Mexican Casserole

The stomach flu has sidelined the B.A. Gourmet for a few days. As soon as the rumbling subsided, though, I knew it was time to ditch the toast, bananas, and crackers for a Mexican meal.

Ingredients:

2 lbs of Ground Turkey

6-8 Flour Tortillas

2 Packets of Taco Seasoning

1 Onion

1 Bell Pepper

1 Can of Black Beans

1 Can of Enchilada Sauce

Shredded Cheese (Mexican Blend)

Steps/Analysis:

First, dice your onion and pepper into uniform pieces. Saute in a little olive oil over Medium heat until the onions are slightly translucent. At that point, evacuate the contents of your pan to a large mixing bowl.

Next, dump the ground turkey directly into the same pan, raising the temperature slightly to Medium-High. Using a spatula or large spoon, break up the meat and stir to cook evenly.

Once the turkey has cooked through, carefully drain the oil from the pan and return to the heat. Add one cup of water and both packets of taco seasoning. Stir thoroughly and allow the sauce to cook down for another 4-5 minutes.

Add the meat to the bowl with the onions and peppers. Then, drain the liquid from the can of black beans and add them to the bowl as well. Stir to thoroughly incorporate everything.

Pour half of the meat/onion/pepper/bean mixture into a large baking pan. Sprinkle on some cheese and cover with a layer of tortillas.

At this point, I decided to sprinkle on some more cheese and double up with another layer or tortillas, effectively making a quesadilla in the middle of the casserole. If that seems like overkill to you, by all means skip this step. I think it worked pretty well, though.

Spoon on the rest of the meat mixture, add cheese, a final layer of tortillas, and some more cheese on top. Put the pan in a 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes, or until the cheese on top is brown and bubbly.

While the casserole is cooking, open up your enchilada sauce and heat in a small sauce pan over low heat.

Serving/Notes:

To serve, cut the casserole into squares and spoon some enchilada sauce over top. The end result is a little like a quesadilla, a little like a taco, and a little like an enchilada. It's a big ol' mess of Mexican goodness.

Rice and guacamole are welcome sides, as is a little hot sauce or salsa.

Pulled Pork Stromboli

Earlier this week, I was a little stumped about what I would be cooking for dinner. My usual Internet and magazine searches weren't yielding any appetizing suggestions. Maybe I was just in a fickle mood. At any rate, I sat down with a blank piece of paper and started brainstorming, putting together strange combinations of food to get the creative juices flowing.

And that's how it happened... Pulled Pork Stromboli. Forgotten what a stromboli is? Check here: http://thebagourmet.blogspot.com/2010/01/leftover-corner-sauce-to-stromboli.html

I guess you could say I'm a fan of mixing culinary styles. Some of my favorite dishes on this blog are BBQ chicken pizza and breakfast quesadillas, after all.

Ingredients:

2 Balls of Prepackaged Pizza Dough

1 Container of Lloyd's Shredded Pork

Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ Sauce

Shredded Cheese (Mexican Blend)

1/2 Onion

1/2 Bell Pepper

Mushrooms

Leftover Corn (optional)

Steps/Analysis:

Dice the onion and pepper and start sauteing over Medium heat. Pull them off the stove when they just start to turn brown. You want to take the raw vegetable edge off of them, but remember that they'll be wrapped in dough and cooked some more in the oven.

Dice the mushrooms as well. There's no need to saute them, though.

Then, sprinkle some flour across the counter and grab a rolling pin. Start rolling out half of the total amount of pizza dough. Try to get a fairly big, rectangular shape.

Once you're there, spoon half of the Lloyd's pork down one side of the length of the rectangle. Then, add the onion, peppers, and mushrooms on top. There was some leftover corn in the kitchen from a previous dinner, so I threw that in too, just for the hell of it. Pour on a little BBQ sauce to help hold everything together and top with a thin layer of shredded cheese.

Next, fold the sides of the dough in towards the center and roll everything up like a giant burrito. Try to seal up the seams as well as you can to avoid leaks - a little olive oil will help if excess flour is preventing a good seal. You can also brush some olive oil over the top of the newly-formed stromboli to encourage browning in the oven.

Finally, carefully transfer this Italian/BBQ monster to a pizza stone or baking dish. Repeat with the second half of your dough to make another, identical stromboli.

Place the stone or pan in a 350 degree oven for about half an hour. When the strombolis are done, let them rest for about 5 minutes to help keep the insides from spilling out when you cut them up.

Serving/Notes:

Despite my best efforts to neatly encapsulate everything, this is quite a messy meal. The end slices of the stromboli are manageable by hand, but the center pieces are best attacked with a knife and fork.

That being said, the effort is well worth it. The pulled pork strombolis were really tasty - kind of like a summer BBQ in every bite. People dove right in. Just check out the aftermath...

Breakfast Quesadillas

My two favorite food genres would definitely be "Mexican" and "Breakfast." Naturally, I'll take any opportunity to combine the two. They often work really well together and already have a pretty strong precedent to build off of: huevos rancheros.

Since I had some leftover tortillas from my mu shu pork dinner anyway, I invented the "Breakfast Quesadilla" this past weekend. It's a little more complicated than most of my recipes (involving a frying pan and a panini press), but is well worth it.

Ingredients:
1 Large Flour Tortilla
2 Eggs
2 Slices of Pork Roll
Salsa
Cheese (Mexican Blend)

Steps/Analysis:
First thing's first, get your pork roll browned in the frying pan over Medium heat. If you've never had the good fortune to try pork roll before, it's one of the more amazing benefits of growing up in New Jersey. It's a little bacon-y and a little ham-y and all good. There's a number of brands on the market in the area, but for my money it doesn't get any better than Taylor Ham.

The trick to cooking pork roll is to make a cut from the center of its round form to the edge; that will keep it from shrinking into a meaty dome over the heat. Once browned, remove from the stove and cut the slices into quarter circles.

Next, lower the heat on your stove to Medium-Low and coat your pan with a pat of butter. Pour in two beaten eggs and allow to partially set up. Just before the eggs are completely cooked, scatter the pork roll pieces over half of the eggs and spoon on some salsa. Then, gently fold the eggs (now more properly called an omelette) over in half. Allow the eggs to finish cooking.

At this point, you should definitely start heating up the panini press, if you haven't done so already.

To prepare the tortilla, sprinkle a thin layer of cheese over one half. Carefully, lay the eggs on top of that side and sprinkle more cheese on top of that. Then, fold the other half of the tortilla over and place in the panini press.

Once the tortilla is crispy and has those lovely, golden-brown grill marks you're done. Remove to a plate and cut into triangles (I find that a pizza cutter is the best tool for this job).


Serving/Notes:
A little hot sauce is a nice addition, but otherwise there's really nothing else you have to add to your quesadilla. All the goodness is already neatly tucked inside.

I'll eat just about anything in a tortilla, but this is the real deal: a hearty, hand-held breakfast that's kind of fun to make as well as being extremely tasty.

I imagine this dish would be nearly as delicious without using a panini press. You would just have to move fast enough so that the hot eggs melt all the cheese for you. You could probably toast the assembled quesadilla in the frying pan as well (a la grilled cheese sandwich), but it might be difficult to warm both sides evenly.

Mu Shu Pork Roll Ups

It's been a bit of a lazy summer for the B. A. Gourmet, but let's get back into the swing of things, shall we?

Do you have a hankering for Chinese food too? This week's recipe is a very simple, mu shu-style pork wrap.

Ingredients:

1 Pound of Lean Pork

1 Large Bag of Frozen Stir-Fry Vegetables

Flour Tortillas

Hoisin or Plum Sauce

Steps/Analysis:

Slice your pork into thin, bite-size strips and start them cooking in a large pan with a little olive oil. Add liberal amounts of salt, pepper, and garlic powder. Stir and flip as necessary to prevent the meat from sticking together and encourage even browning.

Once the pork is cooked through and is getting a little crispy, add the frozen vegetables straight to the pan. Stir thoroughly, adding several spoonfuls of the hoisin or plum sauce. Once the vegetables are heated all the way through, kill the heat and take the pan to the table.

Stack the tortillas on a large plate, cover with a paper towel, and microwave for about 30 seconds. This will warm them up and make them a little more pliable during the assembly process.

That's it? Just 3 or 4 steps? Yep, that's it.

Serving/Notes:

To eat, spread a little more sauce onto a tortilla, scoop on meat and veggies, and roll. Make sure to tuck the ends in as you go and try not to overstuff the wrap.

The typical Asian side dishes are welcome at the table. I served my wraps with white rice and edamame (salty soy beans that you may have had as an appetizer at a sushi restaurant; think of them like Japanese beer nuts), both of which are a cinch to cook up. If you look in your supermarket's freezer case, you'll probably find bags of microwaveable edamame that will take all of 5-6 minutes to prepare.

Nutella Pancakes

I suppose I've had a bit of a sweet tooth, lately. At least, it must seem that way from my most recent posts. From last week's dessert we transition nicely to today's breakfast with Nutella pancakes!

I'm pretty good with pancakes, I won't lie. Long ago, my mother taught me that you could flip a hamburger as many times as you want, but you only flip a pancake once. As long as you take that to heart, the rest of pancake cookery will follow. After that, you'll start experimenting with what you can add to the batter to make a unique treat. That's what happened to me.

Ingredients:

Pancake Mix (I'm partial to Hungry Jack brand myself, but use whatever you like)

Any Ingredients Your Mix Calls For (i.e. oil, water, milk, eggs, etc.)

3 Tablespoons of Nutella

2 Tablespoons of Butter

Steps/Analysis:

It doesn't get much simpler than this, folks. Basically, you'll want to follow the directions on the box of pancake mix to form a batter. Aim for 6-8 pancakes. Any more and you'll want to increase the Nutella to preserve the ratio.

Scoop the Nutella into a small, microwaveable bowl. Add the butter and zap for about a minute and a half. Stir until you have a smooth consistency that can be worked into your pancake batter. You may need to microwave it again, depending on your machine.

Pour the liquefied Nutella into the batter and combine with a whisk or a large spoon.

Set a griddle or a large pan on the stove over Medium heat. Grease it liberally with a pat of butter and ladle out your cakes.

When the edges of the pancakes seem to have firmed up and air bubbles are breaking the surface it's time to flip. Do so only once. You can peek at the underside, though, to make sure they're done when you think they are.

Remove the pancakes to a plate or serving platter and place in a just barely warm oven if it's going to be a while before serving.

Serving/Notes:
The Nutella flavor of the pancakes was much more subtle than I expected and the nuttiness comes out a lot more than the chocolate seemed to. They were quite delicious served up with more Nutella, whipped cream, and fresh fruit.

You'll notice that my pancakes are paired with french toast that a lovely breakfast assistant did up. I also think a bready breakfast should always be paired with a meat, turkey bacon in this case.

Choco-Berry Mousse Torte

Inspired by my lady's return to the Northeast, I decided to try my hand at a second dessert (since my Johnny Rotten Cake had turned out so well). I actually found this recipe on a full page add in a magazine. Reading the ingredient list below will give you a pretty good idea of what the advertisement was for.

This is a great no-bake dessert. It takes a little time and effort to put together, but the end result is disproportionately more elegant than the amount of work involved. You'll get a few 'Oohs' and 'Ahhs' from this one, I promise.

Ingredients:
1 Tub of Cool Whip

1 Box Jell-O Instant Chocolate Pudding

1 Package of Cream Cheese

2 Cups and 2 Tablespoons of Milk

3 Squares of Semi-Sweet Baker's Chocolate

Nilla Wafers

Strawberries

Steps/Analysis:

The torte requires that you build it upside down. I'll give you a few moments to mull that over...

Back? Great. It's important to have a handle on this, conceptually, as you follow these instructions. It'll all make sense in a few minutes.

First, find a circular cake pan, roughly 9 inches in diameter. A pie plate will do in a pinch. Line the bottom with plastic wrap and stand Nilla wafers on their edges around the edge, leaning them against the wall (rounded side facing out) of the pan/plate/Frisbee/whatever.

In a large bowl, combine 2 cups of milk, half of the tub of Cool Whip (defrosted, of course), and the dry pudding mix. Stir until uniformly smooth.

In a separate bowl, break up 2 squares of baker's chocolate and microwave for a minute or so. At the end of the cycle, stir the chocolate and repeat until it is completely melted. Once a gooey, chocolate mess is accomplished, add it to the quasi-pudding you just created and stir to combine.

Note: In my first attempt, I microwaved the chocolate and attempted to add the cold ingredients to its bowl, rather than the other way around. Don't do that. Just don't. If you do, the melted chocolate will seize up and become a grainy, quicksand-like reservoir in the bottom of the bowl and you'll have to start over. Heed my words!

Slowly pour the contents of the thoroughly mixed bowl of pudding goodness into your pan. Be patient so you don't disturb the retaining wall of Nilla wafers.

Hopefully, you've let your cream cheese sit around for a while and soften. Dump that into a new bowl, with the sugar, and the 2 tablespoons of milk you have in reserve. Stir to combine and carefully spread over the top of the pan. Then, press a layer of Nilla wafers into it. You want the flat bottoms facing up (You do remember that the top of this thing is actually the bottom, right?).

Cover the whole kit and caboodle with plastic wrap and store in the fridge for at least 4 hours. I let mine go overnight.

When you come back to the torte, remove the top layer of plastic and place a large plate or serving platter upside-down on top of the pan. Clamp your hands on each side and flip the whole thing. Coax the dessert out by pulling on the exposed plastic wrap, if necessary.

Top the torte with the remaining Whip Cream and a layer of sliced strawberries. Finally, take a cheese grater to the last square of chocolate and give it a good dusting of chocolate snow flakes.

Serving/Notes:

The pictures say it all, don't they? This is a great summer dessert - chocolaty and rich, but not overly heavy. The Nilla wafers soak up a lot of moisture and make a really tender makeshift crust. Delicious!

Maple/Mustard Glazed Chicken

This week's recipe is inspired by a meal I saw on http://closetcooking.blogspot.com/ . Having said that, I think enough alterations were made to the original that I have to take the credit/blame for this one. Some of these changes were made out of laziness on my part, some were a result of necessary improvisation.

Maple/Mustard Glazed Chicken was not a rousing success, but neither do I believe it to be a lost cause. It's got potential.

Ingredients:

4-6 Chicken Breasts

8 Tablespoons of Maple Syrup

1 Cup of Dijon Mustard

4 Tablespoons of Brown Sugar

1 Teaspoon of Thyme

2 Eggs

Flour

Bread Crumbs/Oatmeal (explanation forthcoming, I promise)

Steps/Analysis:

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Combine the maple syrup, mustard, brown sugar, and thyme in a bowl and stir to combine.

Fill three shallow bowls separately with flour, the beaten eggs, and a bread crumb/oatmeal mixture.

Now, before I had gone grocery shopping for this meal, I checked the refrigerator and pantry for items I already had at hand. I saw a canister of bread crumbs and happily checked it off of my list. However, when it came time to cook, I discovered that the container was practically empty. I searched for a new one to no avail. I saw the oatmeal and thought I remembered reading about meats crusted in oatmeal before, so I augmented my bread crumb supply with it. I don't necessarily recommend this, but it seemed to work out well enough.

Trim any excess fat off of the chicken breasts and cut into single portions. Set a large pan over Medium-High heat and pour in enough oil to coat the bottom.

Dredge your breasts in the flour first, then the egg, and, finally, the bread crumbs/oatmeal and place directly in the pan. Get a nice, brown crust on both sides, but don't worry about cooking each breast through. Once you have the crust, remove the chicken to a lubricated baking dish.

When all of the chicken is in the baking dish, pour on the glaze evenly and place it in the oven for about 10 minutes to finish cooking.

Serving/Notes:

The maple syrup/mustard mixture ended up being less a glaze than a thick, heavy, smothering blanket. We all ended up scraping most of it off on our plates. The flavors were nice, though a little heavy on the mustard. I would try to balance the sweetness better the next time.

The oatmeal crust was pretty successful and starting the chicken out in the pan helped the meat retain all its juices throughout the cooking process.

I kept the sides simple, opting for mixed vegetables and biscuits and creating a country-style illusion.