The thing about cooking from the Rick Bayless cookbook is that for me, the beginner chef, there are only two days I can tackle a recipe; Saturday and Sunday. His recipes have many different steps that take a bit of time, and two or three hours can fly by before you even know it. But, that's what makes it fun as well, to spend the entire time working on different components, seeing how things come together, and really expanding my cooking ability. When I was deciding on the recipe to make this evening, this one jumped out at me for a couple reasons. First, it was enchiladas, and who doesn't love enchiladas? Second, it did not contain a lot of exotic ingredients so I knew I would be able to find them in Seattle without having to go to a specialty store. And Third, while there were multiple steps, and it would take some time, nothing seemed too complex for me to handle at my current level of ability.
After I returned home from my Sunday shopping trip, I pulled out all of the ingredients I would need and got to work. The first step is to cook the pork shoulder by adding it to boiling water, and then lowering the temperature and letting it simmer with some aromatics like onion, marjoram and thyme. While that's cooking, I started working on the ingredients for the sauce. Boiling water was poured over some dried ancho chiles to help them reconstitute (after the seeds were removed). I then added chopped onion, a little cinnamon, clove and black pepper, some canned tomatoes and bread to a blender. When the chiles had soaked for half an hour, I put them in as well, and blended everything until smooth. At this point I took a little taste of the sauce, and wasn't too excited. The flavor was a little bitter, and I wasn't sure how it would come together. But, there were still more steps to go, so I kept going, and added the sauce to some heated oil in a saute pan. The goal is to fry and condense the sauce, another technique that I've never tried and one that I can't imagine attempting unless it is in a recipe like this. After a few minutes, I added the saved water that the pork had cooked in, and set it to simmer for 45 minutes. Right at the end of the time, I added a little bit of sugar and a dash of salt.
While the sauce was simmering, I went to work on the enchilada filling. I started by taking the pork that had cooked earlier and shredded it. I added that to a pan, along with some potato, onion and plantain. I browned this for about ten minutes, and then added in a mixture of more tomatoes and one chile that I had left aside, and cooked this down to thicken. All of this took right around 45 minutes, so I was finishing up just as the timer for the sauce went off.
From there it was simple. Put the filling into steamed tortillas (I ended up going half corn/half flour), then pour the sauce all over them. I stuck in the oven for a couple of minutes, pulled them back out long enough to cover with some crumbled queso fresco, and put them back in for the cheese to begin to melt. After about five minutes, the enchiladas were good to go. I put two on each plate, added a simple salad of spinach, peanuts, mandarin oranges and blue cheese with a Balsamic Vinaigrette, and dinner was complete.
The final result was definitely good. The flavors really came together nicely, providing a very flavorful meal that wasn't overly spicy and was actually surprisingly a little sweet. I think this comes from the sugars being cooked out of the tomatoes, as well as the final dash of sugar at the end. While the sauce was a lot of work, but was definitely worth it in the long run. It is something that I think I can make again, and put over tortillas with different types of fillings for different meals throughout the day.
This meal is one that I will definitely attempt again, though next time it will be better. One mistake that I made was with the pork. I didn't lower the temperature on the water soon enough, and cut the pieces a little too small so some of it was tough, and I ended up boiling off too much of the water. Also, I forgot to get white bread, so had to settle for nine-grain sandwich loaf bread as a fill in. And, I didn't get enough ancho chiles, so added a california chile to try and get enough. Not to mention I don't have an appropriate colander yet (it's on the way). But, through it all, I improvised and everything worked out. Oh, and next time, I'll make sure the battery is charged in the camera so I can document the various steps along the way...
For this recipe, please refer to Authentic Mexican: Regional Cooking from the Heart of Mexico, by Rick Bayless, or visit his website at www.rickbayless.com
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment