A Story About Indo-Mex Food Fusion

As it is a well-known that United States is a melting pot of multiple cultures, traditions, people and of course food etc. Many ethnic foods from the original tastes and recipes have been revised and adopted with mix and match. Majority of the transformations have come upon on experimental basis and then adopted as staple over time. Story shared in this blog post is a fusion between Indian and Mexican recipes for Enchiladas that turned out be really good.

I have been dabbling with cooking for the last few months, cooking Indian dishes. Besides, Indian food, I like Mexican, Italian, Thai etc. Enchiladas is one of my favorite dishes. A few months ago, I went to a local Mexican restaurant to have enchiladas for lunch but did not have a pleasant experience. The served dish’s taste and texture was just horrible. So, I decided to take the matter into my own hands and cook enchiladas myself. Since, this was the first time me cooking a non-Indian dish, I read a couple of recipes on the internet and then decided to add Indian touch to the contents. So far, I have been cooking different dish every time, so it is always a challenge to cook it the right way. Many thoughts and ideas come to mind a few days before the cooking session happens (there is no fixed frequency, just whenever I feel like cooking). Throughout every cooking session, there is plenty of anxiety, excitement, adrenaline, and the desire to bring the dish to perfection. It is just like when you are preparing a professional presentation to be delivered to your external or internal stakeholders. I am sure majority of novice cooks must be feeling similarly when preparing a dish for the first time.

Recipe for Preparing the Chicken

Chicken was used as protein for enchiladas. You can buy pre-baked chicken from a gourmet grocery store or bake it yourself. Recipe used to prepare chicken in this post came from one of my nieces. So, there is a little story about how I came across this recipe that will be shared in the next section.

Half pound chicken breast x 2 (pounded flat)

Olive oil – 1 tbsp

Garlic salt – 1/2 tsp

Paprika – 1/2 tsp

Lemon pepper – 1/2 tsp

Salt & pepper to taste

Two cubes of butter

Place chicken breasts into a bowl and add olive oil – mix to coat both sides
Sprinkle each side with salt and pepper
Mix all spices and rub on each side of chicken breast – can be cooked right away or can be placed in the fridge to marinate
Preheat air fryer to 400F
Once ready, place chicken breasts in air fryer and put one cube of butter on each breast
Set cook time to 16mins
Flip the breasts when prompted
When cook time is complete – check and add time as necessary in 1-2 min increments until desired crispiness is achieved

The Story Behind Chicken Prep Recipe

We (missus and I) were vising extended family in Ontario, Canada in 2022 late fall to attend a family member’s engagement ceremony. It was a multiday affair with family members flown over and driven from various Canadian provinces and US states. We got there four days before the ceremony. Everyday there was lavish food for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. We were staying at my sister’s home (about twenty minutes’ drive from the engagement ceremony home). One of the days, I decided to skip heavy breakfast and lunch at the ceremony home. My niece (sister’s daughter) asked uncle what you would like for lunch. I said something light, so she suggested baking chicken breast (following the above recipe) that turned out very tasty. We also had quinoa salad, prepared by my sister, which was also very tasty. The whole experience was enjoyable. After lunch, I went for walk in the stiff Canadian winds and the frigid weather. I made a mistake not layering up for the weather and by the time I came back (after four miles walk), a bitter chill was seeping into my bones. My sister made hot tea, we sat down in the family room, made small talk, and enjoyed the tea. After drinking that cup of hot tea, the chill got expelled from my bones and body warmed up nicely. The thought of that cup of tea will stay with me forever. Then I took an hour nap in the warm bed that was so enjoyable. After the nap, I took shower and was ready to enjoy the evening party at the ceremony home.

Here is another story in the story about Three Cups of Team

Sharing Hot Tea with family, friends and even strangers is a hallmark of socialization in the countries where the Britishers have ruled. The English Teatime and customs are very famous. I am sure there are quite a few stories about the rituals, hospitality, and the warmth of sharing tea. One of the stories is included in a book titled “Three Cups of Tea” written by Greg Mortensen. Tea sharing is a small part of the saga in this book, but the whole experience of Mortensen’s efforts to help a deprived mountainous community in the Karakoram Mountain range near K2 peak (the second highest peak after Mount Everest) got started with started with tea sharing experience. Greg got separated from his mountaineering companions while returning from K2 expedition. He was out of food and disoriented due to hunger and fatigue. Luckily, he came across a local village elder who provided shelter and three cups of tea to Greg during their initial meeting. The villager elder brought him to his home and advised Greg to stay put until he got healthy to travel back to USA. During this time period, Greg observed that the village did not have proper school building, so he promised his hosts that he would collect funds and return to build a proper school building. It is a very interesting story. Not just that village, but all other communities in the Baltic region had been ignored for education, clean water, health services that are taken for granted in the developed countries. There are other interesting books written by Mortensen about his work in other remote and economically deprived regions. The logistics, challenges to raise funding and rallying support for the projects and persistence to overcome the hurdles are amazingly portrayed in these books.

Due to the proliferation of streaming and social media, unfortunately reading is becoming old fashioned. However, it is fun to read, feel and visualize multiple variety of experiences happening in your nick of the wood, surrounding towns or hundreds and thousands of miles away, while sitting on your favorite rocking chair in the family room, lying down in the warm bed or even reading in a sunny and warm park setting.

Here is another story in the story about Three Cups of Team

Let’s Go Back and Make Some Enchiladas

Note: recipe shared above was meant to have baked chicken for a tiffin (a light lunch or snack), so when you bake chicken for Enchiladas, skip the salt/pepper/paprika and other spices for now. Just bake the chicken and we will add other ingredients later. Just apply butter to soften the baked chicken.

Ingredients

Half pound chicken breast x2 (pounded flat)
Two medium sized onions
One medium sized tomato
Four spoons of cooking oil
Half spoon each of common salt and lemon pepper salt
Half spoon each of paprika, black pepper, chicken curry powder, garlic powder and ginger powder
One pound of cheddar cheese
One can (12 ounce) of enchilada sauce
A small bunch of Cilantro

The Airport Fence for Dare Devils

Cooking Instructions

Ok, now we are moving forward with the big show
1. When the chicken breasts are baked nice and soft, dice them in small pieces

Dice two medium sized onions
Dice a medium sized tomato
Add four spoons of cooking oil in a pan and as the oil heats up, add diced onions and tomatoes in the pan
Keep stirring and squishing until they turn light brown
Add diced chicken in the pan
Add salt, paprika, black pepper, chicken curry powder, garlic powder, ginger powder, and pepper lemon salt (you can add/delete other condiments according to your local/communal tasting rituals)
Add about a quarter pound of cheddar cheese and one quarter cup of enchilada sauce in the pot
Cook all the ingredients for 15 minutes

Note: the idea to add cheddar cheese in this stage of cooking is to ensure that it will bind all the spices inside the chicken pieces, because when the chicken is baked inside the tortilla (next stage), melted cheese in this stage will prevent the spices to spill out during baking. The sauce will make chicken a little softer and more palatable.

Pre heat a traditional oven to 375 degrees
Smear a flat baking pan with little butter or cooking oil
Add about a quarter spoon of butter on a cooking pan and warm up four or six flour tortillas

(One at a time)

Transfer each warm tortilla to the flat pan, add cooked chicken and a couple of spoons of Cheddar cheese
Fold each tortilla and turn them upside down to ensure that ingredients do not spill out
Spread rest of the enchilada sauce and cheddar cheese across the pan
Put pan in the heated oven
Take a peek around twenty minutes mark to see how the dish is coming along
Around 25 minutes mark, the dish should be ready
Cut and dice cilantro half an onion in small pieces
Take out the cooked enchiladas
Spread diced cilantro and onion across the pan (if you follow my recipes, you will notice that cilantro is one of my favorite herbs. I try to add it in majority of the dishes that I cook (well where it can be used)