Friday Food: A Green Chili Week

Friday 

Short version: Roasted roosters, garlic bread, cucumbers with ranch dip

Long version: Our neighbor--the one with whom we butchered the bull--dropped by on Wednesday with three mean roosters her daughter wanted to get rid of.

I can't even count how many chickens we have gotten this way over the years. A. is a very accomplished rooster exterminator at this point. He long ago decided that plucking is really not worth the time and effort and just skins the birds, but this time, since they were young roosters, he decided to pluck them.

So I roasted them. 

I covered them all in green garlic puree and salt, and just roasted them at 400 degrees about an hour and a half. I also put some butter on the skin, since they seemed to be drying out.

I think I should have covered them with foil to start, though, because the skin was still dry even with the butter. The store chickens are really wet, so you don't want to cover those, but these birds could have used a little moisture trapping.

They also could have used more flavor. The garlic flavor was very muted after the long cooking.

Oh well. They were fine. And the resulting carcasses made a LOT of good stock in the pressure cooker/canner the next day. Plus, I pulled off about five cups of meat after pressure cooking them.

Saturday

Short version: Ground beef tacos or skillet, green salad with ranch dressing

Long version: The younger kids had their meat in corn tortillas with cheese. A. and Cubby had the meat fried with roasted bell peppers and onions, then mixed with cheese. I had mine in a salad.

Sunday

Short version: Green chili chicken casserole, green salad with ranch dressing, chocolate fondue party

Long version: I was idly clicking through recipes in the morning when I came across a recipe for an enchilada casserole made with chicken and green chilis.

And who had already-cooked chicken and many, many bags of roasted green chilis in the freezer? THIS MOM.

The recipe I saw had a sub-recipe for the green chili sauce, which was just the chilis, onion, garlic, chicken stock, and cumin. I used green garlic, since I don't have any regular garlic cloves right now, and the green chilis Miss Amelia keeps giving me. The original recipe also called for using some jalapeno to add some heat, because that recipe assumed canned chilis from the store.

New Mexico chilis are nothing like that. They definitely do NOT need additional heat. In fact, the resulting sauce was so spicy that I added cream cheese to it to tone it down. And it was STILL way too spicy.

Because of the spiciness, I used a lot less of it than the recipe called for, and the resulting casserole, while tasty, was a bit too dry. The heat was reduced some while it was cooking--I suspect a lot of the bite came from the raw green garlic--but there was still enough to burn my mouth a bit.

Anyway. I made a GIANT batch of the green chili sauce, most without the cream cheese, so I froze a bunch of it and we ate it allll week in everything. That creamy green chili sauce is excellent in scrambled eggs.

Sunday is homemade dessert day at our house, but I didn't make a dessert. At least, not ahead of time. I was just going to give the kids marshmallows, but then I decided at the last minute to melt some chocolate chips and peanut butter (plus a tiny bit of cream to loosen it up) in the microwave and let them dip their marshmallows in that. I also found a lone graham cracker in the pantry that I split into four pieces for them. 

They thought this was the most thrilling dessert ever. And I thought it was great that I didn't have to bake anything. Wins all around.

Speaking of wins! I asked A. to make me a real, functioning gate for the garden. To replace the propped-up, splintery piece of garbage I've been battling for two years now. This was my only Mother's Day request.

Cubby helped.

New gate! On hinges and everything! YAY!

Monday

Short version: Green chili hamburger stew, bread and butter, cheese

Long version: I made this stew the day before while I was making the casserole, using the leftover ground beef taco meat and many of the same ingredients from the casserole for the rest of it. It was a lot less spicy than the casserole, though, and very good. A nice, warming dinner for a chilly and rainy (hooray!) night.

Tuesday

Short version: Rapee Morvandelle, baked broccoli

Long version: Cooking a big ham always means there will be leftover ham for daaays. I wanted to finally use up the last of it, so I made a dish I remembered making years ago from the MiL's copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. 

I don't have a copy of the book, but the recipe was easy to find online. I used this one, doubling it and substituting some things: cheddar for the swiss cheese, garlic powder for the fresh garlic (too lazy to dig some green garlic), no herbs because I didn't have any, and adding extra milk to use up the last bit of a gallon jug.

All except for one serving was consumed at the one meal. Guess they liked it.

I put the broccoli florets in a covered casserole dish with some water and baked that along with the casserole. It got a little overdone, but it was fine.

Wednesday

Short version: Chicken patty sandwiches, leftover enchilada casserole, sliced cucumber

Long version: Miss Amelia called on Tuesday to ask if A. could stop at her house on his way to school on the bus to pick up some food she wanted us to take. Because it was too heavy to carry home otherwise.

I braced myself for a ridiculous quantity of food, and it was indeed a GIANT box. Included in it was a bag of those dubious frozen chicken patties we got from the school maintenance guy many months ago. The kids love those in sandwiches, so that's what they had.

A. and I had the casserole.

Thursday

Short version: Tuna and stuff

Long version: This was a crazy day. We went hither and yon and back again. I made tuna salad for dinner, which the kids ate with crackers and cherries. A. and I had it fried with cheese, like a tuna melt without the bread.

And then we all went to a very long Latin Mass that went until 8 p.m. But! After Mass there was food. So then the children had Frito pies* and barbecue sandwiches and salad and cake and cookies and Cubby snuck a Coke in there. At 9 p.m.

Craziness. Good food, though, and it was fun.

Okay, your turn! What'd you eat this week?

* This is a very regional thing. It's just Fritos topped with taco stuff--meat, beans, tomatoes, lettuce, etc.