Red Chile Enchiladas -- Stacked, (almost) the way my mama made them -- Part 2 of 2

Okay, so I forgot to put in the recipe quantities and it isn't tomorrow. But here's the rest of the enchilada process.

Speaking of process, this really is a method more than a recipe. It is going to seem long and complicated because we took lots of pictures, but putting stacked enchiladas together really doesn't take all that long. The most important part is getting everything in place before you start. There are four essential ingredients -- enchilada sauce, grated cheese, chopped onions, and tortillas.

While gathering items and grating and chopping, etc., I preheat the oven, usually to 250 degrees Farenheit. I usually heat up enchilada sauce in a skillet unless I've just made a fresh batch, in which case I just use the big pot full of enchilada sauce. In any case, I warm up the sauce on low heat -- it really shouldn't be bubbling, just warm.

And a generous amount of grated cheese. We use Monterey Jack and Colby Longhorn Cheddar, and the amount varies depending on the number of enchilada plates being made. On the particular occasion on which these pictures were taken, four people were having enchiladas. Not that we worry too much about extra grated cheese -- somehow, it always gets used up within a few days.

Not everyone likes raw onions, but I chop them finely for those of us who do:

Most of us prefer corn tortillas in our enchiladas, but one of the offspring has decided that he prefers flour tortillas instead. I found small flour tortillas, a size generally called "gorditas", that are about the same size as corn tortillas and I have been using those for this particular child.

In this picture, the corn tortillas are on the right and the flour gordita tortillas are on the left.

Once all these components are assembled, and the sauce is warm, it's time to begin by cooking the tortillas lightly in the enchilada sauce. I drop in a tortilla (flour in this case):

Make sure it is entirely submerged in the sauce:

And then let it cook long enough to soften the tortilla. The first tortilla is the only one that really needs checking because the other steps are done while the next tortilla is cooking. When the tortilla kind of flops when you pick it up out of the sauce, it's ready.

Transfer the tortilla to an ovenproof plate. You can see the stack of plates waiting in the pictures above and below.

Before moving away from the stove to do anything else, place another tortilla in the enchilada sauce and make sure that it's covered. Each subsequent tortilla will cook while you assemble the rest of the dish.

Take the plate with the tortilla to the area where you have the grated cheese and chopped onions prepared. Ideally, this area should be no more than a step away from the stove.

And sprinkle grated cheese on the tortilla.

Chopped onions can also be added at this time. As you can see, the grated cheese and chopped onions are right next to each other for easy loading. Once you have enough cheese on the first tortilla, go back and take the next tortilla out of the sauce and put it on top of the first tortilla.

Put another tortilla in the sauce to cook, and then add more cheese and (optional) onions on top of the second tortilla.

This process can be repeated for more than two tortillas. There was a time when my husband ate a stack of 4 tortillas in his enchiladas. It's all in how much you want to eat -- cheese can be very filling.

When you have enough tortillas layered with cheese to fit your appetite (or the appetite of the person for whom you are preparing the enchilada), put the filled plate in the heated oven.

And then start on the next enchilada. Basically, this process is repeated for each enchilada plate you are preparing.

I can fit more plates into the oven, if necessary. It's a balancing process.

A couple of special cases should be mentioned here. Sometimes a person wants only one tortilla. It's possible, of course, to "stack" only one tortilla, but I prefer to put cheese and onions on half of the tortilla:

Then fold the tortilla over the filling:

And put more cheese and onions on top:

This method yield the "look and feel" of stacked tortillas without the extra food.

The other special case that occurs in my family is the family member who wants more sauce (and thus more spice). I just pick up some enchilada sauce on the spatula I use to remove the tortillas:

And then drip it onto the tortilla on the plate:

It is possible to transfer quite a lot of sauce this way and some people really prefer the additional sauce.

Once the oven is fully loaded with as many enchilada plates as we are making, I take the enchilada sauce off the heat, put away any leftover cheese, and take a short break so that the cheese can get all nice and bubbly in the oven.

There's no hard and fast rule for how long this break is. Sometimes I speed things up by turning up the heat on the oven to 300 or 350. I rarely leave the enchilada plates in the oven more than 15 minutes or so before starting the next step.

I said this was how my mama made enchiladas, and my mama cooked eggs to put on top of her stacked enchiladas. Not everyone likes an egg on top, not even in my own family. So do what works for your family.

You can fry the eggs in a traditional manner, but I poach eggs in enchilada sauce. I put a small amount of enchilada sauce in the skillet I use for making the enchiladas and add as many eggs as I need:

Then I cover the pan and cook the eggs over low heat until they are done:

This takes me about 10 minutes, but I check them frequently and move the pan around to make sure that all the eggs get cooked.

When the eggs are done, they are transferred to the top of a stack of enchiladas.

Typical accompaniments for stacked red enchiladas are refried beans, guacamole, sour cream, chopped lettuce, olives, or green onions.

Enjoy! Just remember -- just like they tell you in restaurants -- be careful, the plates are hot!

Red Chile Enchiladas -- Stacked, (almost) the way my mama made them -- Part 1 of 2

I've been promising this entry to a lot of people for a long time -- like before I even started this particular blog. And it has taken a lot longer to write than I thought it would. In fact, this post took longer to write than it takes me to make enchilada sauce and enough enchilada plates to feed my entire family.

The most important part of red enchiladas is the sauce. It is possible to buy commercial enchilada sauce, which I was intrigued to find on Amazon. Old El Paso, Ortega, and other companies manufacture enchilada sauce and most of the commercial varieties are good enough for most people. If you want to control the amount of "heat" in your enchilada sauce, however, your best bet is to make it yourself.

My mother, it should be noted, always used commercial enchilada sauce. On the other hand, she usually lived in areas where really good sauces were available locally. While I was living in New England, however, I found it necessary to learn how to make my own enchilada sauce.

This recipe is basically a gravy or white sauce recipe. You start with fat, add thickeners and seasonings, and then liquid. If you are familiar with making gravies, this is going to be a snap. I generally make 3 or 4 quarts of sauce when I make it, but it is quite simple to make smaller batches. You'll see the big batch being made in these pictures, but I will include quantities for both small and big batches in the recipe at the end.

The first step is to mix the thickening agent (flour, in this case) and spices. I use a cup of unbleached all-purpose flour:

And a cup of chile powder. Almost any chile powder will do, but some are much hotter to the taste than others. If you have a variety of chile powders available to you, you may have to experiment and/or mix varieties in order to get the amount of "heat" you want.

 Add one Tablespoon ground cumin powder and one Tablespoon granulated garlic.

Put it all in a bowl:

And mix:

Until the mixture is homogenous:

Next pour one cup of vegetable oil (just about any oil will do, though I generally use canola oil) into a large pot. (If you are making a small batch, a skillet will work just fine.)

Once the oil is heated, add the flour and spice mix:

Whisk the flour and spices into the oil and cook, whisking constantly, for 3 minutes. At first the roux (fat/flour mixture) will look fairly smooth:

But by the end of the 3 minutes, the mixture will be clumping a bit:

This step is the only tricky part of this entire recipe. If the heat is too high, the flour and spices will burn. I use a medium heat for this step but I watch constantly. If it looks like the heat is too high, I remove the pot from the heat and let it cool down a little before proceeding. I have, on occasion, burned the roux and had to start all over again.

When the 3 minutes are up, add 3 quarts of water. Hot water is best because it speeds the cooking process a bit.

There will be a lot of steam at first, but just continue whisking as you add the water. I generally stir the first quart of water in to make a smooth sauce and then add the additional 2 quarts.

Once all the water has been added, bring the sauce to a boil, turn down the heat slightly, and let the sauce boil at a fairly lively pace -- not simmer -- for 20 minutes. I don't whisk for the entire 20 minutes. Instead, I check the sauce every 4 or 5 minutes and whisk it thoroughly. Sometimes a little sauce will be sticking to the bottom of the pot -- just scrap it up with the whisk and mix it in.

Years ago, we had a word-a-day calendar that taught us the word inspissate. Forever after, we have talked about letting the enchilada sauce inspissate for 20 minutes.

At the end of 20 minutes, the sauce should be considerably thicker. Remove it from the heat and then either use it to make enchiladas right away, or bottle it for future use.

I keep a supply of glass quart jars on hand just for storing enchilada sauce. There are products still packaged in glass quart jars and I seek them out so that I will always have some on hand.

Enchilada Sauce -- Large Batch (Small Batch)

1 cup (1/3 cup) vegetable oil
1 cup (1/3 cup) unbleached white flour
1 cup (1/3 cup) chile powder
1 Tablespoon (1 teaspoon) granulated garlic
1 Tablespoon (1 teaspoon) ground cumin
3 quarts (1 quart) hot tap water

Mix together the flour and spices.
Heat the oil in a large pot (or a smaller sauce pan or skillet for the smaller batch).
Add the flour/spice mixture and whisk thoroughly. Heat for 3 minutes over medium heat.
Add 3 quarts (1 quart) hot water and whisk until smooth.
Bring to a boil, then lower heat so that the sauce is at a lively simmer or light boil.
Let the sauce boil for 20 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.


Tomorrow -- the rest of the story.

Strawberry Soup -- A Cold Soup for Summer

This is a great soup for summer because it requires little preparation and almost no heating. I first saw this mentioned as a dessert soup, but with a spicy meal, this is a nice beginning course.

Heat two cups of wine with 2/3 cup sugar. Bring to a boil and cook for 5 minutes.

The original recipe called for a dry white wine, but I've never been a big fan of dry wines so I most often use a sweeter wine, such as a muscat. This particular time I used a nice strawberry flavored wine from a small farm not too far away from where we live.

This wine syrup needs to cool before proceeding. Since I'm usually in a relative hurry when I make this soup, I just put the pan in the freezer for about an hour.

When the wine syrup is cool enough, puree it in a blender with about 4 cups of fresh strawberries.

Puree until the mixture is nice and smooth.

That's the most exacting part of the entire preparation. Pour the strawberry mixture into the bowl you want to serve it from and add 2 cups of orange juice.

 Chill for a few hours and that's it. Enjoy!

Strawberry Soup

2 cup white wine
2/3 cup sugar
4 cups sliced strawberries
2 cups orange juice


Mix wine and sugar in a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes, remove from heat and allow to cool.

Puree strawberries and wine syrup in a blender or food processor until very smooth. Stir in orange juice.

Chill for 2-3 hours before serving.

Next week: Red enchiladas the way my mama made them. (For all those who have been promised this recipe....)

Dealer's Choice -- An Ode to My Pots and Pans

About 30 years ago, when I was (fairly) newly married, my husband and I bought a set of Farberware stainless steel pots. The original set we bought had 12 pieces -- 1-quart, 2-quart, and 3-quart sauce pans with lids, 4-quart and 8-quart pots with lids, and 2 skillets that could be fitted with lids from the other pans.

That is a picture of those very same Farberware pots and pans 30 years later. Okay, there are a couple of changes. We had to replace one of the skillet handles about 15 years ago when it became really loose for some reason. (Perhaps my sons had been banging it a little too vigorously?) And the smallest (1-quart) saucepan was replaced because of a kashruth error (non-kosher food heated up in it by someone who was not clued in to the ins and outs of keeping kosher). There was nothing wrong with the pan otherwise; we put it in a Goodwill collection box and it's probably still in use today.

We have also made a few additions over the years. First of all was the double-boiler insert:

And, over time, we also added bigger and bigger pots. In addition to a much larger skillet, we have 12-quart and 16-quart stock pots.

All three of these pans use the same size lid, so one was put away where I couldn't readily reach it.

There are two things about our Farberware that I wanted to talk about. First of all, I really, really like these pots and pans. My family has used them on a daily basis for over 30 years. Not every pan every day, naturally, but at least some part of the set is used each day we are at home. They have been used for cooking and head-wear (somewhere I have pictures), for banging on by children who wanted to make noise, and on occasion for storage.

Some have even been mis-used. I remember one particular batch of tomato sauce that got burned to a crisp in one of the big stock pots because I forgot to turn down the heat. The tomato sauce was a total loss, but the pan cleaned up as good as new. I know that my daughter eyes the Farberware and hopes she will be able to take it off our hands some day. (Way down the road, I hope.)

The second thing I wanted to share about the Farberware is my mother's reaction when she first saw it. She thought the pots looked really nice and asked how much we had paid for them. I told her that they cost about $100. This was in the late 1970s and was, I suppose, a considerable sum but my husband and I were both working full time and had no children so we could easily afford them. My mother quite literally threw a fit. I'll never forget what she said: "I've never paid more than $15 for a set of pans in my life!"

Well, that's probably true, given the pans my mother used to buy. On the other hand, she replaced her pots and pans every couple of years because they would get beat up, or burned, or in some other manner became unusable. Over the 50+ years of her marriage, I'll be generous and say that she spent $15 every 3 years for new pans. That's about 17 times 15, or $255.

With the extra pieces we have bought, and the replacements we have had to make over the past 30 years, it's possible that we have also spent in the neighborhood of $255 for our Farberware pots and pans. On the other hand, our pots and pans are still in great condition and are still being used, as I said before, on a daily basis.

The lesson we learned from our Farberware pots and pans was that you really do get what you pay for.

Next week: For summer -- Strawberry Soup.

Caramelized Onions

This was supposed to be last weekend's post, but ... well, sometimes things happen. This weekend's post should happen on time.

My children and I once decided that everything in the world tasted even better with the addition of one or the other of two foods -- chocolate or onions. Though we have tried, we haven't yet come up with something that would be improved by the addition of both.

This method of preparing onions is a good one for people who really don't like the taste of onions, or who have problems with digesting uncooked onions. It's really simple, though time-consuming, and the taste of onions cooked this way is hard to beat. You might even be able to add chocolate to them.

Onions are caramelized by cooking them for a long time over low heat. The process releases the sugars inherent in the onions and gives them a sweet oniony flavor. (No, that's not an oxymoron.) The cooked onions can be used in many different ways. I like to make a big batch and freeze them in smaller quantities for later use.

I usually start with about 5 pounds of onions. Big onions are good because that means you have to peel and chop fewer onions. Vidalia onions work well because they tend to be sweet anyway, but almost any white or yellow onion can be used.

I slice the onions by cutting them in half, then slicing each half to form half-circles of onion. You can chop them up finer or even make rings. It doesn't much matter in the end.

For 5 pounds of onions, I use one stick of butter. I melt it in a big pot and add the onions.

That's a 8-quart pot and, as you can see, it is almost full of the raw onions. During the first 10 to 15 minutes, I stir the onions fairly frequently to make sure that the onions are coated with the butter. After that, I just check on them from time to time.

After about 45 minutes to an hour, the onions are starting to cook down:

The only real trick to this process is to use a fairly low heat under the onions. You can make them brown a little faster by adding a small amount of sugar (a teaspoon or two), but it's not really necessary. Eventually -- after a couple of hours -- the onions will start to brown and stick to the bottom of the pan.

Notice how much the onions have cooked down.  Scrape up all the stuff at the bottom and stir it into the onions. I often add a little water to the onions if they are sticking too much. At this point, I check the onions more often to make sure that they don't go from browning to burning.


When the onions are browned to your satisfaction, they are done. At this point, they can be used to any number of things. We use them on pizza and in dishes where we want a sweet onion flavor. But one of the easiest and tastiest uses is to spread the onions on Italian bread that has been brushed with olive oil and toasted.

It's impossible to describe how incredibly delicious this onion spread is. Try it yourself!

A Quick and Easy No-Bake Cookie

I had it in mind to post a somewhat complicated cookie recipe this week, but then I decided that I needed a break after the blintzes last week. So this week's something sweet is a no-bake cookie recipe -- Oatmeal Fudge Cookies. They are pretty much what they sound like -- a kind of fudge with oatmeal in it. Plus other good things.

The basic formula is simple -- make a fudge-type sauce, then add oatmeal and other ingredients. To finish the cookies, drop them on waxed paper.

Fudge is pretty basic -- sugar, canned milk, butter, and flavoring (in this case, cocoa).This isn't exactly classic fudge, though the beginning is similar. First, however, it's a good idea to combine the sugar and cocoa.

I usually just use the wooden spoon I'm going to stir the fudge with to mix these two ingredients thoroughly:

Combine butter, canned milk, and sugar in a pan and heat to a boil. In the interests of speeding things up, I set the fudge ingredients on the stove over low heat and then start getting everything else together.

The rest of the ingredients for this cookie are oatmeal, coconut, and peanut butter. And a little vanilla.

I also set up the work area for making the cookies before going back to the fudge mixture. In this case, it's just a couple of sheets of waxed paper placed directly on the counter.

I do all this first because, once the fudge is cooked, time is of the essence. After everything is set up, it's time to go check on the fudge mixture.

I turn up the heat at this point to medium-high. Breaking up the butter can help it melt a little faster, so I do that if necessary. And then I stir continuously until the fudge comes to a full boil.

 The picture above shows what to look for. There are bubbles starting to form around the edges of the pan, but it's not quite ready to boil. Thing is, you don't want to wait too long to start the timer (or check your watch) once you reach a full boil because it only boils for one minute before taking off the heat.

This is the sort of thing you look for -- large bubbles in the center of the pot that don't go away when you stir. Let the fudge cook for one minute while stirring continuously.

 At the end of the minute of cooking, everything will be bubbling furiously. Take it off the heat.

And add the oatmeal, coconut, peanut butter, and vanilla:

Stir everything in very thoroughly -- you especially want to make sure that there are no lumps of peanut butter.

All that is left is to drop the oatmeal fudge mixture onto the waxed paper. I do it the same way I make drop cookies -- take up a spoonful of stuff in a teaspoon, and use a second teaspoon to transfer the mixture from the first spoon to the waxed paper. Work fast, because the fudge mixture will start to harden if it sits too long.

Cookies are achieved! You can wait for the fudge to cool and harden a bit, or eat it right off the waxed paper. The "crumbs" are good, too.

Oatmeal Fudge Cookies

2 cups sugar
1 stick butter (or margarine)
1/2 cup evaporated milk (not sweetened condensed milk)
4 Tablespoons cocoa powder
3 cups oatmeal
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup coconut flakes
1/2 cup peanut butter (smooth or chunky -- doesn't matter)

Mix sugar, butter, milk, and cocoa in a deep saucepan.
Bring to a rapid boil. Cook for 1 minute, stirring continuously.

Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients.

Drop by spoonfuls onto waxed paper and let cool.

Variations:
Substitute wheat germ and/or bran flakes for some of the oatmeal.
Add sunflower seeds.

One time I either cooked the fudge too long or started the timer too late and the fudge got hard too quickly. I couldn't really drop spoonfuls onto the waxed paper, so I formed spoonfuls into balls by rolling them in my palms. Worked okay; tasted good.