It takes a Village

Oh man, I can't even stand to look at them...

I'm completely obsessed with this enchilada recipe.  I can't stop thinking of all the people for whom I can potentially make it, and all the occasions on which I could make it.  It is, in fact, the kind of caliber of recipe that one hides away and keeps secret and convientinetly forgets to copy for a friend or relation.  Why am I sharing it, then?  Firstly, because it's not my own invention, so I hardly have a patent.  Secondly, because it's so good I'm hoping you'll make them too so I can eat them MORE.

Also I have to admit: I'm a lifelong Texan (if you don't count the last three years), and I have eaten copious amounts of Mexican food in my life--Tex-mex, authentic, and New Mexico Mexican.  And I had no idea, until today, what was in Enchilada sauce.  *gasp*  I guess the canned stuff has always served us well enough...

I've been on the hunt for a good enchilada recipe for some time.  I had tried several, but they always left me feeling flat--like enchiladas were nothing special, or at least, that my homemade ones were not as good as the stuff from the frozen section (an all-time low in cooking!) Surely, I thought, the flavors ought to be more intense than this!  I didn't have much faith that the enchiladas I dreamed about would ever actually materialize, so when I saw Tex-Mex Cheese Enchiladas on the infamous (now not too trusted) list of Saveur 150 Classic Recipes, I wasn't banging down the doors to make them.

That was a mistake.  This recipe is gold, I tell you, gold.  I can now say that I make the best cheese enchiladas you will ever taste.  It took all my strength of will not to have the leftovers for midnight snack last night and breakfast the next morning.  I rashly promised my friends to bring them leftovers for lunch, a decision I regretted almost immediately: "but I want to eat the deliciousness!!!!"

What has become of me? I'm hoarding enchiladas!!!

I made them again a week later for a sick friend, and had to carry them around in my car most of the day.  The intoxicating smell hit me every time I opened the door--I might have swiped a taste or two on the drive.  But... but... I want to eat them!

Step one: boil chilies in stock until soft.

I have chili fear, just so you know.  I know what a jalapeno is, but that's about it, and anytime chilies pop up on recipes, I have anxiety.  What is that? What if I can't find it? What if it burns my mouth out!??!  Ancho chilies are dried anaheims--and I found them in the first supermarket I tried, so do not despair.

Oregano and cumin with a flour paste to thicken the sauce.

Enchiladas are labor-intensive.  The sauce itself takes about twenty minutes to make, and then you have the whole process of frying the tortillas, basting the tortillas, rolling the tortillas...  I found dealing with the corn tortillas the trickiest thing, as they have a nasty habit of shredding while you are trying to work with them.  Originally I turned and transfered them from one station to the next with a fork, but the pointy-ness of the instrument contributed to the torn tortillas.  So then I started working with a spoon instead--slightly more cumbersome, because the very edges that tear the tortillas are the edges that would also keep them in place, but I found this worked.  I also fried the tortillas for slightly longer than the directed five seconds, as the extra frying also made them less likely to tear. I'm interested to know if scilicone-tipped tongs would work better, although I sort of suspect not.  Even the spoon would tear a tortilla occasionally, unless it was held upside down (and then, of course, the tortilla would just slide off).

Okay, okay, so you're all waiting for it: here is the link.

Battle stations!!!

Fork and a torn tortilla.

Spoon and an in-tact tortilla.

Dipped in sauce. 

Filled with cheese!

Also, I love my job.  No, I don't really have a steady job.  But when I do get to work, I love it.  These are the girls I coached all year for a Pueri Cantores Festival that took place on Friday.  Their

enthusiasm is so energizing. 

The Love Feast

And the kitchen was filled with smoke. --Revelation 15:8

We DESTROYED the chicken pot pie.
So good.

Okay, so that's not an exact quotation from the Holy Writ, but when "my cup runneth over" in the form of delicious, decadent, chicken pot pie bubbling over in the oven, the result a few days later is a Very Smoky Oven.  My scraping the charred bits off of the bottom of the oven onto the floor helped a little, but not much.

Also, I seriously need a new baking sheet. This one (extremely cheap) has the nasty habit of warping an entire INCH suddenly and alarmingly in the oven with a loud BANG.  I've never had anything fly off the sheet, thankfully, but I shouldn't have to put up with the stress.

So you wouldn't thinking dating a man who can cook would be a problem, but honey, it can cause issues.  We discovered over a pot of soup--mostly to our amusement--that we can't really cook together, or if we do, one or the other must relinquish the role "top chef" and go meekly chop onions and do dishes and other menial tasks while their partner reigns supreme over the spices.  And then on Valentine's Day when we both want to cook...

I can't complain.  *lies on the couch and awaits gourmet Penne a la Vodka*

We decided that, with such an abundance of riches, we would take turns preparing the Valentine's Day feast.  I gave the man the day of (after all, he did buy me chocolates and roses and shaved right before coming over *sigh*), but a week later, it was MY turn.

I was short on ideas.  I cook all the time, so to make cooking romantic, it seemed, required a little extra effort.  A simple google search for "Romantic Dinner Ideas" and "Valentine's Day Dinners" turned up an endless parade of lobster tails, clams, oysters, lamb, and truffles.

I don't know what's up with the preference for seafood.  Maybe someday whilst living in the middle of a Very Large Land Mass and surrounded by PASTURES on every side, I'll learn how to cook lobster and oysters.  Maybe someday I'll be able to afford truffles, and maybe someday my Valentine will like lamb.  But come on people.  We can do better than this.  Thoroughly unsatisfied, I decided I must devise my own menu, and this is what I came up with:

Baked Cheese Dip with French Bread

Meatloaf

Rosemary Carrots and Potatoes

Strawberries and Whipped Cream

We'll be eating this bad boy for a few days.

I put it in italics to make it more romantic.  Because it's lent there's no real decked-out, chocolated-up, drenched-in-liquor dessert.  If you're not impressed by that menu, then you just have never had exemplary meatloaf.  Okay, so the potatoes are a bit of a filler.  But meatloaf is Serious Business.  It's also great because you probably have almost all the ingredients in your kitchen--last week's garlic focaccia (now rather dry and inedible) makes excellent breadcrumbs;  parsley left over from numerous recipes (still flourishing in a cup of water in the fridge from two weeks ago!)... seriously, all I had to buy for this was a pound of beef and a pound of pork--even the sausage I had already in the freezer.



You should never buy breadcrumbs, because they are the perfect way to use up old bits of bread.  A few pulses in the blender or food processor grinds them up nicely.  You should be warned, however, that bread will still go moldy unless all the moisture is dried out--like, all of it. Toast your bread on low in the oven to avoid The Moldy Breadcrumbs.

Perhaps I shouldn't mention the part where I set the meatloaf on fire.  No, I don't have a picture--when something in your house is on fire, do you stop and take a picture!? I thought it would be a brilliant idea to crisp the top of the meatloaf by broiling it.  HA!  So grease from the sausage (yummy, yummy sausage) had rendered from the meatloaf and CAUGHT ON FIRE when I broiled it.  Again, the kitchen was filled with smoke.  It sort of killed the romance, at least for a while, but The Wooed was a good sport about it.

Candles were on sale at Hobby Lobby.

This is my computer desk

converted into a banquet table. 

Romantic Meatloaf
1 lb ground beef (for this sort of thing I like the fattier stuff)
1 lb ground pork
1/4 lb country-style sausage, removed from casing
1 onion, diced
6 cloves garlic, diced or pressed through a garlic press
2 TBSP olive oil
2-3 slices bread, processed into crumbs
milk to soak the bread in, about 1/2 c
2 eggs
1 TBSP Worchestershire Sauce
1 TBSP apple cider vinegar
1 TBSP Dijon mustard
1/2 c brown sugar
1 bunch parsley
Salt and Pepper
Dash of hot sauce
1/2 c Ketchup

Cook the onions in the oil on low until clear and soft.  Add garlic and cook for a minute or two to take the raw edge off.  Meanwhile, soak the bread in the milk.  Stir together all ingredients except meats; add meat and work with your hands until just combined.  Cover a baking sheet with edges (the fat will run off in your oven otherwise) with foil and spray with cooking spray. Arrange the meat in a loaf shape on the pan and bake for 45-1 hour, or until a cooking thermometer inserted in the middle reads 160 degrees. 10 before you take the meatloaf out, drizzle ketchup over the top.

It is quite possible that only a music nerd would
 understand why this picture is so funny....