Mexican Breakfast Casserole

This Mexican Breakfast Casserole is wonderful for breakfast, brunch, or breakfast for dinner.

What's wonderful about this breakfast casserole is that you can assemble the whole thing the night before and then bake it in the morning while sipping your coffee, Bloody Mary, or Mimosa.

Chorizo and Egg Breakfast Tacos with Homemade Tortillas

These Chorizo and Egg Breakfast Tacos start with homemade flour tortillas that are filled with a mixture of Mexican chorizo, eggs, cheese, and homemade salsa roja. They are a delicious way to start your day.

These Tex-Mex breakfast tacos are loaded with scrambled Mexican chorizo and eggs, onions, and minced jalapeño. They taste so amazing.

Chorizo Nachos

You will want to make these chorizo nachos the next time you have a few friends over for game day.

These chorizo nachos begin with restaurant-style corn chips that are drizzled with melty Jack cheese sauce, topped with spicy chorizo, and a sprinkling of cilantro and chives.

Hearty Fisherman's Stew

Hearty Fisherman's Stew - a delicious combination of Spanish Chorizo or Portuguese Linguiça, white fish, tomatoes, leeks, and lots of fresh parsley.

This fish stew is hearty and warming, and great for serving when the temperature outside begins to cool.

Poached Cod in Saffron Broth with Spanish-Style Chorizo

Cod poached in a saffron broth with chorizo and potatoes is an easy one-pan dinner that is ready in an hour.

This cod in saffron broth with Spanish-style chorizo and potatoes is loaded with delicious flavors. The mild fish and potatoes are balanced with the spicy sausage, and the saffron broth is both gorgeous and delicious.

Chorizo Macaroni and Cheese with Cheddar and Cotija

This Chorizo Macaroni and Cheese with Cheddar and Cotija takes the flavors of English and Mexican cheeses and combines them into about the best macaroni and cheese I've ever tried. 

This Chorizo Macaroni and Cheese with Cheddar and Cotija is so flavorful from the combination of the medium sharp white cheddar and the salty, hard, and grainy Cotija cheese. I also added a small amount of Monterey Jack cheese for creaminess.

Chorizo Kale and Chicken Stuffed Poblanos

These decadent and cheesy chorizo, kale, and chicken stuffed poblanos are from a new cookbook, Stuffed: The Ultimate Comfort Food Cookbook by Dan Whalen, the author of the hugely popular blog, The Food in my Beard. The back cover of the book describes Dan as "the mad scientist of comfort food."

As the title hints, this book is about taking your favorite comfort foods and stuffing them into your other favorite comfort foods. He even has a recipe for Turduken in the book.. and it's stuffed with corn bread stuffing. See what I mean? 

Other recipes from the book that I want to try... pepperoni bread, chicken stuffed waffles, and sweet potato tamales, just to name a few. Oh yeah, and cheese stick Pot Stickers. Seriously.

At the end of this post, you will have an opportunity to win a copy of this fabulously fun and decadent book.

So about these stuffed poblanos...

This is a cross section of the rolled up chicken stuffed with cheese, kale, and chorizo and then stuffed into a poblano and then topped with more cheese. The kale makes them extra healthy, right? 

I used Mexican chorizo and seriously recommend that you do the same. Next time I make these, I will try to pound the chicken to be thinner to make it look more swirly (and I will be making these again). 

Serve these with Mexican rice and garnish with sour cream and avocado slices if you like. We loved these. 

Chorizo Kale and Chicken Stuffed Poblanos

I’ve (Dan Whalen) been cooking this recipe for a really long time and it never disappoints. It’s fairly straightforward and is easy enough to make on a weeknight, but tastes like something much more special. Feel free to use another type of cheese if you want to tone down the heat level. Choosing the right chorizo in my opinion is the most important part of this recipe. I usually like the ground uncooked Mexican stuff, but most of the authentic Portuguese cured/smoked kind are tasty, too. Some of the more Americanized brands are a little too smoky/sweet and come off “hammy” to me.

Makes: 6 to 8 servings

Heat: 5.3

Pig-Out Scale: 6.4

Filling

1 tablespoon (15 ml) olive oil

½ pound (225 g) ground chorizo

3 branches kale

8 ounces (225 g) pepper Jack cheese

8 ounces (225 g) queso blanco, crumbled

10 poblano peppers (number includes two extra in case of breakage)

4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Make the Filling: In a skillet over medium heat, with a little olive oil, cook the chorizo to brown it (whether it is already cooked or not). Remove the thick stems from the kale and rip the leafy parts into small pieces. Shred half the pepper Jack and combine with crumbled queso. Slice the other half of the pepper Jack into thin slices.

Prep the Poblanos: Broil the poblano peppers for a few minutes, turning and moving around constantly to slightly char parts of the skin and soften them up a bit. Using a paring knife, remove the stem from the peppers and shake out the seeds and insides.

Prep the Chicken: Slice the chicken the long way to make 2 thin cutlets out of each breast. You may want to also pound these out to thin them further.

Stuff It!: Top the cutlets with the chorizo, kale and cheese. Roll the cutlets up and stuff them into the poblano peppers. Try and match smaller peppers with smaller cutlets. Also, don’t worry if some rip! Practice makes perfect and we can hide those rips with cheese later.

Cook It: Preheat the oven 350˚F (180˚C, or gas mark 4). Bake the peppers for about 45 minutes, until fully cooked. Top with the slices of pepper Jack and broil until browned.

Recipe from Stuffed: The Ultimate Comfort Food Cookbook: Taking Your Favorite Foods and Stuffing Them to Make New, Different and Delicious Meals. by Dan Whalen (Page Street Publishing; August 2013) Posted with permission.

Disclosure: I received a copy of this book to participate in the Stuffed Blog Tour.

Macanese Stir-Fried Chicken | Wok Wednesdays

According to Grace Young, the author of Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge, Macanese food is a fusion of southern Chinese, Portuguese, and Southeast Asian styles, as well as other European and Indian cultures.

This dish is super easy to prepare, even though it calls for 17 (se-ven-teen) ingredients. Not including the rice.

Amazingly, I had most of the ingredients on hand. The only two ingredients that gave me a challenge were Spanish Chorizo and canned coconut milk. Spanish chorizo, which is a cooked and cured meat, is not the same as Mexican chorizo (found everywhere here), which is uncooked. It's sort of less spicy and more smokey than pepperoni, and more spicy than smoked kielbasa. It's the sausage that is usually used in paella.

Seventeen ingredients you say? Try chicken, garlic, cornstarch, two kinds of soy sauce, rice wine, sugar, coconut milk, chicken broth, vinegar, oil, shallots, the chorizo, turmeric, sweet paprika, tomatoes, and salt.

The orange "look" of this dish comes from the turmeric. My only hiccup on pulling this recipe together? The instructions say "sprinkle on the turmeric..." and I took that to mean that I should use my fingers to really "sprinkle" it. Turmeric is also used as a dye, a factoid I did not know. I now have orange fingernails. Oops.

The orange manicure not withstanding, we loved this dish. I texted my son that I was doing a stir fry and "feel free to stop by" and he did. He loved it too and took home all of the leftovers. (He also cracked up watching me take pictures of my bowl prior to dinner. My secret life exposed.)

I am participating in Wok Wednesdays, a group of individuals cooking their way through Grace Young's Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge. We've all agreed not to publish the recipe in order to support book publishing. I encourage you to get the book and try this amazing, amazing dish. I've not been disappointed with any stir fry I have tried from the book. Join the group and wok along!