Debbie had bought some poblano peppers with the idea of making chiles rellenos.  When some days (well, ok, weeks) had passed and it looked like her travel schedule was not going to “support” making them, I took over and determined to CrummyCook them last Wednesday.

We have an older Mexican cookbook from Diana Kennedy which Debbie had always “praised with faint damn” by saying it was “too complicated.”  I looked up the chiles rellenos recipe in the book and was intrigued because it stuffed the peppers with picadillo instead of the usual gooey bland cheese, but when I went over it in detail Debbie was right: you had to make the picadillo, you had to roast and peel the peppers, you had to stuff them, and you had to make a sauce for them.

Mark Bittman  to the rescue with a simpler approach.  Still plenty daunting, still roasting/peeling, stuffing, and sauce, but the stuffing itself was straightforward and Mark had a less take-no-prisoners approach to the sauce.

Unfortunately, my stuffing didn’t go much better with these chiles than my frustrating encounter with the squash blossoms in July.  I think I roasted the chiles too long, and, although they were easy to peel, the chile innards began to fall apart and they resembled Franken-chiles by the time I patched them together with toothpicks and skewers (above).

No matter, the final result was tasty enough, and I will work on less vigorous roasting next time around.