Saladosity, Part 16: Mexican

[This is the sixteenth post in a long series.  You may wish to start at the beginning.  Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

(If you need a refresher about my salad-making lingo, go back and review our first salad.)

This is one of my all-time favorite salads.  It’s a little more of a pain to make, and I hadn’t made it in quite a while for that reason, but I returned to it recently and I fell in love all over again.  Admittedly I took a little shortcut this last time around, but I’ll point that out to you when we get there so that you can take it too, if you like.

The Protein

You have all sorts of options for protein here.  If you really want meat, your all-time best choice is whatever leftover taco meat you have from last night.  If you’re not prone to having any leftovers in that area, you might try taking a leftover chicken breast, dicing up part of it, applying a bit of taco seasoning (or chili powder, in a pinch), and heating it up for just a few seconds in the microwave.  If you’re really desperate and you simply must have meat, substitute canned chicken for the leftover chicken breast.

But you know what I’ve discovered?  It’s perfectly lovely without any meat at all.  Just use pistachios.  Now, you may say “but wait! pistachios aren’t Mexican!” No, in fact, pistachios are from the Middle East.  But they really do work here.  I don’t know that I can tell you why ... you’re just going to have to trust me on this one.  I will use leftover taco meat if it’s handy, and I’ve done the chicken thing a couple of times, but, honestly: pistachios are pretty damned good.  Sometimes better than meat.

Plus, you know, if you happen to subscribe to a vegetarian flavor of nutritional tribes, you don’t want the meat anyhow.  For paleo flavors, cashews are perfect.  I think the only reason to avoid the cashews would be if you’re allergic to them.  If so, first of all my condolences, but secondly, try the chicken.  It’s also a good call.

The Cheese

Obviously you want the shredded Mexican cheese blend that we talked about when we went shopping for meat and cheese.  If you’re being strict about the paleo and avoiding the dairy, you can omit the cheese and you won’t miss too much.  But I think it’s better with.

The Crunch

The go-to here would of course be crushed up tortilla chips.  But, whether Atkins or Whole30 or even Weight Watchers, corn chips are not considered an ideal choice for a healthy diet.  They’re grains, they’re carbs, and they add a decent chunk of calories.  So here’s where the plantain chips that we picked up when we went shopping for nuts come in.  Plantain chips are crappy for just eating straight out of the bag, but that should be considered a feature, not a bug.  What they’re great for is substituting:

• They make excellent “crackers”: have them with some cheese, or dip them in guacamole or hummus.
• They’re imperfect but surprisingly yummy nonetheless at playing the role of oats in granola.
• They’re not too shoddy at faking as potato chips, at least for culinary purposes.  Like on top of casseroles that called for crushed chips.
• They do a damned fine job as faux tortilla chips, if you crumble them up and put them on salads.

Just take a bag of plantain chips and beat it up a bit, then toss it into a zip-loc bag for maximum freshness.

The Dressing

What really gives this salad its kick is the guacamole dressing, and it is in fact the only salad where I’m going to recommend you use a “heavy” amount of dressing (which, remember, is defined as “more than you normally would”).  This dressing is so damn good, you’re just going to want a lot of it.

Now, the rough ingredients of the dressing are pretty basic: you need guacamole, sour cream, and some cilantro dressing.  The first two are pretty simple.

Remember that guacamole is one of the things we talked about when we went shopping for cold goods.  In our house, we’ve settled into a rhythm of buying those big boxes of Wholly Guacamole at Costco, tossing most of ’em into the freezer, and just rotating into the fridge as needed.  One container of that is the perfect amount for this dressing.  You could make guac fresh every time you wanted this salad ... but then you wouldn’t eat this salad that often, and that would be a shame.

Sour cream is sour cream.  One big spoonful should do it.  If you’re looking to avoid dairy, you could skip this part and it might be okay ... never tried it, personally.

The cilantro dressing is the only complicated part.  What I like to do when I’m feeling industrious is make my own.  Unlike having to make the guacamole part, this would something you do once a month or whatever, and then you just have it on hand every time.  I originally concocted my recipe (below) because my friendly neighborhood Trader Joe’s brand of cilantro dressing is heavy on the soybean oil, and I don’t like that.  Now, I’m going to be honest with you here: we’ve since discovered Primal, and they make a super yummy cilantro lime dressing—it’s not strictly Whole30 safe, but only because it contains (organic) honey, which ... c’mon: that’s a very small concession to make.  So use that if you don’t want to make your own.  But if you do want to try making it from scratch, just follow the directions below, and you won’t be disappointed.

Once you have the cilantro dressing, all you want to do is mix your guac and sour cream together in a bowl; it will be super-thick, so just drizzle in some cilantro dressing and stir, repeating until you get the consistency of a fairly thick dressing.  In my experience, if you get the consistency right, the taste will just automatically be perfect.

Cilantro Dressing

You’re going to need a food processor or blender for this one.  Pour in ⅓ of a cup of pepitas (those’re the roasted pumpkin seeds we bought when we went shopping for nuts), 2/3 of a cup of milk, ⅓ of a cup of oil (more on that in a sec), 2/4 of a cup of grated parmesan cheese, and ¼ of a cup of white wine vinegar.  (If you do it in the order I’ve suggested, and you do 2 ¼ cups for the parmesan instead of ½ cup, you’ll get by with only using 2 measuring cups and minimal mess.)

Which oil to use?  Well, use what you like, but I would try to avoid the “bad” oils like soybean, peanut, canola, or palm.  Avocado is amazing (that’s what Primal uses in theirs, for what it’s worth).  Grapeseed is also not bad.  I don’t think olive works well, taste-wise, but perhaps you feel differently.

Now add some chopped jalapeños.  I used to get them pre-chopped and canned from TJ’s, but then I started buying packages of fresh ones.  The fresh ones are more of pain, because you have to chop them yourself, and it is very easy to burn the crap out of yourself when learning to cut jalapeños, but eventually you get the hang of it, and one of those little packages of jalapeños is enough for 4 batches of this dressing (divie your choppped bits into 4 roughly equal piles, toss one in the blender, and freeze the other 3 for later).  But the canned is fine too.

Now you’re going to want to add about 5 cloves of garlic.  Feel free to substitute minced if you like; it’ll all end up that way in just a bit.

The last task of any complexity at all is to take a big bunch of cilantro (I typically use however much is in a Trader Joe’s pack of organic cilantro), separate out the stems, and toss the leaves in the blender.  We don’t need the stems for this recipe, but you can compost them, or perhaps you have an animal that might like them (our guinea pig always did).  Or, you know: just toss ’em.

Two heavy pinches of salt, 12 or so grinds of black pepper, and turn all that into a liquid.  Finally, remember that homemade mayo we made for our autumnal salad?  Make another batch, then immediately dump it into the blender.  This time, just pulse it a few times to mix it all together.  The resulting consistency should be a nice, viscous-but-not-thick liquid, which is perfect for some salads all on its own.  Also perfect for thinning out guacamole dressing while adding a whole bunch of flavor.

Mexican salad

Once again, you’re ready, and it’s just assembly.

• base veggies
• pistachios (or seasoned meat, if you prefer; slightly warm)
• crushed plantain chips
• shredded Mexican cheese
• guacamole dressing (heavy)

This one is a very hearty salad.  It’s got a nice crunch, but it’s really the smooth, creamy goodness of that guacamole dressing that makes it all come together.  For me, this is my entire meal, and I can’t get enough, so I typically make a huge one.  Try this once or twice and you will never look at a “taco salad” from a chain restaurant in the same way ever again.

Next time, we’ll get meaty.