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Nopales Enchilada with Tomatillo Sauce
This was an amazing meal! I bought nopales at the grocery store—the flat piece of a prickly pear cactus—already dethorned and sliced into strips. All I had to do was cook and eat them. I parboiled them in a pan with an inch or so of water, then put them aside until the tomatillo sauce was ready and I could assemble the enchiladas.
The sauce is amazing. Take 10 or so fresh tomatillos, 2-4 jalapeno or serrano peppers, and put them into an oven-proof skillet. Put them under the broiler until they are blackened, like in my picture above. Then run them through the blender and liquify them. Pour into a pot with 4-6 cups of vegetable broth, bring to a boil, add salt to taste, and it is ready.
Dip 1 or 2 corn tortillas at a time into the hot tomatillo sauce and leave for 20-30 seconds. Pull out and lay on a plate, fill with nopales and mushrooms (or whatever you like), roll and smother in Tomatillo Sauce.
I like to put fresh cilantro on top, too. Yummy!!
Making hash browns and french fries without using oil is not something that I learned to do when I was learning to cook as a child. But who wants all of those empty calories or that oily sheen on everything? Not me!
I have always made hash browns by putting them in a hot frying pan with about 1/3-1/2 cup of water and then cooking them on medium for about 10 minutes on each side. But there was a discussion on the McDougall boards a couple of months ago about how to cook hash browns without oil and someone said that Mary McDougall cooked hers dry, so, I tried it this week. It works great! It wasn’t quite as crunchy on the outside, but I am going to try it again a couple of times to see if I can get it just right. These are the pictures of the hash browns. I usually cook these in my cast iron pan and do not have any problems with them sticking, but I used a non-stick pan for the ones in the picture. I do not use oil to cook in the cast iron pan, but I do wipe it with a paper towel with a teaspoon or so of oil on it after I clean it to keep it seasoned. I wipe it until there is no visible oil in the pan.
The other picture is of the baked french fry wedges that my teenagers and I love. We just wedge clean potatoes, these are red potatoes, sprinkle on salt or whatever we are in the mood for, and bake on 400 until they look like the ones in the picture. The blue mat that you see under the potato wedges is a silicon bake mat. It keeps everything from sticking. I used to use parchment paper to keep all of my no-oil foods from sticking, but I hated to go through so much of something that I couldn’t reuse. The silicon mat works great. They are pretty expensive, though. I bought mine for about $5 several years ago when the local Albertson’s grocery store went out of business. I honestly didn’t know what I was buying, just that it was 75% off. I wish I had gotten a couple of more.
Leftovers for lunch—still tastes good! Bean soup over cornbread.
I wanted to show people how I cook and store my beans and rice. I put the rice into Mason jars and the beans are in the containers they came in from Whole Foods. I don’t have enough jars yet for everything, but it is a good start. I cook a lot in my pressure cooker and use my rice cooker several times each week. They are both quick and easy. Tonight’s dinner is going to be beans over red cargo rice with cornbread on the side. You can see the beans in the pressure cooker and the red cargo rice in the rice cooker.
Split Pea Soup
Today the weather actually got cold—it was 25F when I woke up around 8:30 this morning. Very nice! So I pulled out the cold weather food, finally. Tonight we ate split pea soup with toasted ciabatta bread. It was just the thing to warm everyone up.
Here is the recipe:
1 pound of dried split green peas
8 cups of water
3 vegetable bouillon cubes
1 bay leaf
1 large onion, diced
1 or 2 carrots sliced into rounds
1 spoonful of diced garlic (I use the kind in a jar)
Put everything into a pressure cooker, bring to pressure, and cook for 10 minutes. Or use a pot on the stove top and cook for 1 hour. A crock pot will work too, but cook for 2-3 hours on high. (Every crock pot is different, so you will need to check on occasion to see how it is doing. My old one would have cooked all day on low and the beans would have been perfect, but my new one would have boiled off the water and ruined the dinner if I cooked it for that long on low.)
After the beans are done and soft, add 1/8 teaspoon liquid smoke for that ham flavor. Salt and pepper to taste and then serve.
Keep warm!
Mmmmm—breakfast! Or brunch. I got up late this morning and decided to have leftovers from last night. I cut up cold, boiled red potatoes, a few white button mushrooms, and added sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Cooked until hot in about 1/3 cup water. I did throw a few shredded parsley leaves on top to make it look better.
Last month I signed up for Foodie Pen Pals, a food box swap, through Lindsay at The Lean Green Bean. Each person who signs up gets assigned to send a box of foodie items to another person. The items should cost no more than $15 and can include homemade things, gourmet, or just great local stuff. I sent mine to Emily in Seattle and received a terrific box from Alli in Seattle. Turns out they are neighbors and collaborated on my box. No wonder it was so good!
The first picture shows everything laid out in front of the box. The first item was Strawberry Pepper jam that Alli got at the Market in Seattle. We cut slices of fresh baguette and ate the entire jar! This jam is one of my top two now—so good. Thanks, Alli!
I got several bags of Cinnamon Orange Tea, also from the Market. I have not tried these yet, but have them at work to try, well, if the weather ever cools down. She included honey stir sticks to go with the tea; I just love honey.
My family and I love this next item, Space Noodles. The pasta shapes are just like the Space Needle in Seattle! It isn’t just pretty to look at, it tasted good with homemade marinara sauce on top.
If you are interested in joining the Foodie Swap for January, go to The Lean Green Bean and sign up.
My teenagers and I enjoyed the anticipation of receiving the box. The oldest is getting ready to head off to college soon and is saying that we need to get her on the list for a box.
The best part of the Foodie Box was the postcard of Seattle featuring the Space Needle. What a beautiful city!
Have a great weekend, everyone!
