Trader Joes Recipe Series –2 Pollo Asada & Hatch Green Chilies with Jalapeño Cream Cheese

OK this one is totally cheating, but it was so good. I bought pre-marinated thinly sliced chicken breasts at Trader Joes.  I know, it’s ballsy to write about using food out of a bag, but seriously it was awesome…

First I heated up the grill. I got the chicken out. I got out some hatch green chilis and some corn tortillas.  I put the tortillas into a foil pouch and sprinkled them with water Then I had moment of inspiration.  I remembered that I had some jalapeno cream cheese. And so I thought I would stuff the chilies with the cream cheese.

omg. These were so easy and so good.

Grill the chicken and the peppers. 5 Minutes on each side for the chicken, it cooks fast. When the peppers are blacked, take them in, place them in a zip lock for a few minutes. Then peel, make a slit, pull out the seeds, stuff them with jalapeño cream cheese top with cheddar cheese and return them to the grill for about 2 minutes so the filling can get hot and cheese on top melts. Warm the tortillas in the foil pouch on the grill, about 5 minutes.

Best picture of the night, in my opinion…

Serving was easy, slice chicken, serve in warm tortillas. This made great left overs.

The pollo asada at Trader Joes is $5.50 a pound and the chilies were, I have no idea .50 or something.  We bought more to make this again the week. It took ten minutes to get dinner on the table, perfect for a weeknight.

Trader Joes Recipe Series 1 – Stuffed Artichokes

I have waited a long time for Trader Joes to come to Houston.  It is basically a whole foods type market at Wal-Mart prices.  Well Houston is getting three, and the first one opened up over in the Woodlands and I have been twice.

I came home with TONS of veggies and no meal plan. I pretty much bought stuff that looked great and then came home and was like, uhhh. what now?

So what follows are a series of new recipes using my lovely Trader Joes stash. (Are groceries really a “stash”, maybe not, anyways..)

Stuffed Artichokes:

Prep the artichokes, cut off the tops, the bottoms and the pointy things. Don’t be put out, it took me like 5 minutes to do four. It’s no biggie.

Heat 2 inches of water in a pan and insert a steam tray. Place the artichokes in, stem side up and add lemon slices. In my picture they are stem side down, it was prettier! But in real life it’s easier to check doneness if the stem side is up. So I flipped them.

Put the lid on the pan and steam 20 minutes. Meanwhile stir together 1 C Panko bread crumbs, 1/3 C parmesan and some salt, pepper and Italian seasoning, and parsley - mix them up.  And preheat the oven to 375.

Once they are cool enough to handle, open up the leaves and pull out the chokes (the hairy ball part) and then stuff the crumbs down between the leaves. Drizzle mightily with olive oil.

Bake until toasty about 15 minutes. 

OK, this isn’t the best picture, but these were heavenly.

I served these as dinner along with the bagged spinach salad kit from Trader Joes that has spinach (duh), cranberries, blue cheese, candied pecans and raspberry vinaigrette.  I added some crumbled bacon to the salads and served warmed naan bread on the side. 

Caveats: My kids did not eat this and even with the simple bagged salad, these were beyond what would be reasonable for me to do on a weeknight, but for a weekend summer supper it was perfect.

Upside: The meal was cheap..we ate 1/4 of the salad in the bag, so about $1.50 and then $3 for artichokes, so… yeah. super cheap and healthy and fancy – my kind of meal.