Adding for those who are going to try my recipe. Have things out and ready (as in, near the stove ready to put in the skillet for ingredients) before you begin to heat the oil. You have to move quickly once that oil is hot enough and get the things in and stirring before the oil begins to smoke. There isn’t much of a window. If you can, have someone get you the cup of HOT water and pour it for you as well so you can keep stirring.
Yes, I subscribe to the theory of “Too much food is just enough” when it comes to cooking for other people. I live in fear of running out. 
That corn cake sounds seriously sinful. I must make it!!
And the cinnamon-tortilla recipe looks great also. Thanks!
I’ve been looking for a corn cake recipe forever! This is going on the “Must-make” list right now!
For the generic mexamerican rice you find in taco stands, I just make rice and add a bit of Bijol. Available at your local mex grocery store or even in the Latin section of most chains.
Make as you normall make rice and toss in some frozen peas and carrots and when it’s cooked, toss it in a pan with a little olive oil to cook and get that oiliness you are looking for. Bingo.
silenus, before you go running to the grocery store, here are some yummy add-ins you may want to consider:
A small can of diced mild green chiles- a favorite in my house
Sliced jalepenos
Cubed Velveeta (mmmm, melty veeter)
A can of tamales, sliced
A handful of Green Giant Extra Sweet Frozen Niblets corn instead of canned
This casserole is such a good base. You can make it your own in so many ways. We love it!
I’m a fan of Vigo Yellow Rice. I don’t know if it’s regional or available all over. You just dump it in a pot or rice cooker and cook it like regular rice. Normally, I don’t like the taste of packaged rice mixes, but this one is good. It’s very similar to what I find at middle-of-the-road Mexican places.
Oh, yeah. The add-in possibilities are endless with this. Ortegas are a given if I am cooking. But just the palin cake, as a contrast to the tons of peppers I usually put in my Mexican food will be wonderful.
What’s the secret?
Look for firm skin, no soft spots, NO WRINKLES. Dry stretch marks are ok if they don’t look too bad. Wrinkles mean they aren’t so fresh. Pick them up and turn them around to check out the color. You can usually detect a mild jalepeno scent if you sniff the stem area, not always though. (That may just be due ot my allergies.) Usually the really hot ones are a dark, but vibrant green, with a sort of waxy look to them. (I don’t believe that it’s waxing to make them look better either since I’ve had some fresh from a garden with this appearance.) REALLY hot ones often have patches of black/very dark green on them as well. This is what worked for the peppers in this area. She said “you want black ones” if you are looking for hot peppers. I found that the bright green waxy ones were just as hot if not hotter in some cases. I would pick the left pepper, and the bottom pepper as being the hottest in the four in the first picture (top left) here. Red on jalepenos often means a milder heat, or even no heat IME. Click on the jalepeno link on this page and look at the 2 jalepenos on the right to see what I mean by “stretch marks”. (the yellow marks on the red jalepeno are stretch marks) Also compare the difference in shade between the green pepper and the leaves. That is the difference that there will be between the “vibrant green” jalepenos and the not as hot jalepenos. The peppers in the middle of that page don’t look like they’d be the hottest you could get. The peppers that are shown in the link “black areas on jalepeno peppers” on this page might, or might not be quite hot. (If the green were darker and more vibrant I’d be more willing to think they were really hot ones.) I’ve noticed sometimes when the black areas on the pepper are that uniform, and that big that the pepper doesn’t have as much heat. Black dots, or splots but not that quite much are what I’ve seen on really hot peppers. Those peppers are woth a gamble though, I’d buy them because they’d have a good flavor even if they didn’t have the most heat I could find.
You should probably experiment buy up small amounts of peppers with differing characteristics, (though not soft ones, or pale/wrinkled ones) take note of how hot the peppers were and if you liked the flavor, and search for more of that kind. Can you make “chili”? (I don’t mean the stuff many have with meat and/or beans, I mean what many call salsa or pico de gallo.)
Boil a pot of jalepenos until they are cooked. (Whatever size you want to make, though an ordinary sauce pot is more than sufficient.) You should use only just enough water to keep the peppers from touching the bottom of the pot, not much more. (About 10-15 minutes) Be careful of the steam, don’t breath it deeply or let it get into your eyes. Save the water the peppers were cooked in, (just leave it in the pot wijth a lid on it) and let the peppers cool a bit. Remove the stem, use two forks, one to pull the stem, the other to hold the pepper. Put the de-stemmed peppers in the food processor. Add tomatoes if you like, or tomato sauce. Put in whatever seasonings you might like. (At most I put in a bit of garlic, sometimes no tomato, depending on if I’m making green chili or not. Sometimes I just have the peppers, nothing else.) Put in some of the jalepeno water to lubricate the blades, this adds heat since you cooked off some of the oils that give the peppers their flavor. Run the machine, and put the results into a good jar. Let it cool, then refridgerate. It stores well. (I wouldn’t store it in plastic unless you want to delegate a specific plastic bowl for salsa.) It’s good on many things.
Make chili to gauge the kind of peppers you get, so you can find what the best kind for your area are. I think it does vary some from place to place. Maybe the vibrant green peppers aren’t hot at all there.
Hope this makes sense and helps you find good peppers.
Well, the kids liked helping to make the corn cake, but they didn’t want to try it, even though they both love corn. Go figure. (The grownups thought it was nummy!) The Near East shelf at the store where I shopped had no Spanish or Mexican rice version. I got La Preferida (sp? too lazy to go look at the box), figuring that the specks of red and green pepper in the illustration were part of the “Serving Suggestion.” They weren’t. C’est la vie. The kids sat and picked out the yucky red and green things.
But they did like the colored chips.
Didn’t get around to the cinnamon tortilla thing. My sister brought sherbet and an ice cream cake roll. Yum.
And we had leftovers for lunch on Sunday. Double yum.