Adventures in Cooking with Rick Bayless

Adventures in Cooking with Rick Bayless

This weekend, I had the most fantastic meal straight out of Rick Bayless’ cookbook: Everyday Mexican. My cooking companion and I made a truly genuine Mexican feast! We made homemade tomatillo apple salsa with chips, authentic Mexican tortilla soup and a lovely red leaf lettuce salad tossed with homemade zesty lime cilantro vinaigrette.

For a nice wine complement, we paired this delightful meal with a red French cabernet (black bottle pictured). The meal was truly a sample of aromas and tastes; my senses were inundated. The kitchen smelled delicious. This meal made for a definite highlight of my weekend.

The tortilla soup in the cookbook called for chicken to be added in the recipe. I’m not a fan of meat, yet we both agreed we really wanted a hot soup on such a cold night in December. When we flipped to the end of the recipe a few pages past the ingredients list, we discovered that Rick provided a vegetarian substitute.

He suggested pan frying tofu in ½ inch slices in a pan until well coated and then slicing the seared tofu into ½ inch chunks and tossing in with the soup, rather than chicken. We used extra firm high protein tofu that was very cheap—less than 2 dollars at our local Trader Joes. We pan seared the tofu with olive oil and the result was amazing! The tofu was chunky and provided a good base and sustenance for the soup. My dinner companion, who is a dedicated meat eater, was very impressed with the soup as well.

The side salad was basic, yet still satisfying. I simply chopped red leaf lettuce and fresh from the vine hot house tomatoes for a good base for our salad. Sometimes it’s the simple wholesome ingredients that make a meal taste so fresh and delicious. The salad may have been ordinary, but the homemade lime vinaigrette (or Lime-Cilantro Vinegreta) was extraordinary!

As he sampled the salad, my dinner companion noted he could really taste the spiciness of the dressing. I agreed that using such simple ingredients: lettuce and tomato for the base, when combined with the homemade vinaigrette made a fresh, flavorful, scrumptious side salad. I attribute the spiciness of the vinaigrette to the fresh green chiles (we used serranos) the recipe called for. The taste was fresh and spicy—a delicious combo.

Tomorrow, learn how we made the authentic Mexican tortilla soup from start to finish. More pictures to come too!