Homemade Enchiladas

Intense and delicious!
You will need:

1 dozen corn tortillas
5-6 dried Pasilla Chilies also called Anchos
(often in packaged Mexican food section)
6+cloves of good garlic
A yellow onion
Small can of tomato paste
Spinach leaves, no stems, produce bag full
Mushrooms, at least half a pound
Cream Cheese (Tofutti)
Almonds or pecans
Small bunch of cilantro
Olive oil
Canola oil
Salt
(optional, grated Jack soy-cheese)
Wear an apron!

Begin by slicing open the ancho chilies and removing the seeds and stems (seeds seem to scrape off best with a thumbnail despite trying various tools). Don’t touch your eyes or lips with hands with chilies on them. Put the anchos in a sauce pan with water to cover them, add salt, and simmer on low heat for 20-30 minutes. While they simmer, chop 3 big cloves of garlic and ¼ of an onion and put them in a blender.

Wash and de-stem spinach, dice 3 more garlic cloves and rest of onion. In olive oil in a sauté or sauce pan, sauté the onion and garlic until nearly golden and add spinach and mushrooms and cook until wilted and tender. Set aside spinach. (Grate cheese if using Jack). Set up a saute pan with shallow canola oil to get ready to lightly dip the tortillas in hot oil to soften them.

When anchos are done, add the chilies and water to the blender and blend with garlic and onion. Hold lid on tight when you blend, not too high a setting. To taste, add tablespoons of tomato paste and re-blend to reach desired hot/cool spiciness. I found I ended up using the whole can, but kept adding/blending it 3 tablespoons at a time. Another time I will try roasted tomatoes per original recipe, not the paste. I also added a tablespoon of olive oil to cut the spiciness, but that wasn’t in the original recipe.

Set up a counter adjacent to stove top with the pan of spinach, a bowl larger than the tortillas filled with the sauce from the blender (don’t wash blender out, leave some sauce in down around the blades), any grated cheese, the corn tortillas, and an empty dinner plate. All this needs to be beside the sauté pan with the canola oil. And you need the pan you are going to assemble and serve them in – glass or ceramic pie/casserole type.

Heat up the canola oil and with the type of tongs you may use in making pasta, begin lowering one tortilla at a time into the oil and quickly flipping it over and then lift out, let oil drip off, and drop into the bowl with the sauce. As you do that with one hand, with the other, drop the next tortilla into the hot oil. You will get a production going where you then remove the tortillas from absorbing the sauce on both sides to the empty dinner plate in time to drop another tortilla from the oil into the sauce and another tortilla into the oil.

Once all tortillas have been in the hot oil and dipped in the sauce, and are on the dinner plate, turn off sauté pan with oil and clear space to assemble the enchiladas. Set one sauce covered tortilla in the serving pan and with the same tongs or finger, add the spinach/mushroom filling, cheese if desired, and there will be sauce remaining that can go on top of the spinach before you roll if you desire. Roll them up, and keep on filling them.

I ran out of spinach as didn’t do a full bag’s worth, so I improvised something equally delicious. In the blender that still has the sauce in the bottom, add 4 oz of cream cheese and nuts (almonds or pecans), a small bunch of cilantro, and a little soymilk for moisture and blend. Then use this delicious cream filling instead of the spinach, on another group of tortillas.

They do not need to bake, but you can add any remaining sauce over them and warm them in the oven before serving so they are all the same temperature. I served it with a green salad and watermelon and it was a quintessential Mexican meal!

PS – doesn’t hurt to play some Spanish language music and dance a bit while making these – viva Mexico!

German Chocolate Cake, a saga

Branden requested German Chocolate Cake for his birthday. All I knew about German Chocolate Cake was that it was a) chocolate, and b) covered in some sort of coconut-pecan frosting. So I had to do some research. In searching for a recipe, I uncovered a conspiracy as profound as the sweet potato scandal... German Chocolate Cake is not the least bit German. It is in fact Texan, and is named German after "German's Chocolate", which is made by Baker's (which is all awful pseudo-chocolate, by the way). Furthermore, German's Chocolate is not German; it was called German after this guy named German, but even he wasn't German, he was British.

German Chocolate Cake should have "German's" chocolate and should be made with buttermilk, being Texan. The frosting should indeed involve pecans and coconut, but may also involve caramel, and may share the cake with chocolate frosting.

I couldn't bring myself to use Baker's chocolate, but I did figure out how to make soy buttermilk. I made two frostings, one a lightly caramelized pecan-coconut and one a simple chocolate buttercream-type frosting. Also, I served some of my banana bliss ice cream with the cake.

The birthday-party-goers, all in Viking attire (even if that consisted only of an authentic viking name tag), exclaimed loudly about the cake and then immediately started to fall asleep on our living room floor. So be careful, don't eat german chocolate cake and drive.

Now onto the recipe...

For the cake, I used Morgana's Chocolate Cake recipe. However, I used soy "buttermilk" instead of water. To make the buttermilk, I mixed 2 c of soy milk with the vinegar (I used white vinegar) called for in the original recipe, and let it sit for about ten minutes before adding it to the other ingredients.

Coconut-Pecan Frosting
1/2 c margarine
3/4 c brown sugar
1/2 c soy milk
1 t vanilla
1 1/2 c shredded coconut
1 c pecans, chopped

Melt margarine, add sugar. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture is thick, sticky, and lightly caramelized. Add remaining ingredients, bring to a boil, and cook, stirring frequently, for twelve minutes. Cool for a minute or two, until it is a spreadable consistency, before frosting the cake.

Chocolate Frosting
1/2 c margarine, softened
2 c sugar
1/3 c cocoa powder
2-4 T soy milk
1 T vanilla
pinch salt

Cream all the ingredients together, using only as much soy milk as is needed to make it spreadable. You may want to chill the cake in a refrigerator after frosting to make sure the frosting is totally set before serving.

Pepper Seitan

This is my version of Chinese Pepper Steak. I usually end up browning seitan when I use it, so it's a nice change to eat this recipe, in which the seitan ends up soft and succulent. Serve with brown rice and a side of steamed or stir-fried vegetables.

1 lb seitan, cut into long thin strips
1 large green bell pepper, cut into long thin strips
1 large yellow onion, cut into thin half-moons
1/2 c sliced water chestnuts

Marinade:
1 T reduced sodium soy sauce
1 t sugar
1/2 t salt
1/4 t black pepper
1 T cornstarch
2 T rice vinegar
1 t fresh ginger, grated
2 cloves garlic, minced or grated
1 T sesame oil

Sauce:
Original marinade from seitan, plus enough water to make a total of 3/4 c of liquid
1 T cornstarch
1 T reduced sodium soy sauce

Marinate seitan (in the marinade) for about fifteen minutes; this is the perfect time to chop the veggies. Whisk sauce ingredients to combine.

Stir-fry onions for about five minutes, or until they are just starting to become translucent. Add peppers and water chestnuts, stir-fry for another five minutes, or until they are as cooked as you want them.

Put veggies aside; in the same (now empty) pan, stir-fry seitan for five minutes. Add sauce and reserved veggies, cook until the sauce is thick and everything is warm, probably another (you guessed it) five minutes.

Wild animals at a birthday party

I finally found 6 hole muffin tins to fit in my mini oven
and whipped these up for a little man's birthday celebration 5/4/07...

Chocolate cupcakes with vegan or vegetarian options

1-1/2 C organic whole wheat flour
1 C organic brown sugar
2 teasp baking powder -
1/3 C organic rapunzel cocoa powder
1/2 C organic canola oil
Cap full of pure vanilla
1 C water (or soy/milk)

I tried 6 of each - vegan style would be best with a little more oil for added moisture but both were great. Topping is cream cheese or tofutti cheese with a little sugar, vanilla, and fresh orange peel zest, topped with an organic strawberry. lefts overs were great (sans frosting) with yogurt and fruit for breakfasts. Yum!

Celebrating fresh fruit!

And the tree it came from ...

Dense and Easy Chocolate Torte

1 c butter substitute (try Earth Balance)
1.5 c good chocolate chips (try Guittard)
3 T powdered egg replacer
1 c soy milk
.5 c sugar
1 t vanilla
1 c almond flour (or walnut flour)
.5 c whole wheat flour

Melt butter-substitute and chocolate chips in a mixing bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk egg replacer with milk. Add sugar and vanilla, then combine with melted stuff. Fold in flours. Bake in an ungreased 9" round pan or springform for 55 minutes at 325F. Let sit for a half hour, then refrigerate. When cooled, frost with vegan ganache:

1 c good chocolate chips
2 T butter substitute
.75 c soy milk

Melt butter and chocolate, add milk, stir until smooth, cool until it slows down a little, then drizzle over torte. Refrigerate frosted torte for at least an hour before serving. It's great with milk or coffee.