Echiladas Veracruz

Even the wannabe gourmand occassionally needs to whip up something fast & easy. In this case, we were staying at a lodge up in Tahoe and I had to make a yummy dinner for hungry skiers with a minimum of ingredients, no seasonings, and no leftovers in the tiny little lodge suite kitchen. They don't even stock salt & pepper in these places. So I grabbed a few instant food items from Safeway and whipped up some pretty delicious Crab & Shrimp Enchiladas Veracruz.


10oz Safeway Select Verdi Alfredo Sauce
12oz Wild Wife! Mild Chile Verde
8oz salad shrimp
8oz crab
Small package fresh pico de gallo
Small package fresh sliced peppers & onions
16oz shredded jack cheese
10 white corn torillas

Fry tortillas in oil until just slightly crisp. Drain on paper towels.

Mix together the alfredo sauce and the chile verde. Pour enough into a 9 x 12 baking dish to cover the bottom.

Discard all but 2 tbsp oil. Add pepper & onions and fry until onions begin to turn translucent. Add shrimp meat and crab. Add enough sauce cover the seafood, and then bring to a simmer. Remove from heat.

To assemble:

• lay a tortilla in the baking dish


• fill with a spoonful of the seafood


• sprinkle with cheese


• add a spoonful of pico de gallo

Roll and finish seam side down. Repeat until all tortillas are used.

Spoon sauce over enchiladas and sprinkle with remaining cheese and pico de gallo.

Bake in 350f degree oven for approximately 30 minutes, until cheese on top is melted and bubbly.

Cochinita Pibil

Here’s the email I posted back to the chef who gave me the recipe:

Ok, so we made this for my little nephew's first birthday (which I suppose was more an excuse for us adults to get together than it was for the kids ;) ) and it turned out FANTASTIC!

We used a paste of achiote seed, cumin, oregano, pepper, allspice, chile seco, salt, garlic, and OJ then coated a couple of pork butt roasts. My brother hacked off a couple of banana leaves that hung over his fence from his next door neighbor, then we kinda seared those over his bbq and removed the spine, and ended up with perfectly pliable leaves to wrap the pork in. After we tied the roasts up using some strips off the extra leaves, we put them in gallon-sized ziplock bags with a marinade made of leftover paste, oj, grapefruit juice, and lemon juice. The marinade kinda soaked in through the leaves and added a bit more flavor overnight, I think.

The next day we slow roasted the two roasts still wrapped in the banana leaves for about 3 hours or so. When we opened them up, the meat just fell off the bone. We served it that day with warm corn tortillas, queso fresco, and a variety of salsas (best one for this was just onion with habaneros and a splash of oj).

The best, tho, was the day after. We had quite a bit of leftovers, and it was the first day of regular season football. We completely shredded the remaining meat and rolled it into what was left of the six thousand corn tortillas that my brother had bought at Costco, and made the world's greatest taquitos ever. Half a case of avocados, a gallon of sour cream, all the remaining salsas and a few cases of corona later, and not a single scrap of the cochinita pibil was left.