What I Ate (and Will Eat) Wednesday

As I mentioned in this post (and this one), last night we made Chicken Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce.  It was so good and so easy I just had to share it with you.  Normally I think of pumpkin as a fall or winter vegetable but in this recipe it becomes more of a mole sauce (without the work!) which would taste great any time of year!

Warning: if you have a cat that is anything like Woods and loves chicken, be prepared for lots of meowing and leg rubbing while you shred the chicken.  I don't think Woods stopped talking for the entire 15 minutes it took me to shred the chicken even after I gave him a few pieces in the living room (where he gets all treats in a vain attempt to keep him from begging).  It was so funny; I really wish we would have gotten the whole thing on video!

Chicken Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce, taken from Martha Stewart's Kitchen Everyday Food cookbook

Ingredients:
1/2 roast chicken, skin removed and meat shredded
6 scallions, thinly sliced
Coarse salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree
4 garlic cloves, peeled
1 jalapeno chile, quartered--remove ribs and sees for less heat if desired.  I removed them because I am not a big fan of super spicy things but with the amount of pumpkin in the sauce, you could leave some or all of the ribs and seeds in.  We missed the heat!
1 teaspoon chili powder
8 corn tortillas (6 inch)
1 1/2 cups (6 ounces) grated sharp white Cheddar cheese

Kitchen Supplies:
Medium mixing bowl
Blender or food processor
Cutting board
2 quart baking dish
Sheet tray

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. In a medium bowl, combine the chicken and scallions.  Season generously with salt and pepper; set aside.

In a blender, puree the pumpkin, garlic, jalapeno, chili powder, 2 1/2 cups water, 2 teaspoons salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper until smooth.  Hold the top down firmly with one hand as the blender will be quite full.  Pour 1 cup of the sauce in the bottom of a 2 quart baking dish (square or rectangle).

Lay the tortillas on a work surface; mound the chicken mixture on half of each tortilla, dividing evenly.  Roll up each tortilla in a tight log; place seam side down over the sauce in the baking dish.  My logs didn't stay together very well but the pumpkin sauce and cheese cover all sorts of things.

Pour the remaining sauce on top; sprinkle with the cheese.  Place the dish on a baking sheet; bake until the cheese is golden and the sauce is bubbling, 25 to 30 minutes.  Ours took 30 minutes to get really bubbly and golden brown.  Let cool for 5 minutes before serving.

Serves: 4

According to the cookbook, this dish can be made up to 8 hours ahead of time.  Simply prepare as described above, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to bake.  Be sure to add a few minutes to the cooking time to account for the chilled dish.

This recipe was everything a weeknight dinner should be (in my book at least): quick, simple, cheap and tasty.  We will definitely be making this again soon.  As is our tradition, we had leftovers of this yummy dinner for lunch today, hence the What I Ate part of the post.





Now for the What I Will Eat part.  In yesterday's post, I mentioned that meal plans should be flexible.  Tonight's dinner is a perfect example of that.  We were planning on making shrimp and egg-knot soup tonight but J emailed me earlier today that he wanted to do something fun tonight.  All of the ingredients for the soup were freezer and pantry items that could keep for another week so we quickly devised a plan: 

Dinner at this local-food restaurant (which came recommended courtesy of Slow Food St. Louis) followed by a free night of jazz music at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.  We will have an appetizer and dinner at Brasserie before we feast on homemade chocolate and cheese danishes and wine at the Botanical Gardens.

Source: dressdesigndecor.blogspot.com via Kt on Pinterest

Want to know the very best part?  This whole night will be free!  You see, we are having dinner on my parents thanks to a generous anniversary gift they sent our way that has been burning a hole in our pockets sitting in our account for a while now.   THANKS MOM AND DAD!  The concert is free.  We had a bottle of Charles Shaw Pinot Grigio in our fridge and ingredients for the danishes in the pantry and freezer.  So we might have to pay for parking in the Central West End but I think I can handle that.  I can't wait!

What have you eaten this Wednesday?  What will you eat for dinner?  In my family, we always talk about what we are going to eat for our next meal while we are eating our current one, which goes a long way in explaining my love of meal planning and talking about food.  Happy Wednesday everyone!

Homemade Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread

As I alluded to in this post, I made cornbread for our Oscars Watch Party at this girl's house.  Since I had a bunch of cornmeal from back when I made French bread, I decided to make it from scratch and use up some of the large container in the process!

I scoured the internet for recipes using cornmeal and came across this one from Ina Garten.  She used yellow cornmeal and all I had was white cornmeal, but it turned out great regardless!  It does call for quite a bit of butter, but the results meant a very moist and tasty bread!  So much so that I didn't get any pictures of the final product before it was devoured.  Here's the recipe:

Homemade Jalapeno Cheddar Cornbread, taken from the Barefoot Contessa

Ingredients:
3 cups all purpose flour
1 cup yellow cornmeal (I used white)
1/4 cup granulated sugar
2 tablespoons baking powder
2 teaspoons kosher salt
2 cups milk
3 extra large eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 pound (2 sticks) of unsalted butter, melted--I told you it has a lot of butter!
1/3 cup chopped scallions, white and green parts (about 3 scallions), plus one more for garnish
1 seeded and minced jalapeno
8 ounces sharp cheddar cheese--I used a Mexican cheese blend from Trader Joe's, which was even better!


Kitchen Supplies:
Knife
Fork
Spoon
Cutting board
Two mixing bowls
9 x 13 glass pan--I used a 7 x 11 pan and then poured the additional batter into a 6 muffin tin
Toothpick

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease baking dish with butter, set aside.  In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking powder and salt.   In a separate bowl, combine melted butter, milk, and eggs.  Add wet ingredients to dry, mixing just until most of the lumps have dissolved.  Add 2 cups of cheddar cheese, scallions and jalapeno, mixing well.  Let sit on the counter for twenty minutes to combine.

Pour mixture into greased dish and sprinkle with remaining cheese and scallion.  Bake for 30 to 35 minutes (mine took 33 minutes) or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the dish comes out clean.  Cut into big squares and serve warm or at room temperature.

Serves: 6-8


I am not a big fan of spicy food and am notorious for touching my eyes and face after dealing with hot peppers--the first time J met my extended family, I had just touched my eye with jalapeno juice and it looked as if I had a black eye!  Therefore, I try to handle the pepper as little as possible when cutting it up.  Here's how I do it:  First, I cut the pepper in half.  Then working with one half at a time, I spear the narrow end with a fork so my hands never actually touch the pepper.  The fork acts as a hand to stabilize the pepper while you work.  I then use a spoon to scoop out the seeds and ribs before cutting the pepper into strips, stopping just before the fork (this way the fork holds the whole half together while you chop it into smaller pieces).  Eventually I am able to run my knife through the diced jalapenos and put them in the bowl using the back of my knife, all without actually touching it!

Have you ever made cornbread?  Do you have an aversion to peppers like I do?  Any tips for not getting hot pepper juices in my eye?  I'm all eyes ears!

Albondigas Mexican Soup

As I mentioned in this post, J and I spent Saturday morning watching Food Network.  Some of our favorite Food Network shows are in the line-up on Saturday mornings, including Secrets of a Restaurant Chef, Mexican Made Easy, Barefoot Contessa, and so forth.  We usually find inspiration for the week's menu from these shows and this week was no exception.  We watched as Marcela Valladolid made Albondigas Soup and decided to replicate her efforts last night.  The meal turned out great and is similar to a minestrone or Italian wedding soup, but with Mexican flavors.
Albondigas Mexican Soup, modified from Marcela Valladolid's recipe

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 of a yellow onion, chopped
1/3 cup long grain rice, uncooked
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
1 pound ground sirloin--we used ground round because we bought organic and it was a lot cheaper than the organic ground sirloin.  Since the meat would be combined with onions, cilantro, and rice and then boiled in the soup, it's okay if you use a cheaper (or leaner) ground meat.
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1 carrot, cut into rounds
1 serrano chile, whole
1 Yukon gold potato, cubed with skin on
2 tablespoons tomato paste
8 cups vegetable stock
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 large zucchini, cut into half moons
3 corn tortillas, cut into strips

Kitchen Supplies:
Large stock pot
Mixing bowl

In the bottom of your stock pot, heat oil over medium heat.  Add onions and saute for five minutes, until mostly translucent--do not brown as they are going to cook longer in the meatballs once you add them to the soup.  Remove onions and let cool slightly.  In a medium bowl, mix together onions, rice, cilantro, ground meat, salt and pepper.  Using wet hands, shape the meat mixture into approximately twenty 1-inch balls.

Combine carrots, chile, potato, tomato paste and vegetable stock in stock pot.  Bring to a boil then slide in the albondigas (meatballs) and zucchini into the pot.  Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for twenty minutes or until the meat is cooked through.  During the last five minutes of cooking time, add corn tortilla strips for added texture and flavor.   Serve.

Warning: you can eat the serrano pepper but it is very spicy so proceed with caution.  It gave J hiccups almost immediately and he loves spicy food!

Serves: 6 to 8 people

J and I had an interesting conversation about albondigas while we ate dinner last night. He suspected, and was later proved right with a little searching online, that albondiga was an Arabic word that became part of the Spanish language as many words that start with al- are. Many Arabic words entered the Spanish language when the Iberian penisula (modern day Spain) was conquered by Muslim Moors from North Africa in the 8th century.

This is a little off topic but since we are discussing Arabic based Spanish words, I thought I would share my favorite one with you: ojalá which means "hopefully" or more literally "May God (Allah in the original meaning) will it."

What's your favorite word in a foreign language, Spanish or otherwise?