Cheesy Enchiladas with Tomatillo sauce

It all started when I was grocery shopping at Smart and Final, looking for a deal on Thanksgiving turkey, and found Queso Fresco Cacique for $1.28. Its a Mexican cheese made from milk that comes in a little round wheel. Its semi-firm so you can slice it or crumble it up. I figured it would be the start of a nice cheese enchilada or some stuffed chili peppers. I think I have a few peppers of some kind in the frig that had come in our SLO Veg box last week. I will have to look up their website to see exactly what kind of peppers they are. Ah, here is is: http://www.sloveg.com/eathealthy.cfm
"Fruit, Vegetable, Herb, and Juice List for 11/04/2013 - 11/08/2013 THIS WEEK'S TOTE INCLUDES:
New Specialty Item ~ 'Organic" Watercress, Red Leaf Lettuce, "Organic" Carrots, "Organic" Oregano, Golden Beets, Vine Ripened Tomatoes, Brussels Sprouts, Blue Lake Green Beans, Shanghai Bok Choy, Broccoli Crowns, Red Bell Peppers, Anaheim Peppers, Haas Avocado's, Sweet Oro Blanco Grapefruit, Black Beauty or Crimson Red Grapes"

I didn't find turkeys on sale yet at the first store, so I ended up at Food 4 Less, picking up some celery and carrots and potatoes to have on hand for our upcoming feast. I know its a little early, but those vegies keep for quite a while so I think I am okay. If I use up the potatoes in the next two weeks, I can always get some more. I am sure they will be giving them away in another week.

Anyway, back to the cheese. I wanted a green enchilada sauce for them. Tomatillo sauce, particularly. I almost bought some at the store, but then I saw the tomatillos! They were a bargain price of $1.38/lb. It was mid-afternoon, but I was sure I could make some fresh tomatillo sauce for the enchiladas by dinner time. When I got home I brought in my groceries and googled a recipe. This one from Melissa D'Arabian on the Food Network looked perfect!
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/tomatillo-sauce-recipe/index.html

Quite possibly the most delicious sauce in the whole wide world is a fresh tomatillo green sauce made with roasted tomatillos, garlic, onions and peppers. Its a super simple sauce as well. I put a whole head of garlic and a quartered peeled onion on a baking sheet, along with four Anaheim green peppers and about a dozen tomatillos, husks off. I popped it into a 400° oven and forgot about it for 30 minutes while I prepared my rice pilaf, carrots and broccoli, and rolled up the cheese enchiladas. I had picked up one of those roasted whole chickens at the store as well, so this dinner was pulling together.

The tomatillos went right into the blender, followed by the other vegies after I had skinned them. The garlic was so done it just squeezed out of the pods like a paste. It all got pureed and seasoned with salt, pepper and lime juice. That's it! I gave Lee a spoonful to taste when he walked in the door. Oh yeah!

I had a pint jar of sauce left after I smothered the enchiladas in it

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Tomatillo Sauce

Ingredients

1 pound tomatillos, husked and rinsed
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1 Anaheim chile, seeded, deveined
1 white onion, quartered
*1/2 jalapeno chile, seeded, deveined
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 teaspoons salt, plus more for sprinkling
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more for sprinkling
Juice from 1/2 lime

Directions

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place the tomatillos, garlic, Anaheim chile, onions and jalapeno on a baking sheet. Toss the vegetables with the oil, salt and pepper. Roast the vegetables until the tomatillos turn a dark-green color and the onions golden brown, about 30 minutes.

Let the vegetables cool slightly. Peel the garlic and transfer all the ingredients to a blender. Blend until smooth, about 1 minute. Add the lime juice and sprinkle with more salt and pepper.

The tomatillo sauce can be made 1 day ahead, covered and chilled.

*Note: I didn't have a jalapeno pepper to put into the sauce today, and I think I prefer it without it. Super mild green sauce this way.

Dinner included cheese enchiladas with tomatillo sauce, rice pilaf, roasted chicken and steamed broccoli and carrots.

Asian Red Cabbage Coleslaw

Asian Red Cabbage Slaw: The final product ready for transporting to the barbecue.

I am seeing red this morning: red cabbage, red onion, red mixing bowl, red chopping board...all because I am making a cabbage slaw to take to a Memorial weekend barbecue.

Red cabbage came in our weekly delivery from SLO Veg and it was one huge head of cabbage! I opted to use red instead of green because I thought it would look more American. I should note here that the red cabbage and red onion are actually a shade of purple Sigh! I perused the Pinterest and found several variations, but the Asian version sounded just perfect to accompany the barbecue host's pork loin roast. I was actually going to host the barbecue, but then I got a better offer. I am no dummy. I also opted to make a batch of baked beans, al la Pioneer Woman style, but that is for another blog entry.

Anyway, back to the slaw: I had red cabbage, red onion, green onions, shredded carrots and that fennel bulb that I had been carving on for several days. Fennel is a pretty strong flavor, and a little can go a long way. But chopped up in a slaw would give it a nice fresh, interesting punch, I thought.

I began by assembling all the vegetables and the dressing ingredients. I had rice vinegar, lime juice, sesame oil, sugar, soy sauce, coriander seeds and ground ginger. In a perfect world I would have fresh ginger and cilantro leaves, but this was the best I could do today. Besides, I get to use my mortar and pestle to smash the coriander seeds, so that would be fun. Oh holy senses, Batman, was it ever fragrant, too! 

I peeled off the outermost leaves of the cabbage and then proceeded to halve it with my Cutco santuko knife. Cutco offers two lengths and we got the shorter knife, but now I was wishing for the longer one because this one didn't reach all the way through this huge head of cabbage. (Birthday present hint!) I ended up taking out my old Viking butcher knife and finishing the job. Then I used the santuko to carefully slice a half head of cabbage, split into smaller wedges, into slaw. I got to use my big red Tupperware bowl, the one that comes out on holidays when preparing large batches of salads, whether it be green, red, potato, macaroni or pasta. Back in the day, I would bring my salad in that bowl and serve out of it, because we might have a crowd of 50-60 relatives to feed. But today we were going to a much smaller gathering, and I just needed to mixed my slaw without dumping it all over the countertop and then I put it into a smaller container for transporting. 

Next I mixed up the dressing: 3 tablespoons of rice vinegar, 1 tablespoon of soy sauce, 1 teaspoon of sesame oil and lime juice, 2 teaspoons white sugar, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger and 1 teaspoon of coriander seeds, smashed. I mixed this up, then added a bit more soy sauce and sugar, so probably 2 tablespoons soy sauce and 4 teaspoons sugar, total. I stirred it all up and poured it over the cabbage mixture, then sprinkled on some coarse salt and fresh ground black pepper and stirred it all up. The red bowl really was handy!

I think the salad turned out to be light, refreshing and pretty! I can't wait for dinner time!

ASIAN RED CABBAGE COLESLAW

Dressing:

3 Tbs rice vinegar,

2 Tbs soy sauce

1 tsp sesame oil

1 tsp lime juice

4 tsp white sugar

1/2 tsp ground ginger (fresh grated ginger would be nicer)

1 tsp coriander seeds, smashed (fresh cilantro would be nice, too)

Slaw:

1/2 large head red cabbage, sliced

1/2 large red onion, chopped

2 green onions, diced

1/2 c carrots, shredded

1/4 c fennel, sliced and diced

Prepare vegetables and put into a large mixing bowl. Mix together dressing ingredients and pour over vegetables. Stir well and season with salt and pepper. Refrigerate until serving time. 

Makes about 12-15 servings

Salsa Beans with Bell Peppers and Anaheim Chilies

We're having a big family potluck barbecue this weekend and I volunteered to make a batch of beans for the barbecue. It's pretty common our area to serve Santa Maria-style barbecued beef tri-tip, pinquito chili beans, and garlic french bread at a barbecue. You just can't beat good beef tri-tip cooked slow over an oak barbecue pit. 

One of my brothers-in-law, Don, used to make a good salsa bean recipe using Sun Vista canned pinto beans, Ortega tomato salsa and Italian stewed tomatoes. He was very brand-specific. He would add browned hamburger with onions and green bell peppers. He used a special seasoning salt blend that a friend of his concocted, and we always kept a supply of "Fiscalini's seasoning" on hand and used it for everything. Its kind of like Lawry's, but with more salt, pepper and granulated garlic.

Another brother-in-law, Gary, made the traditional Santa Maria-style pinqinto beans, using the small pintos, but that was a whole other batch of beans. He used dried pinquitos to start with, and it was an all day affair. http://americanfood.about.com/od/saladsandsidedishes/r/Santa_Maria_Beans.htm

I use to make my own version of the first kind of salsa chili beans in large quantities for all our family barbecues when my kids were growing up, but nowadays the dynamics of the family have changed and we don't have big family barbecues every weekend like we use too. The trick is, when making beans for a crowd they can't be too hot, but they need to have flavor. When I make beans these days, I can make smaller batches and experiment a lot.

I prefer making chili with black beans, because they have more fiber and I like the taste better than pinto beans. I will mix some black beans in with the pintos for this batch, mostly for color. Also, I recently acquired another local rancher's seasoning blend (Perozzi family), which is similar to Santa Maria-style seasoning, but a little heavier on the pepper and garlic. So this weekend I am going to make a batch of salsa beans, sans hamburger meat, and heavy on the onions and bell peppers, for our family picnic. I want to keep it vegetarian for the non-meat eaters in our clan. My audacious barbecue-master brother will be barbecuing enough beef and chicken to satisfy the meat lovers. He is barbecuing a whole top block, or "sirloin", for the big day, along with his specialty chicken thighs.

Anyway, I got my basic ingredients: Ranch-style pinto beans, black beans, and salsa. It's not Ortega salsa, but I couldn't find any of that. I don't have any Italian stewed tomatoes, either, so I plan to add a can of diced tomatoes and a big pinch of dried Italian seasoning. I began by dicing an onion and a bell pepper. I first tasted, then chopped up one of the other peppers that came in our SLO Veg box this week. I am not sure what kind of pepper it is, but its not a jalapeno or a serrano or a Fresno chili. I got a few of those, also, but they are not for this batch of beans. I think the ones I used are just called green chili peppers, or Anaheim chilies. Pretty mild, like the diced Ortega chilies in a can, which is what I used when I don't have fresh chilies. http://phoenix.about.com/od/foodanddrink/ss/chilepepper_8.htm?utm_term=types%20of%20green%20peppers&utm_content=p1-main-3-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=msn&utm_campaign=adid-5f316501-8c25-43a5-8e64-299d7923322f-0-ab_msb_ocode-5995

I pre-fried the onions and peppers until they were soft and slightly browned to bring out a lot of flavors. Then I simply open my cans of beans, drained off some of the liquid, and pour them into the crock pot. I will add diced tomatoes, some salsa and a tablespoon of tomato paste and stir it all together and let it cook low and slow until it is time to eat. Everyone always like these beans, and it can't get much easier.

My recipe is:

1 yellow onion, diced

1 Anaheim green chilies, diced

1 green bell pepper

2 cloves garlic, minced

1 gallon pinto beans, UN-drained

(I used ranch-style today, because I like their sauce)

1 28-oz can black beans, drained

1 cup canned salsa

1 15-oz can diced tomatoes

1 tablespoon dried Italian seasoning

1 teaspoon chili powder

1-2 teaspoons seasoning blend (I used Perozzi's private blend. You can use Lawry's  or Santa Maria-style seasoning)

Empty crock? Does that mean they liked it???