comfort food

Comfort food: Cheese and onion enchiladas

Moriah

Continuing with the theme of what Mojo cooks because she hates to, and this is what her mother cooked and so she likes it enough to cook it:

This should probably fall under the heading “no brainer,” but these are the best enchiladas I’ve ever had, bar none.

I got 27 enchiladas out of this today:

3 Tb flour
3 Tb shortening (probably really should use lard, but I didn’t have any)
3 c water12 oz taco seasoning*
32-oz bag of finely grated cheese (I like sharp cheddar)
3 medium yellow onions, finely chopped**
corn tortillas

Oven to 350F.

Melt flour and shortening/lard together in a huge skillet and/or wok-like pan, and stir until smooth and bubbly. Add water and taco seasoning, then cook until thick. Turn burner to low or off.

Coat the tortillas in the sauce, then roll up with cheese and onions. Pack them in a jelly roll pan or something equally large. You may have to add some water to the sauce to thin it out, as it will get thicker as it sits. Save enough sauce to coat a full pan of enchiladas, then do so. Sprinkle the extra cheese and onions over all.

Put in the oven for 20-25 minutes.

This isn’t hard, but the prep time (especially if you hand grate the cheese and dice the onions by hand instead of the handy-dandy chopper I adore) is a killer.

Obviously, you can substitute any meat you like, but I prefer plain cheese and onions.

Pimp moment of the day:

*My mother always used to use Li’l Guy taco seasoning (not the enchilada one). It came in a 12-ounce glass jar. Their website says it’s discontinued. Now, I haven’t looked to see if they still carry it in the grocery stores the way I remember it, but I don’t use this because now I go to Planter’s in River Market (downtown Kansas City) and get their mix. The seasonings you use make all the difference, so experiment.

By the way, Planter’s is one of the businesses I mentioned in The Proviso. I mention a lot of local businesses in my book(s).

onionchopper**If you don’t have one of these, get one. Right now. I believe we got ours at Walgreen’s for like, $5. Best kitchen tool buy ever.

Comfort food: Beef stroganoff

Moriah

Got a request for my recipe for beef stroganoff, so I’m going to add a new category of comfort food. These are adapted from recipes my mother used, the food I grew up on and while some of it’s expensive to make, some of it’s not. It’s not fancy. The reason I don’t cook is that my mother made everything from scratch (even egg noodles) and so it wouldn’t occur to me to go get, say, a jar of Ragu for spaghetti sauce (and the one time I did I gagged). However, when I do cook, I cook from scratch.

I very rarely measure anything unless I’m baking, so you’ll have to adjust for your own tastes. I have tried this stroganoff with stew meat or cutting up a cheap steak (say, chuck), but I don’t like it that way, as the flavors don’t blend as well. Liberal use of pepper is the key to a good batch of stroganoff.

The measurements for this beef stroganoff are written per 1 pound of hamburger.

1 pound hamburger
1 diced medium yellow onion (Get one of these gizmos.)
minced garlic (I buy it in the jars, usually in produce section by the onions.)
salt to taste
coarse-ground black pepper to taste, maybe 2 tsp
parsley to taste, maybe 1 Tb of dried
1 to 2 4-ounce cans of mushroom stems and pieces, drained

Cook up the hamburger with all the above ingredients on medium high heat, enough to barely cook the meat and make the onions translucent. Stir well, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes to let the flavors settle in. Drain, put it back in the pan, and put it back on the stove.

Into the drained meat, stir in (very well):

1 can cream of chicken soup

Let that simmer on low for about 15 minutes. While that’s cooking, cook up:

egg noodles

Remove the stroganoff from the heat. Add:

8 oz sour cream

Stir it in well and let the whole thing sit for about 10 minutes. Drain your egg noodles and put them on a plate. Then top with the stroganoff mixture.

That’s it. Only takes me about 1/2 hour, no matter how much I make, and I make it in batches of about 5 pounds of hamburger. It never lasts long enough to be able to freeze any of it, but it is freezable.