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Butternut Squash Enchiladas

November 3, 2012February 4, 2017

Fall is a perfect excuse to put squash in, oh, just about everything you make. Squash ravioli? Yes. Squash cake? Absolutely. Squash enchiladas? Of course.

The inspiration for this meal came from 1) the abundance of squash at the grocery store, 2) the fact that I’d had something similar (some kind of squash taco) at a restaurant here in Portland called Oba, 3) there were people coming for dinner, and I wanted to make something easy that was basically a meal in a dish. This was exactly that, a delicious, relatively easy meal in a dish. I’ll also say this: this was loosely based on a squash enchilada recipe I found, but I was quasi-doubling it. Also, I bought too big of a squash because it was pretty. So we had lots of extra filling, which I just threw in a pan, covered with enchilada sauce and cheese, and baked on it’s own, sans tortillas. But I’ll try adjusting amounts below so that you don’t have that same problem.

Butternut Squash Enchiladas

Ingredients

One ~2 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cubed
Olive oil & salt
1 can black beans, rinsed
1 medium onion, diced
mild green salsa (we used one of those little cans from the grocery store)
12 small corn tortillas
1-2 cans enchilada sauce (Carmelle made our enchilada sauce because she is a Mexican food guru… but I was prepping the filling, so I wasn’t paying attention. Dang!)
1 bag of mexican blend shredded cheese

For serving: sour cream and sliced avocado

Instructions

First, preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Spread your squash on a large baking sheet, toss with olive oil and salt, and bake for 20 minutes, or until squash is tender. Remove from oven and allow to cool for a few minutes before putting into a large mixing bowl. Add the black beans and onion and mix to combine. At this point, you can lower the temperature of your oven to 350 degrees.

Cover the bottom of a large casserole dish with a layer of enchilada sauce and about half the can of salsa. Warm the tortillas a little bit, one by one, in a pan with a little bit of olive oil, just so that they won’t break when you stuff them. Take a warm tortilla, fill it with the squash/bean/onion mixture, a sprinkle of the cheese, and roll it up. The ends don’t need to be all nice and tucked in, but you want the tortilla to overlap enough… Does that make sense? Fill the dish with filled, rolled tortillas, and cover with enchilada sauce, salsa, and the rest of the cheese (or just however much cheese you want).

Throw that dish in the oven (don’t throw it, actually… that would be bad) for 30 minutes, or until the cheese is bubbling and a bit brown. Allow to cool for a few minutes before serving with sour cream and slices of avocado. Enjoy!

Delicious Chocolate Cupcakes (that also happen to be gluten-free)

October 13, 2012February 4, 2017

If you read the title, let me preface this post by saying that I am not often a baker of gluten-free food… Actually, I’m not ever really a gluten-free (GF) cook, if I have anything to do with it. The GF baked goods that I have had in my life are generally sad, deflated looking little things, and usually don’t taste super. So, I try to avoid it.

As you may know, this past year, Jonah and I were nannying for a family, and they are gluten free. I had baked some things for them before (muffins, breads, even pie) and while they were impressed because it usually was pretty good, I was not. You’re going to tell me that pie dough that I made with potato and coconut flour and butter was better than my usual flour-butter-shortening? I don’t think so. But when Roza’s birthday rolled around (see photo below), I wanted to make her the best GF cupcakes I could find. How could you not with a face like that? And I must say, If you just gave me that cupcake, I would not know that it doesn’t have any sugar or flour in it. It is perfectly fluffy and dense at the same time, perfectly chocolatey without being too sweet… It was good. So yeah, these are, by non-GF standards, good cupcakes.

Now let me tell you a bit about Roza. She is the cutest 4 year old I’ve ever met in my life. With a voice like a cartoon character and an endlessly positive attitude, she always had the ability to make me howl with laughter. She was super into Curious George at the time, and we had been reading her this story where George is home alone and finds all these party favors and decorations and cake ingredients, etc. for a party, so he decorates and makes the cake, and then it turns out the party is for him! So Roza’s mom decided to do the same thing. All week, Roza cleaned the house with her little miniature broom for a party she knew we were having, and then she and I decided to make cupcakes for said party. Then, at dinner on Friday with her parents and me and Jonah, we surprised her with the fact that this all was her own birthday party! It was the most adorable thing ever. Their family doesn’t eat sweets a whole lot, and usually sweets aren’t things like chocolate cupcakes, so she was pretty enthused by the idea of baking sweets like these. While we were making them, we had this conversation about 20 times:

Roza: Annie, do you know what is yummy?
Annie: What’s yummy, Roza.
Roza: Chocolate… (Breaks into giggles).

Have I mentioned how much I love her? I have? Ok. I’ll stop.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Cupcakes

Note: A lot of GF recipes will not use just coconut flour. In fact, when I told Roza’s parents that this recipe only had coconut flour, they didn’t think it would be very successful. But the key is using LOTS of wet ingredients. Coconut flour soaks up moisture like nothing else, so in order to balance it out, the batter will seem pretty wet. But it works, I swear.

Ingredients

Cupcakes

¼ cup coconut flour
¼ cup cocoa powder
¼ tsp sea salt
½ tsp baking soda
3 eggs
¼ cup canola oil (the recipe called for grapeseed, but I used canola because it’s what we had around)
½ cup agave nectar (we did a little bit less than this since their family is into less sweeteners)

Frosting

1 cup chocolate chips (preferably dark)
½ cup canola oil (again, the recipe called for grapeseed, but I still didn’t have any)
2 Tbl agave nectar
1 Tbl vanilla extract
a pinch of salt

Instructions

Cupcakes

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. In a mixing bowl, combine coconut flour, cacao powder, salt and baking soda and stir. In a larger mixing bowl, blend together the eggs, oil and agave. Then mix the dry into the wet, and stir until thoroughly combined. Line your cupcake tin with liners, and scoop about 1/4 cup of batter into each liner. Bake them for ~20 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

Frosting

In a small saucepan over very low heat (or in a double boiler, if you’re feeling that it’s necessary), melt chocolate and oil together. Stir in the agave, vanilla, and salt. Then put the frosting in the freezer for 15 minutes to chill and thicken – mine took longer than 15 minutes to thicken up, but then it was a bit difficult to spread because I think I left it in the freezer for too long… I’m sure there’s a happy medium here, I just didn’t quite hit the nail on the head my first try). After removing from the freezer, whip it with a hand blender (or transfer from the pot you used to a standing mixer and use that) until it is fluffed up. Spread over the cupcakes and enjoy! Roza definitely did.

The Greatest Fish Tacos!

September 30, 2012February 4, 2017

Hello all. Summer is tip-toeing out these days. And, while I’m sad that the warmth and long days are leaving, I must admit I’m excited to start wearing sweaters and scarves and boots – my fall uniform. The other nice thing about the very gradual transition this year – the temperature is slowly going from a high of 90 to a high of 72, and that’s great – is that it’s a gentle reminder to make all my favorite summer dishes I haven’t made yet.

These fish tacos are easily in my top 5 summer meals. They’re relatively easy and refreshing. I suppose they could be made year round, but to me they just seem to go with sunshine and shorts. I like to make some roasted corn for a side dish and wash it all down with a light summer ale.

Fish Tacos

Ingredients

Lime-Cumin-Dijon vinaigrette

2 Tbl fresh lime juice
2 tsp dijon mustard
3/4 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp salt
1/8 tsp freshly ground black pepper
6 Tbl olive oil

Fish Tacos

2-2 1/2 cups roughly flaked cooked halibut (about 12 oz)
3 Tbl mayonnaise
1 scallion, white and light green parts only, minced
1/2 cup minced celery leaves and stalks
1/4 cup chopped green olives (optional… I don’t usually include these. Another option is to prep them and not add them to the mixture, but to serve as a garnish/possible topping)
1 cup arugula, roughly chopped (or other “peppery green”)
1 cup cilantro leaves, roughly chopped
6 small corn tortillas (the 4 inch ones)
other serving options: yogurt or sour cream, goat cheese, slices of avocado, and lime wedges

Instructions

To make the vinaigrette, put the lime juice, mustard, cumin, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Whisk together, and while whisking, add the olive oil in a slow steady stream. Whisk until the dressing is well combined.

Now onto the filling. In a mixing bowl, combine the fish, 2 Tbl of the vinaigrette you just made, the mayonnaise, scallion, and celery and mix gently. You want to be sure to be gentle because you don’t want to break up the fish too much. If you’re using the olives, mix them in as well. In a separate bowl (I know, another bowl!) toss the arugula and cilantro with just enough of the vinaigrette so that it is lightly and evenly coated. Now the recipe leaves the fish and the greens separate, which you totally can, but for the sake of not having a thousand dishes on the table, I usually just lightly fold the greens in to the fish so it’s all one big mixture.

When you’re ready to eat, heat the tortillas however you’d like (the recipe recommends over a gas flame, but that sounds a little frightening to me, so I am a fan of a dry pan or, if need be, a microwave). Put the tortillas on plates, put on a layer of the fish and a layer of greens (if you’ve left them separate; if not, just heap it all on there). Then top your tacos with whatever garnishes you choose, and enjoy! Be sure there are napkins around, because there are juicy little buggers.

Old Fashioned Strawberry Shortcake

September 13, 2012February 4, 2017

Wow you guys. This is the longest I have gone without posting here. I’m going to do my best to get back on the horse, but I can’t make any promises. Here are a few reasons August was a little rough:

1) We travelled quite a bit. To Seattle twice: once for a farewell party for my sister (who just moved to Berkeley, CA to pursue her dreams), once for a wedding (congrats to Johnny and Sophie!), and then to Minnesota for Jonah’s family reunion.

2) I was nannying AND working at Pagatim. It was… a lot.

3) We moved! It’s official! We now live in a beautiful grown up house with friends. I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to have doors between rooms (for example, there is not only a door between our bedroom and kitchen, but an entire floor/ceiling, which means Jonah can no longer wake me up in the morning by eating his cereal), a full sized kitchen (with a dishwasher!), big windows and lots of light, a patio out back… the list goes on.

But really, I know there is no excuse to leave you hanging like that, so my hope is to not let that happen again. One of the times I went to Seattle this summer, we went to see a viewing of The Princess Bride at the Mural Amphitheater right under the Space Needle. It was so fun, and we packed a wonderful picnic to bring along. I made these shortcakes for dessert, and they were so delicious.

Strawberry Shortcake

Makes 8 shortcakes

Ingredients

Shortcake

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup yellow cornmeal
2/3 cup granulated sugar, plus 1/3 cup to top shortcakes
1 tsp fine sea salt
1 1/2 cups heavy cream
4 tsp lemon zest
1/4 cup unsalted butter, melted

Strawberry Filling

2 pints ripe strawberries, hulled and sliced (I think we used raspberries instead)
2 Tbl granulated sugar
2-3 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
We also added a few roughly chopped mint and lemon verbena leaves

Whipped cream for serving, preferably homemade

Instructions

Shortcake

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and butter a baking sheet. Mix together the flour, baking powder, cornmeal, sugar, and salt in a bowl. Then stir in the cream and lemon zest. Turn the dough onto a floured surface and form it into a ball, then knead about 12 times, or until the dough holds its shape (careful not to overwork it!). Cut the dough into 8 equal portions and form the portions into balls. Dip each ball into the melted butter, and then dip half of the ball into the (1/3 cup) sugar. Place each ball onto the baking sheet, sugared side up. Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown on edges and baked through. Cool on a wire rack.

Strawberry Filling

While the shortcake is baking, you can get started on the fruit. Now, I didn’t follow the recipe when it came to the fruit. I combined the berries, sugar, lemon, and herbs in a pot and put it over low heat. Let it cook, stirring frequently, until the sugar is absorbed and the berries start to soften, then remove from heat. (You can also prepare the whipped cream while the shortcakes are baking.)

To serve, slice the shortcakes in half horizontally, spoon a heaping serving of the fruit over the bottom half, then put on as much whipped cream as you’d like, and put the top on. These are a lovely end-of-summer dessert, simple but really delicious. Enjoy!