Chilaquiles Jones

For our anniversary, my mom got me and M. a gift certificate to Frontera Grill. We went with my mom and aunt one Saturday for brunch, after buying berries and pastries at the Green City Market in Lincoln Park.

Frontera chilaquiles with guajillo sauce. And really good coffee.

I'd had chilaquiles on the brain for weeks, and when I saw it on the menu I knew I had to have it. The guajillo sauce was sharp, a little spicy, a tiny bit bitter, and all delicious. The substantial chips were made from the housemade thick tortillas, so they still had some bite despite being drowned in the delicious sauce.

After getting home, I had to make a batch of my own. I found a recipe on Epicurious, which I followed with a couple of exceptions. I used chipotle powder in place of the paprika, and I doubled it, so it cooked longer.

It was pretty easy to make. I soaked a package of guajillo chilies in hot water until they were soft, then roughly chopped jalapenos, onions, and garlic. After removing the stems and seeds from the chilies, I blended everything with drained whole tomatoes and some of the soaking liquid, and cooked  it for about 40 minutes. The heat level was still pretty low, so I added some more chipotle and cooked it a little more along with the honey.

Homemade chilaquiles

I tossed some of the sauce with store-bought tortillas and topped it with some crumbled feta (instead of queso fresco), then baked it until the chips were browned.

With some chopped sweet Texas 1015 onions, lime juice, and avocado, it was satisfying, but pretty different from Frontera's version. This one was more tomato-y and less spicy and complex. Next time, I think I'll try a mixture of dried chilies and toast them before soaking, and reduce the amount of tomato.

I'd assumed the sauce would cook down a bit, which is why I made the double batch. I ended up with four pints, which was a bit more than expected. I'll be making this again soon.

Onions: Milagro Farm

Jalapenos: Urban Roots

Garlic: Buena Tierra Farm

Tasting Home

A couple of weekends ago (before the Great Motherboard Death of 2009), I escaped the heat of Texas for a long weekend in upstate New York. My sweetie and I visited his family and attended a wedding on Lake Seneca.

The cool breeze off Lake Seneca, and later in the trip, off Lake Ontario was refreshingly crisp, and a kind of chilly I forgot I could feel in the never-ending heat we're been experiencing in Austin.

I attended the large Rochester Public Market one Thursday morning. At the first table, I saw pineapples. Why are there pineapples in a farmers market in New York, I asked myself. I asked someone manning a table where the farm was, and was answered "We don't have a farm." So, this isn't a growers' market, I guess.

I did find plenty of farm tables, including one with a towering pile of fresh sweet corn that I had to sample, raw, right at the market. Coming from the Midwest, I miss big, juicy ears of sweet corn, and that one did not disappoint.

Probably the most abundant fruit at the market were New York apples. There were varieties I'd never heard of, and they were all incredibly inexpensive. Had I had more time in NY, I would have bought baskets and baskets of them.

On the way home, we had a short layover at O'Hare. Being a Chicago native, I miss the airport (or, I miss living in a hub city where I don't have layovers on every trip). It's familiar, and I know I'm in for a treat whenever I visit home or have a connection there because of the Garrett Popcorn shop.

Why I love the airport

When I was a kid, my grandma worked downtown. Sometimes, as a treat, she'd stop by Garrett's and buy a small bag of their Chicago Mix, a sweet-salty blend of their homemade caramel and cheese corns. The caramel is buttery and sweet, and the cheese is tangy and salty and a finger-staining shade of orange. Together, they're one of my favorite foods from childhood.

Salty-sweet goodness