Vegetarian Mexican Salad

This is me trying something new in the hopes of posting more often.

When I cook something unfortunate or something that didn't work for me I'm going to post it and link to the recipe in case you want to give it a try and in the hopes you'll have better luck cooking it than I did.  Maybe you will cook it and love it then tell me where I went wrong.  I make plenty of mistakes I just don't usually take the time to post about them unless they are particularly epic.

And when I make something fabulous that was amazing but the recipe was perfect I'll just do an easy cheater post and point you in the direction of the talented blogger that created it.  This Mexican salad which is a knock off of a dish at Chipotle restaurant is a perfect example.  It comes from the Healthy Irishmen Blog  where chef Gavan Murphy, and sometimes his wife, post fabulous healthy recipes using fresh organic produce.  They  have some great recipes to browse through and aside from the potato and bread dishes most of his recipes are French diet friendly.

The recipe for Vegetarian Mexican Salad is especially worth checking out.  This is the kind of salad that always looks appealing at restaurants but I never think to try to make at home where I can control the fat and salt content.  Now that I know how I will be making this beauty all summer.  The super spicy and tangy dressing is my favorite part but if you aren't into breathing fire you'll want to take the amount of peppers down a notch.  I also cheated to make this salad even easier by buying some jarred salsa (because the fella won't eat raw tomatoes and I was lazy), mashing an avocado on my lettuce rather than making guacamole, and then sprinkling organic canned corn and some cilantro on the salad rather than making the corn salsa. And if you're on the weight loss phase you'll want to skip the corn all together since it has a high GI but there are so many other tasty things on this salad you won't be missing anything.

Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

Since I'm fessing up to my astronomical failures as a cook allow me to confess to another ridiculous thing I cannot manage to succeed at.  Nachos.  You heard me correctly.  Melted cheese and tasty fixings over chips.  Couldn't be simpler, right?  Anyone can do that.  Yeah anyone except me it would seem.  Having never attempted to make them before I thought the broiler would be the way to go.  30 seconds later I was waving out the fire on my organic blue corn chips.  Another dinner ruined.

In my defense nachos were never something we ate in my house growing up.   And the horrible alien cheese sauce drenched corn chips at the fair or the mall aren't nachos those are just wrong.  So I don't have a food memory of this dish to lead me to create a long forgotten favorite recipe.  All I had was a strange craving for cheesy corn chips after eating a quick meal at the Great Dane (a locally famous brew pub with good beer and a gluten free menu) and being mocked by the monster nacho plate being eating by people at a neighboring table.

Giving up cheese in Wisconsin is like giving up on snow in the Arctic, it just isn't possible.  It is everywhere and it knows where to find you when you least expect it.  Once you stop eating it you suddenly notice how prevalent cheese is.  Where as you once thought phrases like "cheesehead" or "the cheese state" are just cute metaphorical terms of endearment we use to talk about the area, you know now that the place literally is made of dairy and you can't escape seeing it.

I've gotten pretty good at ignoring all the amazing cheese this town has to offer and hardly mind that everyone around me makes yummy noises while nibbling on their latest gourmet cheese discovery at parties.  But everyone once in a while as I happily eat my bunless burger and salad a little rodent somewhere in my head will start screaming "Cheese!"  I try to ignore it but it gets more specific, "Ooey gooey sinful cheese drenched macaroni and cheese hot and fresh out of the oven!"  Then things go down hill into something along the lines of "Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos! Nachos!"  Until the part of my brain that hasn't been taken over by gerbils riffles my brain to find a solution that will make the cheese obsessed brain animals happy and not make me sick.  Anyone who read my vegan mac and cheese post knows that it is no small order to fill.

Thankfully I have a very understanding fella who is no longer surprised that the woman he lives with occasionally (okay on a very regular basis, shut up) goes crazy and insists that directly after lunch we must go to Whole Foods so I can look into making nachos immediately.  It probably helps that he usually benefits from my moments of madness by being rewarded with delicious food for the low low price of doing my endless dishes.

So the only way I could see this nacho thing going down was to indulge in goat cheese which I allow myself every couple of weeks because it doesn't seem to negatively effect me too much and lets face it I need some sort of cheese or I really will snap in the face of all this temptation.  However the goat cheese dribbled chips burst into flame because nachos under the broiler probably wasn't my greatest idea ever.  The cheese sauce I salvaged off of the wreckage on the other hand was amazing!  So whereas I cannot suggest asking me to ever making you something as simple as nacho I can tell you that this accidental goat cheese creation is a great dip.

Now world please do tell me how in the hell does one make nachos?

Spicy Goat Cheese Dip

1 5-ounce log goat cheese
1/4 cup heavy cream or coconut milk
1-2 chipotle peppers, chopped
1-2 teaspoons adobe sauce from chipotle peppers
1 jalapeno, finely chopped


Place goat cheese in a oven safe bowl.  Heat for 20 seconds or so until it becomes soft and easily mixable.  Add heavy cream or coconut milk until the cheese is the constancy you like, you might not need all the liquid depending on the goat cheese you're using.  Stir in the chipotle, adobe sauce and jalapeno until well combined.  Place in oven at about 375 degrees until cheese begins to brown on top.  Serve warm with good quality corn chips.

Mexican Dry Rub

Another night more celery to peel.

The fella dubbed this meal “eating at the American embassy” seeing as we ended up making a Mexican dry rub to go with the French braised vegetables and Californian wine. So it wasn't a well thought out plan, but it was delicious.

See, we bought crazy random veggies like turnips and celery root for a recipe we found interesting and in the whirlwind that was trying to find food we could eat during the grocery trip earlier in the week we forgot to consider the GI of certain vegetables. Whoops. It's like eating dessert at a friend's house, right, root vegetables you have never tasted before have no fat? Unfortunately no, in the real world that meant I had to cook this meal as French cooking practice when in fact it doesn't comply with any of Montignac's eating rules.

Funny thing is even without going all out French diet yet, eating butter and heavy cream but avoiding sugar and most carbs, I've already lost 7 pounds. I haven't even been exercising. How can this be! I didn't think it was actually going to work but I guess just giving up sugar is a huge step so I shouldn't be that surprised. I didn't really think I was doing anything revolutionary until I stepped on the scale and then later in the day watched a friend of a friend put five raw sugar packets in one small cup of tea while ravaging a brioche that I realized that Americans have a serious problem with sugar. I've only been five days clean of sweeteners and I still had to hold back the tidal wave of holier than thou-ness I felt bubbling inside while watching the tea sweetening incident happening in the same breath as a clueless conversation about diabetes. Oy vey.

Getting back to dinner; to even out the butter in the vegetables for the original recipe (another one from the Boulud cookbook) I decided to switch out the steaks it called for and use chicken breasts instead and save some calories. Problem was I really was not feeling the need to search out the 5 different whole pepper corn varieties the recipe called for so I ended up making making a dry marinate that is a staple in our kitchen instead. We usually do it on very thin steaks but as I found out last night on pounded thin chicken it is just as good and insanely easy for the delicious meat you end up with.

The vegetables were not quite so low maintenance. Aside from unnecessary celery peeling, Boulud also insisted on cutting all the vegetables in precise eighths. What could that possibly have to do with the outcome of the dish? Obviously Boulud has some obsessive compulsive control freak issues to deal with, however the two times I've followed his instructions to the nth degree the fella and I have ended up with meal so good we were speechless after the first bite. All we could do was chew and making yummy noises while staring at each other and nodding joyfully. So I cut everything in eights and threw it in the pot and hoped for the best.

Obviously I'm going to have to come up with a reconsidered version of these braised vegetables that have a low GI because they were fabulous. Celery root is way better than any potato just in case you were wondering, it's a crime they sit rotting in the “ethnic” part of produce section being ignored. I would stop cheating and actually peel the celery to eat that again.

Until then here is the Mexican dry rub. It originally came from a Rachel Ray 30 minute meal but don't hold that against it, we'd tweaked it so much I think it's safe it call it ours at this point.

Mexican Dry Rub

2 tablespoons grill seasoning
2 limes, zested
1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons chili powder

4 (1 inch thick) strip steaks or butterflied and pounded thin chicken breasts


In a small bowl, combine the spices and lime zest. Work dry rub into meat. Set aside on a plate to marinade for about 15 minutes. Pan fry in a small amount of oil until cooked through.