I make enchiladas at least once a month, usually when I have a random assortment of leftovers and vegetables I need to use, and I am craving something a little spicy. What I like best about enchiladas is that you can make them a thousand different ways, and they’re almost guaranteed to be delicious no matter what you put in them. My commitment to creating authentic Mexican cuisine is minimal, so it frees me up to try a lot of possible combinations.
My basic formula is:
Put a few cups of cooked beans or leftover chicken, pork or beef into a mixing bowl. (This is an excellent use for slow-cooker pulled pork or dried beans that you soak overnight, then cook on low all day in the slow cooker.)
Mix beans or meat with sour cream (or Greek yogurt), a few generous handfuls of shredded or crumbled cheese, chopped cilantro, salt and pepper.
Lightly sauté some veggies in olive oil.
Take flour tortillas (or corn tortillas that have been softened by microwaving them briefly or sautéing them in a little oil) and add generous dollops of beans or meat and veggies in the center.
Roll the filled tortillas up, and nestle them in a casserole dish, seam down.
Cover with enchilada sauce and bake, adding more cheese on top for the last few minutes.
Heat a small amount of olive oil in a pan and sauté pepper, onions and mushrooms for 5-8 minutes, until vegetables start to soften. Preheat oven to 375° F.
Make the sauce in a separate saucepan: sauté garlic in olive oil for 1-2 minutes, then add the tomatoes and their juices, crushing them well with your hands as you go and breaking them up more with a spoon or spatula. Season with spices and let simmer uncovered for about 15-20 minutes. Blend with an immersion blender if you want a smoother sauce.
In a large bowl, mix pinto beans, cilantro, sour cream and half the bag of cheese. Add a few good shakes of salt and pepper, and mix well.
Grease a 9 x 13 casserole pan with a bit of olive oil to keep enchiladas from sticking. Place heaping portions of bean mixture and veggie mixture on a tortilla, roll it up and place it seam side down in the pan. Repeat until the pan is full and you use up all the filling.
Pour the sauce over the enchiladas. Cover the pan with aluminum foil and bake for about 40 minutes.
Take the enchiladas out of the oven, remove the foil and sprinkle the remaining cheese on top. Return to the oven and bake for another 5-10 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the tortillas are starting to get crisp on the edges.
Serve with extra toppings: sour cream, jalapeños, salsa, hot sauce, avocado, lime, cilantro, etc.
We fell in love with arancini – Sicilian fried rice balls – when we lived in Naples (the ones filled with meat sauce are my favorite) and have been dying to try this New Orleans variation for some time.
Do yourself a favor, and take the following steps immediately:
Make a huge pot of gumbo – we played around with a combination of recipes (one from our friend Kathleen and one from The New Orleans Cookbook) – and invite people you like to come share it with you. This is an excellent idea for, say, a football game. Bonus points if it’s the Saints game.
The next day, make these gumbo-filled arancini, and prepare to be amazed.
Prepping the gumbo and rice ballsStarting to look more like aranciniBreaded arancini, ready for fryingGumbo arancini with extra gumbo
Take the rice out of the refrigerator about 30 minutes before you start cooking so it has time to warm up a bit. Take the gumbo out of the refrigerator just before you are ready to use it.
In a large mixing bowl, blend leftover rice with 2 beaten eggs until it is slightly sticky and holds together.
Beat remaining egg(s) in a small bowl and set aside. Pour breadcrumbs into a separate bowl and set next to the egg mixture.
For each rice ball, make two small patties out of the rice. Add a dollop of gumbo to the center of one patty, then place the second patty on top. Form the two patties into a round shape.
Dip each rice ball in egg mixture, then roll in breadcrumbs.
Heat 2 inches of vegetable oil in a pan until it is hot but not smoking. Fry arancini in the oil, turning so that each side turns golden brown. Remove from pan and place on paper towels.
Serve with a small bowl of gumbo and extra hot sauce.
As Gill mentioned in a previous post, last weekend we went to our friend Claire’s place to put on a barbecue. It had been too long since we had done so, and Claire was kind enough to indulge us.
The recipe I’ve been using for a few years is one I found in ReadyMade Magazine, which unfortunately shut down in 2011. The article was called “How I Learned to Cook Southern-Style Barbecue on my Fire Escape” and was written by food writer, JJ Goode. Mr. Goode’s recipe is adapted from Adam Perry Lang’s book Serious Barbecue (he also happens to do the writing in that book) and is so freakin’ good that I’ve been carting the torn-out, dog-eared article around the world for the last five years.
Despite having made this dish on many occasions before, there were a few firsts this time around. For one, a whole pork shoulder (bone-in) was fairly easy to find here in Barcelona. Our local market here has a number of stands specializing in meat, and I simply walked around until I found the one that only had pork products (I’m not kidding, no other animal was represented under the glass at this place). A whole shoulder was something I had to request and pick up the next day, and 4-5 kilos worth of meat was only about €16.
Second, this was my first attempt at the low-tech version of this recipe. In the past I’ve had a digital meat thermometer as well as a grill with a temperature gauge. These tools obviously make maintaing a grill temp of 250°F and achieving an internal meat temperature of 193°F MUCH easier. This time around, I did not have these things, and the results were still as good as always, so clearly, they are nice to have, but not a requirement.
I won’t bore you with all the details of how to recreate this heavenly pulled pork (you can click through the images above), but I will note a few things that I’ve figured out over the years. I am by no means an expert, but maybe these are useful to you:
Patience and planning are more important than any other skill when it comes to low and slow BBQ. Leave time for salting the meat and leave time for the mustard to tenderize the meat. Above all, you simply cannot rush magic of slow smoking, so grab a book, take a nap and be patient.
Many recipes (including the one I’ve been carting around all these years) call for injecting the meat with various liquids (like apple cider) to keep it moist while it’s cooking. They are nice to do, but by no means required.
The key to slowly cooking the meat is indirect heat, meaning, position the coals so they are never directly below the pork shoulder.
Place an aluminum pan of water inside the grill and make sure it stays full. This water evaporates and the humid heat keeps the pork shoulder from drying out.
Every time you open the grill, you lose precious heat. Remember, with a target temperature of 250°F, you don’t have much to begin with. Open it only when necessary (like adding coals, or water to your pan) but otherwise, let it be. Resist the temptation to gaze longingly at the succulent meat; there will be time for that later.
When the meat is done you should not need a knife at all. You should be able to effortlessly pull out the bones and a couple of forks should be enough to pull the meat apart. If this is not happening, that meat needs to go back on the grill (probably for a few more hours).
Save the bones from the pork shoulder for use in soups, gumbos, red beans and rice, etc. A couple of hours stewing with one of these bones gives virtually anything an amazing smokiness you can only get from the grill. Freeze the bones until you’re ready to use them.
Make your own BBQ sauce. You just spent 6-9 hours cooking the most amazing meat, and you’re going to put nasty, sugar-filled, store-bought sauce on it? Please. Do not do this.
Last weekend, we celebrated our lovely friend Claire’s birthday by camping out all day on her gorgeous terrace in El Gòtic and slow-cooking a ridiculous amount of pork to perfection (more about that in another post).
Power nap.
It was a tough day.
Brian worked his magic on the grill, and I made a simple coleslaw and this bourbon-chipotle BBQ sauce, which I have to say, turned out mighty fine. I love BBQ sauce, but I find a lot of the bottled stuff too sweet and lacking in real flavor (also, it’s strangely not a thing here in Spain).
I like a BBQ sauce with a little kick to it, and my old friends bourbon and chipotle give this recipe a moderate level of spice with a hint of smoky sweetness.
End-of-the-season tomatoes
I’ve made a variation of this recipe before with canned tomatoes, and it turned out well – but go for the fresh version if you’ve got ’em. It takes additional time to cook them down, but it’s not a lot more hands-on work, and I think it’s worth it.
Pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and bourbon-chipotle BBQ sauce. Yes.
5 lbs. fresh tomatoes, cores and seeds removed and roughly chopped (or about 70 oz. canned whole peeled tomatoes)
3 ribs celery, chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 tsp. red pepper flakes
2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp. Worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup + 1 T. dark brown sugar
1/2 cup bourbon
2 T. molasses
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, deseeded and chopped
3 cloves garlic
1 T. cocoa powder
Olive oil
Instructions
First, make the ketchup-like base. Heat a little olive oil in a large pot, and add tomatoes, celery, onion, garlic, chipotle, red pepper flakes, salt, pepper, vinegar, Worcestershire and brown sugar. Cook uncovered for 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours until the tomatoes have reduced and become thick and saucy. (Use fresh tomatoes if available; if you use canned tomatoes, you can reduce the cook time to about 30-45 minutes.)
Purée with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. Push the mixture through a strainer once or twice, and discard solids.
Add bourbon, molasses and cocoa powder to the tomato mixture and cook on medium heat for 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning as needed.
I have a tendency to cook as though I am feeding the entire Duggar family instead of two normal-ish adults. As a result, we often have leftover grains and beans to get creative with.
This week, we had a ton of extra bulgar and a bag of dried garbanzo beans begging to be used, so I cooked up some tasty (and shockingly vegan, minus the tzatziki sauce, which I do think is a necessity) fritters.
The great thing about this kind of fritter is that you can adapt it to fit whatever you have on hand. We’ve been eating a lot of bulgar lately (quick cooking instructions: 2:1 ratio of broth or water to bulgar; boil liquid, add to bulgar, cover and let sit for 30 minutes), but you could easily substitute couscous or rice. We also happened to have chard and peppers, but you could use zucchini, carrots, spinach, whatever your little heart desires.
Of course I made twice the amount in the recipe below, so I did not actually cut down on the leftover count. You get a fritter! And you get a fritter! Fritters for everyone! I think tomorrow I’m going to add poached eggs to them and call that brunch…
Easy mint tzatziki sauceSautéed chard and peppersGarbanzo and veggie mixtureDelicious fried goodness
Garbanzo, Bulgar & Veggie Fritters With Mint Tzatziki
Prep Time: 15 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 45 minutes
Serving Size: 4
Ingredients
Fritters:
1 1/2 cups cooked garbanzo beans (about 1 can)
1 small bunch Swiss chard, tough parts discarded and roughly chopped
1/2 red pepper, diced
1 onion, diced
3 cloves garlic
1 1/2 cups cooked bulgar (or couscous, brown rice, etc.)
Juice of 1 lemon
Flour
Olive oil
Spices and herbs to taste (salt, pepper, cumin, red pepper flakes, mint, cayenne, etc.)
Mint Tzatziki Sauce:
1 cup Greek yogurt
1/2 cucumber, peeled, seeded and diced
1 clove garlic
1 T. olive oil
1 T. vinegar
Small handful of fresh mint, finely chopped (or a few T. of dried mint)
Salt
Instructions
Make the tzatziki by mixing all the ingredients together in a small bowl. Cover and refrigerate while you make the fritters.
Heat a little olive oil in a large frying pan. Sauté onion, pepper and Swiss chard until onions are soft and chard is wilted. Drain excess liquid using a strainer, and set aside.
Add garbanzo beans, lemon juice and garlic to a food processor and combine until it forms a rough paste. Add chard mix and spices and blend until mostly smooth.
Transfer mixture to a large mixing bowl and add bulgar, adjusting spices if necessary.
Heat a thin layer of olive oil to medium-high heat in a frying pan. Form small patties from the mixture, and coat in flour.
Fry patties in oil until crispy and brown on each side, a few minutes per side. Serve with tzatziki sauce, salad and bread.
Our building has some sort of gas leak, so maintenance turned off the gas for all the apartments until they fix the problem. I should probably be more alarmed at the safety or health implications of this, but I’m mostly just annoyed that I haven’t been able to use the stovetop in five days.
Thank goodness we have an electric oven and a slow cooker, or they’d be getting an earful of my strongly worded but grammatically incorrect Spanish complaints.
I went a little crazy at the market yesterday and came home with 2 kilos (4.4 lbs.) of pork to make tacos… and enchiladas and about five more meals I have yet to dream up.
Hello, beautiful.
I spent a little more time making the marinade than I normally do, and it was totally worth the extra few minutes. The meat had a nice subtle spiciness – nothing too crazy – so you can adjust the chipotle and jalapeño measurements to your own taste.
If it falls apart when you try to turn it, you’re doing it right.
I recommend serving the tacos with extra sour cream, avocado, cilantro and Tapatío. This is actually just a good life rule.
4-5 lb. pork shoulder (or other cut with some nice marbling)
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, deseeded and chopped
1 jalapeño or other medium-spicy pepper, chopped
1 T. cumin
1 T. chili powder
7 fresh tomatoes (or tomato purée), chopped
1 lime
1 bunch fresh cilantro
Salt and pepper
Olive oil
Taco Fixins:
Corn or flour tortillas
Avocado
Sour cream
Cheese
Hot sauce
Instructions
Salt the pork generously and let sit in the slow cooker while you do the rest of the prep.
Combine onion, garlic, chipotle, jalapeño, cumin, chili powder and a little olive oil and microwave or sauté for about 5 minutes, until onions are softened. Transfer to food processor.
Add fresh tomatoes, most of the cilantro (saving some for garnish) and the juice of 1 lime. Blend until smooth.
Pour mixture over the pork, turning it over a few times to coat (the meat won't be completely submerged).
Cook on high for 6 to 8 hours or low for 9 to 11 hours, turning the meat once or twice if possible. When it's done, the meat should fall apart when you touch it.
Serve on warm tortillas with your favorite fixins. Save the leftover cooking liquid to cook black or pinto beans.
Dag Flachet is a good friend of ours, and along with some partners, he runs an empanada joint called Las Empas, here in Gràcia, Barcelona.
Mind you, this is not your standard restaurant; these empanadas are made by the customers. I don’t mean you show up and make your own bespoke empanada, I mean customers compete using a Facebook application to design and promote an empanada of their own creation. The one with the most votes gets the opportunity to make a test batch, and if all goes well, get an empanada on the menu.
“What’s the incentive?” you may ask. Once your creation is on the menu, for every 20 that are sold, you get a free empanada when you go by the restaurant. It’s a clever business model that links social media with food in an engaging (and competitive) way, and rewards creativity with deliciousness.
Needless to say, it was enough to motivate me, so I’ll walk you through how the process went.
A couple of years ago, Gillian and I had an amazing meal at some restaurant in Hawaii that used a red-wine reduction sauce. We thought, “Why are there no beer reduction sauces?” and set to work making one. What we ended up with was a seared beef tenderloin with blue cheese and porter beer reduction, which turned out surprisingly well (consequently, it was later featured on craftbeer.com). I thought this might make a good empanada, so I gave it a shot.
Using the Las Empas Empanada Creator on Facebook is super easy and intuitive. Pick the type of dough (out of five options), pick the filling (too many to count), add the spices (also too many to count). Simple. If something essential is missing (for instance, porter beer reduction sauce), let them know, and they’ll add it to the application.
Select filling and specify amounts.
Once you’ve created and named (a good name is essential) your empanada, it’s time for shameless self-promotion. Share it on Facebook and encourage your friends to vote for your empanada. Likes on Facebook contribute to your overall score, and votes are tallied so you can see your progress on the leaderboard.
Leaderboard shows total votes and time remaining in the competition.
After a month of, as mentioned before, shameless self-promotion to friends and family who may never get to try my empanada based on geographic distance, I ended up at the top! Seriously, thank you all of you who voted.
I’m not just making this up, here’s the screen shot!
The next step was to met with Dag in the test kitchen and do a test run. This day started by writing all the ingredients of the empanada on his giant chalkboard wall. Being a designer who loves typography, I maybe went a little overboard.
Photo courtesy of Blaga Popova.Me + Food + Typography = Way too much time making this.
I’ve never made empanadas before, but the prep of the filling was similar to what I’d done when making the original recipe. Dag had handy little patties of empanada dough and we made about 15-20, using a fork to close them up.
Putting the pieces together (Photo courtesy of Blaga Popova)Ingredients and pre-oven empanada.
A few minutes in the oven and the empanadas were ready for a formal presentation in front of the Las Empas sign. You should note that Dag is seated and is still taller than I am when standing.
I present you Empa Porterhouse Blue (Photo courtesy of Blaga Popova).
The empanadas came out with gooey, cheesy, beer reductiony steak filling and were really good. With zero prior knowledge and this being my first attempt at empanadas ever, I’m extremely pleased with the results. Of course, now I see there are a few things I would optimize the next time around. Mainly, cooking the meat less time before it goes into the dough (it gets cooked again in the oven) a using LOT more beer sauce. Obviously.
These things are to be expected, and overall I had a ton of fun making empanadas and drinking beer all afternoon (we had to make sure we had the right beer for the sauce, of course). Many thanks to Dag and the rest of the Las Empas team for humoring me, as well as Blaga Popova for documenting the event. Looking forward to the next round of testing and seeing Empa Porterhouse Blue on the menu soon!
It’s the time of year where I’m simultaneously mourning the last days of summer and antsy to move on to the crisp fall weather. Barcelona has been skipping back and forth between seasons – sunny and balmy one day, cool and stormy the next.
During one of the fierce thunderstorms this week, I put the potatoes in our CSA basket to good use and made a simple, creamy potato-leek soup that hit the spot. Cozy up with a bowl – you won’t regret it.
One thing Americans – and New Orleanians in particular – do exceptionally well is brunch. Long, leisurely, mimosa/cocktail-fueled, this-is-my-only-plan-for-the-day brunch.
Say what you will about our excess and indulgence… in this case, I support it.
We have recently started hosting meals through EatWith – a website that allows you to share meals in people’s homes all over the world. It’s basically Airbnb for dining, and when we first moved to Barcelona, being a guest was a wonderful way to meet new people and eat delicious food. And since we pretty much already do this kind of thing on our own (two extroverts who really love food and parties), it made perfect sense for us to become EatWith hosts.
Last weekend, we hosted our first New Orleans brunch and made one of my all-time favorites: grits and grillades. I had never had grillades (or grits for that matter) until I moved to NOLA. It’s a slow-cooked meat dish – made with beef, veal or pork – in a thick, flavorful gravy, served over creamy, buttery grits. So a light, healthy breakfast.
It’s easy to make, but it does take a long time to cook, so I advise making it the day before. The flavors are even better the next day, and all you have to do is reheat it and make the grits before people come over (you’re going to want to have people over: it makes a ton). We made our own chicken and beef stock, but you can also use store-bought.
Get the recipe below!
The building blocks of a good stockThis is not at all excessive.We don’t have a mallet.I’m sorry, disapproving cow!Trimming the steakThe Holy TrinityMimosas?Lovely guests
Grillades is a slow-cooked meat dish served over creamy grits, perfect for a New Orleans-style brunch.
Ingredients
Grillades
4 pounds boneless beef steak (round steak or stew meat)
4 cups beef broth
2 cups chicken broth
1 cup red wine
3 medium onions, diced
2 medium bell peppers, diced
5 ribs celery, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
Flour
Vegetable oil
1 large can whole peeled tomatoes
5 fresh tomatoes, blanched, peeled and cored (optional)
Creole seasoning mix (We used some of Emeril's Essence and Tony Chachere's)
3 bay leaves
Dried tarragon and basil
Salt and pepper
Creamy Grits
2 cups whole milk
2 cups water
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup coarse ground cornmeal
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
8 oz. cream cheese
Instructions
Trim the fat off the beef. On a floured surface, use a mallet or blunt utensil to pound to about 1/2 inch thickness.
Cut beef into long strips or small squares. Salt generously and set aside on a plate.
In a large, heavy pot, heat a generous layer of vegetable oil to medium-high. Season meat with Creole seasoning mix and pepper, then brown it in batches on all sides (a few minutes per side).
Remove the meat and set aside. Add onions, bell peppers and celery to the drippings and cook until the vegetables are soft, about 10 minutes.
Add the tomatoes, chicken stock, beef stock and red wine, and bring to a boil.
Turn the heat down to medium-low and stir in bay leaves, tarragon and basil.
Simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, until the meat is very tender and falling apart (at least 2 hours).
In the last 40 minutes of cook time, prepare the grits. Bring milk and water and salt to a boil over medium heat.
Slowly pour in the cornmeal to the boiling liquid, whisking constantly to avoid lumps. Turn the heat down to low and whisk continuously for the first 5 minutes.
Cover the grits and whisk every few minutes. Turn off the heat after about 25-30 minutes and stir in butter and cream cheese, adding salt and pepper to taste.
Pour a ladle of grillades over the grits, and serve with hot sauce.
Our last CSA included five wee little potatoes, which were not quite big enough to make mashed potatoes or tortilla. So I turned them into a quick brunch using a few other ingredients we had in the house. We live on the third floor, which is actually the fourth floor European/ fifth floor American, so I try to avoid unnecessary stair climbing when I’m hangry.
I used the Pioneer Woman’s breakfast potatoes recipe as a guide and added a couple of poached eggs on top (plus a healthy serving of ketchup). My poached eggs never turn out quite as pretty as I’d like, but they were perfectly runny and delicious, and I’m working on new techniques to improve their aesthetics.
Cut the potatoes, peppers and onion into medium chunks.
Add garlic and toss with a good glug of olive oil and a bit of softened or melted butter. (I find it's most effective to mix the ingredients with clean hands.)
Season liberally with spices.
Bake at 425 degrees F/ 218 degrees C for 25 minutes, gently turning them once or twice.
Turn the oven up - in my case, as high as it will go to 250 degrees C (482 degrees F) - and bake for another 20 minutes. Check on the potatoes occasionally to turn them or take them out if they're starting to get scorched.
