Incredible Enchiladas

Posted on 01/09/2013 by Walter Blevins

The best enchiladas I’ve ever had came from a place called Sadies in Albuquerque, New Mexico.  This iconic restaurant is big and every night it’s a hopping place.  New Mexico style enchiladas are “stacked” rather than rolled with an enchilada on the bottom and layers of filler topped by sauce and enchiladas 3 or 4 high.

Then the enchiladas are covered with red or green chili sauce or in the famous New Mexico style called “Christmas” which is red sauce on one side and green sauce on the other.  Finally, many people (myself included) order this delectable stacked dish “con huevo” with a fried egg on top.  Oh man, that’s some fantastic eating.

Most of us don’t make enchiladas at home because it’s messy.  But it’s worth it.  And it’s a lot cheaper than going to your local Mexican restaurant.  Plus, if you’ve got kids, everyone can pitch in and get messy together.

One of the other great things about enchiladas is that you can make it with leftover meat—shredded pork or beef or left over chicken or turkey.  My version today uses the last of the leftover Thanksgiving turkey which I froze in November for when we wanted a turkey dish. Continue reading →

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Semi-Homemade Enchilada Sauce

Posted on 01/09/2013 by Walter Blevins

I love enchiladas, especially New Mexico style.  But I haven’t really tried making them very often because I just don’t like the taste of the “enchilada sauce” that you buy in a can. It always has a faintly metallic taste that I don’t care for.

So, I took off on a quest to come up with a recipe for enchiladas and a homemade sauce that fit “Cheap Bastid’s” criteria: inexpensive (OK, cheap), tasty and easy to make.  And, I think that I was able to get that done reasonably well.  I searched the web for recipes and came up with several which I kind of cobbled together to come up with the one I’m using here.  There’s 2 recipes and 2 blogposts—one for enchilada sauce and one for enchiladas.  Both are easy although the enchiladas get just a bit messy when you’re assembling them.

Homemade enchiladas with Semi-Homemade Enchilada Sauce

Continue reading →

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Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Posted on 01/03/2013 by Walter Blevins

Remember school lunches way back when?  Were you a member of the “Clean Plate Club”? OK, so here’s how it worked at Manhattan Elementary in Tampa 50 years ago.

Everyday after lunch the teacher would call each kid’s name from the class roster.  There were 3 replies—“clean plate”, “little bit” or “no”.

The only answer that was good was “clean plate” which meant that you had eaten every morsel from your divided plastic plate.  You could get away with 3 “little bits” each grading period.

But if you said “little bit” or “clean plate” trying to pull the wool over teacher’s eyes there was always some goodie two-shoes who would snitch, usually with a snide “nuh-uhh”.  And then you’d incur the teacher’s wrath with a guilty sentence meted out of eraser clapping or blackboard cleaning after school.

There was one dish that tripped more of us up than any other.  It was the nemesis of the “Clean Plate Club”.  I’m talking Brussels Sprouts!

Green, spongy, golf-ball size morsels of “yuck” boiled to a gag-reflex inducing consistency.  That was the school lunch version.

Cheap Bastid’s Roasted Brussels Sprouts–not for school lunch anymore!

But—that’s no longer the case.  There are other ways to cook Brussels sprouts.  Ways that are delectable and tasty. Continue reading →

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Cranberry Cheesecake

Posted on 12/31/2012 by Walter Blevins

We did it!  We came up with the bright idea at Thanksgiving for a different take on dessert.  Cranberry Cheesecake. We both love cheesecake and we both love cranberries—especially at the traditional holiday dinners.

And we thought—what if?  What if we tried making a cheesecake that tastes like cranberries.  Carolyn insists on the canned jellied kind that slurps its way out of the can and that you slice.  I prefer the other extreme of making a cranberry relish or salsa with fresh cranberries.  So far, for the 8 holidays we’ve been together, she’s always won (no big surprise there is there?) which is OK because it’s one less dish for me to prepare.

Now this cheesecake ended up being a bit less dense than other cheesecakes but no less tasty—especially with the tartness of cranberries added.  And it’s really easy to make.  Next time I make it, I’ll try a couple of different things to add to the flavor, perhaps change the consistency a bit and dress it up a little more.   (There’s a couple of notes at the end of the recipe that you might want to try). Continue reading →

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Iowa Porkers

Posted on 12/03/2012 by Walter Blevins

Seems like there’s a lot of places which have their own signature sandwich.  They range from Philly Cheesesteak to Louisiana PoBoys to San Diego Fish Tacos to Cuban Sandwiches in Tampa or Milwaukee Bratwurst.  A trip to one of these cities isn’t complete until you’ve tried it’s special concoction.

I lived for a number of years in Iowa.  If there’s any distinction there it’s that the food tends to be a bit more bland than in a lot of other places.  You’re not going to find any local dishes that are spicy.  Sometimes it’s like you should carry around one of those tiny bottles of Tabasco Sauce just to kick things up a bit.

But that’s Iowa.  And one thing Iowa’s got lots of is pork.  And Iowa’s signature sandwich is the fried Pork Tenderloin sandwich.  Oh man, what an incredible lunch.  And you can get it in hundreds of restaurants—pounded thin, breaded, deep-fried hanging out over the edge of the bun goodness that might just burn your lips at first bite.

Iowa Tenderloin sandwich ready to eatI’ve enjoyed many lunches of “Iowa Porkers”.  One of the more memorable was in a tiny tavern in a equally tiny town near where we were pheasant hunting one Saturday probably 25 or so years ago.  This thing was the size of a dinner plate—super thin and crispy—perched inside an oversized hamburger bun and hanging 2 or 3 inches over the side of the bun all the way around. Continue reading →

Posted in Comfort Food, family meals, pork, sandwiches | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments