Stuffed Poblano Chiles

I want to be ordered about my recipes, but I've realized that if I want to have the best chance at success, I'd better go with my strengths. Order is not one of them. I throw things together, and even when I'm researching, I do best when I have a pile of things and tumble them about.

So, new format for the recipes. These are mostly for me anyway, right?




Stuffed Poblano Chiles

Ingredients:
4 thin skinned potatoes (I chose yellow skins)
4 poblano chiles
1 lb grass-fed ground beef
A few crushed tepin chiles (chiltepines)
fresh sage (I used broadleaf and golden)
crushed coriander (I used freshly crushed, from seed)
salt
olive oil, if using lean ground beef


Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400F.  Brown the ground beef in a skillet with a little salt and finely chopped sage and crushed chile to taste.  Set aside, but keep grease in the pan.

Looks yummy, yeah?

2. While beef is cooking, chop potatoes into small cubes, 1/2-1 inch wide. Dump them into the hot oil, add salt and the crushed coriander, mix well. Cook on med-high until a little browned, then turn down heat and cover. Cook until soft, stirring a couple times as it cooks. It took me 20 minutes.

Just after adding the seasonings

3. While potato is cooking, slice into the chiles. From the top, slice along the side until 1/2-3/4 of the way down, carefully take out as many seeds as you can.

All nice and cleaned out

4. Mix potatoes and beef together and stuff the peppers full. Place peppers in a lightly oiled pan (or with parchment paper, perhaps?) and bake, slit side up, for 30-45 minutes. I did mine for 30 min. and that was fine.

Stuffed Poblano Chiles with beans, salsa, and guacamole

Serves: One pepper per person, so four. However, I had enough stuffing that I could probably stuff another 3-4 peppers with it. 

Inspired by: A love of chile rellenos and got the temp. and 'don't roast first' suggestion from about.com's local foods section.


What worked, and didn't:
The taste of the filling was great. That worked well. I even made one using just potatoes and added a bunch of crushed chile. Very nice. I served it with some refried beans, tomato salsa (tomatoes, salt, and crushed chile. Out of some other ingredients), and guacamole. The beans went with it the best. However, the chile was a whole lot of 'chile' taste. Not heat, just...I think it would have done better with a sauce. I'll have to try it again sometime when I have some green chiles in season more, so I can make a green chile sauce or something.

One thing I won't do again, likely, is try to stuff the peppers before roasting them. Most recipes call for the poblanos to be roasted and skinned first, and then stuffed. But one suggested not bothering, as long as you cook it a little longer. The taste was fine, the texture was fine, but stuffing these uncooked peppers, without breaking the poblano into pieces, was a real pain. I'd roast them next time, I think, and see how that works.