Dinner

I was given a blog challenge by my cousin: make something with chicken stock. (Okay, she just asked what I make with mine, but I will consider it a challenge.) Half of it was strained and frozen, the other half I left the chicken chunks in (of course I took the bones out!), added a little water, some fresh sliced-off the cob corn, some sauteed onions and carrots and some various herbs and spices (paprika, cumin, a dash of cinnamon, chili powder. etc.) to make some Mexican soup. Then I took a couple chilies in adobo sauce, mixed that into some Greek yogurt, and stirred a generous dallop into each bowl of soup. Finish with some crushed tortillas. And of course, I forgot to take a picture.)

Thursday I picked up my CSA box and found a bag of these beauties:

Tomatillos! Kind of like a tomato but not really. I peeled off the papery skin and threw them in some boiled water to soften up. Then I pureed them with the stick blender with some onion and garlic and then added some seasonings. (A funny story - our CSA box always has a half sheet of paper in it that explains what everything is and usually includes a recipe. This week it was the recipe for salsa verde. I have only made this by roasting the tomatillos, so I decided to try the boiling thing and the farmer's recommended spices... which I *thought* said "onion, garlic, cloves and then salt and pep." So I looked over the recipe twice and thought - Mexican recipes often have cinnamon or cloves in them, I guess that must be right, but it seems like a strange thing to add, so I will just add a tiny sprinkle of cloves. And I did. And it tasted fine, but just slightly interesting. I knew the cloves were there, but if you were trying it without knowing the ingredients, you might wonder if the tomatillos had a slightly clove-ish flavor. Anyways, after dinner, I checked the recipe because it was still bothering me. And of course it actually read, "onion, galic cloves, then..." Duh. I only imagined the comma. But the salsa verde was still very good.

The box also had some lovely purple and yellow peppers and shiny green zucchini. Quick stir-fry with some onion made the side-dish.
Oh, and the chicken stock? Went in the beans. I LOVE mayacoba beans (a yellow bean), but if you can't get those, perhaps some pinto beans would work. I soaked a couple handfuls overnight, drained the water the next day and cooked them with that frozen portion of chicken stock for about and hour, then added in some onion slices and garlic and cooked it for another hour, probably close to 2. I mushed a few of the beans with the back of the spoon to make a creamy texture and seasoned with paprika, cumin, oregano, thyme and cilantro. (And salt and pepper of course.) The whole thing ended up like this:

Poke the poached egg and the yolk creates a creaminess to the whole dish. Yum. Of course, since I was photographing our dinner, Tiny wanted his phographed as well:

(Normally the kids don't get cereal for supper, but I am so tired of making two dinners. Neither boy wanted anything to do with the adult food. The day before, JT tried ONE BITE of rice and declared it yucky. Tiny ate 1 1/2 bites but scraped his tongue off after the second bite (and he was the one who said he wanted rice - I made a creamy brocilli-cheese rice). Everything I read says 'keep offering and eventually they will like it' (or at least eat it, I assume). NO LUCK. When Tiny doesn't like dinner, he doesn't eat and wakes up early in the morning starving to death. Okay, end of rant. I will keep pushing real food on them and one day they might actually eat it. In the meantime, Mr. Burli and I will enjoy it!)