Wowzers

So, apparently this is my 200th post. I have no idea how that snuck up on me, and perhaps I will revisit it and celebrate the accomplishment another day. But today is cinco de mayo and if any one knows what a gringa likes to celebrate, it's a holiday people native to the culture don't even really pay homage to. Hence, I devoted part of my day to making tosadas de tinga de pollo.

This is one of my all time favorite Mexican foods, and is actually authentic enough that most people don't know what it is (fortunately I was exposed to it in my short lived time as a server at Masa in Minneapolis). Tinga is a preparation of shredded chicken which is then sauteed in a tomato onion and adobo sauce. It's really very easy and is a Mexican equivalent to pulled pork sandwiches. The adobo and chipotle make the chicken spicy and smokey, and it's easily defined as comfort food.

It's also easy to make:

Since my Mexican reference gave me no specific quantities, I won't either. You can probably guess based on pictures, and comment if you have a question.


1) Get your husband (or wife, roommate, domestic partner, or friend) involved and make some queso fresco. It's just like paneer but you add salt. Easy and delicious. We made the whole milk variety this time... so sinfully good







2) Boil some chicken until cooked. I was specifically told to use split breasts, but you can use whatever you want probably. These were kosher (for whatever reason) and this turned out phenomenally. (Side note: I never knew anyone to boil meat until I was good friends with an Irishman. We made a thanksgiving dinner in Italy and he brought the turkey, which he had boiled. Kind of a strange practice, but leads to evenly cooked and tender meat).


While the chicken is cooking make your sauce out of the following ingredients:



Do this to these (and the garlic):



Run to the front porch to investigate the noise. Turns out it was just these:
c

looking at this:


Get back in the kitchen, your chicken is done:


Do this to that stuff from before:

and add some water if its too thick

Make this:



look like this:



and then put it in this like so:


Add the adobo sauce, one chipotle and about a cup of water and simmer until it looks like this, but cooked down a bit more:



Then assemble your tostadas like so:










Your end result should look something like this (plus cheese, which I was too hungry to remember to put on for this picture... maybe I'll replicate it tomorrow.)




Happy Cinco de Mayo!