Recipe index

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.

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