Another week, another dish. This week I tried to cook something less risky (remember that chicken can kill you) but a lot more complicated. When I called my mom to ask her how to cook stuffed peppers (chiles rellenos), she answered with, “Oh, you don’t want to do that,” and, “You’re going to get fatter from cooking all these foods all the time.”
With a twice-bruised ego, I insisted that I did want to try the dish and that I couldn’t gain weight from all this cooking since I only do it once a week.
After taking some aggressive notes in Spanish, I went to the grocery store to pick up the things needed. That’s right, I took notes in Spanish, my first language. As I’ve been cooking all these recipes that I often ate at home, I find that I’ve been cooking in Spanish, so to speak. By that I mean that most of my thought process about what I’m cooking happens in Spanish — even at the grocery store when I’m going through a mental note of what to get next.
After previously attempting to find queso fresco at the local grocery store and being ridiculed by a Hispanic woman for asking if they had the cheese I needed, I decided to try the grocery store up the road. I walked around the display of cheeses located near the entrance and was disheartened when I didn’t see any. I thought I’d try looking in the aisles before I gave in to the fancy cheeses (I didn’t know how they would react with the peppers).
Thankfully I was able to find the queso fresco in the dairy aisle. While there, I also picked up a container of sour cream, then went around the corner and got some eggs. 
I waddled over to the produce section and picked up two tomatoes, two onions and a bulb of garlic. Though a little more difficult to find, this store had pasilla peppers. Now, pasilla peppers are actually misnamed. An actual pasilla pepper is dried, long and narrow, while the pasilla that I used for the recipe are fresh and brownish. The name of the pepper changes within different regions of Mexico. In the United States the name pasilla for some reason stuck to the fresh pepper.
An interesting note: When I asked my mother for the name of the type of pepper I needed, she completely forgot the name and just said, “You’ll know when you see it.” It was true. I knew what pepper it was when I found it.
While at the grocery store up the road, I also got some cooking oil, some chicken consome, two cans of tomato sauce and a bag of rice.
Unfortunately, I had forgotten that I was going to need an electric eggbeater. I was not about to buy one, so I did the next best thing; I begged for one. A couple of text messages later and I was able to secure one for the evening.
The actual cooking process sounds complex, but it’s actually quite simple. First I made the rice. This is the same rice that I made with the mole last week, and no, it wasn’t just a cop out. Spanish rice is the perfect side for Mexican food which relies on spices and is on the saltier side.
The rice went through the same process. You put a spoonful in the pot and begin to cook some thinly sliced onion. Add a piece of garlic to the mix and let it sit until the onion starts to become transparent. Then you add a cup of rice. You stir it until the rice changes color so that it doesn’t burn and get stuck at the bottom of the pot. Once most of the rice has changed color, you add a can of tomato sauce and a spoonful of chicken consome. You stir that mixture for a while, then add about one cup and a half of water. Let the rice sit with a lid that is not completely over the pot until all the water evaporates. If you cover the entire pot with the lid you’ll cause a riot in the kitchen, and nobody wants a riot in the kitchen.
This is where the fun starts. While the rice was cooking, I went ahead and started grilling the peppers. I simply placed two peppers on the stove and let them sit there. Is this a health or fire code violation? Maybe. But you know what they say. 
Grill the peppers until they are all a bit blackened. This doesn’t mean burn them all down (It’s not the SAC that we’re talking about), but just let them start to look like they are peeling. This means that you have to turn the pepper while it’s on the stove. Careful with this, I used my hand to do it (like my mother does) and a couple of times I was angered by the unpleasant burning sensation.
Once the peppers are off the grill, put them in a plastic bag and close it. Let the plastic bag sit there for a while until the peppers cool down to a temperature that makes them manageable.
While I waited, I had my assistant chop up some onion and some tomato for the sauce. In the meantime I used the eggbeater and beat some eggs. First, I only beat the eggs white until they were fluffy, and then I add the yolk. Why? Because I was told to do it that way. I have no idea if it actually matters.
After that I went back to the peppers. I opened the bag and started peeling off the burnt skin from the peppers. Don’t do this before you need to take off your contacts because it will burn. You’ll literally feel how much the peppers burn on your skin. Once that task was done I opened the bell peppers in the middle by cutting a line with a knife. Then I filled each pepper with some queso fresco. To close the peppers and ensure that the cheese didn’t come out I used toothpicks. The best way to do this is to make sure that the toothpick goes in twice.
Once they are secured, set the pan with oil. This time be generous with how much cooking oil you use. It has to be enough that a good portion of the pepper is in cooking oil. Once the cooking oil warms up you dip one of the peppers in the egg mix, make sure that it’s fully covered, then gently place it in the pan. Let it sit there for a little bit, until the egg cooks, then turn it around to let the other egg-covered side cook as well. You’ll want to place the peppers on paper towels to extract excess oil. 
Once you do that for all the peppers, you can make a sauce that will go over the peppers. To make this sauce you’ll use tomato, onion, half a can of tomato sauce and a spoonful of consome. I used the onion and tomato my assistant chopped and let them sit over some pam until the onion became transparent. Then I added the tomato sauce, a spoonful of consome and a quarter cup of water. I stirred everything until boiling point. When serving the peppers and the rice, a good side to compliment both is sour cream.
After not receiving any complaints of e-coli I was satisfied with the result of this dinner.
