sauce was really spicy from the serrano peppers, but once we dipped the tortillas in the sauce, rolled up the chicken and lettuce/cilantro mix inside, and slathered on some creme fraiche (I couldn't find any Mexican crema at my grocery store) and cotija cheese, the sauce really mellowed out and wasn't too overwhelming. We had these again the following night and the sauce was even more flavorful than when we first made it.
I would definitely recommend trying the dish! It takes some work with all of the steps involved, but it was a lot of fun (to watch) - I was the kitchen supervisor for this meal while Matt cooked a delicious dinner for me!
