ds83473@gmail.com – Page 12 – DebsLunch Recipes

March 11, 2018November 15, 2019

Enchiladas

These are based on a Martha Stewart recipe from her now defunct mag, Everyday Food. June 2006, to be precise. But of course I don’t make them exactly as Martha instructs, because we all know that rarely works. My personal theory is that most Martha Stewart recipes have at least one wonky instruction, to ensure that the dish only comes out right for Martha herself. In this recipe, there’s an extra 3/4 cup water in the sauce, which makes it too thin and bland. It also calls for corn tortillas and tells you to fry them before rolling, which may be more traditional, but is a lot harder to manage than using flour tortillas, and simply microwaving them for a few seconds until pliable.

Here the enchiladas are filled with beef, but I have used all kinds of fillings successfully: chicken, beans, roasted potatoes or sweet potatoes or squash, corn, peppers … black bean & corn is a favorite.

For the sauce:

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup flour
2 cups vegetable or chicken broth, preferably home made OR one 14.5 oz. can of broth plus enough water to make 2 cups (about 2-3 tablespoons)
1 1/2 tablespoons chili powder (I often use part chili powder and part ground Ancho chile)
1 chile from a can of chipotle chiles in Adobo sauce, plus a few spoons of the sauce
1-3 tablespoons of tomato paste
1 tablespoon brown sugar
salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the filling:

1 pound lean ground beef
1/3 cup finely chopped onion
salt and freshly ground black pepper

For assembly:

6-8 flour tortillas
1/2 pound cheddar cheese, shredded

Make the sauce: measure the oil and flour into a sauce pan and whisk to combine. Heat the broth in the microwave – a spouted glass measuring cup works well for this – and pour it into the pan while whisking until smooth and thickened. Add the chili powder, Adobo chile and sauce, tomato paste, and brown sugar and whisk until smooth. Simmer the sauce for about 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Make the filling: Brown the ground beef in a skillet, breaking up the clumps with a wooden spoon. Add the onion and cook, stirring, until there’s no pink left in the meat and the onion is translucent. Season with salt and pepper.

Assemble the enchiladas: Heat the oven to 375°. Microwave the tortillas briefly to make them flexible. Pour a thin layer of sauce into the bottom of a 13 x 9 baking dish. Fill each tortilla with a big spoonful of meat filling, top with a few big pinches of grated cheese (reserving about 1/2 a cup of cheese for topping), tuck the sides in, and roll neatly. Place the enchiladas in the baking dish as they’re rolled.

Pour the rest of the sauce over the enchiladas. Place the baking dish in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes until bubbling. Top with the reserved grated cheese and return to the oven for about 5 minutes to melt the cheese. Serve the enchiladas with sour cream, chips, and salsa of your choice.

Originally published March 2018 – although I’ve been making them since the Martha recipe was published in 2006.

February 22, 2018February 22, 2018

Pear Cake

This was one of my three go-to desserts when my kids were little – that I could make when I got home from work, and we almost always had what we needed in the house, and they could be devoured as soon as they were ready. The others were camel cussert (caramel pudding) and ginger bread.

2-3 pears depending on size
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
1/2 cup light or dark brown sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil – or another 6 tablespoons butter, melted
1/4 – 1/2 white sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons ginger (or 2-3 tablespoons chopped crystallized ginger)
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup plain or vanilla yogurt

Melt the 4 tablespoons butter in a small saucepan, and add the brown sugar. Stir until the nicely blended and smooth, and pour the mixture into a buttered or greased 9 x 9 square baking dish. Peel the pears, core, and slice them, and arrange the slices over the brown sugar. Place the oil or melted butter in a mixing bowl, and add the white sugar – use the half cup if you are using plain yogurt, and less if using vanilla. Mix well, and add the egg, then add the, leavening, salt and ginger. Mix in the yogurt, and the flour, and spread over the pears. Bake for about 25 – 30 minutes in a 350° oven. Cool in the pan for about 10 minutes then turn out onto a serving platter large enough to catch any drips.

Can also be made with apples.

Originally published October 2011

February 9, 2018February 22, 2018

Recipe for a curiously satisfying breakfast

1/3 cup rolled oats
2 medjool dates
1 large banana

Optional additions: small spoonful of brown sugar, splash of 2% milk, a jar of good peanut butter

Put the oats in a small saucepan with 2/3 cups water and a pinch of salt. Pit the dates, cut them into small pieces, drop them into the pan with the oats and water, and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Reduce the heat, stir, and cook for about 3 minutes. Peel and slice about half the banana into the pan, stir again, and cook for about another 3 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the oatmeal stand for a few minutes – cover optional.

Add the optional toppings, and eat with a large spoon, straight out of the pan.

Eat the remaining half of the banana with the peanut butter.

Originally published February 2018

February 9, 2018February 9, 2018

End of the CSA Potato Soup

Which is reminding me “La fin des haricots“, the French way of saying, “It’s the end of the world“, but ironically, as we might say it about something that’s really not the end of the world, or of the beans. I learned this from Clotilde (of Chocolate & Zucchini) and her series on French idioms.

This recipe is related to bottom-of-the-vegetable-bin stirfry, in that I dug out all the soup vegetables I had from the vegetable bin and the pantry – well, I still have a celeriac and about a quarter of a head of cabbage – and made them into soup. It’s also related to Ovens of Brittany cream of [main ingredient name goes here] soup, because even though Ovens is not exactly where I learned to make cream soups, it’s definitely where I made the most cream soups, volume-wise, since our normal size batch of soup was 7 gallons.

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil
white and pale green parts of one large leek, rinsed and finely sliced – one generous cup
2 parsnips, peeled, woody parts removed, and chopped – 3/4 cup
3 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1 to 1 1/2 inch cubes – another generous cup, maybe a cup & a third
2/3 cup peeled and chopped carrots
3-4 cups broth, home made preferred, but you can use soup base and water, or even plain water (I had some from the summer made from dill and corn cobs)
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups milk, half & half, or a mixture (I half half & half and half 2% milk – that’s a lot of halfs)
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Pour the olive oil into a large pot that holds at least 4 quarts, and heat till fragrant. Add the leeks and some salt and pepper, give them a stir, and let them cook gently over medium heat while you chop up the rest of the vegetables. Add the parsnips, potatoes, and carrots, and continue to cook over medium heat until softened and starting to brown. They might start sticking a little bit, don’t worry about that – they’ll come loose when you add the broth.

Add the broth, making sure you have enough to cover all the vegetables – add water if necessary. Raise the heat until the mixture comes to a boil, then reduce the heat and cover and simmer until all the vegetables are soft, probably 15 minutes. In my experience the carrots take the longest, oddly.

Make the roux while the vegetables cook: melt the butter in a small skillet. Add the flour, and cook and stir for a few minutes until there’s no raw flour smell.

When the vegetables are all cooked, stir in the (cooled) roux, and keep stirring while the mixture thickens, to ensure there won’t be any lumps. Mix the half & half and milk in a spouted glass measuring cup, heat it to just slightly warm in the microwave, and add it to the soup. Heat gently, try not to boil it after you’ve added the dairy, add more salt and pepper, and serve.

Originally published January 2018

February 9, 2018February 22, 2018

Rhubarb Strawberry Pie

I’ve been using a recipe I adapted from a book called American pie : slices of life (and pie) from America’s back roads, by Pascale Le Draoulec. It uses flour for thickening, which I like with rhubarb.

Crust for a 2-crust pie*
1 1/2 cups chopped rhubarb
2 cups halved strawberries (can be frozen – we rarely have rhubarb & strawberries at the same time in WI, and when the fresh strawberries come in, seems a shame to bake them!)
1/4 cup flour
2 TBLS cornstarch
1 1/2 cups sugar
pinch of salt – or use salted butter
1 TBLS butter, approximately

Preheat the oven to 400°. Combine the rhubarb and the strawberries in a bowl. Mix the flour, sugar, cornstarch and salt, if using. Roll out the bottom crust and ease it into the pie dish. Put 1/4 cup of the flour mixture in the bottom crust and spread it around. Set the crust in the fridge. Add the rest of the flour mixture to the fruit and toss well. Roll out the top crust and cut it into strips – with a decorative cutter if you have one – the one I use is actually for making the ruffled edges of lasagna noodles. Toss the fruit again, and pour it into the bottom crust – it helps to take it out of the fridge at this point. Dot the fruit with small pieces of butter. Weave the crust strips into a lattice – the American pie book has explicit instructions on page 345 – or just use what you remember from making woven potholders for your mom. Bake the pie for 10 minutes then reduce the heat to 375°. Bake for about another 50 minutes, until the filling is bubbling. Cover loosely with foil if the crust browns too fast. let cool at least 1 hour and eat with vanilla ice cream.

*I have always used my mom’s recipe – 3 cups flour to 1 cup butter, with 1 TBLS sugar per cup of flour for a sweet pie. And I tended to use unsalted butter, which makes a good tasting, but not flakey crust. For flakes you need shortening or lard. Recently I’ve been playing around with both the proportions, and the type of fat – mom used salted margarine – and I have decided that I like the original proportions, but with salted butter, plus two TBLS vegetable shortening. Also recently, I like Earth Balance better than Crisco. I guess that’s not so blasphemous – even my mom, born and raised in Cincinnati – both her Dad & brother worked for P&G – thought that Crisco was suitable for greasing pans, not eating. And P&G spun off the Crisco brand in 2002, along with Smuckers & Jif.

Originally published summer 2012 … I think

February 9, 2018

Spicey Peanut Dip

1 3/4 cups peanut butter, smooth commercial type works better than all-natural (even cheaper store brands, rather than major label)
approx. 1 TBLS vegetable oil
a few drizzles of Asian roasted sesame oil
2 cups chopped onion
6 cloves garlic (I use dry roasted garlic; put unpeeled cloves in a dry cast iron frying pan over high heat, and shake intermittently until they smell toasty and there are burnt spots on the skins, then cool and peel)
6 TBLS lemon juice or rice vinegar
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro
about 1 TBLS peeled fresh ginger)
1 TBLS soy sauce
2 tsp. dried red pepper flakes
2 tsp. curry powder

Pour the vegetable oil into a wide deep skillet, and heat. Cook the onions in the oil over medium low heat until they are translucent, but not brown. Drizzle in the sesame oil. Cool slightly. Place cooked onions, garlic, cilantro, and ginger in bowl of food processor and pulse until finely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and process until smooth, adding hot water to thin if necessary.

February 9, 2018February 10, 2018

Black bread a la deb & Deb

This recipe was formed by the merger of a Smitten Kitchen recipe, and Pumpkin Rye Bread Angerer, submitted to the November 1990 issue of Gourmet magazine by Robert C. Angerer, of Rochester, NY.

Makes 2 loaves

The sponge:
1 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees)
Pinch of sugar
5 teaspoons (2 packages) active dry yeast
1 cup unbleached white flour

The flavoring:
1 cup water
1/4 cup minced onion
2 teaspoons caraway seeds
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, sliced
1 tablespoon salt
1/4 cup molasses
1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
2 TBLS dark brown sugar
2 teaspoons instant espresso powder
1/4 cup cocoa powder

The bread:
1 cup pumpkin (or winter squash) purée
2 cups whole-wheat flour
3 cups medium rye flour
2 -3 cups unbleached, all-purpose or bread flour

a handful of cornmeal, or parchment paper
egg wash – 1 egg beaten with a bit of water
2 tablespoons Charnushka or caraway or poppy seeds

To make the sponge, measure the water into the bowl of your stand mixer (or a big bread mixing bowl) and add the sugar. Sprinkle the yeast over , mix and then let stand a few minutes till foamy. (if the yeast doesn’t foam, start over with new yeast!) Add the flour, and whisk to a smooth batter. Cover with a plate or a lid, and set aside to rise for 40 minutes to an hour depending on how warm your kitchen is, until the mixture has lots of big bubbles – like a sponge!

For the flavoring mix – Combine the minced onion and water in a small saucepan, stir in the caraway and fennel seeds, and bring to a boil over medium heat. Boil for one minute. Remove the pot from the heat and stir in the butter, salt, molasses, apple cider vinegar, and dark brown sugar. Measure the espresso power and cocoa into a smallish container (Like the spouted glass measuring cup you’ve been using for the other liquids) and stir spoonfuls of the liquid from the saucepan into them, to make a smooth paste. Scrape the paste back into the saucepan, and set aside to cool.

To make the bread dough, add the flavoring mix and the pumpkin puree to the sponge. Add the whole wheat and rye flours, and 1 cup of the white. Mix with the paddle attachment, adding enough of the remaining flour to make a firm but sticky dough. It might not clear the sides of the bowl at this point, but it should when you continue to knead, as follows. Switch to the dough hook if you like (I usually use the paddle), and knead/mix on medium speed for three minutes. The dough should clear the bowl, but it’ll still be sticky because of the rye flour.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and knead it into a smooth ball. Put it back in the mixing bowl (most recipes say to grease the bowl; I usually omit this step, not liking to deal with a greasy dough ball – but do what you like), cover with a damp towel, plastic wrap or a lid, and let rise until doubled – 1 1/2 to 2 hours, depending on how warm your kitchen is. Turn the dough out onto that floured surface, deflate, and divide it in half. Shape each half into a ball, and place on cornmeal-sprinkled or parchment-lined baking sheets. Brush the tops with the egg, sprinkle with the decorating seeds, and brush again to seal the seeds on. Cover with a damp towel or plastic wrap and let rise until puffy – probably not quite doubled, but bigger – 40 minutes to 1 hour. During the last 15 minutes of rising, heat the oven to 350°s. Bake for 45 – 60 minutes until well-browned – checking frequently, since oven temperatures do vary. My favorite doneness test for bread is to turn the loaf over and see if you can hold two fingers against the bottom for a few seconds – if it’s not done, it will be too hot from steam coming out of the wet middle of the loaf for you to touch it – put it back in the oven for a few more minutes.

Eat sliced thin spread with salted butter – or cut thicker and toasted with butter and jam – or topped with slices of cheese – or plain!

Originally published between 2010-2016