The Smells in My Kitchen

[Eaquae Legit]

I'm the same way. I use recipes but only very rarely do I stick to them. And a lot of the time I just make stuff up and then have to try to remember what I did. That's what's happening tonight.

2 packs store-made tortellini
some passata
some fresh basil
some chilli flakes(?)
a ball of buffalo mozzarella
a mittful of grated parmesan
some breadcrumbs (with a bit of oregano?)
a small batch of cream/alfredo sauce (see the other kitchen smells thread)
salt and pepper

Mixing the passata, cream sauce, mozzarella, basil, chillies, and tortellini in a casserole dish. Mixing the breadcrumbs and parmesan and oregano, then sprinkling on top. Baking until it browns and bubbles.

Success? Well, given the ingredients, I can at least say it will be edible. You can only go so far wrong, after all. But we will see.

[Eaquae Legit]

Turned out okay. Needed more parmesan in the cream sauce, and I think next time I'll skip the bread crumbs and go right for the cheese!

[steph]

I have pitas in the oven. They smell good, but didn't puff up. I hope they taste like they smell.

ETA: They don't taste all that great. I'm starting over with a different recipe.

[steph]

2nd try MUCH better. Dinner was yummy. Fresh, warm pitas stuffed with chicken salad and other fresh warm pitas smeared with some traditional and edamame hummus I picked up on sale today for a dollar each.

[LilBee91]

I made strawberry shortcake today! I used a lemon cake mix. It's pretty good, but I think I prefer white cake.

[steph]

Yum!

[LilBee91]

Apparently this a cooking weekend for me. My dinner:

I used frozen sausage, pancake mix, and instant hashbrowns, so nothing was technically my creation. But I did use three different skillets, which was intense.

[Gravity Defier]

Brinner! It's the best.

(And hey, you've been posting a lot more. I love this very much.)

[Claire]

Making Ina Garten's honey vanilla pound cake! Its in the oven now. Excited to taste it!

[Mich]

Brinner! It's the best.

Is it weird that I read that as "Brinner! It's the brest."

It made more sense that way.

[VelvetElvis]

My kitchen smells AWFUL right now. I made a marinade to go on my hawaiian-style kabobs for the birthday luau which has raspberry jam, worcestershire sauce, ginger, and garlic. New recipe. Wish me luck.

[Jayelle]

Not so much a smell, but we made our own salt from boiling down sea water! It was pretty fun.

[steph]

I want some homemade sea salt! Too bad the sea is very far away, seeing as I live on the continental divide. Maybe when we're in Utah next time, I can bring home some salt water.

Helen, how did the kabobs turn out?

[Jayelle]

I was about to say that I'll send some to you, but then I realized that a baggie full of white crystals probably would not clear customs, and would probably not end well for either of us.

[steph]

I was about to say that I'll send some to you, but then I realized that a baggie full of white crystals probably would not clear customs, and would probably not end well for either of us.

Hahaha!!!

[LilBee91]

My dinner Sunday night:

It was my first enchilada attempt completely on my own, and it was delicious. I think next time I'm going to experiment with a green sauce (most likely from a can). Red sauce is great and all, but it's not the best. And then white enchiladas. Mmmm.

[Luet]

My favorite is mole! But I'm too lazy to do it from scratch and I don't know of a good canned/jarred version, so I'm stuck with eating it at restaurants rarely.

[VelvetElvis]

The kabons were fabulous! I tried to get a photo, but they were gone too fast.

[Gravity Defier]

green sauce (most likely from a can)...Red sauce...white enchiladas

Color me confused! Not that I'm questioning the existence of such things but in my family, there are red (chile) enchiladas and green (chile) enchiladas, the latter being white-ish in color; we call them red and chicken enchiladas, respectively.


The green chile can be canned, that's definitely easiest, but we get ours roasted, in a gunny sack and spend the day peeling them and then freezing them for use throughout the year.


Chicken Enchilada Sauce
1 can cream of chicken soup 10.5 oz
1 can cream of mushroom soup 10.5 oz
milk
green chile - chopped
onion - chopped (regular, not green)
garlic

Empty soups into a pot. Fill each soup can 3/4 full of milk; pour milk into the pot. Add green chile, onion, and garlic to mixture. Heat, then simmer.

Chicken Enchiladas
Ingredients:

Sauce
Tortillas
Cheese
Chicken - cooked and shredded

Heat oil in a skillet. Fry tortilla about 20 seconds or until soft. Layer in casserole dish and cover with a layer of sauce. Sprinkle chicken and cheese over the sauce. Repeat for desired number of layers, omitting chicken on the last layer. Cook in oven at 350 for 20-30 minutes.



For red enchiladas, we use:



as the base for the "sauce."

Depending on how much you want to make, take 3-6 chiles, cut off the stem and de-seed them, soak them in hot water until soft, blend, then drain so that the thickest parts and leftover seeds are left out. Heat the thinner part in a pan and add seasoning to taste (garlic, onion powder, and salt are what we use)

Heat oil in a skillet. Fry tortilla about 20 seconds or until soft.

Now here is the thing about enchiladas in my family; we serve ours New Mexico style, so even if we're not making casseroles, just doing it single serve, it's never rolled like a taquito, it's layered flat.

After you fry the tortilla, dip it in the red chile, then put it on a plate OR layer it in the casserole dish; in either event, after each layer, sprinkle cheese and onions. If you're making a casserole, you'll likewise want to give it a little bit of a bake after it's all layered.

I should also note, with red enchiladas, people who don't grow up with them made that way may find homemade sauce less flavorful than canned stuff. Personally, I like either but enjoy the heat packed into homemade stuff and don't find it bland at all.

[locke]

My mom makes chicken enchiladas like Alea does. I will no longer feel quite so redneck making it in california in layers rather than rolled up.

The only thing she doesn't do is fry the tortilla first. And she tears them into strips to cover the entire pyrex, do you leave them in rounds and stack them?

[Gravity Defier]

I will no longer feel quite so redneck making it in california in layers rather than rolled up.

I had never even seen them rolled until...high school? And then I associated it with cheap Tex-Mex microwave dinners we walked past in grocery stores. With that said, I don't want to call it wrong to do that, it's just different than what I grew up with and even amongst Hispanics who make them, you'll find the majority roll them unless they have origins in New Mexico.

do you leave them in rounds and stack them?

Yeah. To help fill the gaps (which aren't that large, as there's a lot of overlap in smaller dishes and some minor overlap in larger ones), I'll cut the tortilla in half and place it over the gap.

[ender1]

Never seen them layered before all the mexican places in NorCal I've been to rolled them

[Luet]

Never seen them layered before all the mexican places in NorCal I've been to rolled them

In NY as well. But she did say it was a NM variation.

[Gravity Defier]

Exactly. It was more a comment on how weird my experience probably is than how weird the act of cooking/eating it rolled is.


My mom is actually from CA, so she learned, very early into her marriage with my dad, how to cook with a more NM bent. Quite a few of her recipes, that we still use to the exclusion of anything else, are things she picked up from my paternal grandmother and those were things she had been doing at least since my dad was a little person.


I'm really not some sort of Mexican food snob; I'll eat Taco Bell/Del Taco and restaurant food, and it's all at least a little different from home cooked but it's all pretty tasty in its own way.

[buckshot]

Our kitchen, hell the whole house smells of huckleberrys!

[LilBee91]

green sauce (most likely from a can)...Red sauce...white enchiladas

Color me confused! Not that I'm questioning the existence of such things but in my family, there are red (chile) enchiladas and green (chile) enchiladas, the latter being white-ish in color; we call them red and chicken enchiladas, respectively.

I define the red as the type my mom makes with tomato sauce (or mole at restaurants). White has cream of chicken. And green is whatever delicious concoction I've had at some restaurants that appears to be none of the above and absolutely delicious.

[Luet]

All of the mole I have ever had is brown. It has lots of spices in it and also has some chocolate! Spicy and sweet and delicious. I've never had white enchiladas. Only red, green and mole.

[steph]

Birthday Cake.

Brian's birthday is on Friday. He wants to take a cake into work (to show off a little to his new team) and he doesn't work on Friday, so I made it today to be ready to take in the morning.

[LilBee91]

I stamp-of-approval this. How are you so skilled? Is the grass just frosting? How did you get it look like that?

*blown away*

[steph]

Thanks! I learned some basic cake decorating skills when I was a teenager and since then, I've just played around.

The grass is frosting, 3 different colors of green. I poked holes with a pin in my disposable piping bags. (Actually, for the darkest green, I was out of those, so I just used a ziplock bag.) Then I squeezed it out into little tufts.

The mountain is brownie baked in my pandoro pan (with a hole carved into it for Lego Brian to cave in). The boulders are chocolate marshmallow fondant. The cake base is yellow cake. The lake is frosting with sprinkles.

It was fun to make!

[Jayelle]

The direction of this thread recently has led me to believe that I don't think I've ever had proper enchiladas.

I hope it's part of the kitchen challenge (when that starts up!).

[Gravity Defier]

I can't believe I forgot to say something about that cake. It hit me shortly after I got to work that I hadn't and I know I already told you this elsewhere but Steph, your cake looks awesome. Between the pirate one last year and this one, I'm in awe of your talents.


Also, I'm all sorts of curious about Shannon's enchiladas, so if those got put in the cooking challenge, I'd probably try very hard to participate in that round.

[Eaquae Legit]

Right now it's bread in the breadmaker, but I sorta put the ingredients in the wrong order, so hopefully it will still turn out.

[Eaquae Legit]

The bread turned out alright, but I had to go and make sure it was fully mixed by hand. And then I forgot to turn the machine back on. Somehow it worked?

Right now, it's Smitten Kitchen's cinnamon buns, which I've been meaning to make for ages and ages, but find incredibly time-consuming. Earlier, it was another sweet potato tempura event, which smoked up the kitchen something awful. I was terrified it would set the fire alarm off, but no such bad luck.

[LilBee91]

Right now, it's Smitten Kitchen's cinnamon buns

I'm planning on making those tomorrow. Any words of wisdom, or are her descriptions good enough?