Corn and roasted poblano pudding with calabacitas and mole chicken

This is just a quick post to get in my five for the week. I spent the afternoon at the river at Sauvie Island with Scott, picking blackberries, drinking a beer with our toes in the river, and then picking up some nice produce at Kruger's Farm Market. I'll tell you all about it later, but right now I'm full of delicious burgers and want to watch a DVD and have a cocktail, and not blog. I do wanna tell you about what I did with all those lovely chiles I showed you the other day, though, real quick.

So, it turns out that making chile rellenos from peppers the size of walnuts is a fool's errand. Instead, after I roasted the poblanos,* I decided to use them in the corn pudding. And hot damn! Am I ever glad I did. The corn pudding was so simple - just sautéed onion, garlic and corn with diced, roasted poblanos mixed with a couple beaten eggs, a splash of cream, a little blue cornmeal and a couple handfuls of grated cheese (jack and sharp cheddar). Bake in a buttered souffle until golden and set. So good scooped onto a plate with some summer squash confetti. Or sliced and browned in a pan with a thick slab of ham and some fried tomato for breakfast (I'll tell about that later, too).

*anchos are the dried form of poblanos, I forgot that on Thursday's post.

For the calabacitas (Mexican summer squash vegetable dish), I sautéed diced pattypan and yellow crookneck squash with some of my Royal Burgundy beans (they got a bit big and needed a chop), diced red bell pepper, chopped green olives and chopped dried cherries. Add some cumin and cinnamon, salt and pepper and it's a thing. Kind of like a vegetarian/healthy empanada filling. Oh snap, I am totally going to make this into an low-cal empanada, Ben!

The salty olives and sweet cherries really brighten up. It looks kinda like circus barf, but it was really good.

I had some chicken thighs that I simmered in a poaching liquid spiked with achiote, Mexican oregano, garlic, dried shallot and bay leaf. Then I shredded it and soaked it with mole I pulled from the freezer (from the venison tenderloin that I cooked for Norm). This busy plate looks a tranny mess, but good lord it was tasty. Add a basket of warm, soft, flour tortillas and a basic Argentinian Malbec (we had Don Miguel Gascón 2007 - the chocolate covered cherry is a no-brainer with the mole, but not too serious for the bright veg medley) .