Chicken Mole "Tacos" with Cilantro Lime Sour Cream

Yesterday was my husband's birthday, so I made his favorite dish: Chicken Mole Tacos... or as my husband puts it "the most delicious thing on Earth."  Mole (said mol-ay - like the end of the word "guacamole") is a kind of Mexican sauce involving chocolate.  It is not sweet, but instead is rich and savory and delicious.  My first exposure to it was once when I was visiting Ithaca, NY.  My mom and I stopped for lunch at Viva Taqueria, where they had it on the menu.  I had heard of it, but never tried it before so I went for it, of course.  I couldn't wait to see what this savory chocolate dish was all about.  Well, it was fantastic, cravable.  I was talking about it for weeks afterward.

Fast forward a few years and I was completely craving it, but we didn't want to drag the kids to Ithaca just for that, so instead I decided to try and make it.  I did some basic research online and the recipes either seemed ridiculously complicated or I couldn't see how they could possibly end up tasting like what I wanted.  Back then, we ate it on a flour tortilla as a taco, but now, as you can see, we just make a pile of it all on our plates.  It's perfectly delicious either way.  My husband and kids like to put it on a bed of refried beans, but I prefer it without.

I hesitate to call this paleo/primal because the few chocolate chips in it are not, but you could easily add a squeeze of honey instead to get that slight sweetness it seems to need.  The sour cream also would not be paleo, but would count as primal, I believe.  We serve it with guacamole and cilantro on top.

Anyway, here is the recipe I came up with.  It makes enough mole sauce for the five of  us for two nights, so I generally freeze half for a faster dinner on another night.  We have made it with chicken and pork and both meats are excellent with the sauce.

Mole Sauce:
2T olive oil
1 onion, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic
3T chili powder
3T cumin
1 can green chilies
2T cinnamon
2c chicken broth
1 can diced tomatoes
2 large or 3-4 small chipotle chilies (dried, chopped)
3T almond butter
1/2c semi-sweet chocolate chips
3T cocoa powder
salt to taste

In a medium saucepan, heat oil to medium.  Add onion and saute until onion is beginning to be translucent.  Add chili powder, garlic, and cumin.  Keep stirring so garlic doesn't burn and let the spices meld - a minute or two.  Add green chilies and cinnamon and saute until liquid from green chilies is fairly dry.  Add chicken broth and diced tomatoes, and the rest of the ingredients.  Stir well and heat thoroughly.  You want to give it enough time for the dried spices and chilies to rehydrate and fully flavor it.  If the sauce is very thin, cook down until it's a bit thicker.  If sauce is too thick add water until it's thin enough that you can blend it without trouble.  Think thick ketchup.  Put sauce in blender (or use a stick blender) until pureed.  Set aside.

Cilantro Lime Sour Cream

1 c cilantro, chopped
1 c sour cream
2 T lime juice
sprinkle of salt

Put most of the cilantro in a bowl to be used as topping for your tacos.  Put a couple tablespoons worth into sour cream.  Add lime juice and salt.  Mix up.

Shredded Chicken

For our family of 5 we use a couple pounds of chicken thighs for this and I cook them in the pressure cooker.  I imagine you could do it in the crock pot, too.  We get boneless, skinless chicken thighs to make shredding them easier.  I put them in the pressure cooker, cover with water, add a bit of salt and then bring to pressure for 7 minutes and then let it sit for 7 minutes before releasing the pressure.  The entire idea is that you need the chicken to be ready to fall apart on it's own.  As a side note, in a pinch, the water from the chicken can be used in the mole sauce in place of chicken broth, but it doesn't give quite as full a flavor.  Once the chicken is cooked, I put it in batches into my stand mixer and let 'er rip.  I love this - it has saved me so much time over the year that I've known it.  I found it out from this pin on Pinterest.  Takes all of five minutes or something instead of 30 minutes with a couple forks.  After that, I mix in a bit of the mole sauce to give it a bit of flavor.

Beyond that, we just use the Wholey Guacamole brand guac because I'm lazy like that.  And then my husband makes margaritas!  YUM!

Homemade Ketchup and Yogurt Cheese

For the past couple years, I've been making ketchup at home instead of buying the store-bought version of ketchup.  I started because I wanted to avoid the amount of sugar (and high fructose corn syrup) in regular ketchup (and the preservatives, etc.) and just basically to eat high-quality food.  Since then, however, I've found that making a fermented recipe means my ketchup has probiotics in it!  What an easy way to get probiotics into my kids daily, while cutting out the sugar they were getting in the store-bought ketchup!  Beyond that, I've heard store-bought yogurt has hidden gluten in it.  Basically, it keeps making more sense to make my own, as I learn more.  As an added bonus, I get  yogurt cheese out of the experience, too!

Originally, I had tried a recipe from DIY Delicious by Vanessa Barrington, but then I found the fermented ketchup recipe from Nourished Kitchen.  I had been on a learn-to-ferment kick, anyway, so I dove right in.

Don't be surprised, if you taste it pre-fermentation, that it's NASTY.  That was my experience, anyway.  I tasted it thinking "hm, wonder what to expect" and it was not at all appealing.  So, since I had made it already anyway, I figured there was no harm done in letting it sit in a cabinet for a few days and then seeing if it had gotten any better.  And WOW!  After fermenting it was fantastic!  Now, I will admit, I am not generally a huge ketchup person, and neither is my husband.  This was mostly for my kids. After making this fermented ketchup, though, we were both curious so we tried it out.  My husband now uses it as his go-to condiment!  Totally worth the time and effort.

I make a double batch each time, because we go through it pretty fast.  Also, I use canned [organic] tomato paste (oh the shame!) for the convenience factor, and it generally needs a LOT of thinning out from the raw apple cider vinegar, so when I make it, it has a lot more vinegar than what the nourished kitchen recipe calls for... and it's still not really thin enough that I could reasonably put it in a squirt bottle.  I tried that... it was a fail.  I'd also like to highly recommend using wide mouthed mason jars for this because it can be a bit difficult to get into a narrower mouthed jar.

The bonus is that in the process of making ketchup, I get some yogurt cheese.  Why?  Well, I use yogurt to make the whey for the recipe.  If you're sensitive to dairy, you can try using goat yogurt to make whey - that worked pretty well when my son was dairy sensitive.  Alternatively, you can buy "vegetable starter culture" and avoid the milk all together.

Making whey is very, very easy.  Simply line a colander with some cheese cloth, then dump in some yogurt.  I used a store-bought grassfed yogurt that we really like, but you can certainly use homemade or whatever else.  I wouldn't recommend greek yogurt because it's already been strained, which is why it's so thick and creamy.  Then just cover it, put the colander into a bowl and stick it in the fridge overnight.  In the morning, take it out and in the bowl you'll have whey (a yellowish looking liquid) and inside the cheesecloth, in the colander, you'll have yogurt cheese (also known as labneh).  Depending on how long you strain it, it'll be thicker or thinner.  Greek yogurt is obviously not strained too long because otherwise it'd be a lot thicker and more cream cheese-like.

Now, what do you do with yogurt cheese?  You can add it to recipes to make it creamy.  I like to make boursin with it in place of the cream cheese.  You could simply spread it on a bagel or something as if it is cream cheese.  You can make veggie dip with it.  I basically use it in place of sour cream or cream cheese (depending on the recipe).  Delicious!

Apple Streusel Muffins

It's September and the weather's getting cooler which always leads me to baking and fall foods! My kids love apples, so we've had some around the house (hoping to go apple picking today) and when I woke up this morning and decided apple muffins were the way to go. What better way to warm up the house on a chilly autumn morning? Unfortunately, digging through my pile of cook books, I couldn't find a recipe for apple muffins anywhere. How strange! So I went to my good ol' Betty Crocker cookbook, and looked through for a recipe that I thought would be adaptable enough for apple streusel muffins. I ended up adapting this from their blueberry muffin recipe.

Apple Streusel Muffins

Streusel topping:
1/4 c whole wheat flour
1/4 c packed dark brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 tablespoons room temperature butter

Muffins:
3/4 c milk (almond or coconut milk works as well)
1/4 c virgin coconut oil (warmed slightly so it's easier to mix) or vegetable oil of your choice
1 large egg
1 c all purpose flour
1 c whole wheat flour
1/2 c sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon plus (a product from the pampered chef that has cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice... I was lazy and went with a mix, sorry!)
2 apples, diced

Heat oven to 400 degrees. Grease bottoms of 12 medium muffin cups.
Make streusel topping as follows, then set aside: Mix streusel flour, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a medium bowl. Cut in butter, using pastry blender or crisscrossing 2 knives, until crumbly.
Beat milk, oil, and egg in large bowl with fork or wire whisk. Stir in flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, and spices all at once until flour is just moistened (batter will be lumpy). Fold in diced apples. Divide batter evenly among muffin cups. Sprinkle each with about 1 tablespoon topping.
Bake 20 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Let stand about 5 minutes in pan, then remove from pan to wire rack. Serve warm or cooled.

Enjoy!

Getting the Most Bang for Your Organic Buck.

Organic Meat is not cheap. At more than $10 or $15 for a small (whole) chicken, you're looking at some fairly high prices compared with regular ol' factory farmed chicken. But, as you may know, organic chicken tends to be better for the environment because it uses less antibiotics (although, with modern "organic" and "free range" farming methods, it may simply mean fewer antibiotics going into the soil and waterways and not much else - for more information, read "the Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan). Local meat likely has a smaller carbon footprint, but may have a higher price tag. The cost being what it is, it's helpful to stretch the chicken into several meals. There's a show on the Food Network that focuses on making multiple meals using the same few ingredients which may be helpful for this.

I want to recommend what we usually do, which is to roast the chicken and then the next night make something with the... uh... leftovers.

To roast the chicken, just rinse the chicken (make sure to remove the bag of gizzards, etc, from the inside, if there is one), dry it, stick it in a roasting pan. What I do is cut up some root veggies like carrots, potatoes, parsnips, beets, onions, toss with some olive oil, salt and pepper, put the veggies as a bed in the bottom of a pan and put the chicken on top. Then you just want to rub some olive oil on the chicken and I like to sprinkle it with some spice mix - Emeril's Essence is good, Old Bay seasoning works, or sprinkle on whatever you like, even lemon pepper would probably be tasty. Then you just put it in the oven at 375 for 1 hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours. You'll know it's done if you can wiggle the leg and it sorta comes apart pretty easily. Carve it up and enjoy!

Ok, so when you're done with dinner, put what's left of the chicken, covered, in the fridge (or freezer if you can't get to this for a few days) and the next day you put it in a big pot, cover it with water and simmer it for several hours to make broth (or as many as 24 for a fuller, more nutrient-dense broth). I like to add celery salt because I'm not a big fan of celery itself, but if you have celery on hand, throw that in too, along with some carrots and some onions. I like to chop them in large chunks, because I expect to strain them out when I get the chicken out. If you want your broth to be yellow (and look like broth from the supermarket) add a bit of turmeric, though if you use a yellow onion and just leave the onion skins on, it colors the broth nicely and doesn't leave a flavor to it . If you're not adding celery salt, you probably want to add salt to taste, also add pepper. How much of these really depends on how much broth you're making, obviously. If you're making a lot, you'll want to add more salt, pepper, and spices. Just taste it and see if you like it, if not, you can try adding more... just go slow so you don't end up overdoing it.

Now you'll want to strain this broth and get the chicken bones, etc, out. I do this by putting my strainer in another large pot and then pouring it all into the big pot, thereby straining out big chunks. You can now use this broth for whatever you might want. I usually do soup. If you spend some time and pick the rest of the meat off of the chicken, you can usually get a fair amount for the soup. I also usually chop up any left over meat from the night before and toss that in the soup. Then I add carrots (you can use the same ones from before or new ones... or just wait and only put the carrots in after), egg noodles, and thyme. I let the soup simmer until the noodles are soft, then I toss in some other veggies, usually peas, corn, or green beans... use whatever you like or have on hand.

So, there you go. Two meals from one chicken, twice the bang for your buck. If you make a lot of broth, you can freeze some and use it for something else, too!