Cinco de Mayo 2 — Easy Chicken Chilaquiles

I recognize that it’s a little on the late side for many of you to cook this for Cinco de Mayo. I have heard rumors, however, that in some parts of Texas, Cinco de Mayo has been rescheduled for September due to concerns over swine flu. They’re also planning to push back the 4th of July to November.

Regardless of when you celebrate Cinco de Mayo, or whether you celebrate Cinco de Mayo, this dish is worthy to add to your repertoire. I got the recipe from my mother, who is a source to be reckoned with. She works full time, has written several books, travels the world on a regular basis (I think right now she’s somewhere in the Aegean) and still manages to cook dinner nearly every night (skipping the nights on the Aegean). So you knw that any recipe that comes from a woman like this is 1) simple to prepare, because she does not have TIME for excessively complicated dishes and 2) delicious, because she has high standards.

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Sometimes a quickie hits the spot — Pineapple Bread

It’s the weekend. Which means, of course, that you have time to relax. Or to spend time with your family, spend time with your friends, clean your house, water your plants, and also cram in sixty million errands into two short days (and people who do not have to be in an office on weekdays, can you do your errands then? Thanks.) Weekend time, much like weekday time, is to be treasured, and sometimes I treasure that time by spending it cooking, one of my favorite activities. I lovingly research recipes, and plan meals, and braise and roll and bake and chop. Sometimes, I do not.

Last weekend, though, I had six women (the lovely ladies of my book club) coming over for an early brunch, which means I had to clean my place like a madwoman (I have a toddler, aka a storm of destruction and chaos in my home) and, oh, cook something brunchy. I’m not great at brunchy. And I didn’t have the time to lovingly pore through my eight thousand cookbooks and find something.

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Homemade Hummus

Every night on my way home from work, I drive through Little Ethiopia and fantasize about Ethiopian food. Ethiopian food, if you’ve never had it, is usually made of a variety of fantastically spicy stews served on this spongy flat sourdough bread called injera, which is kind of a cross between a pancake and bread. I started thinking about making Ethiopian food at home, and since injera is integral to the Ethiopian food experience, I started scheming as to how to make my own injera too. It’s made from a grain called teff, and you need your own teff based starter that captures wild yeast, and you need to make it over at least three days and …

Do you see where I’m going with this? I literally DRIVE THROUGH LITTLE ETHIOPIA ON MY WAY HOME EVERY DAY. How much easier would it be to just stop one night and pick up some Ethiopian food and injera than it would be to go through the whole rigmarole of finding teff, getting a starter going, making the injera, making the stew not having it taste nearly as good AND then doing the dishes? I’m a big believer in jumping into cooking projects, because homemade is usually better and easy to make, but some culinary escapades just don’t make sense.

Hummus, however, is not one of those escapades.  Yes, you can buy about sixteen varieties of hummus at nearly every grocery store, but it is totally worth making at home, since it is 1) a snap to make 2) inexpensive and 3) infinitely customizable.

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Ten Minute Thai Style Turkey

I have a rich fantasy life, and I’m not ashamed to say that a large part of it revolves around the kitchen. In my fantasy life, I have a huge sunny kitchen, and a window sill filled with fresh herb plants. I can start dinner every day at 2 pm, and cook delicious food slowly from scratch out of healthy ingredients while singing folk songs and having a lovely and delicious conversation with my obedient child who is coloring happily at our enormous farmhouse kitchen table while I cook. Oh, and the dishes magically wash themselves. (Hey – I said it was a fantasy).

Sadly, reality often intrudes. My kitchen is neither large nor sunny, my herbs live outside (well tended by my lovely husband), my child is more likely to be coloring on the table than coloring at the table and conversation is often punctuated with shrieks (her new trick) or “Up pee! C, D, E.” (She often conflates the alphabet with saying “up, please”.) I’m rarely home on a weeknight before seven, at which point it is imperative that I have a tickle fest with the Nuni (hey, I didn’t say reality was all bad) and by the time I actually make it into the kitchen I just want to get dinner on the table as quickly as possible. Fortunately, with this particular dish (which is frequently featured on the menu chez nous), I don’t have to give up delicious food cooked from scratch out of healthy ingredients. I can even sing, but to be frank, my repertoire usually features “She’ll be Coming Round the Mountain.”

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Tsumami – Sautéed Mushrooms

When I was a little girl, like most children, I had a whole laundry list of things I would not eat. Mustard. Onions. Cucumbers. Bell Peppers. But the things that disgusted me most, that bore the fullest brunt of my childhood disdain, that I would not touch with a ten foot fork, were mushrooms.

What the heck was I thinking?

OK, I know what I was thinking – mushrooms aren’t even in the same kingdom as other food, being neither animal nor vegetable, and the fungal kingdom needs a serious rebranding, because fungi? Just don’t sound appetizing. Also, I’m just old enough that most of the mushrooms available were those flavorless white button mushrooms.

All I can say is thank goodness for the 90’s and the Portobello mushroom explosion, because without that I might never have tried a mushroom and discovered their greatness. Because mushrooms? Are delicious. Sure, the texture’s a little funky, a little … fungal, but you get used to that, and even grow to love it because the flavor is just so flavorful and savoury. Mushrooms are what food is supposed to taste like, and if you want good mushroom, this is the way to prepare them.

Savour Fare has moved! For the rest of the post and the recipe, please visit Savour-fare.com.