Tomatillo & Chile Sauced Vegetarian Enchiladas - Daring Cooks May '10

Years ago I would have said Mexican food was when you bought a box of hard taco shells from the grocery store and filled them with ground beef that had been cooked with a packet of Taco Seasoning Mix and garnished with a squirt of Taco Sauce from a plastic bottle. As a kid, I really liked it, but obviously I was missing an entire country's worth of flavor, products and culture.

Tomatillo and Chile Sauced
(Hand-made Corn Tortilla)
Enchiladas with Mushroom & Spinach

Our hosts this month for Daring Cooks, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food, have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

I opted for a vegetarian recipe and my inspiration came from Everyday Mexican by Rick Bayless (a wonderful and simple to follow cookbook). I added a few tweaks, including the roasted Anaheim Chiles that gave the sauce little nibblets to chew.

It will not surprise anyone, who has read my posts, that I am a huge Rick Bayless fan (as raved about here), so this month's challenge was a regalo del cielo.

The first prep I did was to char-roast a few Anaheim peppers. It was too breezy to strike up the grill, but one of my favorite little cooking devices is this inside top-of-stove grill rack.
You could also use the oven on 400F, or a cooks torch (if you're very familiar with its use.) It's important to cook til the skin is completely black for optimum flavor, I find. When completely charred, remove from heat and quickly wrap in plastic wrap and set aside for a few minutes. The steaming inside the plastic helps make the cooked skins peel off so easily. When ready to continue, unwrap, split in half and remove core, seeds and stem.
Then peel, or use knife to help scrape, skin from the outside. Please resist washing the pepper as you'll wash away the very smokey flavor you just created. Slice the pepper and chop into medium pieces and hold for further use.

The next prep was to husk and chop the fresh green Tomatillo~

RECIPE: Tomatillo-Sauced Enchiladas with Spinach and Mushrooms - adapted and tweaked from Rick Bayless


Grilled (or oven roast at 450F, or stove top grill) 3 Anaheim peppers - seed, peel and chopped

SAUCE:
4 garlic cloves - peeled
6 med. tomatillos - shucked and cut in half
1 Jalapeno pepper
1 Serano pepper
1 cup Fresh Cilantro - chopped large

1 Tbls. oil,
2 cups Veggie (or chicken) stock


In a blender, puree: garlic, tomatillos, peppers and cilantro.
In a saucepan, heat: oil, then add puree and cook til smooth and thick (about 5-7 minutes)
Add the stock and simmer for 10 Minutes, stirring.
Hold and keep warm while prepping filling (or you can refrigerate and reheat later).

FILLING:
1 cup sliced mushrooms (bella, shitake, etc)
1 red onion, thinly sliced
6-8 oz. fresh baby spinach
1-2 Tbls. oil
salt/pepper

8 Corn Tortillas
3 Tbls. Sour Cream
1 cup crumbled Queso Fresco (or other Mexican cheese, goat cheese, or feta)

In a large skillet, heat the oil on Med-High. Add the mushrooms, cook til browned, and add the onions (holding out a few for garnish). Continue cooking til onions are soft. Add the spinach and stir often as the leaves wilt - about a minute or so. Season with salt/pepper, cover and remove from heat.

In the saucepan with the Enchilada sauce, add most of the chopped chiles (keeping some for garnish), and the sour cream and stir to combine.
Dip each tortilla into the sauce and place flat on plate. Add a little filling down each center of the tortillas, roll up and lay on a plate seam side down. Spoon the sauce over the top of rolled tortillas, sprinkle with crumbled cheese, onions and more chopped cilantro. Serve immediately.
I've made hand-made Corn Tortilla before and always have a blast doing it. It is much easier than you think, once you get your rhythm going.

A lesson I learned a while back was to NOT substitute just any corn flour to make tortillas. The corn flour used for tortillas, and tamales, etc. has been treated so you must find the right kind and then, it couldn't be easier. I used a brand I found in a common grocery store, although well stocked with Mexican ingredients. Maseca makes Masa Harina that is sold in a large yellow and beige bag usually found with wheat flours.

RECIPE for CORN TORTILLAS: adapted from Rick Bayless

1 3/4 cups Masa Harina
1 + 2 Tbls. hot tap water

Mix these together, by hand, in a large bowl until completely combined and making a dough.

Cover and rest for 15 minutes. Divide the dough into golf-ball size balls in the palm of your hand.

Using a Tortilla Press (or a heavy cast iron skillet) and two pieces of plastic wrap (a large ziploc bag cut apart makes the perfect weight for this) press each ball into about 5" circles.

With each press, peel the top plastic off and lay the plastic aside - then place the dough circle down on your flat palm and peel away the remaining plastic from the top. Place each tortilla on a hot griddle pan (see picture for my favorite one to use) that has been heated to med.

Cook until it releases, about 30 seconds, flip and move to a hotter part of the griddle and cook on each side for another 30-45 seconds each side. If it puffs a bit, just press down gently with a spatula.

As each tortilla is done, remove carefully from the griddle and place in a towel to keep warm. I usually cover the towel with foil for extra heat containment.

My family barely spoke during this dinner, we were all so enthralled with the flavors and brightness of these Tomatillo and Chile Sauced Enchiladas.
I used the leftover corn tortillas as baked chips the next night with a quick guacamole. ¡Olé!

Handmade Mushroom Pasta w/Pork Tenderloin & Sage

Oh Mama, don't you love Umami? That's the earthy warm 5th taste that shows up, even in the air, when you heat up mushrooms. When you add that flavor to the dough for handmade pasta - - - Che buono!

HANDMADE MUSHROOM PASTA with Pork Tenderloin & Sage

I love being a multi-tasker so I'm constantly looking for ways to add to, double up, and extend things. One of my very favorite things to make is flavored pasta. Being able get some of my "vitamins from vegetables" while practicing my "addiction to carbs" just makes me smile. I've made Dandelion Pasta, Roasted Red Pepper Pasta, Chocolate Pasta, you name it. And this Mushroom Pasta Dough is one of my favs. It's very simple and the only real work comes in the kneading, which is so important. I really enjoy the feel of dough and kneading is like therapy, but a lot cheaper. I'll warn you; While showing the steps to this process there's no way to make a mound of mushroom paste look pretty, but it's a lot like pate at that point. Start with 1/2 cup of Dried Wild Mushrooms and 1/2 cup sliced Baby Bellas. Cover the Dried Mushrooms with a cup of boiling water, to reconstitute them. Drain them and reserve the mushroom water for later. Saute the mushrooms on Med/High in a small amount of Olive oil for just a few minutes to bring out the juices. Let cool, then add the mushrooms from the pan to a blender with 2 eggs. Puree to a smooth paste. On a work board, make a mound of 2 cups of All Purpose Flour and 1 tsp of salt. Make a well in the center of the flour and pour the mushroom paste into the well. Gradually pull the flour from the sides into the mushroom paste, kneading as you go. When and if you need moisture, add a couple Tbls from the mushroom water that you reserved. Continue kneading the dough for about 10 minutes until you have a smooth, blister free dough that when pressed with your thumb returns quickly. Cover the dough and let rest for 20 minutes. Cut the dough into two parts and cover the half you're not working . Press or roll out the first half until it's flat enough to be rolled through the widest setting on a pasta machine. Continue to roll the dough thinner through the machine, cutting sections as you go to make it manageable. Roll the cut sections through the Fettuccine blades to create your Mushroom pasta.

To hold the pasta for cooking, toss serving size amounts in a bit of flour and make mounds of them on a parchment covered baking pan. These can also be frozen, then bagged for later. Cook fresh pasta in salted boiling water until it floats to the top, or about 3 minutes. Drain and serve with your chosen sauce, optionally adding chopped sun-dried tomatoes, capers or olives. Ingredients: 1/2 cup Dried Mushrooms 1/2 cup Baby Bella or other button (sliced) 1 cup boiling water (for reconstituting dried mushrooms and reserve this) 2 Tbls. Olive oil 2 Large Eggs 2 cups All Purpose Flour salt/pepper to taste *Optional* Sun-dried tomatoes olives capers chopped parsley chopped fresh sage.


To prepare the Pork Tenderloins as shown in the picture:

6 oz. Pork Tenderloin (slice into 1/2 inch rounds)
2 Tbls. Olive oil 1/3 cup white wine
1 small onion (sliced )
12 oz. Stock (veggie or meat)
2 Tbls. chopped fresh sage
1/4 cup cream

Saute the Tenderloins in olive oil on Med/High just til browned and reserve. Turn down to Low/Med and add onions to the pan. Cook onions til caramelized, adding salt to taste. Deglaze pan (add in) white wine (or just a bit of stock if you don't want to use wine). Cook this til most of the moisture is gone, for about 5-10 minutes. Put the Tenderloins back into the pan, add the stock and cream. Cover the pan and cook on Low for about 10 minutes. Add sage and turn up heat to reduce liquid by 1/3, about 3-5 minutes. Stir to make sure nothing sticks. The Pork Tenderloin is ready to serve. You can add the pasta into the pan, or serve separately over the pasta when ready. Garnish with chopped parsley.