Baked Pinto Beans, Enchilada Style

More recipe experimentation has been going on, though I've been caught up both with the end-of-the-school year and unwise decision on my part to teach a May term to make some extra cash. Somehow even a class that I've taught many times before becomes like slogging through molasses when it meets every day for almost three hours, just after the regular semester is over and everyone is already tired, students and professors alike. It's also cutting in to my summer research/writing time, which I value dearly, though I thought I'd have more energy to do both. Oh well - it will be over soon enough. Meanwhile, I continue to puzzle over the quest to get a square meal on the table every night for my family, which most nights I manage to do, though I find myself getting in mental ruts where, when I try to come up with a dinner, I find myself stuck on certain themes and forgetting things I've made from the past that would be perfectly acceptable and delicious. Which is why I have this blog to remind me.

Experiments included a couple Indian dishes from the Madhur Jaffrey World Vegetarian book, which I remember as being good but when I tried to look up what I made just now, my mind drew a complete blank as I stared in the index at the hundreds of Indian recipes. Lentils? Potatoes? Spinach? I dunno. (See, I told you I'm tired).

I also tried a Mark Bittman recipe this week for Baked Pinto Beans, Enchilada Style, that blew me away. Though he describes it as "couldn't be easier," it actually was pretty time consuming, because to make the recipe truly amazing, you have to prepare a tomato sauce in a particular way. Basically the dish itself is just pinto beans (2 cans, drained) layered atop the tomato sauce, dotted with 1" cubes of cheese (1 cup), 1/2 cup crumbled queso fresco, a cup of crumbled tortilla chips, baked 20-30 minutes. This part, it's true, was pretty easy, but the added step of the sauce making caused it to take considerably longer.

For the sauce, "Salsa Roja," I went to my local Mexican grocery store and bought a little bag of dried guajillo chile peppers. Poured boiling water over two of the peppers, soaked them, removed seeds and stems, minced. In a skillet, I sauteed them along with 2 onions, finely chopped, 4 minced cloves of garlic, then after those softened, 2 lbs. tomatoes, cored, peeled, seeded, and chopped, 1 T sugar, salt & pepper. I used fresh tomatoes so those also took awhile to core and peel, though he says canned ones are fine. You cook this for about 20 minutes, then stir in 1/4 cup minced cilantro and 3 T lime juice. I pureed it slightly with a hand blender then used it as the bottom layer for the aforementioned baked pinto beans. Oh, and I microwaved a sweet potato, chunked it up, and tossed it in as well - a variation he recommends - and this added considerably to the salty-sweet-crunchy-chewy-savory Tex Mex deliciousness of this dish. But if I do it again (and I plan to), I'm going to make the sauce ahead & freeze it. Soooo good. The guajillo chiles are essential - they make it really unique and smoky.

Baked Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

I first had enchiladas with salsa verde in Madrid in 1996. It was my first encounter with tomatillos, and since then I often order them at Mexican restaurants. I've tried my hand at elaborate recipes that involve making your own tomatillo salsa, but lately, as time seems in shorter and shorter supply, I've been looking for shortcuts. This is a good one.

Chicken Enchiladas with Salsa Verde

1 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup cilantro
2 minced garlic cloves
1 7-ounce can salsa verde (can be found at any Mexican grocery store, or even in supermarkets)
1 large chicken breast, cooked and shredded (poach 15 minutes with an onion, peppercorns, and parsley)
1/3 cup cream cheese
1 cup chicken broth
Package of flour tortillas, small or large
1/4 cup monterey jack cheese, with jalapenos, or queso fresco
1/2 tsp. chili powder

Preheat oven to 425.

Combine onion, cilantro, garlic and salsa verde in food processor, process until liquid. Mix shredded chicken and cream cheese, stir in 1/2 cup of the green salsa mixture, reserving the remainder.

Place about 1/4 cup chicken mixture on a tortilla, roll up and place in greased 11x7 baking dish. Repeat with remaining tortillas, pour salsa mixture over all, sprinkle with cheese and chili powder. Bake 18 minutes or until cheese is nice and bubbly.

grilled chicken burritos

I had the chance to visit both China and Mexico this summer, China along with a group of professors from my university and Mexico to give a paper at a conference. Both trips were great. Everyone says that real Chinese food in China tastes nothing like what we have here in the States, but if that's the case, the Chinese are now making remarkable concessions to American tastes. Everything I had vaguely resembled something I'd had before in the States, only better. Much better. Fresher ingredients, nothing soggy or congealed, a lot of vegetables. There were some familiar dishes-- staples like kung pao chicken, only better than any kung pao chicken I'd ever had in my life...

It was also my first trip to Mexico, and the two best meals I had were at a restaurant in San Miguel de Allende called El Correo (some kind of spicy pork dish) and in a village in the countryside outside San Miguel, a lunch that was entirely vegetarian, with fresh salsas, refried beans, something that resembled spinach, and some other tasty things.

Now it's back to school, and to celebrate the end of the first week, I decided to experiment with this week's installment from the Splendid Table, the NPR feature on food that I get delivered to my email inbox. After making these grilled chicken burritos, I'm thinking of making a big donation to the program. What made this so awesome was not taking any shortcuts-- marinating the chicken in a mixture of cumin, lime juice, garlic, and cilantro for a few hours, actually GRILLING it (Nour's job), carefully preparing the guacamole (which turned out much better than the usual stuff I slap together with a smashed avocado and some lime juice and salt) and the green tomatillo salsa. I also made refried beans-- I don't think the canned ones taste as good as the recipe claimed. Then you cook your tortillas on the grill, spread with refried beans, the sliced chicken, cheese, the guacamole and salsa, and you have something really and truly amazing... I don't know about "weeknight kitchen" though, unless you happen to have a few hours to spare for marinating, a pound of tomatillos, some Mexican queso blanco, and some charcoal on hand.

Recipe adapted very slightly from the Splendid Table, Lynne Rossetto Kasper

The Chicken:

1/4 cup lime juice
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1 Tblsp minced garlic
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

Mix ingredients together. Marinate chicken in plastic bag for at least three hours. When it's time to grill, grill 5 minutes per side, let stand 5 minutes, then slice diagonally.

Accompaniments I used:

Flour tortillas
2 cups refried beans, heated
2 cups queso blanco or Monterey Jack
2 cups Guacamole (recipe follows)
2 cups Tomatillo Salsa (recipe follows)

Guacamole (adapted for what I had on hand)
Makes 2 cups

3 ripe avocados, peeled and diced roughly
1/3 cup chopped plum tomatoes
1 Tblsp. minced jalapeno pepper,
1 Tblsp. chopped cilantro
3 Tblsp. lime juice
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. ground black pepper
3 dashes Tabasco

Combine all the ingredients and mix well. Smash the avocados to keep a bit chunky. Refrigerate until ready to use.

Tomatillo Salsa:

1 lb. tomatillos, coarsely chopped
1 roasted jalapeno, peeled and seeded
1 cup chopped tomato
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
2 Tblsp. lime juice
1 Tblsp. minced garlic
2 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. ground cumin
1/2 tsp. salt, or to taste

Combine all ingredients, mix well, chill until ready to use.

Once chicken is grilled, let stand 5 minutes, then slice diagonally. Grill tortillas 30 seconds per side, spread with refried beans, cheese, chicken, salsa and guacamole. Num, num.

Pollo con Salsa Verde

Ramadan ended Wednesday night, so to celebrate I prepared a somewhat unorthodox Mexican dinner of Pollo con Salsa Verde (Chicken in Green Sauce), Mexican rice, and refried beans, all of it from scratch. I was most excited to prepare this because it involved using my new cookbook, Mark Bittman's The Best Recipes in the World, which I'd been eagerly awaiting from Amazon. I am a huge fan of Bittman's Minimalist column in the NY Times, which I've read religiously for years, and his How to Cook Everything, which is an extremely useful cookbook. But this new cookbook promised to be even more thrilling, especially since it has lots of Moroccan recipes and recipes from many of my favorite ethnic cuisines-- Indian, Thai, Japanese, and even old standbys like French and Italian. I trust Bittman implicitly-- I've probably made several hundred of his recipes, 90% of which have turned out to be dishes I'll make again.

So the aforementioned Mexican dinner came entirely from the new cookbook. It involved making refried beans from scratch, doing a quick soak of small red beans and then preparing them with epazote, a Mexican spice that thankfully is sold at a local vegetable stand about a half a mile from my house. Also sold at the local vegetable stand are hulled pumpkin seeds and tomatillos, two essential ingredients in the Mexican chicken dish. The rice involved frying dry rice in oil and then cooking it with broth and a mixture of pureed tomatoes, onions, and garlic. It was pretty delicious too-- had a texture I wasn't used to with rice, but I liked it fine. And the Chicken in Green Sauce was terrific.

I will never forget the first time I had green enchiladas-- in a Mexican restaurant in Madrid called El Cuchi, back in 1995. (The restaurant was very theatrical-- waitresses served tequila shots accompanied by a hard hat to be placed on the customer's head and rapped on after the customer kicked back a shot while the waitress also rang a hand-held siren.) But I loved the enchiladas. The tomatillo-cilantro flavor was so unlike anything I'd ever had before, and it's one of my favorite things to order at Mexican restaurants. Mark Bittman's recipe is more complex and nuanced than any green chicken I've made before, partially because of the addition of pumpkin seeds and scallion. I would definitely make this again, and I plan to continue making and reporting on lots of new recipes from this cookbook.

Pollo con Salsa Verde
1/3 cup hulled pumpkin seeds
1 cup chopped cilantro leaves
1 cup coarsely chopped scallion
1 cup husked, cored, and sliced tomatillos
1 jalapeno, stemmed and seeded
Chicken stock
3 Tblsp. lard or neutral oil (I used canola)
2.5-3 lbs. chicken parts, trimmed of fat (I used legs)
salt & pepper

Toast pumpkin seeds in a dry skillet, stirring frequently, until they begin to brown and pop (less than 5 minutes). In a blender, puree them with cilantro, scallion, tomatillos, and enough stock to make a thin paste.

In a skillet or casserole, brown the chicken in oil on all sides, turning occasionally, about 10-15 minutes.

Add salsa verde to the pan with another 1/2 cup of stock, the pieces may not be quite covered and the mixture will be soupy. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cook 30 minutes, turning pieces occasionally, making sure sauce reduces and thickens somewhat. Serve with rice and beans.