Once in a while I come up with an absolutely genius one pot meal. Well, this is it- I even surprised myself when I tasted it. I wanted to make something with spanish and mexican flavors but didn’t want to make the normal quesadillas or fajitas or even burritos. I thought about it for almost the whole day and then finally came up with this fabulous dish. I had bought some ground turkey from Trader Joes the day before- I was actually planning to make meat balls with veggies but somehow didn’t feel like it. I have noticed that if I force myself to cook a dish, it doesn’t taste very good… I have to really want to make it – I usually visualize it in my head before I cook the dish- it sounds a little cooky but that is how my brain works. Anyway, I wanted to incorporate the ground turkey somehow in the dish, so I decided to pair it with rice and beans. When I think of Mexican food- tomatillos come to mind – I love using tomatillos– they have a very tart and creamy flavor.  I also wanted to create a smoky dish but didn’t want to add any heat since I wanted Sia to enjoy it- so I decided to use smoked paprika which has a little bit of heat but a lot of flavor. I also decided to use one of my favorite ingredients- roasted frozen corn.  It also has a nice roasted smoky flavor.  I blended the tomatillos, garlic, cilantro and vidalia spring onions and used that as the underlying flavor for the rice.  I don’t know if you all have noticed huge vidalia spring onions every where??  They are delicious- mild enough to use in salads but also have a lot of flavor for sauces, etc.  Once the rice was cooked with all the delicious ingredients, I decided to take it to the next level and add cheese. My first thought was to add queso blanco but then I remembered I had a blend of shredded mexican cheeses in my fridge.  It included monterey jack, queso blanco and a bunch of other cheeses- perfect!  I love sweet and savory flavors in my dishes and decided to add raisins- they are optional but I would highly recommend them.  The little burst of sweet juice midst the smoky rice was very pleasant.  Now as we all know my daughter is obsessed with mangoes- so we have plenty in the house at all times.  I wanted to make a cool salad to go with the rice and decided to combine avocados with mangoes.  I thought very hard about this since both the ingredients have similar textures- my initial idea was to add some crunch to it but at the end I decided to keep it simple- some salt, lime juice and cilantro.  I served the salad on top of the hot rice- it was out of this world!!!  If you cook just one dish from this blog I would recommend this one- it was truly delicious.  All the flavors went really well together- the hot smoky rice with the cool creamy salad- a match made in heaven!

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