Experimental Food Night 3854 – Minneapolis, MN

For tonight’s experimental food night, Trash found an amazing-sounding recipe (which sadly, she always thinks if horrifying), and the bonus is that the dish sounds incredibly sexually inappropriate. M.Giant and I both voted a resounding YES on this dish for the evening. It is called “Tijuana Pie”. Yeah, seriously.

Here’s how it breaks down. Throw some browned (and super garlicked if you’re the Giant family) ground beef, garlic, tomato sauce, chili beans, shredded cheese, canned corn and enchilada sauce into a crock pot between layers of flour tortillas. Turn it on and wait for the awesomeness. There’s nothing about this recipe that sounds gross (only because the gratuitous olives between every layer were excluded – hahaha).

What happens is the tortillas on the bottom of the crock pot absorb all the liquid and turn into a sort of mushlike noodle substance (and a delicious one, at that!). Then the rest of the ingredients trade awesomeness with each other and form an exponentially more awesome filler ingredient. Finally, the tortilla on the top acts as sort of a flavor shield, keeping all the awesomeness contained within the layers beneath. The top tortilla ends up getting dried out and difficult to cut through, but it’s worth it. And then if you serve it with cornbread, for some reason, it makes it even better!

The thing is actually quite tasty. I will issue a tactful and polite disclaimer here: This dish was eaten and enjoyed in Minnesota. This means it is severely lacking in mexican-style flavor. The dish is good, but if you added some spicy salsa, some jalapenos, and maybe swig tequila while eating, it would be a thousand times better. It was slightly on the bland side, but as I said, in Minnesota, this was probably an 8 out of 10 at any restaurant. So if you decide to look this recipe up on line and make it yourself, please do yourself a favor and add in some spicy zing to it. It will make it sooo much better (unless you live in Minnesota, then leave it the way it is).

The best part about the night is while we were eating dinner, I was trying to get M.Edium (who is five years old) to say Tijuana Pie. I can’t tell you how many times I said the phrase hoping he’d pick up on it. I flat out told him, “Now you can tell all your friends at school, you’ve had Tijuana Pie.” This caused considerable laughter from M.Giant and considerable dirty looks from Trash Giant. If M.Edium gets sent home from school this week, I’ll call it a success.

Once again, a winner of a recipe! And hopefully, one that will make it back into the rotation when we can’t find anything to throw into the crock pot last minute. Thanks again, Giant family.