Basil Chicken Tacos with Relish and Cream

Do you know how when you buy basil it smells so good and is such a lovely and bright addition to your meal, but a little goes a long way? Inevitably, you put the rest of it in the fridge and two nights later half of the basil is brown and dying? Yeah. I hate it when that happens. Thus, the other day Joey and I blended up the basil with garlic in his food processor. We ended up using it to make Southwest Potatoes with a poached a egg on top.

It was a great meal. We followed Bittman's lead, but made it better by using the basil puree as the oil base and then, also using some fat rendered from a wonderful smokey bacon from the Meat Hook (thanks Sean) to brown the potatoes. At the end, we used the crumbled bacon on top of the dish before finishing with cilantro and lastly the egg. I don't have pictures from that meal, but trust me, It was awesome.

At home I made my own basil puree in a blender. It is a lot harder to do it in a blender, so if you are going to, put very few leaves at a time and be prepared to use more oil. As a slight aside, Bittman just wrote an article on the wonder and awesomeness of food processors.

The second puree was just basil and oil. Today I finally got to use it and what I made was so good, I am sharing it with you.

Making the chicken

thin cut chicken cutlets (1 per person)

basil puree (olive oil and basil pureed together)

Adobo, salt and pepper to taste

I followed a loose interpretation of another Bittman idea to cook them up, basically using the puree as a moisture seal for the lean meat.

Making the relish

For the relish, and really the whole idea of having tacos this week, I was inspired by a show on the food network. It's one about using just five ingredients to make things. I don't know what the name of the show is. Anyway, the show was more of an inspiration than a directive and I just used what I had.

Equal parts diced yellow onion, green pepper and radishes

Lemon zest and dry cumin

I felt pretty ingenious when I put this together. I knew that I wanted to add a lemon flavor to the relish but I did not want to add a lemon, oil combo to it because the cutlets are packed with an olive oil infused stuffing. Instead I took my peeler and shaved off some zest and diced it up and threw it in the bowl with the vegetables and then sprinkled the whole thing with cumin. I chose cumin because if I had fresh cilantro, I would have put it in.

Making the Cream

This was the easiest part and I also got my inspiration for making this from that cooking show. I took polish cream, which is basically just like sour cream except that the reduced fat version still only had cream in it rather than stuff like corn syrup (yuck Breakstone's). Anyway, I took a spoonful of that and mixed it with a spoonful of Salpica Habanero Lime salsa. Both are really good on their own, so their marriage was the perfect edible proof that opposites attract. The creamy cooling flavors mixing harmoniously with the acidic, smokey ones, perfectly topped my happy little tacos.

Success!

I am posting more pictures on Facebook, if you want to check them out. I hope this inspires some of you to try this at home.

Chicken Quesadillas on a Tuesday Night

I tend not to buy meat because I don't feel totally comfortable cooking it. It seems alien to me and I also feel guilty if I do not buy organic or farm raised meat. The last time I went to the supermarket, however, I compared the price of prepared fake meat products with the price of organic farm raised chicken breast. The chicken breast was cheaper and the whole chicken was a lot cheaper!

When I got home I put all my food away, including the raw breasts. I eyed them in their fleshy brightness and wondered if I should just cook them right away before I forogt about them. It is one thing to let carrots wane in your fridge and rotting meat another. I took the chicken out and then needed to tackle the next issue: how to cook this in a generally neutral way so I can use it for many different meals and how can I cook it so that it doesn't taste like bland rubber?

Luckily, because I am brilliant, I had the answer to those questions. Below is the recipe for cooking the breasts (and how to make quesadillas with the meat).

Chicken Quesadillas

4 chicken breasts

1/2 an onion

1 tomato or 2-3 smaller tomatoes

1/2 a green pepper

Generous dash of dry oregano

Salt, to taste

Fresh cracked pepper, to taste

For quesadillas

2 tortillas

A few slivers of sharp chedder cheese

Salsa

Prep your vegetables by slicing the tomatoes and onions in 1/8-1/4 inch slices. Then julienne the green pepper by the same diameter. Lay your breasts on a pan and in the areas around the breasts put your vegetables. Dash the breasts with salt and the oregano. Turn heat on medium and cover. When you hear and can smell the meat cooking, about five minutes, you will need to turn the meat. Uncover the pan. After you flip a breast over, you will ease the vegetables under the raw side of the breast. The result is that you will have the cooked side facing you and the raw side will be buffered from the pan by the vegetables. Now dash with salt again and crack pepper over the whole thing. Cover and reduce heat to low. Let the meat cook for about twenty to twenty-five minutes. When this time has elapsed you will have a lovely broth on the bottom of the pan with tomatoes and peppers whose flavors have intensified and sweetened, and best of all you will have four juicy delicious breasts.

When you are making the quesadillas you will take each tortilla and bend it in half so that you have four pieces. In a pan or a griddle you will place the first 1/4 inside of the pan. Next take two or three slivers, not slices, of cheese. The cheese is an element, not the highlight here, so please show a little self control. Use just enough so that when it melts it will more or less cover the area of the tortilla without melting over the tortilla's border. Next you will take some of those tomatotes peppers and onions from the chicken pan and drape a layer of them over the cheese. Then slice off a few pieces of chicken of a breast and place on tortilla as the third layer. Next, add more cheese, with the same restraint used before. Top with one of the tortilla quarters and then do the whole process with the last two quarters of tortillas. Put a low heat below the pan and cover. Check the quesadillas in a few minutes. Turn and heat the other side. Plate and enjoy with salsa. Voila, you've got a lovely healthy meal on your hands. Congratulations!!!

Mercadito Cantina, Where They're Gonna Know My Name

I like tacos. They are great. They bring together many things I love, such as citrus, tomatoes, avocado, tortillas, grilled meats, heat, acidity, beer, and the list goes on. When I lived in Memphis my friends and I would travel almost thrity minutes to eat at a taqueria where guys wore real cowboy hats. I'm not sure that makes it the real deal, but it was pretty darn good.

Up until recently I had not had any mind blowing tacos in New York. Then I read about Mercadito Cantina in the New York Times' $25 and Under column. Not only is the place worth a visit, but it's good in the best way a restaurant can be. Every time I go, I am humbled by the fact that I know that I cannot replicate this at home. The caliber of the execution is top notch.

Mercadito strikes the perfect balance between East Village casual cool and delicate, uncompromising culinary delivery. The salsas are not chunky approximations that you can buy in the chips aisle of your supermarket. They are perfectly calibrated in texture without being soupy.

The tacos, as well, are exacting. When I eat their tacos I feel like I've entered the sushi realm of taco making, not because they are playing at fusion, but because each taco comes to the table with a clear nod to aesthetics and balance. Like sushi, each taco comes with sharply defined elements that drape the pallett like a rainbow. You marvel at the clarity of each flavor and how beautifully it blends into the others. Like sushi, too, they are smaller, and so allow one to sample a greater variety of flavors.

I think though, what really makes this place a winner is not just the easy, yet tasteful decor or just the thrilling food, but the combination with a helpful, non-intrusive staff. It is a rare thing to feel so completely taken care of and pampered at a restaurant with so few interruptions. This place is perhaps my favorite discovery of 2008 and I can't wait to go back this year.

Mercadito Cantina
172 Avenue B (Btwn 10th and 11th Street)
New York, NY 10009
212-388-1750