Best Thing SHE Ever Made

The view from the side

A few weeks ago, my husband and I were watching TV and we flipped to "The Best Thing I Ever Made" on Food Network. The episode's theme was Family Dinners, so everything the chefs made were big dishes that can be served family style and are pretty comforting to eat. One of the chefs, Marcela Valladolid, host of "Mexican Made Easy", featured her Corn and Poblano Lasagna. It sounded sooooo delicious and relatively simple! Instead of a traditional Italian lasagna, hers is stuffed with poblano chiles and zucchini, and the sauce is a blended corn/cream mixture (which I probably could have eaten on its own as a soup). After we saw this episode, we couldn't stop talking about how much we wanted to make and eat this meal. As fate would have it, what did I find at the farmer's market that week?? POBLANO CHILES! We were destined to make this meal, and it was oh so yummy! The recipe calls for Oaxaca cheese, but she said you can substitute mozzarella, which is all we could find in our local grocery store.

And the view from the top - look at that melty cheese!

The lasagna was really easy and delicious and it will definitely be made again, but this post also comes with a cautionary tale:

Be careful when you slice spicy peppers! Only recently have I started to experiment with peppers, and so I never really knew much about peppers or their oils. A few weeks ago, we made jalapeño poppers, and later that night, I felt as though I had burnt my finger. I just assumed that I accidentally hit the side of the oven or pan while I was taking out the peppers, and although it really hurt, I just brushed it off as nothing. Doesn't every good cook burn themselves once in a while in the kitchen? A few hours after we had finished the lasagna, my hands were in excruciating pain - tingling and burning. At first I thought I might be dying; I had never felt this type of pain before in my life! I quickly typed in my symptoms into Google and I found out that, no, I was not dying, but my hands were burning from the capsaicin in the peppers. A quick search for remedies led me to pour rubbing alcohol over my hands and then coat with a thick lotion. Although the pain didn't go away completely, it was lessened enough so that I could fall asleep. Lesson learned. Next time - GLOVES!