SC - Rellenos with beef?

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Olwen the Odd wrote:
> 
> >
> >Now it's both a challenge, and a fun one, at that, to adapt a first
> >course for hors d'oeuvre use. I know I had a good time making the tiny
> >little rellenos (no, this was, regrettably, not a fried food kind of
> >crowd, but that was probably lucky for me).
> 
> Adamantuis, I tip my hat to you.  I once decided to make those Jalapino
> Poppers when given a bushel of peppers.  I made up the cheese mixture and
> cored all number of peppers and piped in the mix and dipped the little
> buggers in a coating and put them in to fry.  Not ONE had any filling left
> in it.  Needless to say, I laughted myself half to death.

It compensates for my apparent inability to roast a chicken in a small
toaster oven... ;  )

I think Jalapeno Poppers are one of those subsets of intersection
between Real Food and Junk Food, the point being that it is almost
impossible to prepare them from scratch at home. I've made them in
restaurants (bearing in mind that by this point we've strayed pretty far
from what a Mexican cook would respectfully call a chile relleno), and
what it involved was filling the peppers, chilling them until the
filling was firm, coating them with flour, dipping in egg wash, then in
very fine crumbs, chilling again on a cake rack to help firm up the
breading, then a second dipping and crumbing, chilling again, then
frying _very_ briefly to set the coating, after which they can be either
finished in the fryer, chilled again or possibly even frozen, or
finished in the oven.

The problem is that a very moist filling, when it reaches 212 F., will
essentially cause the cheese to explode out of the peppers.

Note that a respectable Mexican cook would probably laugh at all this
incompetence, and proceed to make perfectly executed proper
batter-dipped chiles rellenos, fried and then finished in the sauce, and
stuffed with a cheese that is not only fairly dry, but doesn't really
melt, so they don't have to worry about this problem.

As I said, I solved all this by using peeled, roasted chiles, stuffing
them with a filling that didn't need to be cooked, and serving them
uncoated, cold. Or rather, room temp.
  
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com