Taking the Southwest to Los Angeles

A weekend visit to Los Angeles, California to visit family is on the calendar.  My husband, Wayne, and I worry about descending on relatives and causing a disruption in weekend plans. We hope to soften the blow by preparing a Mexican food dinner for them the first night of our arrival.

After long years of living in the Southwest in El Paso, Texas, I am pretty proud that I can prepare most Mexican food dishes without consulting a recipe. But in discussing a menu for the upcoming dinner, I realized we will be cooking in someone else's kitchen. Will they have a comal (Mexican style griddle ) handy?  Our comal has a permanent home on the stove. We use it to warm corn and flour tortillas, among other uses. 

Comal with chile pepper handle

Will their kitchen have a lime squeezer to prepare ice cold Tecate beer with salt and freshly squeezed lime?  I suppose you could get the juice out of a lime by hand, but it's been a long time since I used that method.

Mexican lime squeezer

And what about a tortilla warmer?  Will aluminum foil work as well?

Tortilla warmer

Our home freezer is full of roasted green chiles, ready to be thawed and peeled for any number of dishes, such as chile con queso (chile with cheese), chiles rellenos (stuffed chiles) and pico de gallo (fresh salsa). But then we live near Hatch, New Mexico, home of famous green and red chiles.  I know Los Angeles has plenty of green chiles, but I don't want to have to roast them that evening.

I love to make old-fashioned Mexican Rice that I learned about in Diana Kennedy's Recipes from the Regional Cook of Mexico (1978), pp.31-32.   But the dish takes constant attention to keep it from burning. Quite a risk in a strange kitchen, which I believe has a gas range.  (Our home stove is electric.) 

And I couldn't figure out how to carry a jar of homemade red enchilada sauce on the airplane. The thought of such a jar packed with my trip clothes in the checked luggage was scary.  

After much exchange of ideas, we decided on the following menu.

Mexican Food Dinner 

Appetizers and Drinks
  Mango salsa ( Joy of Cooking, 1997, p. 63 )
  Tostadas (bought)
  Tecate beer (bought)

Main dish
  Tacas (Not a misspelling! See explanation below)
  Lettuce and tomato (bought)
  Cubed new potatoes sauteed with onion and red and green bell pepper

Dessert
  Pineapple sherbet (bought)

Tacos (the real spelling) can be made with just about any ingredient you want to put in a corn tortilla. At our house, we often make a healthier taco by softening corn tortillas and filling them with ground meat cooked with onion and garlic and adding cheese.  But Wayne likes to make tacas, the way his mother used to.  And, being from Central Texas, she called them tacas. He fills a folded corn tortilla with the meat mixture and cheese and then deep fries everything.  They are delicious, but oh the cholesterol and the calories. So, if I can talk him into the healthy version, we have tacos.  If not, we have tacas.

We are looking forward with great anticipation to our Los Angeles visit and the ride on the Coast Starlight to Portland to follow.  It will be great to sit back, watch the scenery, and let someone else do the cooking.