Stop the Press

In the intro of this recipe, Chrissy tells the story of how she thought she had perfected this dish. However, when the book was about to be printed, she halted everything so that she could add chorizo to the recipe. And we are so glad she did! This dish was nice and spicy. Enough to clear out your sinuses! Although, the cayenne pepper was a key player in that too. Could you imagine being so powerful that you could LITERALLY stop the press?! All over a bunch of chorizo. If Chrissy ever ran for president, chorizo would be her VP.

This was most definitely a comfort food dish! It was warm, spicy, and creamy; all classic comfort food characteristics. I’ll give you a little breakdown of what was in this dish. We started out with a cheesy sauce and mixed rice, broccoli and cauliflower, and chorizo into it. The cheesey sauce called for whole milk but I didn’t have any. Skim milk worked out to be a fine substitute. I also substituted the fresh finely chopped broccoli for a package of frozen cauliflower and broccoli rice to save time (and, let’s be honest, effort). It worked out perfectly! I kind of liked that the cauliflower and broccoli bits were the same size as the rice that way. I cooked the frozen cauliflower and broccoli in the steamer bag for about half the directed time just to get it thawed out a bit before I mixed it into the sauce.

Next, I scooped my cheesy rice-broccoli-cauliflower-chorizo mixture into my tomato bowls and threw them in the oven.  After topping them with breadcrumbs, of course. I know I say this (or something along these lines) at some point during every recipe but I CANNOT wait to make this in the summer with the tomatoes from my grandma’s garden. Take my word for it, these tomatoes are heavenly and I know they will add tons of flavor compared to my mediocre, store-bought, winter tomatoes. I think summer would also be a good time to try out a lighter version of this recipe by swapping out the chorizo for some ground turkey and sticking with my previously mentioned skim milk for the cheese sauce.  

Spencer’s reaction: “This had the perfect amount of spice – I liked it! I really liked the crunch from whatever was added on top.”

Spencer can apparently handle a lot more spice than I can cause my mouth was on fire! I made him bring me to Dairy Queen after this meal so I could cool my mouth down. At least that’s the story I’m going with.