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.

Portland Waterfront - Bridges and Fall Colors

Carla and I have been getting tired of walking the same routes around the neighborhood; since the Fall weather was fantastic we decided to go to downtown Portland and walk south of the Hawthorne Bridge to see what we might see.

For those of you who don't live in the Portland area, here is where we were. Google knows everything; it has highlighted a number of businesses I've researched in the past few months.

Overview of the Portland Metro Area. Our home in Beaverton is in the southwest part of town.

 We walked from near River Place down past the Marquam Bridge. The Transit Bridge is going in between the Marquam and Ross Island Bridges.

Zoom in on our walk.

We ate an early lunch at home and headed down a bit before noon. As we went through the tunnel we became enveloped in fog. It was much cooler and grayer than the Tron (Beaverton).

Hawthorne Bridge in the mist

The new Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge  is coming along; I catch glimpses of it when I head over the Marquam Bridge. This bridge will be for light rail (to Milwaukie), pedestrians and bicyclers. In the future the Portland Street Car will also use it.

Eastern span Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge

The spans are growing ever closer. Engineers who figure this stuff out are amazing.

 We also saw some nice fall colors on our walk.

South Waterfront

 I've been following photographer Matt Kloskowski for the past few months. A recent article covered Fall photography. I tried to include two of his tips in this picture: use backlight for foliage, and try to get just a glimpse of the sun peaking through.

Trees in the park around the Ira Keller Fountain

 By the time we got back to our car the fog had lifted and I got a brighter picture of the Hawthorne Bridge.

Hawthorne Bridge looking north.

Family Barbecue - June 30, 2013

Andrew and Henriët were coming out west (how odd that sounds) for a wedding in Couer d'Alene over the 4th of July. Anytime they come home we try to get a party organized; I finally feel confident enough in my brisket to share with a group and this would be the best chance of the summer.

They were due to arrive at 6:00 on Friday evening June 28; my favorite butcher, Gartner's Meats, is close to the airport, about an hour from home. It seemed like a perfect plan; pick up the meat, then the kids and home in one trip. As the poet Robert Burns observed in his poem "To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough"

The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men
Gang aft agley,

or

The best laid schemes of mice and menGo often awry 

(and people told me my English Literature major was a waste).

 Andrew called me from the airport to tell me the plane would be a few hours late. Since Gartner's closes at 5:00 it meant I'd need to make two trips. No big deal; I have Fridays off now that I'm semi-retired and it was a nice warm day for a drive to the DES (Dreaded East Side). Oh, except it was Friday before a holiday weekend and there was road construction on one of the freeways resulting in backed up freeways all over town. A 45 minute drive out to Gartner's took two hours; followed by another hour back. And I had that trip to look forward to later that night when Henriët and Andrew arrived at 9:30. Oh well, it was an inconvenience but didn't rise to the level of  "grief and pain" Burns referred to. And the results of the two trips were well worth it; kids at home and good barbecue.

I rubbed the brisket with Meathead's Big Bad Beef Rub. My recipe showing ingredients and measurementgs is here.

Rub ingredients

It went on the smoker at 8:35 on Saturday night. A few laters I went out to check on it.

Brisket on the smoker for a few hours

Andrew caught me in action.

It finished in about 12 hours - much faster than I planned for. I separated the point from the flat, cut the point into chucks, dusted with more rub and put it back on the grill for an two and a half hours (one hour would have bee great).

Burnt ends. The real treat of brisket. Almost as good as bacon

I wrapped the flat in foil, and put in a Coleman cooler wrapped in towels where it stayed toasty warm for 4 hours.

The flat cut across the grain. Decent smoke ring.

Dinner is served. It tasted better than it looks here.

I used the Cook's Illustrated barbecue sauce recipe which is my go-to. Simply the best barbecue sauce I've had. I'm not bragging; credit goes to Cook's Illustrated, not me. 

Barbecue sauce ingredients

I smoked this on a Mak 2 Star Grill. If you'd like to see the details of the cook, check here. (10/5 corrected the link). 

Later in the afternoon the family arrived bringing side dishes and what-not. 

Andrew, Linda, and Sarah

It was a hot day so we jammed one table right next to the house to get some shade.

Sarah, Andrew, and Henriët. We are blessed to have these two wonderful women in our family.

 This picture captures a very rare image of Jeff in the wild.

Starr, Charlie, Jeff, and Jim

Tortilla Soup

Carla was recovering from feeling crummy and I wanted to make her some chicken soup. I've been collecting and reading tortilla soup recipes for a couple of years and have tried a couple.  I hadn't really been tickled by any so I thought to try tried and true Cook's Illustrated. It looked good and I knew that using my home made chicken stock would really enhance the flavor so I gave it a try.

My copy of the recipe can be found here. The original is here.

Ingredients minus chipotle chilis in adobo sauce and the chicken thighs.

The vegetables get cut up and split for two destinations before coming back together at the end. The tomatoes, 1/2 the onions, the chilis, and 1/2 the garlic will go into the food processor to be pureed.

Fresh vegetables 

The other half the onion and onion, along with the oregano and cilantro head into a pot to simmer with the chicken in home made chicken stock. 

Simmer the chicken thighs, onion, cilantro, oregano, and garlic in home made chicken stock.

We'll take out the chicken to shred and discard the rest of the solids. Meanwhile, we cook the moisture out of the pureed vegetables before adding to the broth.

Pureed vegetables cook down for about 10 minutes

Add the chicken back to the broth and vegetable mixture. Serve over oven-fried tortilla strips and garnish with avocado, cheese, and lime.

Delicious

This was simply delicious. The only drawback is that there are no chunks of tomato and onion. Regardless, it's definitely a do over.

I now make my own chicken broth; it's easy and it's difficult to overstate what an improvement it makes to any dish calling for chicken stock. This link shows the Cook's Illustrated method where you brown the chicken and vegetables before cooking. I've gone to an even simpler and faster method as done by Dad Cooks Dinner. Seriously the recipe is about 3/4 of a sheet of paper with a picture and lots of white space.