Enchilada sauce adventures!

Let’s face it, life is busy! And because of it I’ve been spending a lot of time and money on convenience food and take-out meals recently to feed my family. It’s not only expensive, but it’s also a lot of frankenfood I am not exactly proud to put on my table. So to combat this issue I’ve turned to freezer meals as a simple solution to get real food on the table on nights that are too busy to cook. Recently I’ve made 10 pans of lasagna, and today made 10 pans of cheese enchiladas with brown rice. I was surprised by the sheer mass of food it takes to fill 10 pans of food! Huge portions of onions, 4 of cheese and an entire bag of Costco tortillas, but what amazed me the most was how inexpensive it was to make my own enchilada sauce. While calculating the cost of each unit of enchiladas I decided it was not economical to buy pre-made sauce. It would raise my cost per pan by more then I was willing to pay, and included more artificial ingredients then I was willing to eat. Instead I made this simple enchilada sauce below that I ended up very pleased with. Keep in mind this makes a lot of sauce! It will make about 6qts of sauce, but this sauce freezes well, or you can make 10 pans of enchiladas and still have about 16 oz. of sauce left over for another meal as you can see below.

It starts with a puree of chilies. The pepper used here is Chili Negro and can be found in most supermarkets, or Hispanic markets.  

1 table spoon olive oil
2 large white onion
4 gloves garlic
2 bags chili negro
2 cups water

In a large Dutch oven add olive oil and onions; cook until onions are slightly translucent. Add garlic and continue to cook. Seed chilies and put into pot. Add hot water and cook until chilies are soft and re hydrated.

After chilies are cooled pour into blender and blend until smooth.

To make the rest of the sauce:

Chile paste above
2 large cans tomato sauce
1 large tomato can filled with water
1 cup vinegar
1 tsp Mexican oregano
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp salt
1 tbsp California chili powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Simmer until flavors are well combined.

This sauce was rich and dark. The pepper adds an almost raisin flavor with a slight sweetness and a mild heat. The seasoning adds earthiness and the tomato and vinegar add bright slightly tart vibrancy. I’m really pleased with this sauce and will use it again and again. The best part of it is though is the price! My sauce works out to be about 0.02 cents an ounce, whereas this Old El Paso sauce is .13 cents an ounce if purchased at amazon. It might not seem like a lot of savings when looking at it oz by oz but when you make 192oz of sauce this is $24.96 vs $4.41 (not including shipping of 12.57) and this is where our savings are! We are talking just a hair shy of 25.00 on savings just by making our own sauce- and the best part is, it tastes better!

I hope you enjoy. If you end up making your own sauce I would love to hear about it. Drop me a line and let me know.

One Tamale, Two Tamale, Three Tamale Four!

I love a good tamale, I always have and I always will, but after becoming a vegetarian about 9 years ago I’ve been in search of good tamales and am always left wanting. Everyone seems to think vegetarians want spinach and feta in their tamales and I for one do not! If I wanted spinach and feta, I would be eating Greek food, not tamales. So today after finding a little impromptu kitchen inspiration, I made my own! I have to admit it took a while, and required a lot of different kitchen appliances, so I’m glad I made enough to freeze for later.  I also have to confess I don’t stock corn husks in my pantry, so I used parchment papers taken out in 4 inch sheets and cut in half.  

The filling was Tillamook Mexican cheese blend, and a  cilantro pesto I made for a cooking contest to go on something else, but after tasting it I knew it was meant to be in tamales!

Cilantro pesto:

1 tablespoon olive oil
¼ cup pumpkin seeds
3 cloves garlic
½ to 1 jalapeno (some like it hot!)
1 ½ cup cilantro
Juice of 1 lime
1 tsp lime zest
1 tsp salt
Enough water to blend smooth (1-2 tablespoons)

Give this a whirl in the blender until it’s a smooth green spread like pesto.

After making the pesto, I adapted a recipe off of the side of my Masa bag- it was pretty easy to make, no more difficult than whipping up a batch of brownies.

Basic tamale recipe:

2 Cups Masa Harina
1/2 Cup Organic vegetable shortening
1 Cup Lukewarm vegetable stock
1 Cup Lukewarm Water
1 Tsp Baking powder
1 Tsp salt
More water if needed to make tamale dough thin.

I mixed all the ingredients together with my stand mixer (I’ve used hand mixers, and just my hands too. Both of these methods work fine.) Because the vegetarian filling doesn’t hold the same bulk as a meat tamale I like to make my tamale dough a lot thinner so that it doesn’t end up overwhelming the filling. This is a problem I’ve come across many times.

Get your steamer basket or rice cooker going, and start an assembly line to make your tamales. I like mine to go Wrappers, Dough, Pesto, 2 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend, bowl to put finished product in.

Spread 1 heaping tablespoon of dough onto wrapper and spread thin leaving about 1/4 an inch top and bottom. Spread 1 tablespoon of pesto on dough, and sprinkle on about a tablespoon of cheese. Fold in the center of the tamale and then fold top and bottom up. Set in bowl sitting slightly upright.

Repeat

Repeat

Repeat

As you can see this is what makes this recipe time consuming.

Steam each batch of tamales for 10-15 minutes until tamales are done. The dough will still be soft when you take them out, and will harden up when they are cooled. If you are using parchment paper, they will stick some to the wet paper, so as soon as they are firm peel the parchment away.

Sorry for the lack of photos. I wasn’t planning on blogging about this because it’s a little more complicated than the simple food I normally make. But this was too good not to share. If nothing else hopefully you make some cilantro pesto to thrill your taste buds!