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Enchiladas with a difference

We’ve been attempting to reduce the amount of carbohydrates in meals and to this end have started working from meal plans. Most of these menus started with material pulled off “eatingwell.com.“ In the process a lot of great recipes are getting discovered. The most recent is a different kind of enchilada.

The key to a good pan of enchiladas is sauce and for this we don’t use EatingWell. Recipe is attached and it is best if you use Gebhardt’s Chile Powder which isn’t easy to find, but worth the search.

Now the part that is different is … these enchiladas are wrapped in thin strips of zucchini. A mandolin or even a nice sharp vegetable peeler works. The long slices need to be 0.5mm or an ⅛ of an inch thick. Test by wrapping a slice around a couple of fingers if it doesn’t break it will work.

Our take on the original EatingWell recipe is attached and it makes 16 enchiladas with 4 being a serving size. These are actually about half or two-thirds the size you’d get from regular tortillas so you can plan accordingly.

 

Print Recipe

Zucchini Enchiladas

Ingredients

  • 2 T olive oil
  • 1 medium onion - chopped
  • 1 Poblano pepper seeded and chopped
  • ¼ t salt
  • 12 oz cooked chicken breast canned chicken works great
  • 2 cups shredded cheese
  • 1 ½ cups enchilada sauce *Southwest Enchilada Sauce"
  • 3 medium zucchini
  • 2 cups shredded romaine lettuce
  • ½ cup cilantro chopped (optional)

Instructions

  • Preheat oven to 425. Heat oil in large skillet over medium high heat. Add onion and Poblano with a dash of salt. Cook until it starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Transfer to large bowl.
  • Mix in chicken, ¾ cup cheese, and ½ cup enchilada sauce.
  • With mandolin or peeler slice zucchini lengthwise into thin strips. You need 48 unbroken pieces.
  • Spread ½ cup sauce on the bottom of a 9 x 13 inch baking dish. Lay out groups of 3 strips on a clean work surface overlapping the edges by about ¼ inch. Place 2 tablespoons measure of filling on the end of a group of strips, roll up and place seam side down in the baking dish. Repeat until you have 16 enchiladas. Top the zucchini rolls with the remaining 1 cup of sauce and sprinkle the remaining cheese.
  • Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cheese is melted and sauce is bubbling.
  • Serve on a bed of lettuce and garnish with cilantro.

 

Print Recipe

Southwest Enchilada Sauce

Ingredients

  • 2 cloves garlic smashed and chopped fine
  • 1 oz butter ¼ stick
  • 6 T Gebhardt's chile powder *note
  • 5 fresh ripe tomatoes or a can of diced plum tomatoes
  • 1 T tomato paste
  • 1 cup chicken stock
  • 1 cup water
  • salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  • In 2 quart sauce pan saute the garlic in butter over medium heat for 1 to 2 minutes. Reduce heat and stir in the chile powder. Cook, stirring constantly for 2 to 3 minutes to remove the raw chile taste. Watch carefully because chile burns easily. Pull off heat.
  • Stir tomatoes (diced), tomato paste, chicken stock, water, salt and pepper into the chile powder and return to medium heat. Bring to a simmer, stirring frequently, for 10 minutes.
  • Take off heat. Mix, with hand blender, to a smooth consistancy. Sauce is ready to be used, can be refrigerated for 3-4 days or frozen for longer storage.

Notes

Ground Chile powder can be subbed to increase or decrease "heat" of sauce. You can also add cumin and/or dried chile pods to alter the flavor.
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Caddis hatch on the Crooked

First summerlike day and we headed to the Crooked River. It started as a Euro Nymphing practice session. The river was kind of high and turbid so we didn’t really expect much action. But the cooler was full, the kindles loaded up … so we were ready for anything.

As I was rigging up the nymph leaders, I noticed that JQ was taking a great deal of interest in a juniper near the stream’s edge. There was a Black Caddis Hatch and the tree’s branches were alive with the tent winged bugs.

Didn’t see much surface feeding, so I continued with the wet fly rig. This was moderately successful. But what got my attention was all the rises just downstream.

I headed back to the car and got out a dry fly rig. The rest of the afternoon was spent catching six to ten inch Red Band Trout.

 

 

 

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A closer view, literally

I think the saying goes, “the best camera is the one you have in your hand.” For must of us, it’s now our phone. Paired up with the Internet, smart phones have forever changed picture sharing.

Over the 30 years we’ve been in the media, field production tools have evolved … a lot. Nothing compares to the shift that took place in just the last five years.

For blog images and YouTube videos we use a combination of DSLR and iPhone. This month the phones got updated and that gave us a much better camera. To this we’ve also added lenses specifically designed for smart phones.

Moment is a Seattle based company that started as app developers and their focus on mobile production tools brought about the development of a set of lenses. Three different focal lengths, wide angle, telephoto and macro.

It’s the macro lens that has really captured our attention. The shift in subject scale is a dramatic change to prospective. We are starting to look for photo ops a bit differently.

JQ started with plants and flower images and I put it to use on some aquatic insects. You’ll never look at a river quite the same after watching a caddis nymph harass a mayfly.

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Cattle Drive

Oregon’s roads present us with so much more than a means to an end. Each turn presents new vistas, viewpoints, historical markers, even whole roads designated scenic byways. This day it was a cattle drive.

 

A Fort Rock area rancher was moving his herd to new pasture using Highway 31 west of Summer Lake. The wait was much more entertaining than a construction zone. Complete with cowboys on horses and cattle dogs. 

We pulled to the side of the road, rolled down the windows and uncapped our lenses. Except for the blacktop you might have been sitting on the sage prairie two hundred years ago. Then 20 minutes later we are back on our way to Summer Lake and another roadside treasure.

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Roasted vegetables with vinegar

In attempting to eat better, we’ve made an effort to get more whole foods onto the plate. Busy schedules make cooking a challenge, which often means we just skip the vegetable serving. We’ve started doing “meal prep,” making multiples of the dish for a week’s worth of eating. To this scheme came oven roasted veggies and a nice solution to the “eating healthy” problem.

There is a bit more upfront work, cleaning, peeling, and chopping when cooking a sheet pan full of vegetables. The upside is that you do the work when you have time and eat better when you don’t.

These premeasured meal additions can be tossed into a morning scramble or microwaved while the evening’s entree is cooking. We even toss a ½ cup of veggies on a lunch salad. Keeping the seasoning simple makes it  possible to match any evening’s meal by just adding an herb or spice blend.

So start by lining a baking sheet with foil, spray it lightly with cooking oil and preheat the oven to 400 degrees.  Then gather up a mix of vegetables. Keep in mind its a multi-meal prep, so figure about 4 to 6 ounces a serving. The mix is your choice. For us it’s usually an onion, 3 or 4 carrots, 2 stems of broccoli, and a couple of ribs of celery. During wintertime I’ll add root veggies to that mix. In all, I’m chopping up about 3 lbs of veggies to get 5 meals.

Take your time chopping so that you get a consistent size on all the pieces. One inch cubes work well. The time spent getting even chunks will make it easier to get an even roast.

All that chopped up goodness gets put in a large mixing bowl.  Drizzle a bit of oil, a pinch of salt and pepper and then toss to combine. It works to add oil, salt and pepper in a couple of stages to get an even coating on all the pieces.

Spread the veg mix in a single layer on the prepared baking sheet. If you have an extra large batch you can use two sheets and stagger the racks in your oven. Keeping it to a single layer makes all the vegetables cook at the same rate.

Roasting generally takes about 20 minutes, but check and turn at the ten minute mark.  The exception would be when you have a lot of hard root vegetables. Here you just keep turning at ten minute intervals, until done.  Done is a personal preference.  We like to have some browning, but not get too soft. Keep in mind that portions of the roasted mix will be reheated to serve later.

From the oven you return the mixture to that large mixing bowl in which you’ve put a tablespoon of red wine vinegar and one to two tablespoons of some finely chopped fresh herb.  Tarragon and thyme get used a lot in our house, but I’ve also minced garlic or ginger.  More complex flavoring, say a touch of harissa spice for some heat is usually done on smaller portions rather than the main batch. 

Toss the mix to get an even coating and then let it sit a bit. At this point we portion it out into 16 ounce deli cups and when cooled place in the fridge until needed.