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Grilled Chicken with Mesa Grill's 16-Spice Rub
This recipe is a fabulous way to grill up some chicken breasts or pretty much any other grillable cut of meat. It’s also a fabulous way for me to reminisce.
You see, last weekend two of my best friends and I got away for our annual (ok, it’s usually only semi-annual) Girls’ Weekend. This time we chose fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada a.k.a. Lost Wages, Nevada. We each picked an activity. Lisa picked Donny and Marie. June picked The Blue Man Group. I, of course, picked Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill. So, soooooooo fabulous.
Chef Flay says he prefers rubs to marinades for meat because they add so much more flavor. So, I came home and made up a batch of Chef Flay’s 16-Spice Rub to keep on hand for summer grilling and to bring that fabulous Mesa Grill flavor back to my taste buds. This spice rub adds a ton of flavor without overpowering your meat. I have a batch stashed in my pantry. I hope it lasts the whole summer, cause it’s going fast.
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I know what you’re thinking, ”Crepe recipes? On a Southwest food blog?” That’s what I thought. Until I tasted fajita steak and chipotle chicken wrapped up in a crispy crepe, that is.
We found a great little restaurant in Irvine, California last month called the Crepe Maker. The menu is built around a basic crepe recipe filled with just about anything you can imagine. Savory, sweet, Southwest, Italian, they have it all. My husband was skeptical, to say the least. ”Crepes aren’t really food. Are they?”
These crepes certainly are! I have never had a crepe like this. The crepes I have eaten are usually small and soft… delicate little things. The crepes at Crepe Maker are large and crispy! Think pizza sized. They are folded in half and rolled into a cone shape in order to hold such hearty ingredients as fajita steak, marinated chicken and even Tex-Mex combos with corn and black beans. My favorite crepe turned out to be the one I tried on a whim. It has marinated chicken, melted cheddar cheese, tomatoes, spinach, walnuts and… wait for it… raspberry jam! It was delicious! The raspberry jam added tartness and just a little sweet to the dish. The jam melted slightly in the warm crepe and spread itself around on the spinach greens. I’ve been craving the crepes ever since we returned home.
The cooks at the Crepe Maker shared their tips for making the perfect crepe. So, get your filling and your crepe batter ready and cook along.
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Ahhhhh – Mexican Chorizo. It is one of those foods that – when it’s good – can be heavenly, but . . . when it’s bad, it can be a greasy and nasty nightmare. So, I thought, how about making it at home so I could control the ingredients?
Mexican style chorizo is made from ground pork, vinegar and spices. I decided not to bother with trying to put it into casings because I always wind up removing the casings and using it like ground beef in recipes anyway.
First I did some research.
The Homesick Texan posts a fabulous chorizo with pork, vinegar, chiles and spices. Thank goodness HT agrees with me to skip the casings! The Spicie Foodie made a chorizo with less heat. Diane at The Whole Gang adds tequila to her chorizo! Wow! Must try this next time. Menu in Progress makes an Oaxacan style chorizo with five different chile powders.
And, the King of Mexican Cuisine himself, Rick Bayless, adds pork, pork fat, chiles, spices and garlic to his Chorizo Toluqueño in his book Authentic Mexican. He recommends refrigerating for 2 days before using.
Many of the recipes call for using a meat grinder, but, seriously, who has a meat grinder these days? I found that pulsing the pork in my food processor works just as well.
Chorizo is surprisingly easy to make and is very lean, depending on the cut of pork you use. I had to add oil to my pan to cook it because it was so very lean. And, I loved the flavor of my homemade version. So delicious. I have some stashed in my freezer right now for our next leisurely breakfast with chorizo and eggs!
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The next time you are headed to the hospital, be sure to sneak some salsa in with you. It’s the perfect cure for those hospital meal blues. After fasting for a day before my surgery and only drinking beef broth the night after, I had a hard time looking at the grey turkey roll-ups for dinner and the french toast that was the same color as the sausage the next morning. Luckily, my husband smuggled some salsa into my room. Two kinds! And a big bag of chips, no less. What can I say? The man knows the way to my heart.
Seriously, the salsa made everything taste much better and turned it into something you might even want to eat. I put the Goldwater’s Brand Sedona Red Hot Salsa on the turkey and the Goldwater’s Mojave Mango Salsa on the french toast. No, I’m not kidding. I actually put it on the french toast. The mango salsa is not sweet. It’s more like a chutney so it turns the french toast into a savory dish that save you the calories and fat of syrup and butter. It was even good on the sausage patty. I thought it was sort of brilliant even if I do say so myself. I do have to admit that it would taste much better if the mangos were fresh.
So, if your aren’t checking in to the hospital soon (I certainly hope you’re not!) try these recipes for unusual things to do with mango salsa/chutney.
Simply Recipes: Pork Mango Picadillo
Vintage Victuals: Rice with Mango Chutney
Cookin’ Canuck: Savory Mango Chutney & Cheddar Cheese Palmiers Recipe
Jimmy Dean Sausage: Jamaican Jerk Pinwheels
Sandy and I went to Santa Fe and took some classes at the Santa Fe School of Cooking – it was an incredible culinary experience – I highly, highly recommend it for a fabulous getaway for any foodie interested in southwest foods. I learned so much in just a few days – but I heard one thing that shocked and puzzled me. I attended a class called “Fajitas!,” with Chef Susan Anzalone. She said this -
“Never add acid to marinades for meats. NEVER. It will toughen the meat, just like it does in ceviche. Use zest if you want citrus flavor.”
Huh. (==scratches head==) This stunned me, because for years I have used lime juice in fajita marinades – with chicken and flank steak. So, I did some research seeing what some of my favorite chefs recommend for fajita marinades.
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