Beef Enchiladas

I’m always on the lookout for a good enchilada recipe and this one fit the bill for Super Bowl Sunday. We both love chicken enchiladas, but George (my husband) loves beef. I didn’t have any shredded brisket for the filling, so I liked this ground beef recipe. Gooey and cheesy, this is Tex-Mex all the way. I served with a simple guacamole, salsa and sour cream. It may not make me like the Patriots any better, but unless the cowboys are in there I watch for the commercials anyway.

Hope you try these. Recipe follows.

Tex-Mex Beef Enchiladas

Drawn from the wonderful blog: https://www.theanthonykitchen.com/texmex-beef-enchiladas/

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 1 yellow onion finely diced
• 1 pound 80/20 ground beef (I used 90/10)
• 4 tablespoons TAK’s Tex-Mex Blend, I used an entire package of McCormick’s Original Taco Seasoning
• 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 6 tablespoons All-Purpose flour
• 3 ½ cups unsalted beef broth*
• 1 ½ teaspoons Kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• Pinch of black pepper
• 16-20 corn tortillas (I used 10 super-size corn tortillas)
• 1 cup Cheddar cheese freshly grated
• 1 cup Monterrey Jack cheese freshly grated

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350° and have ready a 9×13” greased casserole dish.
2. Heat olive oil in a large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Add onion and sauté for 5-8 minutes until softened. Add ground beef along with TAK’s Tex-Mex Blend, and break apart with a wooden spoon. Cook for 10 minutes, or until no more pink shows and completely cooked through. Remove from the heat and transfer meat mixture to a bowl. Set aside until ready to use.
3. Return sauté pan to stovetop over medium heat. Add butter and allow to melt. Sprinkle over flour and whisk to form a roux. Allow to cook 2-3 minutes. Begin to add beef broth a splash at a time, whisking thoroughly after each addition until all of the broth has been incorporated. Season with salt, cumin, chili powder and pepper. Cook for an additional 7-10 minutes, stirring occasionally and allowing to thicken. Remove from heat and set aside.
4. Dampen two paper towels and wrap half of the tortillas in the towels. (I heat mine in foil in the oven for a few minutes) Repeat additional paper towels and the remaining tortillas. Heat in a microwave for thirty seconds to 1 minute, until warmed and pliable. Add 1 cup of the sauce to the bottom of the casserole dish. Add a ¼ cup each Monterrey Jack and Cheddar to the beef mixture and stir to evenly distribute.
5. One at a time, add 2 tbsp. of beef filling to a tortilla and roll tightly. Place seam side down in the dish. Continue to roll enchiladas, placing them side-by-side until you can no longer fit any more in the dish. Pour remaining sauce evenly over the enchiladas and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake, covered with aluminum foil for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 minutes, uncovered. Allow to cool, serve and enjoy.
6. Makes 16 enchiladas. (or 10 super-size stuffed enchiladas)

Recipe Notes

*It is extremely important that you use Unsalted Beef Broth for this recipe. Otherwise, the salt content will be overwhelming.

Simple Potato Salad

 

There is a softness in my soul towards simple food made from scratch. On this beautiful October day I’m making potato salad to go with my husband’s smoked brisket. Here’s the brisket after four hours in the smoker at 200 degrees. He uses charcoal briquettes, lump charcoal and hickory chips for the smoke. We finish it in the oven, at 250 degrees covered for another four hours.

Everyone has their version of simple potato salad. Here’s mine. Hope you enjoy.

Ingredients:

• 5 pounds of red potatoes, boiled in salted water with skin on, then peeled
• 2 boiled eggs, chopped ( optional)
• chopped green onion to taste
• 3 tablespoons of sweet pickle relish
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 5 tablespoons Miracle Whip Salad Dressing (we like the sweetness, you can use mayonnaise)
• salt, pepper and paprika to taste

Directions

I had large red potatoes so I quartered them and boiled them in salted water until
fork-tender. After they cool down enough you can handle them, peel the skin off. You don’t have to do this, I just think it tastes better.

At the same time I boiled the potatoes I boiled two farm-fresh eggs from a dozen that my friend Amy gave me. Peel, cool and chop roughly.

 

While the eggs and potatoes are boiling I get my onions chopped and get out my spices.

Put the spices and dressing on when the potatoes are still warm. Smells so good. The salad should be wet because it absorbs so much of the dressing as it cools. Add more dressing if you need to. Yum.

Mom’s Marinated Green Bean Salad

I’m thinking about my mom this morning. On September 26th, she would have been 85 years old. She died in 2006 and it still stings but today I am smiling as I make her fabulous marinated green bean salad. Mom loved to cook. She especially loved to cook for crowds of family. Our home Christmas Eve dinners were the makings of gastronomic heaven but this simple salad is great anytime and goes with many meals as a sweet and tangy side dish. So thanks mom, this still tastes like home.

Recipe

Ingredients

2 cans French-style green beans, drained

2/3 cup white vinegar

1/2 cup sugar

1 clove of garlic, minced or garlic powder to taste

1/2 cup salad oil

1 cup Italian salad dressing

1 onion sliced thinly

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and marinate at least two hours or overnight.

Sting

Rainy Day Enchiladas

 

It was chilly and rainy here in Weatherford, Texas yesterday. Not up north chilly, just March in Texas damp and chilly. There is a big difference. My dad used to call this kind of day “liquid sunshine.” I went to the grocery store with comfort food in mind. Over the years I have tried lots of enchilada recipes, but this simple chicken enchilada with a sour cream sauce is my favorite. I thought I’d share.

This recipe has just a few ingredients, is not too hot; although you can spice it up if you want, and a gooey cheese rating of ten on my comfort food scale. Scroll down for the recipe.

Start by boiling the chicken breasts in salted water.

Cool the chicken down where you can handle it and shred by hand.

Start the butter melting in a medium skillet and get your chicken stock ready. I was a little short on my stock so I used one cup of chicken stock and one cup of the water that I boiled the chicken in to get my two cups.

Brown the flour in the melted butter for a couple of minutes then add the stock. Stir until smooth and slightly thickened.

Remove from the heat and add green chilies and sour cream. You don’t want the sauce to boil now with the sour cream because it will separate. Keep warm.

 

I used corn tortillas for these enchiladas, but you can use flour tortillas if you prefer. I do not brown the tortillas in butter or dip them in stock before I roll them; these are pretty soft tortillas,

I simply stuff with chicken and cheese and roll gently, then place seam down in a 9 x 13 pan. ( I never have the right amount to fill the pan, I can’t explain it.)

Pour the sour cream sauce over the enchiladas and top with the rest of the Monterey Jack cheese and bake uncovered at 350 for twenty to thirty minutes. Garnish with chopped green onion.

I had a green salad with these bad boys.

My husband likes salsa on the side.

The sun was shining in the dining room at least. Hope you enjoy.

Chicken Enchiladas

1 pound chicken breasts, boiled in salted water and shredded

10-15 corn or flour tortillas

3 tbsps. butter and 3 tbsps. flour

2 cups of chicken broth

4 oz. can chopped green chilies

1 cup of sour cream

3 cups of Monterey Jack cheese, shredded

1 chopped green onion

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9×13 pan
2. Mix cooled chicken and 1 cup cheese. Roll up in tortillas and place in pan.
3. In a sauce pan, melt butter, stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Add broth and whisk until smooth. Heat the sauce over medium heat until thickened and bubbly.
4. Stir in sour cream and chilies. Do not bring to boil, you don’t want curdled sour cream.
5. Pour over enchiladas and top with remaining cheese.
6. Bake 20-30 min. uncovered. Yield: serves 4

George’s Christmas Ham

 

 

My husband George is a great cook. Never scared to try something new, this year he wanted to make his own Christmas ham. Not the pre-cured ham that comes already cooked but the real thing; a fresh ham shank, butt end. He started with a great recipe from Weber’s at http://www.weber.com/weber-nation/blog/pecan-smoked-fresh-ham-with-maple-glaze-on-the-wsm and modified it a little for our tastes. Tender and juicy, the meat has the best characteristics of pulled pork mixed with a not-too-salty ham taste. Definitely a keeper!

 

The Pig
9-10 pound ham shank (not precooked, some people call these “green”, which sounds a little weird) A note of admiration here for our butchers at Brookshire’s Grocery Store in Weatherford, Texas, who talked with George about this little project and held us a ham shank from their Christmas order. He told us they usually only get these in at Thanksgiving and Christmas. We can request one anytime.

Ham shank and rub.

 

The Rub
½ cup brown sugar, dark
¼ cup kosher salt
2 tablespoons black pepper, ground coarse
2 tsp cayenne pepper, ground (optional)

Score the fat cap on the ham shank to allow the rub to soak into the meat. Mix rub ingredients and apply to the meat liberally. He wrapped ours in plastic wrap and refrigerated it for 48 hours. Reserve some rub for application right before you smoke it. Make sure you set the meat out of the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes before you put it on the smoker. We used the coarse ground black pepper, but next time will use a smaller grind to keep it out of your teeth.

Scored and dry-rubbed ham.

The Glaze:
½ cup honey
2 teaspoons black pepper, ground
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 cup maple syrup (not imitation flavored)

Mix ingredients and bring to a boil in a medium-sized saucepan. Reduce by half. Be sure to watch this carefully because it can boil over really easily. I won’t tell you how I know that. Glaze the ham every two hours. He used a foil pan underneath to catch the fat drippings. Makes clean-up easier.

 

 

 

 

The Wood:
8-10 pc apple wood chunks (presoaked in water)
apple wood-infused charcoal

The original recipe called for pecan wood, which is a little strong for our tastes, so we used apple wood instead. After he set the smoker bed with charcoal, he also needed three additional chimney starter’s full of charcoal to maintain the desired heat for the six-hour smoking time.

We have a big off-set smoker so the temperature that Weber wanted, 250 degrees, is a little tough to maintain for six hours. He cooked the ham shank six hours between 200 and 220 degrees on the smoker and finished it in the oven covered with foil at 250 degrees for at least two hours. We use an instant-read thermometer to make sure the meat is at an internal temperature of at least 165 degrees.

Happy eating!

Swiss Cheese and Sausage Quiche

 

 

 

I honestly can’t remember the first time I had quiche. I know my mom never made it; my Air Force Senior Master Sargent father did not take to such food, but being a child of the 60’s; which means a time before eggs and cream became a bad thing, I must have had it at restaurant. I was hooked.

Definitely not a diet meal, but in cold weather, a big puffy sausage, egg and cheese pie really hits the spot. I have a green salad on the side to make myself believe I am eating something healthy. This quiche is also good cold the next day.

Homemade pork sausage is a snap to make and doesn’t have those nasty little gristly bits that the store-bought breakfast sausages have in them. I must give credit here to Bobby Flay, who I watched make this sausage on the Food Network and then tweaked the spices to fit my palate. I use pre-made pie crust for my quiche, because I have never learned the art of a good pie crust. Gives me something to work for.

Hope you enjoy.

First, the sausage.

Homemade Pork Sausage

• 1 pound ground pork
• 1 tablespoon (at least) rubbed sage
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon onion powder
• ½ teaspoon black pepper
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
• ¼ teaspoon cumin
• ¼ teaspoon paprika

Mix spices and ground pork together. Split meat mixture in half. Sauté half the sausage until brown, breaking it up into small pieces. Drain on paper towels. Make four patties with the remainder and save for breakfast sausages.

Sausage for quiche.

 

Breakfast sausage for the next day.

For the quiche.

Custard

• 4 eggs, beaten
• ¾ cup milk
• ½ cup heavy cream
• ¼ cup white wine (or you can skip this and use more milk or cream)
• Pinch salt
• 1 Tablespoon flour
• Pinch of Cayenne Pepper

Beat eggs and add milk, cream, wine, salt, flour and cayenne. Mix well.

 

Assembly

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

• Place one store- bought pie crust (or make your own) in a deep dish pie plate.
• Place browned sausage in crust.

• Chop 8 oz. of Swiss cheese and place on top of sausage.

 

 

 

 

 

Pour custard on top of filling and bake at 375 degrees for 60 minutes or until puffy and lightly browned.

 

Mom’s Dressing

Mom’s Cornbread Dressing.

“Why is the dressing green?” my husband whispered in my ear. It was his first Thanksgiving dinner at my parent’s house. “Sage, my dear, the spice of the gods.” I whispered back. One or two big aluminum foil pans of the slightly green, spicy dressing, redolent with black pepper, onions, salty bits of giblets and turkey pan drippings scented my mom’s house every Thanksgiving and Christmas. I don’t know where she learned to make her dressing, she did not talk about cooking with her mom, but Lord it was good. There was no written recipe, but I watched her make this so often and tasted it for her so many times that the making of it is imprinted on my DNA. She would tell us kids, “Come taste this for me and see if it has enough sage.” knowing full well it was perfect; she just wanted to see our eyes roll back in our heads like sharks at a feeding frenzy.

Why is it that every daughter tries to recreate the taste of their mother’s cooking? I think it is one of those rites of passage that define us a family. So for this Texas girl, I try each holiday to recreate that taste, with maybe a little less sage in deference to my husband’s palate. His contribution was this knockout smoked turkey breast. But that recipe is for another post. So this year, in my mom’s honor, I pass along the recipe as I remember it; simple in its ingredients, but layered with deep, happy memories of family gatherings. I took pictures and promise I got no kickbacks from the manufacturer’s presented. Substitute as you choose. I try to make the cornbread and the bisquick (mom called this bread pone) the day before the meal. Fresh breads are too moist and will gum up your dressing.

Get a big turkey roaster-size aluminum pan and break up the cornbread and bread pone into crumbs. In a small pan, cook the turkey giblets in enough salted water to cover with a roughly chopped onion, a stalk of chopped celery, a bay leaf and some pepper corns. Peel away any tough parts and chop the turkey giblets. Set aside.

In a small skillet, melt a stick of butter and sauté the chopped onion until tender and translucent. Pour the cooked onion and butter over the bread crumbs. Add the chopped turkey giblets. If you have roast turkey drippings, pour them in too. Add at least one half container of sage and salt and pepper to taste.

Mix enough of the chicken stock to moisten the mixture to the consistency you like. For me it takes one or two cans of chicken stock. When you mix this dressing, you have to use your hands. You cannot feel the consistency of the dressing through a spoon. Don’t be rough, as Emeril Lagasse says “This is a food of love thing.”

 

Bake in a 350° oven for 30-45 minutes. There should be just a browned lovely crust on the top. I did not take a picture when it came out of the oven (duh). Too busy eating. I’ll update it with one at Christmas.

Ingredients:

2 packages of Bisquick

2 packages of yellow cornbread mix (not sweet)

2 cans of chicken stock

1 stick of butter

1 large onion, chopped

1 or 2 bottles of powdered sage

salt and pepper to taste

Turkey giblets cooked and chopped

 

Garden to Table

 

Summer. In Texas. And the squash plants have lost their minds. Yellow squash are the Incredible Hulk of the garden world. Turn your back on them for one minute and they get angry. Very angry. And BIG..very big.

Ready to pick…again.

Uh oh.

 

NEXT year, we vow we are not going to plant four yellow squash plants, even though we love yellow squash. Right.

 

 

 

 

But we just dug the last of the potatoes and have lovely little red onions to use. Potato salad! And devilled eggs.

 

So to go with, Dr. Smoky has brined and grilled bone-in chicken breasts.

 

The basil is blooming. So is the lavender. Made a nice arrangement.

 

But next year, two squash plants. Just two.

 

Bread and Butter Pickles

With the abundance of rain we had in late May here in Weatherford, Texas, the pickling cucumbers got a little ahead of us. Really, they got huge, it seemed like overnight. My practical husband said he would save the day and whipped up a batch of bread and butter pickles with fresh garden onions.

This time around he did not let the cucumbers sit in salt to drain for an hour. They produced a little more liquid, but did not dilute the pickling broth that we could taste and were just as crunchy.

• fresh pickling cucumbers
• 1 sliced white onion

Heat the following items to a boil. Pour over sliced cucumbers and onion. Let cool to room temperature for an hour, then refrigerate. Good to eat in a couple of hours, better if they sit overnight. He’s made these twice now and we can’t get enough of them.

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 cup white vinegar
• 1/2 cup white cider vinegar
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1.5 teaspoons mustard seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
• 1/8 teaspoon turmeric (we did not have, so left this out)

Recipe courtesy of The Recipe Girl.

 

Yellowstone Fudge

I know it is not Christmas, but all the Valentine’s Day chocolate has started me thinking about my mother’s fudge. She always made it at Christmas time……

Mother’s favorite rose, The Lady Bankshead and her Irises.

Mother said, “The best Christmas gift was really three gifts; a gift for the mind, a gift for the stomach and a gift for the heart.” Cooking cocoa fudge with Mother was a gift that combined all three.

One of my clearest Christmas memories was making fudge at odd hours of the night, Mother’s favorite time of day. We had our Christmas celebration on Christmas Eve night and Mother cooked for days and nights before. As soon as the turkey was cleaned, trussed, sage stuffing made, the fudge pot would appear on the stove. My older sister Donna and I (Billy was still too young) would stand in our warm Texas kitchen, barefoot on oven-heated linoleum, drinking thermos glasses of coffee that were ninety percent milk, while also drinking in the steps to this favorite recipe. The anticipation of tasting Mom’s fudge was almost as good as eating it. The memory of that flavor lasted year round.

“Hershey’s cocoa, milk, sugar, salt. Bring to a boil, then stir and simmer.”

Mother used wooden spoons, iron skillets and huge sauce pots. I remember her saying, “In fudge making, a wooden spoon makes all the difference.” She would sense the fudge through the wood as if it were part of her hands, which were strong, sun-browned and long-fingered. Measuring cups were optional equipment. Those same strong hands held the right amount of salt or cocoa. “OK, use a coffee cup if you have to.”

We would wait, standing on one foot and the other, for the correct sounds to issue from the pot. “This fudge sounds just like the mud pots at Yellowstone Park when it’s ready. Plop. Plop.” Of course, it occurred to both of us that mother had never been to Yellowstone Park, but that didn’t matter. It was a mother thing. I remember her face at those moments; cheeks flushed with the heat, brown hair pulled back in a no-nonsense bun and soft, hazel eyes rich with flecks of green and brown and gray. Eyes that could see right through to your bones over the top of reading glasses. Those eyes had the same sort of automatic sensing mechanism as her hands; she could see if you were lying. Very inconvenient growing up.

Our talk would be about a lot of things while the fudge simmered; movies, books we were reading, who we would cast in the lead roles if the movie were made from that book and family stories. She would talk about the kitchen of her childhood in the ‘30’s. Mother grew up in the countryside of Jacksboro and Weatherford, in a kitchen with a wood cook stove. She had a love/hate relationship with that stove, which had to be stocked with wood and emptied of ashes daily. The kitchen was the warmest place in the house, so you got dressed in the morning behind the cook stove. But be careful how you bent over, or you’d get branded. In back of the kitchen was the porch where you washed your face in the mornings in a metal basin. A coal from the cook stove would melt the ice on the water in the winters. She could still smell and hear that ashy sizzle. God help you if you had to go to the outhouse during a winter night. Your feet would need to be washed with that same freezing water and lye soap before you got back in bed. You didn’t get on clean sheets with dirty feet.

Plop plop. How safe and warm our kitchen felt, with the rich smell of chocolate and memories whirling around us, the darkness of night insulating the kitchen and stopping time.

“Simmer the fudge until a small amount dropped into cold water forms a soft ball.”

What’s that soft-ball thing about anyway? To hell with those fancy, prone-to-crack candy thermometers. “Use your eyes and ears, kid.” Plop. Plop.

Books were a favorite topic. All the rooms of our house had bookshelves. In two rooms, the shelves formed the entire wall. Mother read voraciously, constantly, for fun and for escape. A favorite challenge during fudge-making was inspired by the movie ending of H.G. Wells “The Time Machine”. Going back to the primitive society in the past, the time traveler took back three books to begin a new world. Which three books he took were unknown. “Which three books would you take back? Think, what would be your reasons?” Much discussion would ensue. Through Mom’s books and Dad’s too, (Dad’s topic is history) we traveled through time and across continents.

“Take the fudge off the fire and add the butter and vanilla.”

This smelled wonderful. The vanilla would bubble down through the fudge and reappear as a secret chocolate volcano, belching an almost indescribably sweet steam geyser. Yellowstone again.

Developing good judgment was part of the process of making fudge. Judgment of correct color and consistency as well as when the fudge had been beat enough and was ready to be poured into buttery pans. Mother would say, “Now watch for the fudge to lose its shine. When it does, pour it quickly into the greased pans.” Donna and I both discovered that “shine” and “quickly” are relative terms. Cooking our earliest fudge batches, we always waited that fraction of a second too long, and the molten fudge solidified into an instant stalactite as it was poured from the pan. No matter. Mother was very philosophical about such failures. And we ate the fudge stalactite just as quickly, laughing.

After the fudge cooking was the spoon and pan-licking. Two prizes were to be had. The wooden spoon which mysteriously had developed a two inch coating of fudge and the pot which had those lovely crusty brown layers of pure chocolate sugar at the top. The kind of confectionery-coated dentist’s nightmare that could wrap you in chocolate euphoria for an hour. Simply put, it was warm fudge heaven.

Fudge pans were usually cookie sheets, but any size pan would do. We had been known to butter the kitchen counter if we were in a bad mood. Our childhood fudge-eating capacities were quite legendary. We were to leave Dad some fudge. We did; two neatly cut squares in the middle of the pan. Mom was not amused. Luckily, cocoa, vanilla and sugar were always in the cupboard. And fudge technique must be practiced. Dad got his fudge. Plates of fudge were always on the coffee table on Christmas Eve.

Not long after mother’s death I found my well-worn card for Mom’s fudge. On the back was the name and number of the hospital where my nephew Paul was born. It seems I made fudge in my kitchen while waiting for his birth. A good omen. A gift. Mother’s cocoa fudge was a gift, a gift of time spent teaching, listening and caring. It is a recipe for the love she gave in double-batched size to all of us. With no apologies to H.G. Wells, if I were the time-traveler, I would take Mom’s fudge recipe back to start a new world. It would be a gift for the mind, a gift for the stomach and a gift for the heart.