Recipe File: Roja Cheese Enchiladas

by Stepto
No Comments

This was an especially difficult recipe for me. My culinary training was in Southwestern grilled food, Italian, and BBQ. I say "training" because I was a line cook for restaurants that made all those types, and quite well I might add. But ever since I left the restaurant business and started cooking solely for myself and Rochto’s enjoyment I’ve always been terrified to cook Tex Mex dishes.

This is mainly because they are my favorite. To this day the first thing I order at a mexican restaurant are the cheese enchiladas. They are the baseline for which I usually end up judging all other dishes, provided the enchiladas are good enough to warrant a second visit.

The best cheese enchiladas I have ever had reside at Herbert’s Taco Hut in San Marcos, Texas. They were perfect. The cheese had the absolute precise amount of diced onion. The texture was a mixture of cheesy and creamy. The red sauce was distilled straight from the nipples of the chili enchilada sauce gods.

So when Rochelle brought home a bunch of stuff from the store and said "Let’s have enchiladas, I have a craving." I panicked.

You see, I can’t just make enchiladas. Like most of my all time favorite foods, I have to have my own way of doing it. And I’ve had too many horrible horrible enchiladas in my life (like when people just stuff flour tortillas with cheese and picante and bake it. *shudder*) that I knew if I was going to make enchiladas it was going to be a recipe I would want to keep and use. AND I was going to insist on making my own red sauce from scratch.

So, much to Rochelle’s consternation, since she just wanted something simple and NOW, I hit the Interhighway Superweb Tubes. I usually do this for my first try at a recipe, I find two or three that I like online then merge them or mix and match. I did so here, and 2 hours later Rochelle proclaimed the results to be outstanding.

I however was not satisfied completely, but at least I was not disappointed (I found there was too much salt in the final result). Couple nights later Rochelle brought home all new ingredients and I made some major modifications and the results, were awesome.

So without further ado, Roja Cheese Enchiladas with home made sauce.

Ingredients:

Roja Enchilada Sauce

1 Can all natural Low Sodium Chicken broth (Or 2 cups if you wish to make your own)

4 Tbs Chili Powder

1 tsp. Ground Cumin

2 tsp. Crushed Garlic (not garlic salt, not garlic powder, crushed garlic)

1 tsp. Sea Salt

1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. Sugar

6 Tbs. cold water

3 Tbs. flour

Why low sodium chicken broth? Well this was a happy accident. The first batch I made used regular chicken broth and I found it way too salty. Rochelle brought the wrong kind home, but I thought it would be perfect and plunged ahead. I was more right than I knew. Since low sodium chicken broth brings out far more of the wonderful chicken flavor in the broth, I highly recommend using it instead, since we will add a touch of salt throughout the recipe.

On medium heat, combine the garlic and chicken broth in a pot, stirring to distribute the garlic particles around. Add in the chili powder, cumin, sea salt, cinnamon, and sugar while whisking the mixture vigorously. Increase heat to a boil and cook for three to four minutes, whisking all the while. Reduce heat and let simmer for three minutes.

While the sauce is simmering, combine the flour and water in a seperate bowl, making sure to add the flour in a tablespoon at a time and stir so there are no lumps. Once the mixture is complete three minutes should have passed for our simmer. Turn the heat up and slowly pour the flour mixture into the sauce, whisking like a madman to avoid lumps. This is every important, because if you get lumps at this stage it doesn’t ruin the sauce exactly but doesn’t really help thicken it, and you get chunks of cooked flour in your sauce which is never pleasent.

Turn the heat down now back to medium and, slowly stirring, let cook for another three minutes. Turn the heat to the lowest possible setting and let sit. The roja sauce is done for now.

Cheese Enchiladas:

1/3 cup grapeseed oil (Canola can be used in a pinch)

3/4 pound grated mixed cheese (Chedder/Jack)

1/3 cup chopped sweet yellow onion

Enchilada Sauce (see previous section)

8 Corn Tortillas

1 jar Queso sauce (or you can make your own)

Heat the grapeseed oil in a pan to medium heat. I like grapeseed oil because it’s light, healthy, has a relatively high smoke point, and imparts a barely detectable nutty flavor to the tortillas. Canola (or better yet, Enova) can be used in a pinch without impacting the flavor really at all.

Stack the tortillas in 4 groups of two. Using tongs, grab one stack of two and place in the oil for 20 seconds, then flip it for 20 seconds more then set aside.

Here’s how we make the enchiladas. The heating in the oil renders the tortillas nice and soft. If you overcook it no worries, just toss them and start over, or keep frying to make tasty chips. Ok now, seperate the tortillas oil side up. Gently spoon some enchilada sauce all over the tortilla. Then grab a handful of cheese and lay it slightly off center lengthways. Sprinkle some onion, and spoon just a touch of the queso sauce in the center.

Now for the rolling! Take the longest-from-the-cheese edge of the tortilla and pull it up and over, then tuck it under the cheese. Your tucking action should move the cheese more towards the center, then just roll the rest of the way until its done. Cap each end with your fingers and lift it into a baking dish. Repeat for the other tortilla. It takes practice, but after a bit you become a pro at it.

Now repeat: lightly cook the tortillas, spread sauce, add cheese, onion, and a touch of queso sauce, tuck and roll and back to the next one.

Once all eight tortillas are nestled in the dish, you should have some shredded cheese left over, some queso sauce, and a lot of enchilada sauce. Pour the enchilada sauce over the enchiladas. Gently spoon the rest of the queso sauce if you want on top of the sauce, then sprinkle the rest of the cheese. BE CAREFUL with the queso sauce. Most queso sauce is very salty. This is how I overdid my first batch I think, along with the high sodium broth. Feel free to skip putting any more on. It’s mostly a preference thing.

Now, with good enchiladas, heat is the key. We gotta get those suckers HOT. Heat the oven to 400 degrees. Cook the enchiladas uncovered for 20 minutes. By the time you are done the sauce should be deep brown at the edges and bubbling, and the enchiladas should have flattened out from the melting of the cheese and weight of the sauce on top.

Take out of the oven, let cool for 10 minutes, then serve with traditional rice and beans on the side.

Enjoy!

This is a tool gone horribly wrong. Save your family, save yourselves.

by Stepto
No Comments

I downloaded Songsmith with the intent to record a Jonathan Coulton tune in a horrible format as a tribute.

Few people have the actual results of that experiment.

However my next stab at wresting the beating soul of the tool to a forge that might bring forth a shining blade such that kings might be chosen proved…successful?

So I sang, into my iMac’s mic, and that is my voice unaltered in pitch and tempo. The beast, the very dark heart of some mechanical satan, did the rest.

Mamma Mia, a worm hole, and the circles of hell.

by Stepto
No Comments

A lot of recent writers have spoken of the worm hole. For us geeks, the phrase is used to describe a moment in time where a focal point in your adult life opens a gigantic window into an unassuming passed moment of your childhood, where time didn’t really exist. A place where that exact temporal blip stretches infinitely around you, and you were oblivious to its import all at the same time. It’s a better analogy than most people think. Once you go through it, it takes some time to understand fully what has happened.

It’s 2009 (!). I just got done jamming out to Rock Band 2 after some prep work for my first day back to work from the winter holiday. I head back to my office to check on email.

Downstairs, a dark siren call climbs upwards. I’ve been trying to avoid this since I first saw the poster signs 50 feet high in Times Square in 2006. Mamma Mia. A musical based on Abba music. I knew when I first heard of it a movie was inevitable.

DO NOT HUM. *DO* *NOT* *HUM* *DANCING* *QUEEN*

My mind imposes a steel lock on my jaw. I will not indulge, I will NOT reveal the depth of my knowledge of Abba’s music, my early exposure to it. But I have to go downstairs to cook. Resigned to my fate, I trudge down to roast a cut of salmon for the night’s meal, while a joyful and cackling-with-glee Rochto "re-introduces" me to these songs. These songs I have known all my life.

Take a Chance on Me, I’m exposed to, as if it’s new.

Knowing me, Knowing you.

Waterloo, for fuck’s sake.

I season the fish and put it in the oven, crack open a beer, and resign myself to the inevitable. I’m going to be listening to this, and even asking for certain songs to be played, for a good bit of the evening. I wonder, perhaps in desperation, when it was that I grew past the music of my parents—and suddenly, blindingly, it’s 1981.

There’s a silver unispeaker tape recorder/player hand-me-down from my paternal grandfather in front of me. There are two cassette tapes sealed in Sears plastic. I have my bone handled lock blade pocket knife, the one my mother flipped out when my father gave it to me for Christmas. And I am about to discover my own taste in music.

I could fairly say my family household growing up was a musical household. My father was a devout Southern Baptist, with a rich voice and a talent for instruments such as the accordion and piano. The overall bent in the household with my father’s stern guidance was gospel or southern country gospel. I grew up humming Micky Gillis, the Statler Brothers, The Oak Ridge Boys. I knew southern religious music like the back of my hand. Forbidden was the dark side of country for me, Guy Clark, Willie Nelson or Johnny Cash. Hell even Jerry Reed was borderline for me to be allowed to listen to.

My mother was a little more contemporary. While my father was away the house was filled with Streisand. Abba. Bee Gees. The most innocent of the 70’s disco and pop scene.

Christ, by the time Xanadu came out I could have sung every song unheard, so exposed was I to the proto-80’s pop that my mother called her relaxing music. (As a side note my mother was also passionately into Gershwin which I got exposed to at an early age, as were both my parents into classical.) That music to this day is weirdly like comfort food. Where nostalgia grabs me by the shirtfront and jerks me back to 9 years old like it did tonight.

That tape deck was heavy in my hands. Think of it as the pre-cursor to the tape based Walkman. It was the type where all the buttons were at the bottom, tape cartridge in the middle, and the speaker was on the top. Now this was a device of the 70’s. It was the type of player where you had to press play *and* record simultaneously to get it to record. It was one of those where the "Stop" button was critical to actually keeping your tapes in working order. The black cassette loader popped up when you pressed eject. No stopping the tape then a motorized lifting of the mechanism here, people. Eject was a mechanical switch where, even if the tape was playing, the tape loader violently jerked it from the cradle and *ejected* it. If you weren’t careful, it might as well have been labeled eviscerate. More than one Alvin and the Chipmunks tape had been unspooled due to the impatient NOW of the eject button.

I think everyone has a musical awakening. A moment when the entire world suddenly opens up like a locked portcullis into a castle filled with treasure and mystery. A place where you cannot go back once you enter, and where the consequences of entering are far far worth the entry. For me, it’s the summer of 1981, and a momentary abundance of allowance.

I’m at Skyview elementary school. Just before the end of that school year, what was for me third grade, my class was allowed to bring in anything we wanted from home on vinyl to listen to for music class. I can’t remember what I brought, I suspect Gershwin because we had so few LP’s, but one girl brought in Queen’s "The Game" and her song she played was "Another one Bites the Dust." For the first time in my life I was transfixed by music. I was locked, watching a turntable needle roll out for me music that roiled my concept of beat and lyrics. The bass of Queen! That drum beat and Freddie Mercury’s amazing voice.

I had studiously saved my allowance for several weeks in preparation for the coming onslaught of new Empire Strikes Back toys that Kenner was going to release for the movie. But that summer weekday on a trip to Sears I begged my mom to let me use my twelve whole dollars on cassette tapes, for the first time. Wisely, my mother figured that music was better than plastic toys and acquiesced. I feverishly picked two. Queen’s The Game and the soundtrack to Raiders of the Lost Ark. She had to spot me a dollar but I came home with two highly treasured items. I listened to them all day in my room. I was completely mesmerized and adrift in what I had discovered. I remember being deliriously happy.

All highs have a crash. My father returned home that night and was furious. I had no idea the fight my parents had, perched in my bed with a book and headphones listening to my new music. No idea that is until my father calmly came into my bedroom. He sat on the edge of the bed and turned off the tape deck. He informed me gravely that we needed to pray.

Now in my house when a parent said you needed to pray that meant someone had died or was very sick. I remember having to pray when my aunt’s pregnancy turned touch and go for a bit, or when my grandfather had to have surgery.

This must be serious.

My father clasped my hand then proceeded to pray fervently, out loud, to Jesus Christ not to let my eternal soul be damned to hell forever because I had purchased the devil’s music. He said he knew it was too late but that he hoped that I would learn from this mistake and dedicate my life to undoing this horrible, fatal, sin of buying a Rock and Roll tape.

Keep in mind there was no preamble here, just launch right into a prayer about how I was going to hell for sure and could the good lord please see fit to maybe overlook this transgression. By the time he was done praying I was in tears. He left the room without saying anything else.

I don’t know if I got any sleep that night but I remember the staying awake in torment part. I had no idea I had done anything wrong, no clue as to why Jesus would be so against something I found joy in for the first time. After a while though, I remember thinking that perhaps my father was an idiot. After all, music wasn’t in the ten commandments. Certain types of music didn’t seem to be delineated in Sunday School like other behaviors. This was shocking to me to even consider. My dad! An idiot! I mean, who damns someone to hell over tapes? It was an awakening on many levels for me all in one moment.

Damned to hell. For all eternity! For Queen! Fine, I decided. If that’s the penalty I’ll argue it on the back end as to the stupidity. Unknowingly, I was already forming a judgment based on my father’s behavior that he would do nothing but bolster for 20 more years.

You often don’t control when you are jerked back from the worm hole. With a bit of a start I suddenly saw Rochelle scrolling through the tracks on the Mamma Mia DVD and Voulez Vous popped up.

"Voulez Vous! Play that one." I said.

"You don’t know this, it’s not what you think it is." she replied.

"Yes it is," I sang the chorus, "Look I know these songs better than you do." She shrugged and laughed and played it. And it was awesome.

The kitsch washed over me like fire. I’m in hell, just not the one my father envisioned. Another one bites the dust.

10 movies you can quote thanks only to 80’s cable repeats

by Stepto
No Comments

Gather ’round children and I will tell you a tale. A tale of days gone by and of movies that at any other time in history would have been forgotten. This tale is of a device that magically reanimated mediocre, even bad films, such that everyone in my age group knows of these films and can even quote them.

What is this dark force, this twisted Istari that brings the trivial instead of wisdom?

Mid-80’s cable television. (cue bolt of lightning/crash of thunder)

You see, back before the world wide super tubeway net 2.0 service pack 4, before digital satellite and digital cable, before anyone making less than 200k a year had a cell phone, there were 57 channels. Usually divided between "A" cable and "B" cable. "A" cable contained all the stuff you wanted, like local channels, news channels, and movie channels. "B" cable contained public access, and C-SPAN. And for your 57 channels you were charged more or less what you are today for 500+ channels. And because of that you tended to watch whatever was on because paying for TV was still very new, so people felt compelled to watch it, even the crap because hey…already paid for it right?

The problem was HBO and Showtime and the various movie channels didn’t really have a huge library of movies to show. So they tended to take what they did have and play it in heavy rotation, such that a particular movie might get shown 80 or 90 times a month. Combine this with the idle time of School breaks for children in that era and you end up with this, the top ten bad/mediocre movies that I’ve seen more times than Citizen Kane.

#1: Mannequin

As if this film’s support of the neutering of Jefferson Starship into the insufferable "Starship" wasn’t bad enough, it starred sexy hot young Kim Cattrall, which meant in my teenage years I was basically going to watch the entire movie for that alone. For some reason, I assume for stay-at-home housewives, this romantic "comedy" almost always played in the morning hours before 1pm. Which ensured I would idly end up watching it while eating some form of breakfast type meal.

A story about an egyptian goddess of some sort forever condemned to be a department store mannequin until she finds true love, this film is so gut wrenchingly bad I live in constant fear of developing intestinal cancer at some point due to my youthful repeated exposure to it.

#2: Police Academy 2

This movie featured a man eating cereal his cat had just pooped in. Later, he eats a half eaten thrown away chocolate bar that has ants on it. After that do I really need to go into how crass and juvenile the rest of the plot was? Why did I watch it? 50% because it was on, and 50% for Colleen Camp as officer Kirkland. This is another film I fear future cancer from youthful exposure. This time it’s brain cancer.

#3: Turk 182!

Ahhh back to another Kim Cattrall classic. This was a perfectly mediocre film, the story of a rebellious young graffitti artist who uses a "Kilroy was here" type persona to fight back against a city hall who unfairly denied benefits to his firefighter brother who was injured on the job. He finds clever and ever more expensive-to-clean ways to put "Turk 182" on various city landmarks. The movie makes no sense in the end as the city, desperate to find who the heck this Turk 182 person is, misses the fact he’s spraypainting his brother’s Firefighting helmet number, 182. This isn’t a movie I’m ashamed to have seen a million times, but it’s one of those films that would have faded forever into obscurity without endless replays on cable.

#4: Allan Quartermain and the Lost City of Gold

Hold on folks, I’m going to fold space in order to explain this to you. Most people think this is a cheap rip off of Indiana Jones, and they are right except that it’s a remake of movies and stories featuring Allan Quartermain going back to 1919. And all the film versions have as their source H. Rider Haggard’s 1885 story "King Solomon’s Mines." Lucas himself has cited the stories of Allan Quartermain as influences on Indiana Jones. So you have a cheap rip off that’s actually a remake of the very thing that inspired the thing being ripped off. This particular film is worth the price of admission for both a young Sharon Stone as well as a barbarian axe-wielding James Earl Jones as unintentional comic relief.

#5: Red Dawn

Now save your flame mail. I’m not here to say Red Dawn was a boatload of cheap 80’s bratpack starring Reagan-esque propaganda. I’m here to tell you that the greatest scene in any movie EVER is Powers Booth’s glum defeatist shot down pilot character, Col. Andy Tanner. Just chew, *chew*, on this exchange:

Col. Andy Tanner: …The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that’s why they’re here. That’s why they won’t use nukes anymore; and we won’t either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing’s pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.

Darryl Bates: What started it?

Col. Andy Tanner: I don’t know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they’re gonna fight.

Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?

Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forget what it was like.

Jed Eckert: …Well, who *is* on our side?

Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.

Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.

Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.

[he throws whiskey on the fire; it ignites violently, suggesting a nuclear explosion]

If you grew up in a world without early 80’s Reagan sword rattling, or The Day After, Amerika, or Red Dawn, you missed out on some classic us vs. them fear mongering. You think the current government is good at fear mongering? Kids in the early to mid eighties worried about nuclear war before they went to bed.

#6: Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo

This is the masterpiece that inspired a generation to immediately refer to any sequel with the ":Electric Boogaloo" moniker. It’s a story of how breakin’ through stereo types and breakin’ in general helps save a community center from the evil company that wants to turn it into a strip mall. This movie also taught anyone with a modicum of muscle control how to do "The Robot," a tactic that I intend to use during the coming zombie apocolypse to fool them into thinking my brains are circuit boards and thus escape.

#7: Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge

The first Nightmare on Elm Street holds up ok as a horror film. It’s got crazy over the top blood effects, a decent hook, and the requisite amounts of female nudity/skimpy clothing. The second one, which Wes Craven actually refused to work on, is ultimate campy stupid crap. Although it does contain my favorite Freddy line, "We’ve got work to do you and me, you’ve got the body…and I’ve got the brains" where then Freddy peels back his skull to expose his brain. Most of the worst of the Freddy quotes that people like to quote actually come from this movie. Even though most people agree it’s really not very good. Personally it gave me nightmares and the entire Freddy aspect in this movie seemed to me to be the most evil, while still managing to be really campy and silly.

#8: Hellraiser

I confess right now I’ve never been all that impressed with Clive Barker’s horror. Hell, the tagline for Hellraiser was "Sadomasochists from beyond the grave!" That doesn’t sound like it’s destined for the front part of the rental store. But any movie that can inspire almost an entire generation to quote "Jesus Wept" in the same tortured/sensual tone as the movie has got to be ok in my book. It also forever conditioned me to be creeped out by chattering teeth.

#9: Brewsters Millions

This simple morality tale is one of the few examples where a relatively mediocre movie actually benefitted from the exposure and one of the few on the list I can watch today and enjoy and get a good feeling from. The story of Monty Brewster as played by Richard Pryor and his attempt to spend 30 million dollars without attaining a single asset in order to inherit 300 million dollars is both serious and silly. From his minor league team’s exhibition game against the New York Yankees to his running as "None of the Above" for mayor, this is a showcase example of how truly gifted Richard Pryor was and how deft he was with picking a safe script (The Toy, Superman 3) for every concert movie he did that made the white folk laugh nervously (All of them). I watch this movie and just really really miss his comedy.

#10: Night of the Comet

Comet passes by Earth, anyone outside turns to dust. Anyone partially outside becomes a cannibal zombie. Anyone in a cave or metal container survives. Ironically, this is the same comet that, when it passed by 65 million years ago, did the same thing to the dinosaurs. I used to watch this movie and think, has anyone ever made a dinosaur zombie movie? because *that* would be fucking awesome. Instead, we get treated to a bizarre sequence in the middle of the movie where the two lead girls in the film get bored and go on a shopping spree to a Cyndee Lauper tune. It’s bad folks. It’s real bad.

There’s so many more movies I could have put in the list. The Manhattan Project. Howard the Duck. Explorers. Buckaroo Bonzai. D.A.R.Y.L. But I’d be here all night. I think that was a unique time period because very little else competed for our time in those days. Today you have a hundred fold increase in the exposure something can get, but with that comes the darwinian process of not bothering with anything that is even marginally entertaining because there is so much better stuff out there. So I think mid 80’s cable stands out as a place where the audience felt more compelled to watch crap, and the crap became more pervasive.

And I wouldn’t change that for the world.