Arlene Cooks Authentic Mexican Tacos with Missionaries Ken and Juana Blose 🌮

Well, hello and welcome to At Home today. We have a really special program. I want you to call your friends, call the neighbors and get everybody tuned in to watch this program because it’s special because it’s somebody who’s really close to us, is going to be here with his wife. And I’m gonna introduce them to you in just a minute. First of all, I’m always reading the mail and these are really neat letters. Can you get a shot of these, guys? These are some of the nicest little creations that some of the viewers have sent to me. This one here that you’re seeing is a napkin holder. Isn’t that nice? And this is all made out of a… What do you call this, Linda?

Plastic canvas.

Plastic canvas, that they do yarn work with. They work with our yarn and they make it look like a house. And this was sent to me by a lady by the name of Shirley Church from Altoona, Pennsylvania. Thank you, Shirley. This is really cute. I mean, I’m sure there’s a lot of work in that and I really appreciate it. That is a neat little napkin holder. And then, this came from Gloria Keirney of New Kensington. This is really unique because this is, again, that plastic canvas stuff. And what she’s done is made a stove. This little pan is actually even attached to the burner. Isn’t that neat? And you can see, you turn it all around, she has just outlined and combined the pieces, the different sizes with yarn, but it’s really a recipe box and you put your recipes in there. Thank you so much. I really appreciate that, Gloria. And she also sent me one of these. I’m sure that you’ve seen this before. You have to try to figure out what the word is on there. And I hope I have it the right way. Okay and when you look at it, it obviously shows that the name is Jesus there, probably someone that she’s very close to. Thank you so much, ladies. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness. And it’s nice to do things like this. I’m the recipient of this and I appreciate this very much, but it’s nice to do little things like this for a neighbor who maybe is shut in or someone from church who just is not well or just a little thought for a friend that you’ve spent some of the time putting yourself into a little gift like this. It really is appreciated. Thank you so much again, ladies, and thank all of you for your continued comments about the program that you enjoy at home. We’re really glad that we can keep coming to you week after week after week bringing you this program. Well, I told you I was gonna have special guests today. And the fella that I’m gonna tell you about used to work here and was part of our team here at Cornerstone Television. His name is Ken Blose. Something happened to Ken, he took a missionary trip to Mexico and while he was there, the Lord dropped a love for the people and for the city into his heart. And while he was there, not only did he have this encounter with the city, but he also met somebody else who really is a big part of his life now. In fact, here’s a picture of Ken. You can see is the luxury accommodations there. He’s really doing a lot of work, good missionary work in Mexico, have a tremendous, tremendous ministry for children. He’s with Chris Jones, he’s one of our favorites here. It’s Christian Advanced International, it’s a wonderful missionary group there. They literally minister to thousands of children every week. And right in the middle of it is Ken and his newlywed wife, Juana. And they’re gonna be back as my very special guest in just a minute. Stay tuned and we’ll be right back. Here’s today’s At Home hint. When using a recipe card, slip the card between the tines of a fork and stand the fork in a glass. The card will be held at just the right angle and will be safe from spills. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share, we want to hear from you. Send your hint to At Home Hints, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, we’re back and I’d like to introduce officially, this is Ken Blose and his lovely wife, Juana. Welcome to our At Home kitchen. Ken, it’s a little different on this side of the camera.

Oh yeah, thanks for having us, Arlene.

Well, I know that you’ve only been married a very short time, 10 months, you said?

Yeah.

And is she a good cook?

She is a fantastic cook. She’s learned a lot from my mother-in-law and it’s really Mexican cuisine. In fact, she doesn’t hardly speak any English And she doesn’t cook any American.

But you know what?

And it’s fantastic.

Look at this girl’s face. She doesn’t have to speak English. This girl, you can see the love of Jesus shining out through her eyes and her smile. So, what I’m gonna do is talk to you and you’re gonna interpret when I ask her questions, okay?

Okay, right.

And she’s going to prepare, now, are these two dishes that you’re gonna do today, are these things that are like in the normal cuisine for Mexican families?

Yeah, these are very popular Mexican dishes and they’re easy to make here because the ingredients are here. They make a lot of different things in Mexico that are very difficult to find in the United States. You have to go to specialty stores, but here, these are all ingredients that you can find in common supermarket and they’re common things that they make and they make and they eat there. One is a soup and one is tacos.

It’s called tortilla soup, right?

Tortilla soups. They have a very similar ingredients, but a very distinctive taste, the two have very distinctive tastes.

Now, what’s the spice? Ask Juana, what’s the spice most commonly used in Mexico?

Cilantros? Okay, what?

They use a lot of onions and garlic and and chilies and cilantro and jalapenos. They have a great number of chilies.

Cumin? Cuminos, is that what that is?

Si, cuminos.

Cuminos, okay Wonderful, okay, ’cause that’s the distinctive flavor I always taste in Mexican food, is the cumin usually, but okay. She should start and prepare and just tell us what you’re gonna put, what she’s putting together.

Okay, the first thing we’re gonna do is gonna work on a little bit on our tortilla soup. She’s gonna start cutting up the tortillas and we fry the tortillas, make little chips out of them and that’s part of the soup. Now, the main part of the soup, we’ve already made. It’s like a chicken broth. We boil chicken with onion, with one onion, that’s half onion actually, three peeled cloves of garlic, quarter teaspoon of salt.

So, you boil the chicken.

Right and a chicken bullion.

And so, that flavors it while you’re cooking it.

And it makes it in a really nice flavor and it keeps it wet and it keeps it tender. So, she’s gonna start cutting the tortillas and you need to cut these tortillas in the little strips. And she’s gonna start cutting them now and I’m gonna get our oil ready ’cause we’re gonna put these in oil and cook them and they’re gonna make like little chips.

All right.

Okay.

Now, Ken, I understand that, there, you can go and buy fresh-made tortillas in Mexico.

Yes, in Mexico, they have like factories where just about on every street corner, you can go and there’s a factory where they make them. They have these machines, they are crank and they have oil coming out and you wonder-

How are they gonna make it.

What good’s gonna come out of this? But those things come out like hotcakes.

And how much are they?

And they’re about… They’re 700 pesos or 70 cents every two pounds, a kilo. So, that’s about 35 cents a pound.

A pound, wow.

So, those are what everyone buys. Everyone eats them, they’re like their bread and then, for every meal they have.

That’s there on a normal table.

Right.

So, we’re gonna put this on a low flame ’cause it’s oil.

All right, push it and turn, there we go. Yeah, oil gets hot quickly.

Has to be at a low flame.

[Arlene] All right.

Okay and you let that warm up a little bit. After you cut these, you need to let them out in the air just a little bit before you cut them out in here a little bit so they start getting dry. Okay and that’ll make them crispier when you fry them. And then, another thing is you cut them in half ’cause you don’t want them to be too long. She’s cutting them in strips.

Now, these are gonna flavor the soup, is that right?

Yeah, that’s part of the flavor of the soup.

Now, once you have your chicken cooked and all of these instructions, all the ingredients, everything will be on the recipe that you write for. So, if it sounds like we’re going fast, we’re trying to cram a lot into this a little bit of time. So, don’t worry, if you miss an ingredient, you can write and get the recipe. But after you have the chicken done, you bring it out and you shred it.

Right, we take the chicken out and we shred it and part of it, we’re gonna use for the tacos that we’re gonna make.

But it’s all chicken breast, right, boneless chicken breasts?

Boneless chicken breasts. So, we take that and we shred it and then we can put the chicken back into the soup and have it keep it warm. Then once we have our strips, then we can go and we can fry them. So, we’re gonna go over, she’s gonna put those in and then she’s gonna start frying the-

You wanna put… Yeah, that’d be good.

And start frying those. ‘Cause I have never seen anybody fry these as chips.

She’s just letting it get a little bit warmer-

It’s not as hot enough yet, okay.

And once you do that, you have these fried chips, this is what they will look like when we’re done with them. And to prepare the soup-

Are they crisp, can I touch one?

Oh yeah, go ahead and-

Oh, yeah, they’re crisp.

They’re crisp and actually, if people like tortilla chips, they can make them and these are just like tortilla chips you in the store. And they’re very good.

So, you could buy those and cut those into the little triangle shapes and brown them and you’d have your own fresh tasting too.

Exactly, my wife does that and they are fantastic. But what you do is you take one of these and we need a bowl. We need a soup bowl.

All right, here’s a small soup bowl.

Yeah, like as if we were doing the soup.

Okay, hold on, I’ll get it. Okay, keep talking.

Okay, we have our soup bowl. What we do is we would put these in here first. Then we have cheese. Now, Mexican cheese has different names. Their cheeses, they make them in different states of Mexico. So, of course, they don’t have them here. So, we went around to the supermarkets and we found the closest cheese to the cheese that we use in Mexico is mozzarella. And we buy it, it’s called string cheese here and we bought it and we strip it down. Okay, like this, you take the-

What’s it called in Mexico?

This is similar to a cheese in Mexico called Oaxaca, which is a state in Southern Mexico. A lot of the people from the Indian descent live there, there’s a lot of the indigenous people live in the state of Oaxaca and their cheese is very stringy, similar to mozzarella. So, what we do after we shred the cheese like this, we would also put that in with our… And that’s gonna be part of the soup.

Then you’d pour the soup over that, right, you serve it.

You pour the soup, and with the chicken, the soup and chicken in there. And then, you put sour cream on top of it. And we made this for my father. When we first came in, the first thing she did was make a meal for my parents to test this out on them and they just love this soup.

Well, your dad called to tell us. He said, “Now they’ve been working here trying these recipes out and so far, everything is delicious.” So, I know that Dad’s enjoying your visit here.

She’s making these chips now. She’s stirring them, you have to keep stirring them, turning them over the entire time, okay?

And about how long do you cook them?

You wait until they’re kind of a golden color like you see there in the finished product, you wait ’til they’re kinda brown. You don’t wanna burn them, make sure they don’t go black on you. And then when you’re done, you will take them out and you put them in a strainer and you let the oil drip out.

Now, let me ask you. Maybe I should have you ask Juana. Juana, what was the first meal you cooked for Ken after you were married? What was it?

It’s like a beef steak with the… It’s like a steak. What is it called here? It’s called a Virginia fried steak, Chicken fried steak.

Chicken fried steak.

Chicken fried steak.

Okay, and what else?

[Ken] Salad and rice.

Oh, sounds like she’s treating you well.

They call it milanesa, the chicken fried steak is called milanesa and it is extremely delicious and they put it in a sandwich and I always get that. And I love it and she does a fantastic job making that.

The other thing that I have noticed, they’re going to be doing some tacos in just a minute. And here, every time we have tacos, it’s usually with ground beef, but you make the tacos with chicken.

Okay, yeah. I’m glad we’re doing something different.

Yeah, that’s right.

Because the chicken is one of the most popular things in Mexico. Of course, it’s a lot more nutritious than the beef or any other kinda thing you put in a taco. It’s very nutritious meat and it’s delicious. And we use the same-

And it’s readily available?

Right, it’s very available. I mean, a lot of families where we live, we can go into their houses and they have chickens and they have them very fresh .

Like pick yours and we’ll have it for dinner, right? Okay, so she’s cooking these. And as they’re getting brown and she would take them and put them into here. Now, we prepare our chicken. We’re gonna use the same chicken that we’ve cooked in the soup and we’re gonna prepare it in a special way and I’m gonna do that.

Let’s find out, Dale, how many minutes do we have?

[Dale] Coming up on 10.

Coming up on 10.

Okay, we have 10 minutes, that’s plenty of time. We have some tomatoes here. We’re gonna use those and I’m gonna cut up another one.

Tomatoes are real big.

Hope I don’t cut my finger off.

Yeah, we all remember. If you’ve been a Cornerstone Television fan for very long, you will know that several years ago, we had Ken in front of the camera making his famous Polynesian cowboy Polish delight, which really was glorified baked beans with pineapple. And as I recall, Ken, you had a problem with a can.

Yeah.

It attacked you on air.

The FCC wouldn’t let us bring a can on this program today ’cause it’s-

That’s right.

Too violent.

We wanted to save you because you’re too important to Mexico to lose your life here opening a can.

I’m glad this knife, wasn’t very sharp. Okay, so what we have is we have two tomatoes, okay? And we have a blender. Now, I’ve noticed, in every Mexican home, the blender is one of the primary things they use. They make sauces with their blenders, they make what they call aguas, which are like fruit drinks, licuados, which are fruit drinks, but using milk instead of water and all kinds of things. The blender is needed, necessary in the Mexican kitchen. Now, for example, this blender probably is about 20 years old, and I had to dig it out of the basement. A lot of people here in America don’t-

We just don’t.

Don’t have the blender.

Mine’s on a shelf somewhere and I’d have to spend time looking for it too. Yeah, so if you have a blender in your garage or something, get it out and try out these fancy recipes. Okay, so what are we gonna do is make a sauce that we’re gonna put on the chicken. Now, she has made these up now and she stuck them in there and they’re getting-

All right.

So, you strain them a little bit, but you should let them strain a little bit more in a strainer. But for time’s sake, we-

To get the oil off them.

Right.

Okay.

Okay. Now, she’s gonna start cooking up the chicken. Okay and she needs the onion.

There’s the onion and a lot of garlic too, right? You’re gonna cut this up, all right. And the soup is going well over there. And the sauce that you’re making here is for the tacos?

It’s for the tacos and we’re gonna put on the chicken. She’s gonna first start frying the chicken.

Okay.

Okay. We have the chicken in here-

Because then, that means you cook it twice.

Right.

Cook it once to make it soft so you can shred it and then, now they’re going to incorporate it into the filling for the tacos.

Okay, I’m gonna put-

Help her, she needs something but she… There it is, okay.

She’s gonna put some water in there. Okay. Here’s a cup. It’s about a cup of water, a little less than a cup of water. And she’s putting three cloves of garlic, two tomatoes and three slices of onion in the blender, okay?

And anything else?

Meanwhile, I’m gonna prepare- And one bouillon cube, chicken.

Chicken bouillon cube, okay.

And she’s gonna throw that on there.

Does it have to be hot water in there or just-

Regular water.

Just regular, okay. And this is how we run it. Mix that up really good.

[Arlene] It pulverizes everything there, right?

[Ken] Yeah.

Don’t you just love these newlyweds?

We’re gonna set that aside for a moment.

Okay. Newly weds in the kitchen.

And we’re gonna start frying the chicken. And we use some-

Show them how that’s shredded. Bring it over so they can… Yeah, we wanna show the camera over here. This is good. See how finely shredded… You pull that apart with a fork?

[Ken] Just with your hand. You can do it free hand or you can cut it.

[Arlene] They’re some long pieces like-

Whatever you feel like, you wanna do it.

And it’s shredded, that’s the term that you use.

She’s putting some oil in there. We measured about a quarter cup of oil. And then, she’s also gonna put onions in there. She’s already cut some onions and she’s gonna fry that. Okay.

Tortillas always have to be fried up before you use them though, don’t they?

Right, another thing that we do to prepare for the tacos is we’re gonna heat them up in a few minutes here. Right now, she’s gonna be stirring that and getting that fried up and that’s gonna be-

That’s the filling.

That’s gonna be the filling, but we’re also gonna add that delicious-

Now, that’s unusual. Yeah, I’ve never seen that.

And this is called tinga. I don’t know what it means.

No, no.

Nobody knows what it means, so we just call it tinga because we don’t know what else to call it, right?

And when you go to Mexico, if you go on the streets and you see a taco stand, you will see, what do you want, what can you have it feel with, you’ll see this glop, it’s chicken with this stuff, but it’s delicious and that’s called tinga and that’s what we’re gonna make.

Now, Ken, I know that you’re there and you’re a big asset to Chris Jones ’cause he’s told us about it, but what really is your duty as part of that ministry?

Well, I have a number of responsibilities. One, I go out in the streets as you saw in the video, helping them do their programs. I do programs for children to reach thousands and thousands of children and I dress up like a clown sometimes and go out and help them. Some of my duties are administrative. I help with computer work, I do-

I know you’ve had a camera, you’ve taken some videos to show people the progress that you’re making there and what the ministry is doing.

I do a lot of TV work. And then from there, I also am working with the Hand of Love program, which is our child sponsorship program, a very popular thing. And many of the ministries have that and ours is a program where we have like 700 kids now that are being sponsored from all over the country.

That’s wonderful. And really, this whole ministry is funded by private donations, isn’t it?

Right, it’s private, it’s a ministry, a nondenominational ministry. And I’m a missionary who works down there and as a missionary, I have to raise my own funds as well. But thank God that Channel 42 who produces this program has helped me in a great way. Basically, they’ve sent me and I thank God for that.

Well, yeah, but you were such a blessing to us when you were here and it’s nice to see some of your own go into further what God wants them to do and to be a small part of it. And we’re gonna put an address on the screen right now. If you would like to contact Ken or Juana or even Chris Jones who is the head of the Christian Advanced International, we want to make that phone number and the address available to you, which is Christian Advanced International, post office box 741427, Houston, Texas, 77274, or the 1-800 number is 562-4370. And really, you can get in touch with them there and just if you’d like them to come to your church and present a program, I’m sure they could. They’re not gonna be here too much longer, but you will be coming back periodically, right?

Yeah, we’re planning to… We’ll be leaving June 1st, but I’m hoping to be able to make a trip with my wife every year so that I can tell the people and show the people what’s going on.

The progress, sure.

Hopefully, come on At Home and show more Mexican recipes.

There you go, yeah. Okay, our time is running low.

Yeah, time’s flying, yeah.

We’re gonna start heating up these tacos, these tortillas. What we do is we heat them up on both sides and we’re preparing-

So, there’s no oil in that pan, right?

No oil, it’s dry. In fact, you wanna see how they do it in Mexico?

Yeah. Right on the burner?

Right on the burner.

And it does it.

Yeah.

[Arlene] And they don’t catch on fire?

Well, sometimes they do.

[Arlene] And you don’t burn yourself? Well, sometimes you do.

Sometimes you do, but-

Now, she’s added the sauce to the chicken.

Yeah, she’s putting this sauce in there and mixing it in. That’s called the tinga.

That’s the tinga.

And she’s going to let that cook and hopefully, the water will burn. Okay, I’m burning this one.

The water will burn, okay.

Like my tortilla. Okay, it’s better to use a pan of course.

Is that what you brought this for, to put your tortillas in?

Yeah.

Show me how.

This is a tortilla holder. And I have a special gift for you as well. This is a gift for you. This is also to help you with the tortillas. We’ll put that-

What does it say?

It says the wise woman builds her house.

Aww, how nice that is.

That’s it from the Psalms.

Oh and you’re putting the tortillas right in there.

And that’ll keep them warm and then-

Then you package them away.

And you just keep warming these.

Now, she has to show me how she rolls these tortillas when she can.

Okay, this isn’t quite ready but we’re gonna fake-

Well, how about if we take a break and when we come back, let’s let that cook down to where it needs to be. When we come back, she can roll the tortillas. We’ll finish the product and we’ll show them the end, but you have to have the complete full recipe and I want you to get it. So, get your paper and pencil, I’m gonna give you that information right now. We’ll be right to show you the finished product. [Announcer] To receive the recipes presented on today’s program, plus many more great recipe ideas, send your best donation in a stamped self-addressed business-sized envelope to At Home, CTV, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. You’ll receive Arlene’s heartwarming newsletter, Enjoy, featuring an entire month of at home recipes, including today’s mouthwatering dishes. Be sure to include the Enjoy issue number with your request.

Well, I’m here in the dining room, but Ken and Juana are still in the kitchen because I wanted her to show you how to put together the taco. So Ken, just go and take us through it step by step.

Okay, let’s take a look. We got the taco, we got the tortilla, it’s been heated up, we heat it up in a dry pan.

[Arlene] Look at the consistency of the chicken.

And now, we put the tinga, the chicken that we made in there. And the taco has been a little bit hard, but then we fry it in the oil. We wanna fry it both sides for about a minute each side until it’s golden brown. And the frying usually keeps it closed. These tacos usually aren’t like a hand tight kinda a taco because we’re gonna put all the rest of the stuff on the outside. So, these are good for the serve of a fork and put them on the plate, serve them on a fork with it. She’s got that thing golden brown and it’s gonna be sticking together. And then, we put it on some paper towels to get that grease off. You don’t wanna have that oil on there. And then, we put the taco down. Now, I will do the final preparation. We got sour cream.

[Arlene] It looks delicious, smells great, Ken.

And then, put some lettuce on there. It’s called lechuga in Spanish.

Lechuga.

Lechuga.

[Arlene] Lechuga.

And then we have the sauce. Now, the sauce isn’t obligatory. If you don’t like it, don’t put it on. It still taste good without it. And the cheese.

[Arlene] Cheese.

We bought a special Mexican blend of cheese at the supermarket. And here we go.

Yeah.

There they are.

There they are. Come and join me, please. And we already have our soup. Hope we can take a good shot of this soup because you just put a little dollop of the sour cream on top, right? And it has the chicken, it’s got those fresh tortilla strips that they cooked before and the broth of the chicken and the shredded chicken that you also used in the tacos, right?

Exactly.

Now how often, ask Juana for me, how often would her family serve something like this?

Every once in a while, it’s-

Like a special thing?

It’s a special thing, but it’s so simple that they also do it maybe twice a month, but they always have their beans with it too and we didn’t have time to make the beans.

Yeah, maybe the next time you come back, you’ll make frijoles or refried beans, okay?

They say frijoles is a

Well, we’ve certainly enjoyed having you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, we appreciate. Can you imagine how hard it would be to be in another country and not understand what people were saying and do what this lady did today? Thank you, Juana. And thank you, Ken. And thank you for joining us. Remember, that’s recipe number 188. So, send your self-addressed stamped envelope and like I say, be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you right here At Home. See you then, olé!

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