I was visiting my sister Mary in Maine, and was faced with a leftover challenge. A day earlier my father had slow cooked a pork loin, and I had barbequed chicken. We had lots both left to use. We came up with the idea to make Mexican food while out shopping at a cooking supply store. I have to admit that I love to buy hardware, even if I have no idea what to do with it yet. My father and I had seen a tortilla press and both bought one. Our thought was could make flour tortillas from scratch and make use of our leftover meats.

Turns out flour tortillas are hand rolled. Who knew? Probably lots of people—but we were not going to let that stop us. We rolled out some homemade flour tortillas and got started on the sauces and rice. I honestly don’t know how to make Mexican rice. I knew it was colored from tomatoes and figured that it was toasted a bit first and cooked with chicken broth. It turned out more like a risotto then any rice I have ever had at a Mexican restaurant. Perhaps I cooked it to long and the rice broke up too much. Either way it was delicious. My father prepared a dark salsa from reconstituted chipotle, a verde salsa, and a tomato, onion and jalapeño salsa.

I could not resist throwing a couple of green onions on the grill and serving up a few radishes as well. Not too shabby for leftovers.

November 6th, 2007 by John (Cho-Tabetai)