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Chimichangas: Tex-Mex? Mexican? Delicious!

March 19, 2010 By 1 Comment

For real: I cook a lot of food that is quasi-Mexican, but I feel as if I’m insulting a whole nation by calling my recipes “Mexican.” So.. I guess Tex-Mex? Although I don’t like the sound of that either. Why is life so hard?

I have today off from work today, and my immediate plans were: go through my books and figure out what I want to bring with me on the move to the new Casa Shenanigans and go to El Pelon for some delicious fish tacos. Sadly, El Pelon is still not yet open and we had to go to another local place that wasn’t as good. So I figured I’d post about some other delicious taco-esque food I made last week.

Okay, maybe it’s a bit ignorant to say that a chimichanga [really, spell check? chimpanzee?] is taco-esque. But… it kind of is. Meat, cheese, beans, chilies, tortillas…. yup. Sounds like a taco. The big difference here is that it’s all wrapped up in a little rectangular package and then cooked. It’s typically fried, but we all know I can’t fry something that large and dense without hurting myself, so I baked mine.

The possibilities of what you can put in chimichangas is basically endless. You can opt for a vegetarian version with zucchini, cheese and beans and that would be amazing. All you’d really need to do is swap out diced zucchini [or mushrooms or any other firm vegetable] for the ground beef I used in the recipe below. I think the spices and the cooking method would work well with quite a few different options. You can also add in any vegetables of your choice; I had meant to add in roasted corn but of course forgot to do so. It’s amazing I supervise a whole department at work, no?


Baked Chimichangas

1 lb lean ground beef
1/2 onion, diced
1 clove garlic, minced
1 cup crushed tomatoes
1/2 can of diced green chilies with sauce
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon of chili powder, or more to taste
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
3/4 or 1 cup fat free refried beans
1 cup shredded cheddar cheese
6 – 8 large tortillas, 10-inch diameter

Preheat oven to 400F. In a large skillet, heat the oil over medium-high heat. Add in the diced onions and cook until translucent, then add the garlic and cook just until fragrant. The ground beef can then be added to the pan and browned. Once the meat is cooked through, add in the chilies, tomatoes, cumin, chili powder and cinnamon. Stir to combine, and let that cook over low heat for several minutes for the flavors to mingle. [Oh god, now I'm the type of person that says things that douchey Food Network chefs say. I'm sorry.]

Remove the pan from the heat. Take a tortilla and spread two tablespoons of refried beans down the center. Top with the meat mixture (roughly 1/3 cup) and then shredded cheese. Fold the tortilla envelope style and place in a baking pan seam side down. Very lightly coat with oil. Continue with the rest of the tortillas; depending on what else you add in here, this can serve up to 8. Cook for about 20 minutes in the oven, until the tortilla is golden brown and everything is heated through. Serve garnished with fresh salsa, sour cream, guacamole or any other toppings of your choice.

What can I say? These are so simple and so good. The cumin and cinnamon add a warm, earthy-spicy note to the meat, and the tomatoes and diced chilies give it just enough sauciness. These are perfect for a quick week night dinner, or would be great served at a party if using smaller tortillas.

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These aren't the blueberries you're looking for.

March 13, 2010 By Leave a Comment

My father-in-law requested a blueberry recipe for the blog not too long ago, and I’ve been thinking about several possibilities, but I want to wait for some good in-season blueberries to make something really good. Which isn’t to say that the subject of this post isn’t really good, because it is, but it uses frozen blueberries which is pretty much cheating and fresh blueberries are always better.

I didn’t actually take too many pictures of this, because it hadn’t been intended for the blog. It was intended to use up the bananas that my husband YET AGAIN didn’t eat. [Note to husband: I am not buying you any more bananas.] But then I made it, and tasted it, and decided to blog about it. Such is the life of a food blogger, I suppose: never eating a hot meal again and never quite knowing what creations will be “blog worthy” as one of our friends says.

Blueberry Banana Cake

3 ripe bananas, mashed
1.5 cups frozen blueberries, defrosted
2 cups flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon Kosher salt
1.5 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
2 eggs
1 stick of butter, room temperature

Preheat oven to 350. In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the eggs, vanilla and cinnamon. Slowly add in flour, baking powder and salt (the batter will be stiff). Fold in mashed bananas and blueberries until just combined. Pour batter into greased 9×13 baking pan. Cook for 35 – 40 minutes or until set in the center.

Now, mine came out a little light on the top, and I like my baked goods to look nice and golden brown. So I sprinkled about a tablespoon of sugar over the top and stuck it under the broiler for two minutes to caramelize the sugar and brown the top, and then it was perfect.

This makes about 24 pieces of cake, or bars, if you don’t feel like frosting them. These are really tasty; not very sweet, and the flavor of blueberry and banana really comes through. At first I was slightly disappointed in them, but on day two I had a second slice and fell in love with it: moist because of the banana, slightly tart because of the blueberries. It’s the type of snack cake that I don’t feel horrifically bad in eating and also the type that would be perfect with tea.

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Any time is breakfast time!

March 4, 2010 By Leave a Comment

Monsters, Inc. is a really good movie. The scene at the end where Sully gets to see Boo again? The look on his face always gets me. Also, our fat cat is also named after one of the characters, Mike Wazowski [yes, first and last name, and when we're mad at him we call him Michael].

Anyway, you know what I hate [besides people who talk in movies, poor customer service, poorly made iced coffee and bugs]? Recipes that don’t work out well. It’s like, you have such high hopes for them, you know? You look at the ingredients and think to yourself, “Self! This will be delicious!” And then you slave over the preparation of it and you so carefully put together all of the ingredients, and you finally taste it and ….meh. That happened to me the other night when my favoritest friend Becky came over to have dinner with the husband and I. Luckily, this week’s recipe is something different that I made this past weekend!

Pancakes are a favorite around here, so I make them fairly often. I’ve mostly perfected the cooking time and the flipping, so they’re a breeze to make. I’ve seen a lot of talk of ricotta cheese pancakes as of late and thought that might be something different to try. I found a lot of recipes that involve all this mixing and measuring, separating egg whites, etc., which seemed like an awfully lot of trouble for a Sunday morning. So instead I went with a nice Giada de Laurentiis recipe that is basically just doctoring a a pre-made mix.

Ricotta Pancakes, adapted from Giada de Laurentiis

1 cup pancake mix
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup whole milk ricotta cheese
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
zest of one lemon

Preheat non-stick skillet over medium-low heat. Stir water into the pancake mix until just combined. Add in the ricotta, lemon zest and vanilla extract and mix until combined, but batter is still lumpy. Don’t overmix. Add enough batter to the pan to make a 3-inch round circle and cook until deep bubbles form all over the surface. Flip and cook an additional two minutes. Either store in oven heated to 175 F or serve immediately.

Now, since I’m kind of indifferent to pancakes, I wanted something extra for mine. So I hustled up a half pint of blueberries, a quarter cup of water, a teaspoon of sugar and the juice of the lemon I zested and tossed it all in a saucepan. I let it come to a boil and then reduce down to make a syrupy, blueberry treat for my pancakes.

These were really good; the pancakes were fluffier than usual, with a nice sweetness to them punctuated by the bright citrus taste coming from the lemon zest. This was likely more evident when topped with the blueberries instead of a gallon of maple syrup, because when the husband was asked what he thought of these, he had no idea they were any different than the regular pancakes I make. Which I chose to take as a compliment, because he clearly enjoyed them. We had them with center cut bacon and eggs scrambled with sharp cheddar cheese and baby broccoli. Mmm… breakfast.

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