Salsa Chicken and Spanish Rice

Dinner earlier this week was an example of getting creative based on what I had in my kitchen, not wanting to try out a new recipe. Let’s see… Cilantro, onion, a few cans of diced tomatoes, some chicken breasts in the freezer. The answer came to me while I was driving. I can actually tell you what intersection I was at and what lane I was in, but I suppose you don’t really care about that.

I swear I’ve made this before, though it had been a long time, but I couldn’t find the exact recipe in my collection, just a similar one. I know the psychiatrist that I work with once told me about essentially the same recipe, and I’m not sure if my mind has combined my own recipe with hers or if I really did have a different recipe at one point, but either way, what I made was a combination of the recipe that I had and what she told me about.

First of all, you need salsa. I didn’t have any in my cupboard, but I had all the fixins so I made my own in my blender. I’ve blogged about this before.

Next, get out that homemade taco seasoning. I’ve also blogged about this, but for some reason Windows Live refuses to let me link to the post. You’ll have to look in my archives (April 2011).

Put your chicken breasts in a dish and sprinkle liberally with the taco seasoning.

Then put it seasonings-side-down in a greased dish and sprinkle the other side with more seasoning.

Top with that salsa that you just whipped up (store-bought salsa would be fine, too!).

And then top with a Mexican blend of cheese.

If you’re sad that you’re out of cheese and you wish you had more, be like me and chop up a stick of Monterey-colby blend, too.

And that’s it! Just needs to be baked.

There’s so much water in my salsa that the chicken was practically sitting in flavorful water while it baked. That does wonderful things for the chicken! It was so juicy. So delicious.

Now for the Spanish rice. Heat some oil and sauté chopped onion.

Add a cup of uncooked rice and stir it around until it starts looking browned. I’m pretty sure this is to make the final product less sticky and Asian-like, but don’t ask me to swear to that.

The recipe says to add chicken broth, a can of diced tomatoes, some seasonings and spice, and salt/ pepper. I substituted my own salsa for a lot of that, since it’s pretty much what it is, anyway.

Then reduce the heat, cover, and leave it alone for about 20 minutes. No peeking. Gah, that’s hard.

But worth it!

Delicious. I was very pleased with both of these, though the rice was spicy from the salsa. Chicken was juicy, the rice was soft the fluffy, and they were both full of flavor and spice.

Yummy!

Taco Casserole

What do you do when you want to make something Mexican-themed for dinner but you don’t have tortillas or tortilla chips? Can’t make nachos or burritos or enchiladas. That’s pretty much all I know how to make. And I wasn’t about to look up a recipe for making tortillas – if I’m too lazy to go to the grocery store 1.5 miles away, I’m also too lazy for that. But hubby really, really wanted Mexican food.

Solution: taco casserole. I know this sounds weird. Roll with it.

Well, the recipe was actually called taco bake, but there were a lot of similar recipes called taco casserole and that’s more descriptive for me. I chose this one because I had the ingredients, mainly.

Also, it looked simple enough. Sauté ground beef and chopped onion.

Get some taco seasoning ready. If you don’t have any, make your own.

When the beef is done, drain it and then add water and tomato sauce. I also added diced tomatoes, and instead of canned tomato sauce, I used leftover sauce from the other night.

Also add your taco seasoning. This is important!

Stir it up and then cover and let simmer for a while. While it’s simmering, cook some pasta.

And grate some cheddar cheese.

Mmm, the sauce is looking and smelling good.

Stir in the pasta, cheese, and also a can of chopped green chilies.

Pour it all into a greased 9x13 pan.

Top with cheese and toss it in a 400 degree oven.

[I accidentally typed “400 degree onion” and then sat there staring at it, trying to figure out why that didn’t look right. Got it now'!]

And when it comes out, it’s hot and bubbly and delicious.

My pictures make it look more yellow than it really was.

Nor do they capture how delicious this was. Really. It tasted nothing like your traditional baked pasta dishes because of the addition of the taco seasoning. It tasted like a baked taco with pasta in place of the tortilla.

And the leftovers are so, so satisfying.

Make it, and enjoy it.

Best part: dishes were done before it was even finished cooking. Cleanup was a snap!