Tortilla casserole with guajillo chiles, chicken, squash and panela cheese

You ever have those moments when you’re super busy, but you add one more thing to your plate anyway? And it comes with this tickle of dread, like, oh shoot, should I really be doing this? Do I have time?

I’m always cramming a million things into my schedule. Usually it turns out fine. But sometimes — like with this casserole — it doesn’t. Here I am, moving and packing, and I thought: “I’m going to make one last big meal in the kitchen!” At that moment I should have stepped outside myself, and given myself a “WTF?” look. But no. I listened. I brought out Diana Kennedy and bookmarked the “Caserola de Tortillas en Chiles Guajillos” page.

Fast forward one hour later. I was frantically pushing the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve, while it slowly dripped out the other side, one tablespoon at a time. It was 3 p.m. Crayton and I had not eaten since breakfast. My stomach growled. My feet hurt. My face felt flushed and my fingertips tingled, from seeding and de-veining more than a dozen dried chiles. Plus I’d toasted and ground some cumin seeds in my molcajete.

Diana’s recipe called for cooking the casserole on the stove, in a flame-proof dish. I don’t own one and figured I could just bake it in the oven. But now, faced with having to actually make that decision, I panicked. Wouldn’t baking it dry it out? Did I need more guajillo chile sauce? More broth? A more melty cheese? I’d also strayed from Diana’s recipe in other ways — adding chicken for some heft, adding veggies. I dunked the tortillas in the sauce and left them whole, instead of cutting them into pieces and pouring the sauce over them.

Really, my “authentic” caserola had become something else entirely: a pastel-azteca-sopa-seca hybrid. But what did that mean in terms of taste, and cooking time? Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to think about my desired end result, and devise a plan to get there.

So I winged it. Layered the tortillas in my casserole dish, interspersed with my fillings. I didn’t strain the sauce fully, because that took forever. Who cares if we all end up picking guajillo chiles out of our teeth.

The panela didn’t melt well, which I knew it wouldn’t, but I had secretly prayed that I would be wrong. We had no cilantro as garnish. Most terribly, I forgot to salt the sauce.

Lunch went on the table at 4:15 p.m., after two hours of cooking. I took a bite and kind of wanted to cry. It wasn’t inedible… it just wasn’t good, necessarily.

“I like it,” Crayton pronounced. He’s such a good husband.

The three lessons I learned that day:

1. Do not throw your kitchen a goodbye party when you’re in the process of moving, no matter how much you desire to give it the proper send off.

2. Do not crack open Diana Kennedy’s “The Essential Cuisines of Mexico” when you’re in a hurry to eat. The next time I pick a DK recipe — and it will be soon, because I adore her books — I will scan it to see what can be made in advance. For example, this chile sauce totally could have been made the day before. Then I would’ve remembered to add salt, and had time to fry my tortillas properly.

3. Experimenting in the kitchen is great, but not when you’re starving and your partner is depending on you for his sustenance. Next time order him a torta.

By the way, if you have any favorite guajillo chile combinations, I’d love to hear them. They just didn’t wow me this time around. (Or maybe it was the fact that they needed salt.) Maybe cinnamon?