If you have been to the Phoenix area, this might mean more to you, but… my family’s favorite “nice” restaurant growing up was Garcia’s. Most visited? Filiberto’s. Favorite fast food? Del Taco 😆 So needless to say, living in the Southwest, I ate a lot of Mexican and Mexican American food. I’ve been cooking most days for myself for years now. And it seems that my cooking preferences lean hard toward my childhood memories.
Cinco de Mayo and other celebrations where you could find the best street tacos are the absolute best. Cinco de Mayo fell on a Wednesday this year, so I ended up making a few dishes through the week using some new recipes. I tried a new tacos al pastor marinade. It combined a whole onion and pineapple blended with some spices. While the flavor turned out really tasty, the marinade was ultimately too wet, had too much organic material in it to dry out to get a nice crisp on the meat, which I think really adds to the texture of a taco. So the search for the best marinade continues.
I don’t know about you, but when I’m in the mood to be creative with my cooking, I love to wander the grocery store. (I’m so excited to do that again!) Usually I try to be as efficient as possible when shopping. But when you’ve got some time to spare, it can be fun to start with an interesting ingredient and just walk around the store looking for the next ingredient to pair with your first. I often find myself looking at salsa jars for flavor combination inspiration.
On a recent trip I found a jar of Blackberry Serrano Salsa and I knew I wanted to work with it. I pressure cooked some chicken breasts, then shredded them. Combined the chicken and salsa with garlic and a few other spices and crisped it up in the cast iron skillet. I put the meat on some adorable tiny street taco corn tortillas and topped them with more of the salsa, some green onion, cilantro, jalapeño slices, queso fresco, and a squeeze of lime. Turned out to be a winning combination.
By Saturday, I was ready to spend a little more time on making a full meal. This meal is in no way authentic. But it worked with the ingredients that I had and turned out to be a delicious mashup of flavors. The video goes through my afternoon preparing Mexican Street Corn Salad, blistered shishitos (shishitos are from East Asia as far as I know, but you get what your grocery store has and work with it!), mushroom and chicken quesadillas, and a Paloma.
The quesadillas were made with the leftover chicken that I had previously cooked in the pressure cooker. Once you have that, soften up some onions, or go for caramelized if you’ve got the time! While that is going, get your mushrooms washed and chopped, coated in a little olive oil, salt, and pepper, and onto a smoker or grill. The fat of the oil will help to absorb that smoky flavor. Then cook your tortillas. When all of your ingredients are ready, prepare your quesadilla, putting fresh mozzarella on top. When this goes onto the grill, again, the fat from the mozzarella will absorb that smoke flavor. Before it gets too far melted, pull them inside and crisp on a griddle, if that’s your thing. It definitely is mine. Served with avocado slices and sour cream. Truly, I think you will find the final flavor worth the extra effort. Those kinds of details are what takes good food to great in my opinion.
Now, I was so surprised at how many people had never heard of a Paloma! If you have not tried one and you drink tequila, do yourself a favor and get one! Legend has it that the drink was invented in Tequila, Mexico, so you know it is going to be good. Here is an outside link to the recipe that I used.
- Tequila
- Grapefruit juice
- Freshly squeezed lime
- Agave nectar (or not)
- Soda water
For dessert, I love fresh fruit. Fortunately for me, there were some fresh guavas, so I grabbed those. Combined with some mango chili limon candy, it was a great end to the meal. And if I’m honest, half of the candy was eaten while I made dinner, lol.
Happy belated Cinco! (took me a while to edit the video XD) And looking forward to Taco Tuesday, or Monday, or Wednesday soon.
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