Enchiladas, Beans and Rice

I've been trying to eat less red meat, a lot of my Fall and Winter recipes are stews, chili, and what-not. When Carla and I were talking yesterday we thought some Mexican food might be nice. We had a pretty busy weekend planned what with the beautiful weather we've been having and it being the boys birthdays. That meant no custom sauces; we'd see what we could whip up out of cans. Since I just bought a new rice cooker, Spanish (Mexican?) rice was a must.

Seven ingredients for the rice (eight if you count the water). I took the recipe from a vegan site called trans-planted.comTrans-planted.com. It's the blog of a woman who lives overseas and cooks her favorite foods abroad. I'm not vegan so I used some chicken broth along with the water. She most have a very large rice cooker so I adjusted amounts based on a jambalaya recipe I found on zojirushi.com That's the maker of my new rice cooker. My recipe can be found here.

Spanish rice ingredients. Cumin is in the ramekin. 

Seven ingredients for the pinto beans as well. I've continued to tweak this recipe for my pressure cooker; I used five cups of liquid (3 of chicken broth; 2 of water) and they were a bit wet. But thicken up on reheating. You can find my recipe here. If you don't have a pressure cooker, just cook on the stove in a Dutch oven and keep an eye on the liquid; you might have to add some boiling water after an hour or so.

Pinto bean recipe. Cumin and chili powder in the ramiken. 

 Only five ingredients for the enchiladas! I used 1 large and 1 medium can for 12 enchiladas. I went the easy route. I thought about making my own enchilada sauce, but canned is fine. I went for medium heat; of course you can go as hot as you want. I got the recipe from Rockin' Robin; she has a nice video of the process. My recipe is here. I'll tell you she was much neater than me when it comes to making these. It is helpful to have two people assemble these. One to fry the tortillas and dip them in the sauce and another person to build the enchiladas.

Enchilada makin's 

 Back in the 70's when I worked at the Idaho State Correctional Institution as a teacher, Carla and I went to my boss' house (Tom Lloyd) for Texas enchiladas. They were literally the hottest things I have ever eaten even to this day. Enchilada parties were also a big event in college and after. People would bring different items and we'd construct amazing tubes of awesomeness. Cheese, green olives, and chicken in flour tortillas were the basic ingredients.

Simple cooking but lots of burners. I got to use three burners plus the rice cooker!

Hot oil and enchilada sauce in the frying pans. Beans in the pressure cooker.

 Pour the remaining sauce over the enchiladas and put in a 400˚ oven for about 15 minutes.

Enchiladas ready to be served.

 I lucked out; all 3 dishes came out pretty close to one another.  I prepped everything before cooking anything. The rice took about an hour to cook so I started it; then started sautéing the salt pork for the beans. Once the beans were up to pressure we started making the enchiladas.

Spanish rice is ready.

 The rice was the weak link here; they were pretty bland. But they mixed perfectly with the beans. I'll do a little more research before cooking my next batch.

This was actually a pretty quick dinner. 1 hour 45 minutes from walking into the kitchen to having dinner on the table. And that includes stopping and taking pictures in the process.

Dinner is served

 The nice thing about this is we'll have plenty to eat all week.

Left overs. 1 container of beans to the freezer and 1 to the refrigerator.