Chile Colorado

Although not actually part of our culinary world tour, we love making cuisine from different cultures, especially with Mexican and Spanish influenced foods.

We've seen lots of crock pot and slow cooker recipes for Chile Colorado - and tried out a few - but they don't turn out as well when you actually go through the full process. The taste difference, as we discovered, is huge, and it's leagues ahead of just using canned red enchilada sauce.

For really stellar Chile Colorado, you want to go as authentic as possible, so instead of using canned peppers with sauce, hit up a local market or the Hispanic section of the grocery store and look for a bag of dried chiles. We found a bag for $5 that had about 40 gigantic dried chiles, so it will keep us stocked up for some time.

For our recipe, instead of the traditional beef, we're used pork stew meat, which has a different texture and flavor. For Chile Colorado, you'll need:

• Olive Oil
• 1 White Onion
• 1 cup Chicken Stock
• Garlic
• 8 - 10 Dried Chiles
• 1 pound Diced Pork
• 2 tbsp. Vinegar
• Cumin
• Pepper
• Oregano

First thing's first: strap on some gloves and get to de-seeding those chiles. We went with all the seeds removed, but if you want more heat, you could leave in about 1/4 - 1/2 the seeds from one chile. For something really, really hot, leave in the seeds of one or more full chiles. After cleaning them out, we're going to set them in a bowl, as they need to be reconstituted before being used.

Here Megan is pouring boiling water into the bowl - enough to cover the chiles - and then covering it with plastic wrap.

The chiles sit covered for a half hour to soak up the moisture. Afterwards, drain out the water and mix the chiles together with the stock in a blender or food processor until you have a thick puree.

Meanwhile, we'll start cooking the diced pork, onion, and garlic with all the seasonings in a separate pan.

While the meat and vegetables are cooking, we're going to push the chile and stock mixture through strainer repeatedly. Unless you have really big strainer and bowl, you'll probably have to do this in small batches. Yes, it's a lot of work, but it's also well worth the effort.

After staining all the pulpy mixture, you'll be left with this smooth liquid that's a very pretty shade of red and almost ready to go.

Next we add in the vinegar and any remaining seasonings you want, then we mix together the chile sauce with the pork and onions.

Mix thoroughly and simmer over a low heat for another 30 minutes or so until the flavors mingle.

Now we're finally ready to go! I wanted mine in a tortilla, so I've spooned some cooked rice in first, followed by some big spoonfuls of the Chile Colorado.

Top it with cheese, wrap it up, and its ready to go! You could add sour cream, but this is already so flavorful on its own that its really not necessary, and since we left out the seeds, it's the perfect balance of flavor and heat.

You don't have to make it into a taco though, as here Megan put some Chile Colorado in a bowl with rice and tortilla chips.

Culinary World Tour: France (Chicken Fricassee)

Our culinary world tour now hits its eighth stop: France! Home to classic cuisine renowned the world over, picking one single dish out of the dozens (nay, hundreds!) of iconic meals was a tough choice, especially as we've done several in the past just in the course of trying out different cooking styles.

After much consideration and taking stock of what we had on hand, we decided to make a classic chicken fricassee, made with wine (a staple of French cooking) and something we never use in recipes: a bouquet garni (fresh herbs wrapped up in kitchen twine).

Before we get into that, be sure to check out the previous stops in our culinary world tour if you missed them:

Spain: Grilled Paella
England: Yorkshire Pudding
Ireland: Shepherd's Pie
Iceland: Lamb Pie With Rye Crust
Greenland: Suaasat
Canada: Poutine
Mexico: Posole

Chicken fricassee is traditionally made by starting with a whole fryer chicken and cutting it into pieces by hand - and if you've been following our blog, you know how much we love working with whole chicken (check out our coffee rubbed, orange injected and lemon-stuffed varieties). To make this a bit simpler and less time-consuming, however, we used a mixture of bone-in thighs and drumsticks. You could also use leg quarters instead.

For our French Chicken Fricassee, you'll need:

• About 1 pound chicken – if you are serving a large group, use a whole chicken of up to 3 pounds
• 4 Tbsp. Butter
• 3 Tbsp. Olive Oil
• 1 Cup White Wine
• 4 Tbsp. Flour
• 1 tsp. Sugar
• 10 – 15 Button Mushrooms
• 6 – 9 oz. Pearl Onions (about half a bag if you are using frozen)
• 1 Large Bunch Fresh Herbs
• 6 Tbsp. Heavy Cream
• 2 ½ Cups Chicken Stock

To get this savory wonder started, begin by heating butter and oil in a pan and briefly frying both sides of the chicken.

Keep frying until you've got a nice golden skin on both sides of your thighs and drumsticks.

Next we're going to change the texture of the chicken and get the sauce started by spooning in a few tablespoons of flour.

Eventually you'll get chicken surrounded by a roux (as the flour mixes with the butter), like this:

Next it's time to add in the wine. You don't need anything fancy or expensive here, any dry white wine will do.

The roux will start to thicken up a bit as it cooks together with the wine.

Now we'll pour in the chicken stock. As usual, we recommend making your own, because this gives you the ability to really knock the flavor out of the park and control how salty or sweet it is. If you go with store bought, we recommend the Knorr Flavor Boost tubs that get added to water.

Next we add in the bouquet garni - a mixture of two large fresh herb strands tied together with twine. The reason for the twine is to keep it all together without removing the herbs from the stalk, as we'll be pulling the herbs fully out of the fricassee later once all the flavor is absorbed. For our bouquet garni, we used lemongrass and basil (if you don't have a sweet herb such as lemongrass, you may want to squeeze in a few teaspoons of lemon juice).

Here we've set the entire bouquet directly into the sauce, where it will cook for about 30 minutes before being removed.

While that's cooking, in a separate pan we sautee some button mushrooms (with the stems removed) on both sides in a little oil or butter.

After they turn golden brown on both sides, pull the mushrooms out of the pan and set aside.

In the same pan, add the sugar and a teaspoon or two of water to cook the pearl onions.

After heating through, we're also going to set the onions aside - but don't discard the liquid in the pan just yet!

When the onions and mushrooms are done, pull the bouquet garni out of the pan and discard. Pour the pan liquid into the fricassee pan - adding in all that delicious flavor from the mushrooms, oil, and sugar.

Now we want the sauce to thicken, but we don't want the meat to overcook, so we're going to pull out the chicken and set it aside in a covered dish.

Next add in the heavy cream to add a thick, savory component to an already decadent dish.

After mixing in the cream, add the cooked mushrooms and onions into the sauce.

After the sauce has suitably thickened and reduced down, add the chicken back to the pan to reheat and soak in the flavor.

Now it's finally time to start plating up! Set down a bed of mushrooms and set a few pieces of chicken on top.

To finish the dish, crumble some of the remaining fresh herbs on top, and then dig in!

Interconnecting Meals: Meatball Soup To Garlic And Meatball Pizza With White Sauce

During our cooking adventures over the last eight years of marriage, Megan and I have discovered that shopping on a limited budget doesn't mean having to rely on microwave dinners and pre-packaged meals.

In fact, the opposite is frequently true: if you keep your eyes on sales, shop smart, and come up with a weekly meal plan, buying fresh ingredients for fantastic dinners can be significantly less expensive than relying on fast, frozen, or canned food.

We've been coming up with interesting ways to interconnect dinners while putting together our weekly meal plan for years now (like black bean burritos to black bean burgers or the epic habenero mac and cheese) and our latest way to interconnect the dishes throughout a week involved both kale and homemade meatballs.

First we used kale in the bacon and caramelized onion pasta dish made earlier in the week, which will also be included here in a soup. The soup meanwhile uses meatballs that will be frozen and stretched into two meals for a Friday night pizza.

For kale and meatball soup, you'll need:

•    1 pound ground pork (or more if you are feeding a larger number of people)
•    2 strips bacon, diced
•    4 tbsp minced garlic (2 for the meatballs, 2 for the soup)
•    3 tbsp Parmesan cheese
•    1 tbsp breadcrumbs
•    1 egg
•    Seasonings – parsley, salt, and pepper
•    1 bunch fresh kale
•    ¼ - ½ tsp crushed red pepper
•    2 ½ cups chicken stock (homemade preferred, if you go with store bought, we recommend Knorr’s Homestyle)
•    1 can cannellini beans
•    1 tsp. olive oil

We'll be making these meatballs a bit different than our usual giant cheese-stuffed meatballs for pasta (for a look at how those come together, head over here). To put these together, mix the ground pork with the diced bacon, half the garlic, the Parmesan cheese, breadcrumbs, and egg.

After mixing thoroughly, form them into small sized meatballs (smaller than for pasta). Reserve half of them to put in the freezer.

Next we're going to start the soup by cooking the oil and garlic for a few minutes and then adding in the stock, seasonings, kale, and cannellini beans.

You could cook the meatballs separately on the skillet or in the stove and then toss them in at the last second, but to save on dishes and use less oil we're going to let them boil in the soup - about 25 - 30 minutes should do it, resulting in a cooked-through meatball with a great taste and texture.

Here's our delicious soup that has both loads of flavor and the health benefits of kale and beans.

For the second meal making use of the rest of the meatballs, we're going non-traditional and putting them on a pizza! We thought about what sort of sauces we normally like and how we'd usually have meatballs with pasta, so we decided to go with a white Alfredo style sauce instead of a tomato-based one. For this pizza, you'll need:

•    Pizza crust
•    ½ pound frozen pork meatballs
•    ½ cup heavy whipping cream
•    ¼ cup Parmesan
•    2 fresh garlic cloves, sliced
•    Button mushrooms, sliced
•    Shredded mozzarella and monterrey jack

We do our own homemade crusts, which we won't go over yet again how to make here. If you haven't done homemade crust before, definitely give it a shot! Hit up a site like Allrecipes and try a few until you get the one that offers your preferred level of crispiness (or doughiness!) and the thickness you like.

The other half of our meatballs were frozen and are now coming out of the freezer. Don't thaw them ahead of time, as they cook just fine from frozen directly on the pizza.

For the sauce, heat together the butter, heavy whipping cream, and a little Parmesan on the stove top.

We're also going to do something that not nearly enough pizza places have figured out is amazingly flavorful - sliced fresh garlic!

...but wait, what's that in the background?

Is that a MOUNTAIN OF CHEESE?

Why yes, yes it is. A mountain of mozzarella and monterrey jack to be specific.

Pour the sauce onto the crust...

...and use the back of a spoon to spread it evenly across.

Arrange your cheese and toppings however you'd like! We decided to also add on sliced mushrooms for extra flavor and heartiness.

Pop it in the oven for about 20 minutes, and you've got something far better than what any delivery place would bring you.

This is one of the reason why making the meatballs smaller is important, so they don't take up too much pizza real estate and make it harder to pick up and eat. If you went too large by accident, simply cut them in half before placing them on the pizza.