A Hot Mess

We watched a Diners & Dives video that had this as a best seller for the restaurant they were visiting.  They named their version “The Hot Mess” – it’s a loaded sweet potato.  My version uses a pat of butter, shredded cheeses, smoked pork, a creamy sauce of sour cream mixed with chipotle chili powder, and bacon.

It’s really delicious.  Bake the potato, then slit the top and peel the skin back, fluff the insides, and then layer in whatever you think would work well for your own taste.  In the episode we watched they made theirs with smoked brisket.  They also used jumbo sweet potatoes that I can’t find locally, although today the greengrocer lady gave me a wink and slipped me two that were destined for their restaurant customers.  They were not as large as those on that show but they are respectable.  We will use them before they grow roots, maybe next week with different stuffings.  Hot ham, maybe?

Fish Tacos

DSC_6746 [1600x1060]I should probably back up a little.  I have been wondering what to do with my habaneros, drying and grinding works but I’ve got enough to last a good while.  I went in search of hot sauce recipes.  I saw plenty but this one had a nice picture.  I stuck fairly close to it and used peaches for the optional fruit because we had a few and I wanted to make it right now! It turned out pretty well:DSC_6725 [1600x1060]You can understand why I needed something to use it on!  I am sure I’ve seen recipes calling for a nice fruity sauce on fish so I set my sights on tacos.  There are plenty of recipes out there and tons of pictures so I started making a shopping list.  Green onions, red onions, red cabbage, white cabbage, mangoes, more garlic, tortillas, and etc etc.  Too late to use the mangoes in the hot sauce but they are prime ingredients for a nice salsa for a fish taco.  I made one sans cilantro, using the chopped mint from the patio, where an escaped mint planting is proving itself to be tougher than we are. DSC_6756 [1600x1060]I cut the habanero sauce with sour cream, shown here, but the sauce wasn’t that hot so it really wasn’t a problem.  Tasted pretty good on nachos, but the straight habanero sauce was great on them as well, just a little lip burn.  The green chunks in the little bowl on the left are from an experiment I ran with fresh tomatillos, using them in a sour cream based chipotle lime mixture with garlic.  It worked well, I think:DSC_6751 [1600x1060]Here it is, with a drizzle of the habanero hot sauce along with thinly sliced red cabbage.DSC_6750 [1600x1060]Here’s another corn tortilla based taco.  This one has a lime garlic sour cream topping along with the peachy hot sauce.  I used cod fillets for these, marinated for a couple hours and then quickly grilled.  I used this recipe with only minor changes for the marinade and method, and it was the inspiration for the garlic lime sour cream.  I used chipotle powder rather than the adobo sauce.DSC_6748 [1600x1060]A closer look at the mango salsa on this one in a flour tortilla.  It also has a bit of the garlic lime sour cream because I just could not stop myself from adding to it but I suspect it would have been a tad better with just the salsa and the hot sauce.  The flavor of the mango salsa would have been better showcased.  The mango salsa was very good, I finished it off with nacho chips for scoops.