Spinach Enchiladas

I finally figured out a good spinach enchilada recipe. For the filling I used 2 cups cooked fresh spinach, chopped and combined with shredded Monterey jack and cotija cheeses. I briefly fried corn tortillas, filled them, topped them with sauce and more shredded cheese. Then I baked them for about 10 minutes.

I made this sauce from Aida Gabilondo's Mexican Family Cooking.

Tomatillo Cilantro Sauce

1 pound fresh tomatillos, husked

1 cup cold water

4 garlic cloves

1 jalapeno, seeds and all

1/2 medium white onion

2 cups cilantro leaves

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

First put the tomatillos in a saucepan with water to cover, bring to a boil, and simmer 20 minutes. Drain.

Put tomatillos in a blender with water, garlic, jalapeno, onion, and cilantro. Blend until nearly liquid.

Heat oil in a pan and pour the sauce directly into it. Season with salt and sugar and simmer for five minutes.

Cinco de Mayo

We gave a nod to Cinco de Mayo yesterday. I made spinach enchiladas, beans, and salad. Of course I cook Mexican food two or three times a week, so the coincidence was not that startling.

I have eaten spinach enchiladas at a couple of restaurants, but never made them at home. Dad picked the rest of the spinach crop for this spring, so the time seemed right. The recipes I found on the web just didn't seem very authentic--in fact, I was suckered in to using nutmeg in my filling, and I should know better! Anyway, I made a filling of browned onions, spinach, and crumbled cotija cheese.

I tried a new method of preparing corn tortillas for enchiladas: brushing them with olive oil and microwaving them--okay, but traditional pan-frying feels more satisfying. Then I made a light cream sauce with a chicken broth base and some chopped canned jalapenos added. I rolled up the enchiladas with the spinach filling, poured the cream sauce over, and topped with some grated mixed cheese. I baked them in the outside oven for 10 or 15 minutes.

Salad consisted of fresh garden greens with lots of avocado slices.

Sour Cream Enchiladas

My restaurant mainstay as a vegetarian child in the Southwest, sour cream enchiladas don't sound like they should work...but they do.

I'd never made them before, but we happened to have all the right ingredients around.

The filling was sour cream spiked with a little yogurt and a little Herdez salsa verde and a sprinkling of grated mozzarella.

The sauce was my regular New Mexican red chile sauce.

I used James Peyton's advice to roll the enchiladas loosely, which kept them from unrolling.

I covered them with the sauce, baked them at 375 degrees for about 10 minutes, and served them with a cilantro-red pepper-bean salad similar to the one described here and here.

Please forgive our messy table and the Old Milwaukee.

Smoked Turkey, Black Bean, and Sweet Potato Enchiladas

Lawson and I invented this dish several years ago after Thanksgiving, and now we make it every year. It's a product of our particular Thanksgiving, which usually involves a turkey smoked by Lawson's brother; we always have a bag full of leftover smoked turkey meat.

We call it Signature Dish. I take no pictures of it because it is a casserole. Instead, here are pictures of the cat trying to help me fix my speaker cabinet:


***Signature Dish***
First, you have to make a batch of classic Southwestern red chile sauce.

At the same time, you have to roast two whole sweet potatoes at 400 degrees until they soften and collapse a bit.

Then you compile the following:

Layer 1
black beans
roasted sweet potatoes, peels removed and innards gently sliced

Layer 2
a few cups smoked turkey meat
a cup of sour cream
several green onions, chopped

You will also need:
corn tortillas
a little bit of cheese for the top

Get out a pan, grease it lightly with olive oil, and pour some sauce in the bottom. Add a layer of corn tortillas. Add more sauce. Then add the beans and the sweet potatoes, evenly distributing them. More tortillas. More sauce. Then carefully spread/dab the turkey filling on for the second layer. More tortillas. More sauce. Sprinkle cheese on top.

Here, I made you a picture. s=sauce, t=tortilla, c=cheese.

|cccccccccccccccccc|
|ssssssssssssssssss|
|tttttttttttttttttt|
|222222222222222222|
|ssssssssssssssssss|
|tttttttttttttttttt|
|111111111111111111|
|ssssssssssssssssss|
|tttttttttttttttttt|
|ssssssssssssssssss|
|________pan_______|

It's more than the sum of its parts, this dish. We actually smoked a chicken once just so we could make it.

If I were trying to be fancy, I might make individual plates of stacked enchiladas, New Mexican style, but it's so good left over that I prefer to make a big cafeteria-looking pan full.

Impromptu Sonoran Enchiladas

There was a bit of leftover tamale sauce in the fridge, a mediocre, tomato-enhanced batch I made a few weeks ago to go over the last of the 2007 Christmas tamales from the freezer. I used the rest of it to make some Sonoran enchiladas. I added some of Lawson's carrot-habanero salsa (the orange stuff) for heat and brighter flavor.

Sonoran enchiladas are a good thing to know how to make: instead of making a whole bunch of corn tortillas, or dealing with the flabby bland excuses for corn tortillas available in Columbia grocery stores, you just make a few Sonoran corn cakes and you can have homemade enchiladas.

My recipe varies. Sometimes I make them partially out of grits, which I soak first to soften; sometimes they're all cornmeal or masa harina. Here's the basic recipe, adapted from James Peyton:

1 1/2 cups masa harina or cornmeal
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 t salt
1 egg
up to 1 cup water

I don't measure very carefully. These can get too wet easily, so be careful with the water.

Form into 4 cakes. Pan fry over medium-high heat until browned. Set on paper towels. Assemble enchiladas.

This particular batch was part northern New Mexico, part southern Arizona, and part Central America: I topped the Sonoran cakes with chopped white onion, leftover Anasazi beans, a fried egg (all Four Corners/New Mexico traditions) and some white cheddar. Equal parts gringo-style red chile/tomato sauce and Belizean carrot-habanero sauce made this quite the ethnic blend. It was also a pretty good finger in the eye of the idea that there's some monolithic thing called Mexican Food.

Red Chile Sauce

Living way out here in South Carolina, I have profound and regular cravings for New Mexican enchiladas.

I don't think I've ever posted the family red chile sauce recipe here. If you believe James Peyton, this is pretty close to the standard New Mexican recipe. My version is slightly modified from the version you wrote down for me years ago, Mom. A tiny bit of cinnamon and nutmeg seem to warm up the sauce without overpowering the main flavors...but I picked that idea up from a Guatemalan guy who ran a Veracruzana restaurant, so who knows what's really authentic.

Place in saucepan and cover with water:

- 12-18 dried red New Mexican chiles, destemmed and deseeded

Bring to simmer, cover, turn off heat, and let sit 30 minutes or until chiles are soft and pliable. Put chiles and 1 cup of soaking liquid in blender, and process until very smooth.

Make a roux by combining over medium-high heat:

- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 tablespoons flour

Stir until light brown and nutty. Turn down heat and add the chile puree all at once; stir very quickly to incorporate without spattering or lumps. Then add:

- Several cups chicken or vegetable stock
- More soaking liquid if it needs more heat -- depends on the chiles
- 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon dried Mexican oregano
- 1 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
- 1 teaspoon vinegar
- 1 teaspoon sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

Simmer for at least 15 minutes.

Easy New Mexican enchiladas consist of red chile sauce, cheese, chopped green or white onions, corn tortillas, and sometimes sour cream. I like them stacked, not rolled, and topped with fried eggs. I miss the Southwest.

A Religious Experience Involving Chorizo

It may just have been indigestion, but in the early hours of this morning I believe I had a vision. The Supreme Being informed me that it wasn’t “Let there be light” at all, that had been a misunderstanding. It’s “Let there be chiles.” So now I’m a prophet; my holy book is James Peyton’s La Cocina de la Frontera; and by way of religious observance I am to eat lots of Mexican food.*

Dad got me a copy of the Peyton book for my birthday, and it’s great the second time around. Last night I made his homemade chorizo recipe, which was so good it brought tears to my eyes. I was swooning so hard I forgot to take a picture. With it we had along green chile enchiladas filled with goat cheese, Steaming Soupy Beans, and carrots.

Maybe not everyone has had a chance to eat beans this way, from Mexican Family Cooking by Aída Gabilondo:

Cook a pot of Anasazi or pinto beans with plenty of water. Add salt halfway through cooking time.

To serve, place a portion of beans in a soup bowl. Top with a teaspoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of vinegar, ¼ teaspoon of crumbled oregano, and chopped green onions.

*This is a great religion, really. Anyone can join. The other two rules are to be nice to people, and—She specifically mentioned this—don’t start wars.

Southwestern food

I wish I could eat some Patagonia tamales! Last Christmas I made green chile and pork tamales and froze a bunch; if I have time at New Year's, I may do the same thing.

It's been a Southwestern cooking frenzy here for the past 24 hours. We had huevos rancheros for Christmas brunch. I made a surprisingly good recipeless salsa using broiled tomatillos, a few soaked New Mexican red chiles, a can of diced tomatoes, half an onion, cilantro, garlic, and lemon juice from Lawson's very bitter Meyer lemon tree. My egg-frying skills mysteriously abandoned me, but salsa is good for covering up messes like that. We had some excellent pineapple on the side.

Then, because the border foods cookbook you gave me is so inspiring and because Lawson gave me a tortilla press for Christmas, I made red chile sauce and homemade corn tortillas and assembled some stacked New Mexican sour cream enchiladas for dinner. We ate them with Anasazi beans (my last bag). The tortillas were not quite thin enough, but that was fine for stacked enchiladas. They had wonderful corn flavor.

For lunch today I made some flour tortillas, and we ate them with melted cheese and the rest of the salsa.

I love a lot of things about that Peyton cookbook, but I especially like that he confirms many of my own cooking methods. I never presoak beans, and he says most cooks he interviewed don't either. I always use the blender to puree soaked red chiles for enchilada sauce, so there are tiny flecks of chile skin in my sauces; I tried a food mill once, and it was messy and inconvenient. The book says my way is standard home technique. I use olive oil to make the roux for red chile sauce, something you taught me, and that's what he recommends as a substitute for lard in that particular instance (not all -- he says tamales require lard, and I agree). I never realized how New Mexican my cooking is -- I always figured I'd just adapted and bastardized things, but actually my red chile sauce recipe is completely identical to his.

I also like how well he describes the profound craving for Mexican food that he experienced when he moved overseas -- some need for the combination of chiles, corn, and cheese that no other cuisine can match. I felt much the same thing when I moved out to South Carolina, and it's only in my own kitchen that I can satisfy it. In no restaurant outside of New Mexico can you get proper New Mexican enchiladas.

Tonight I'm going to use my beautiful new Le Creuset casserole. The Peyton book has a recipe for rabbit stewed in red chile sauce; I think I'll use chicken parts.