New Mexico Caesar

One of the things I love most about Chopt is their changing menu of specials. Currently their "destination" focus is on New Mexico. I love the southwestern flavors of New Mexican cuisine (and someday hopefully we'll get there to try it in-state), and immediately knew on a recent lunch trip that I wanted to get the spicy New Mexico caesar salad.

The salad combines romaine and purple cabbage with FreeBird Chimayo chile chicken, goat gouda, avocado, pickled jalapeños, and masa crisps. Although they recommended the spicy hatch chile caesar dressing with it (and I do love hatch chiles), I opted instead for the Mexican goddess because I absolutely love that dressing and it had been a while since I had it. The chopper I got on this trip applied some really vigorous chopping skills to the salad so everything got combined really well (other than a rogue giant chunk of avocado, which wasn't really his fault because that part was underripe and hard as a rock).

I really liked this salad and it was definitely spicy. Those pickled jalapeños were so much hotter than I was expecting them to be, and I was thankful for the creamy avocado and side of bread to counteract the heat. The chicken was so well-seasoned, and it was the type of marinated chicken I'd love to make at home in salads or bowls. The masa crisps were interesting. I'm not really sure what I was expecting, maybe something similar to masa fries we've had before, but these were more like seed and grain crackers. They tasted really similar to a brand we've had from Costco before (but which one specifically I couldn't place in flavor). This combination was so good, and I would love to get this salad again, but I'm not sure how much longer the New Mexican options will be around.

Southwest Chicken Quesadillas

Even though it's apparently now "mango season" at Trader Joe's, here's a quick review for something non-mango...

Product: Southwest Chicken Quesadillas (from "Taos Joe" which amuses me)

Price: $3.69 for 2 quesadillas

Quick review: These quesadillas were pretty good, although I found them a little on the salty side (despite being only 490 mg of sodium per quesadilla). I found them more flavorful than some of the other microwavable Mexican and southwest items at TJ's, probably due to how much stuff they have packed into each one. They weren't super thin quesadillas without much filling, but instead they actually had quite a bit of meat and vegetables, which I liked. Inside each quesadilla, there was monterey jack and pepper jack cheese, chicken, corn, peppers, spinach, black beans, and various seasonings to give it that "southwest" flavor (stuff like cumin, cilantro, chile peppers, paprika, and more). It was pretty easy to prepare it in the microwave, and it made for a really quick and easy lunch. Would it have been better out of the oven or finished off in a skillet? Yeah, probably, but the whole point of getting this for me is for lunch to be simple, convenient, and lazy.

Buy Again? Yes. Maybe not every time since it's a little salty and it's more cost-efficient to get something like vegetable burgers, but at $1.85 per quesadilla, it's definitely a good lunch for the price.

Zia Green Chile Company

We finally made it out to Smorgasburg in Williamsburg this weekend, which meant we had the opportunity to try a bunch of food vendors that aren't at the other smaller Smorgasburg locations or other food fairs. One of those was Zia Green Chile Company, which specializes in the amazing green chiles that come out of New Mexico. Our only exposure to these green chiles so far (since we haven't yet made it to New Mexico, but it's on our list) has been from canned chiles from the grocery store (which are good, but we're sure not as good as the real thing) or green chile cheeseburgers (which are good, but not that plentiful around here).

Zia was actually our last stop on this Smorgasburg visit, so we're posting about this a little out of order. By this point, we weren't that hungry but just wanted one more thing to finish off our eating adventure for the afternoon. We were also desperately in need of a drink. The day was supposed to be mostly cloudy and/or full of showers, but instead it was blue skies, lots of intense sun, and pretty high (around 75%) humidity. We were drenched, had already gone through multiple bottles of water and iced tea lemonade, and were extremely dehydrated. That was another reason we ended up at Zia, besides the fact that the green chile food items sounded great. They were advertising a drink that sounded perfectly thirst quenching.

Zia's drink of choice was a prickly pear cactus limeade ($4).  This was a very refreshing drink for a hot day. Bright pink, it was pretty mild in flavor, and not overly sweet like some drinks. It also wasn't very tart despite the lime. It was great for that afternoon with its light sweetness.

For our final Smorgasburg snack, we got the green chile Frito pie ($6). Somehow, after all these years of wanting a Frito pie, this was the first one I ever had. Basically it's a bag of Fritos topped with cheese and chili or some other form of meat, which was in this case topped with a layer of green chiles. We really liked these green chiles. They had great flavor, and it made us want to go to New Mexico even more to try them there. There was a good subtle heat to them, but they weren't painfully spicy or anything like that. The Frito pie itself was good, but a little bit hard to eat and mix up in the bag since it wasn't cut open on the side like some Frito pies are. Overall, it was a nice snack.

We enjoyed what we got from Zia Green Chile Company, and would recommend a stop by their stand at Smorgasburg if you want to try some good green chiles. Next time maybe we'll have stomach space for the sopapillas, or if it's in the fall, the posole. (Too hot for posole right now!) Right now though, could really go for a green chile cheeseburger...