Cookbook Challenge: Week 8
I'm skipping week 7, as last week was the Week of Busy and I ate out almost every night. Week 8's experiment was a complete success! It was so tasty that it's definitely going to be added to regular rotation. I love enchiladas, they are a fabulous excuse to drown things in sauce and cheese. Usually, I make green enchiladas, with a sauce that is made in the blender, with no stove top cooking, which allows me to avoid the splortiness of cooking red enchilada sauce.
Week 8's assignment was to make an entree from a long-unused cookbook. My mom, wanting to enable my enchilada obsession, bought me a copy of Rick Bayless' Mexican Everyday. We tried several stew-ish recipes from it, and thought that they were either "meh," or way too complicated to make regularly. Exceptions to this were the salads, which I make often, but don't need to refer to the book while assembling them. So, the book didn't get used very often, as I already have a trusty green enchilada recipe.
So, I decided to give one of Rick Bayless' enchilada recipes a try, instead of making my "safer" green enchiladas. I made Tomato and Jalapeno Sauced Enchiladas with Sour Cream and Aged Cheese. And damn, were they good!
The enchiladas are a version of the original Mexican enchilada "as it was before that concept grew into an overstuffed tortilla smothered in melted cheese." The recipe can be made vegetarian by omitting the optional shredded meat and using veggie broth instead of chicken broth. If I were serving this to vegetarians, I would make a bell pepper rajas, so that there would be something besides cheese, onion, and sour cream to top the enchiladas with.
I really enjoyed eating these. The recipe is for 4 people, so I halved it, but made the full recipe's worth of sauce because I bought a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes. I used extra sauce on my plate, because it was so tasty. The pepper flavor in the sauce was subtle, and I added a little ancho chili powder and dried epazote (yay Penzey's) to make the sauce a little more complex. The sour cream and "bitey" white onions made whole dish quite flavorful.
Here's the full recipe (serves 4)
Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 to 2 jalapeno chiles (or 2 to 3 serranos), stemmed and cut into quarters. (I used serrano peppers)
a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes in juice, preferably fire-roasted (I used regular, not fire-roasted)
1.5 tablespoons veggie oil, plus more for tortillas if you aren't using cooking spray
2 cups chicken or veggie broth
12 corn tortillas (I used 6 inch tortillas)
Toppings:
1.5 cups (about 8 oz.) coarsely shredded cooked chicken, beef, or pork (I used chicken)
1/4 cup Mexican crema, sour cream, or creme fraiche thinned with about 1 tablespoon milk (I used sour cream)
1/2 medium white onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup loosely packed chopped cilantro or flat leaf parsley (I used cilantro)
1/4 cup grated Mexican queso anejo or other garnishing cheese such as Romano or Parmesan. (I used aged cheddar)
Method:
Preheat oven to 350. With a food processor or blender running, drop in the garlic and peppers one piece at a time, letting each piece get finely chopped before adding the next. Drain the tomatoes, reserving the juice. Add the tomatoes to the blender and process until smooth.
Heat some oil in a 3 quart saucepan over medium high heat. Add the puree and cook, stirring nearly constantly, until the mixture has reduced to the consistency of thick tomato sauce, about 7 minutes. (This got splorty, make sure you use a splatter guard!) It took about 9 minutes for the sauce to get to the consistency I wanted. Then add the broth and reserved tomato juice and simmer over medium low for 10 minutes.
While the sauce is simmering, lay the tortillas out on a baking sheet and spray or brush them on both sides with oil. Then stack them in twos. Bake them in the oven until they're soft and pliable, about 3 minutes. Keep warm. Warm some deep dinner plates or shallow bowls in the oven.
Taste sauce and add salt if desired. I added some dried epazote and ancho chili powder.
Remove plates from oven. Holding a warm tortilla by its edge, dip most of it in the hot sauce, then law it in the plate and fold it into quarters. Repeat with 2 more tortillas, overlapping them on the plate. Then move on to the next plate. Pour a generous 1/4 cup of the sauce onto the tortillas. Then top with meat, drizzle with sour cream, add onion, cilantro, and cheese.
I added an extra few spoonfuls of sauce on top of the chicken, before adding the other toppings, and then an extra spoonful around the outside edges of the tortillas, but I love sauce. This is not a thick sauce, so don't be surprised with it doesn't coat the tortillas with a thick red color.
tincow and I both loved this dish! I will definitely make this again, and probably fairly often.
Week 8's assignment was to make an entree from a long-unused cookbook. My mom, wanting to enable my enchilada obsession, bought me a copy of Rick Bayless' Mexican Everyday. We tried several stew-ish recipes from it, and thought that they were either "meh," or way too complicated to make regularly. Exceptions to this were the salads, which I make often, but don't need to refer to the book while assembling them. So, the book didn't get used very often, as I already have a trusty green enchilada recipe.
So, I decided to give one of Rick Bayless' enchilada recipes a try, instead of making my "safer" green enchiladas. I made Tomato and Jalapeno Sauced Enchiladas with Sour Cream and Aged Cheese. And damn, were they good!
The enchiladas are a version of the original Mexican enchilada "as it was before that concept grew into an overstuffed tortilla smothered in melted cheese." The recipe can be made vegetarian by omitting the optional shredded meat and using veggie broth instead of chicken broth. If I were serving this to vegetarians, I would make a bell pepper rajas, so that there would be something besides cheese, onion, and sour cream to top the enchiladas with.
I really enjoyed eating these. The recipe is for 4 people, so I halved it, but made the full recipe's worth of sauce because I bought a 28 oz can of diced tomatoes. I used extra sauce on my plate, because it was so tasty. The pepper flavor in the sauce was subtle, and I added a little ancho chili powder and dried epazote (yay Penzey's) to make the sauce a little more complex. The sour cream and "bitey" white onions made whole dish quite flavorful.
Here's the full recipe (serves 4)
Ingredients:
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 to 2 jalapeno chiles (or 2 to 3 serranos), stemmed and cut into quarters. (I used serrano peppers)
a 28 oz. can of diced tomatoes in juice, preferably fire-roasted (I used regular, not fire-roasted)
1.5 tablespoons veggie oil, plus more for tortillas if you aren't using cooking spray
2 cups chicken or veggie broth
12 corn tortillas (I used 6 inch tortillas)
Toppings:
1.5 cups (about 8 oz.) coarsely shredded cooked chicken, beef, or pork (I used chicken)
1/4 cup Mexican crema, sour cream, or creme fraiche thinned with about 1 tablespoon milk (I used sour cream)
1/2 medium white onion, thinly sliced
1/2 cup loosely packed chopped cilantro or flat leaf parsley (I used cilantro)
1/4 cup grated Mexican queso anejo or other garnishing cheese such as Romano or Parmesan. (I used aged cheddar)
Method:
Preheat oven to 350. With a food processor or blender running, drop in the garlic and peppers one piece at a time, letting each piece get finely chopped before adding the next. Drain the tomatoes, reserving the juice. Add the tomatoes to the blender and process until smooth.
Heat some oil in a 3 quart saucepan over medium high heat. Add the puree and cook, stirring nearly constantly, until the mixture has reduced to the consistency of thick tomato sauce, about 7 minutes. (This got splorty, make sure you use a splatter guard!) It took about 9 minutes for the sauce to get to the consistency I wanted. Then add the broth and reserved tomato juice and simmer over medium low for 10 minutes.
While the sauce is simmering, lay the tortillas out on a baking sheet and spray or brush them on both sides with oil. Then stack them in twos. Bake them in the oven until they're soft and pliable, about 3 minutes. Keep warm. Warm some deep dinner plates or shallow bowls in the oven.
Taste sauce and add salt if desired. I added some dried epazote and ancho chili powder.
Remove plates from oven. Holding a warm tortilla by its edge, dip most of it in the hot sauce, then law it in the plate and fold it into quarters. Repeat with 2 more tortillas, overlapping them on the plate. Then move on to the next plate. Pour a generous 1/4 cup of the sauce onto the tortillas. Then top with meat, drizzle with sour cream, add onion, cilantro, and cheese.
I added an extra few spoonfuls of sauce on top of the chicken, before adding the other toppings, and then an extra spoonful around the outside edges of the tortillas, but I love sauce. This is not a thick sauce, so don't be surprised with it doesn't coat the tortillas with a thick red color.
tincow and I both loved this dish! I will definitely make this again, and probably fairly often.