Weeknight Green Chicken Taco Meat.

The key to making this dish quickly is to have precooked chicken on hand. I like to cook a whole chicken on Sunday and make stock out of the bones, skin and what-nots. This means that when the chicken is done poaching, smoking or roasting I break it down completely and end up with a container of breast, leg, and thigh meat. To make these quick tacos I used a precooked chicken breast and this green tomatillo salsa.

Weeknight Green Chicken Taco Meat.

Ingredients

1 T olive oil

1 small red onion, sliced

1 small green pepper, sliced

1 breast of chicken, cooked and cubed

1 t cumin

1/2 t paprika (smoked if you have it)

2-3 oz green tomatillo salsa

Preheat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onions and saute for 3-5 minutes or until they are starting soften. Add peppers, chicken, cumin and paprika and cook for 5 minutes. Add salsa and heat through. Serve in tortillas with rice, beans and all of your favorite fixins’.

Enjoy!

A Garden Sleeper: The Tomatillo and some Salsa.

For two years I have tried to grow tomatillos and for two years I have failed (or so I thought). They take up a lot of space in the garden and never seem to ripen on time. So this season, the end of year two, I am cleaning out garden beds to make way for cover crops and winter veggies and I rip out the first of two tomatillo plants.

Annoyed I am thinking about how I am not going to plant tomatillos next year. All I want is a little green salsa, that is all. And I toss the gigantic plant to the side and look down into the bed and see two fully formed, ripe and ready to use tomatillos. What?!? So I start investigating the plant and there are more, MORE! I was so excited I ran inside and woke up the hubs, who was trying to sleep past 8 (which is tough to do when you live with me), I shove handfuls of fully ripe, ready-to-use tomatillos in his face, exclaimed LOOK! and ran out to check the other plant straight away. In all, I ended up with a mere 16 ounces, but that is 16 ounces I did not know even existed! That is 16 ounces that I used to make this lovely salsa.

Easy Tomatillo Salsa.

Ingredients

1 lb tomatillos

1 small onion, rough chopped

3 T cilantro

juice of 1/2 lime

1 jalapeño

1/4 t sugar

1/4 t kosher salt

Peel and wash the tomatillos. Seed the jalapeño if you want to control the heat of the final product and rough chop it. Put all ingredients into a food processor and pulse until the mixture is the texture you are looking for. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips or as a topping for any Mexican style dinner.

Enjoy!