Creamy Zucchini, Corn, Roasted Poblano & Squash Blossom Tacos

today's edition of Taco Tuesday is farmers market focused and there's all kinds of summer squash in the farmers market and if you have a decent farmers market anywhere near you you're gonna find that there's squash blossoms so we're going to put that together corn the first harvest of the poblano chilies this is the perfect thing for well if you live in Chicago like I do late July ok so it's starting off here with some caramelized onions and a skillet these are done in olive oil I'm gonna add a little bit of chopped 2 garlic to it and stir that around just until it is aromatic and that's about right now well the I got a hot pan going here okay so I've got some Mexican oregano I'm going to rub it between my palms because it's always sold in the Holy forum in the Mexican grocery store get a little toss to get that going and then I'm gonna take those out of the skillet put that back on and give it just a touch of olive oil in the bottom I'm gonna lie because I'm gonna give it a little bit of olive oil to coat the bottom of the pan it's more than just a touch and then I've got cubed summer squash let's talk summer squash while this is starting to cook in the pan here so zucchini is what everybody thinks about it's my least favorite of all of the summer squash my second least favorite is those yellow crookneck but let's just face that they all will work for a dish like this my very favorite are the light skinned super tender skinned ones like they grow in Mexico and here in Chicago all the farmers are growing them now because they harvest beautifully you can take them straight to the market sell them people can take them home and they're super sweet they don't have the bitterness that we associate with the Italian cultivars of zucchini the dark skinned ones dark color always equals flavor that darker color always will have a touch of bitterness in it and these are the light skinned ones called hot to Maine sometimes you'll find around ones that are light skinned like green sky and those are typically called Rondon meets French cultivar that a lot of the farmers around here are growing but let's say that any kind of summer squash can be used in this particular preparation I think you're really gonna love it okay so tossing that around they're starting to soften up now let's go on to the rest of the ingredients that are going to be used in this let's talk squash blossoms first here okay so I don't know if you all know this but all plants produce male and female blossoms and you are going to be working with the male blossoms that's the only one that will be harvested in the blossom form so the way that you can tell it is an anatomical little thing that won't surprise you it's got that thing sticking up in the middle of it that's the male blossom there and you want to like get rid of that then take the little sepals off the outside these are the parts that covered the blossom before it opened up then break the stem off right there and then you've got your clean squash blossom I've got a whole bunch of them down here you can use this bulb apart at the base of it or not use it whichever you prefer I kind of like the flavor of it because it'll add a little bit more vegetal flavor now what do squash blossoms add to any dish they're gonna add a beautiful color a sort of sense of like celebration because you're cooking with all these flowers now let's face it in Mexico where they have so many squash that they're cooking with all the time in the markets they have the squash blossoms the male blossoms never produce fruit so it's easy to go in and harvest them and every plant will usually produce about 10 male blossoms to everyone female blossom so you've got a lot of these things to work with and in Mexico they will typically just cut them up rather than the Italians that tend to want to stuff them and batter them and fry them in Mexico they'll take the squash blossoms and cut them crosswise like this and add them to a dish toward the end of the cooking okay so we've got our squash blossoms that have been clean and now sliced up the next ingredient that we're going to talk about here is the Chili's now whatever kind of Chili's you like and you can find in your farmers market those are the ones that you're gonna choose I am wild about poblanos I think they're one of the most delicious Chile's on the face of the earth so I've got poblano that has been roasted directly over the open fire you can see just a burner that's on you can see it's blackened all the way around when it cools off you can peel off that papery skin now that black and papery skin tear out the stem end and the seed pod and then you'll it'll look like that and then cut it into little strips I've got several of those done right here and I think that ours cut labas it does our summer squash here are ready to receive all of the roasted poblano chilies so those are going to go into the skillet along with this corn that's been cut off the cob this is the perfect summer dish for our farmers markets right now here in Chicago we're gonna add to that the squash blossoms just a riot of beautiful fresh vegetables those caramelized onions are gonna go in on top of it to add depth and sweetness and lastly get em up so we've got Mexican crema now this is some that we made ourselves we start with heavy cream and just like you were going to be making yogurt we add a culture to it the culture that we use is actually a sour cream culture and we let that set at room temperature for about 12 hours and then refrigerate it for 12 hours and it makes this beautiful creme fraiche like crema very similar to my favorite ones in Mexico so we'll let this all cook together for a couple of minutes until it comes together looks beautiful and it's ready to make into a taco my standard recommendation to anyone cooking is that you taste your food and then you salt it don't just go adding a half a teaspoon of salt or something just because the recipe says it's going to take a half a teaspoon of salt so this doesn't have any salt in it at all so I'm gonna need to add probably close to a teaspoon to this amount of these beautiful vegetables here so stir that all together it's got all of them the beauty of roasted chilies and then the beautiful view the look of these squash blossoms in here which will add a kind of gentle flavor to it kind of a vegetable vegetable flavor okay one more taste to see if I got it where I need it to be okay we're gonna move over here take our beautiful mixture of vegetables make a taco okay corn Carlo icita squash blossoms roasted peppers little cream some gesso fresco you could put a whole handful of cilantro in there if you wanted to you could cook some episode a into this mixture if that appeals to you pure summer talk

Channel: Rick Bayless

Views: 19,448

Rating: 4.9764242 out of 5

Keywords: Rick Bayless, tacos, squash tacos, rajas, Taco Tuesday, Farmers Market, weeknight, cooking, recipes, dinner, vegetarian, veggie tacos, rajas con crema, poblano, corn, squash

Id: h881i9TX4o4

Length: 8min 3sec (483 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2016