Fattoush

One of the things I've always wanted to do was cook from a cookbook cover to cover. (Well, as much as possible considering dietary and kitchen restrictions, some self-imposed.) I imagine this started back when I read Julie & Julia (well before the movie came out), and just thought that was such a great way to learn and challenge yourself. I also love buying cookbooks, and we haven't made 95% of the recipes in the ones on our shelves, so it's sort of a practical mission as well. I'm not disciplined enough or singularly focused enough to want to go page by page on a weekly basis or daily basis, so I imagine any cookbook challenge I do will take a while (and a few may even run simultaneously), but I think it's a good way to use what we have and continually try new things.

We started with the first recipe in the Jerusalem cookbook last year, and now that we're finally getting settled in our new home, it was time to move on to the second - Na'ama's fattoush. I tried to stick closely to the recipe, but there were a couple of things I didn't measure. The ingredients we used were:

- 1 cup whole milk yogurt ($1.25)
- 3/4 cup + 2 tbsp 2% milk ($0.28)
- 2 pitas ($0.70)
- 3 tomatoes ($1.19)
- 4 mini cucumbers ($1.33)
- 6 scallions ($0.52)
- a handful of fresh mint (about 1/2 a package) ($0.85)
- a bunch of fresh parsley ($0.40)
- 5 radishes ($0.50)
- large spoonful of minced garlic ($0.10)
- about 1/4 cup olive oil ($0.30)
- about 2 tbsp apple cider vinegar ($0.10)
- juice of 2 lemons ($0.98)
- salt and pepper ($0.05)
- sumac to garnish ($0.10)

The salad came out to about $8.65 (not helped by the fact that lemons are not cheap right now and I wanted to use real lemon juice because it was a salad), but considering how much it made, it really wasn't a bad total for dinner, even after adding the two panko chicken tenders we ate it with.

The first step had to be done hours in advance (probably 4-5 hours in our case), which was to mix together the yogurt and the milk and then leave it in the fridge. The result was supposed to have bubbles on the top after a few hours, but I don't know if I did it right, because there were bubbles on the top as soon as I was done mixing. The goal was to be like buttermilk, but less sour, but since we don't really ever taste buttermilk on its own, we had no idea whether that was really the case. We used it anyway, since it tasted like yogurt and yogurt dressings are good.

When it was actually time to make dinner, the first thing I did was chop up the pita and pop it in the oven on a dry baking sheet at 350 degrees for a little over 10 minutes. You're supposed to use stale pita in this recipe, but I'm not a big fan of leaving bread out to get stale (bugs...), and we just bought the pita the day before, so this seemed the most efficient way of drying it out.

The next and most time-consuming step was all the vegetable prep: dice tomatoes, dice cucumbers, thinly slice radishes, thinly slice scallions, coarsely chop parsley and mint. The recipe itself actually said to put the pita in first, followed by the yogurt dressing, followed by all the other ingredients, but since we're still working on our kitchen arrangements, we didn't yet have the counter space for that. I wasn't really sure what the difference was, since the pita, yogurt, and vegetables were to go into the bowl in quick succession anyway, so into the bowl went all the vegetables as I chopped, followed by the pita pieces and the yogurt dressing, and then all the other seasoning/dressing ingredients like the olive oil and vinegar.

As we mixed it up, it just seemed to be really heavy on the liquids, definitely more than the stylized photo in the cookbook. That seemed like more vegetables than dressing, and ours seemed like yogurt everywhere in an overwhelming amount. It didn't really look pretty, but when we tasted it, it tasted good so that was fine. Appearance isn't everything. We left it for about 10 minutes for the flavors to meld and hopefully for the dressing to thicken up (it only did a little bit), and then spooned it into bowls with the sumac on top.

The salad was light and refreshing, had a good amount of flavor, and worked well with the chicken we ate it with. While we both liked this salad and thought it was tasty, it probably won't enter our regular rotation. If we're in the mood for a salad of this type, sure, we'd make it again, but it's not going to be top of mind most likely when we're making our meal plans. I think to keep track of what we've made for this cookbook project, it might be helpful to rank what we've made in order by how much we liked it, so right now, here they are:

Jerusalem Cookbook Project Rankings:
1. Roasted sweet potatoes and fresh figs
2. Na'ama's fattoush

Chocolate Vegetable Tarts

For our second "chocolate night" during the Week 7 challenge, we went back to the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook and made some rich chocolaty vegetable tarts. This was another one of those recipes that jumped out at me the first time I read through the book because it was such an interesting idea. You make the dough using cocoa powder and have bits of chocolate sprinkled inside the tart. I was so curious to see how well all that chocolate would match up with the savory ingredients.

First up, the ingredients for the dough:

- 1 tbsp sugar ($0.05)
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder ($0.60)
- 1-1/4 cups flour ($0.70)
- 1/4 tsp salt ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup melted coconut oil ($0.80)
- 4 tbsp cold water ($0)
- 2 tsp garlic powder ($0.05)

I added a little more garlic powder than the original recipe suggested, and used melted coconut oil instead of vegan margarine (one of the alternatives they offered). All together, the dough cost somewhere around $2.25.

Besides the dough, we also needed:

- 1 box of white mushrooms, chopped ($1.79)
- 1 yellow onion, thinly sliced ($0.60)
- 4 garlic cloves, minced ($0.08)
- 1/2 batch of chives, minced ($0.85)
- 1 tsp low sodium soy sauce ($0.05)
- 1-2 cups of artichoke hearts, chopped ($2)
- lemon juice ($0.10)
- salt ($0.05)
- 3 cubes of basil ($0.30)
- 2 tomatoes ($1.15)
- 2 oz of dark chocolate ($0.60)
- olive oil ($0.20)

The total for the tart contents was about $7.77 (the artichoke amount is more of a guess than anything else since we've had that jar for a while), making the grand total for our tart experiment approximately $10.02. Part of me wants to raise that total another $2 for the fresh basil we bought at the store that completely went bad before we could use it (and it wasn't even that long after buying it). It wasn't from Trader Joe's (with their awesome return policy), so we were just out the $2 and it really was just for this dish. If we just say it was about $12 then, it would be about $1 a tart (a little less, since not all of the vegetables made it into the tarts (more on that later)). Not exceptionally cheap, but fine.

There were a lot of steps involved in making the tarts, none of them exceptionally hard unless you're not used to working with the dough (like me) but together pretty time-consuming. They were:

1. Prep - chop mushrooms and onions, and mince garlic and chives. Mix them all together in a bowl with the soy sauce.

2. Make the dough - combine all of the dough ingredients together in a bowl and mix together well. [The consistency of the dough wasn't what I expected at all, but this was my first time making vegan dough. It was a little bit drier and less sticky to the touch, but I don't know if it was supposed to be like that or not.]

3. Separate dough into 12 portions. Take each portion of dough and roll it out flat.

4. Place each rolled out piece of dough into a greased muffin tin. [I did a really poor job of splitting the dough into equal portions... obviously. So I ended up moving some of the dough from piece to piece while in the tin. Oops.]

5. Slice up the artichoke hearts and add those as the bottom layer to each muffin cup.

6. Add the mushroom mixture. [NB: The mixture isn't cooked first according to the recipe. I was concerned about how much water this would release and considered a light saute first, but ended up just following the instructions. It turned out fine.]

7. Add a spritz of lemon juice and some salt to each muffin cup.

8. Add a little basil to each muffin cup. [Normally this would be where you place one basil leaf in each cup, but yeah... rotten basil leaves. So we microwaved the basil cubes for a little bit and then spread a little in each cup, kind of like pesto, which probably would have been a better idea.]

9. Slice the tomatoes and add one slice to each muffin cup.

10. Chop up the chocolate and add to the top of each cup.

11. Drizzle olive oil on top of each cup.

12. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 minutes and then lower the heat to 375 degrees and bake for 15 minutes.

Similar to the green beans, the tarts didn't quite look like the cookbook photo, but in this case, it didn't matter. The tarts were so interesting and really tasty. I wasn't sure how a cocoa-heavy dough would go with the vegetables but they were a great match. We actually had some mushroom mixture and some tomato ends left after putting together the muffin cups, so I lightly sauteed that with whatever chocolate bits were left, and it tasted really great. In my opinion, that actually tasted better than the tarts, probably because it was a little lighter. Chocolate just seems to match up well with tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions. Who knew? Not me.

Although they were tarts, they were a little too heavy at first to actually pick up and eat like a tart. Maybe I put too much of the mushroom mixture and other vegetables inside, but we ended up eating them with a fork which was fine. A was eventually able to lift and eat them by hand, but that was after they cooled a bit more. I was actually impressed that they came out intact, since it was my first try making tarts and I thought they would be a huge broken mess. We ended up eating all 12 that night. Probably not a great idea, but we were hungry and they were so good! Not a short process to make them, mostly because of the rolling out of the dough and all the vegetable prep, but it was definitely worth the effort to test this out. More of a weekend cooking project than a weeknight meal, in my opinion, but we would consider making these again.

Our favorite recipe from the cacao cookbook was the cocoa jerk tofu, but these tarts were quite good. Can't wait to experiment more with cocoa powder and adding chocolate to savory dishes, because this experiment was great. I've learned through this challenge that chocolate isn't just limited to mole and chili in the savory context. It's so great in so many other things! Very happy with these experiments.

Chocolate Green Beans

The other recipe I chose from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook for our first chocolate night was green beans amandine with dark chocolate. I wanted to have a vegetable dish alongside the cocoa jerk tofu for some balance. This one looked pretty good in the photo (I love cookbook photos) so we thought we'd give it a try.

For the recipe, we used:

- green beans, trimmed and cut ($2.69)
- salt to taste ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup of sliced almonds ($0.83)
- 2 tbsp of olive oil ($0.40)
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar ($0.35)
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract ($0.05)
- half a bunch of tarragon leaves, chopped ($0.60)
- 2 oz of dark chocolate, chopped ($0.60)

This was a little over $5.50 for our second dish. It was a little less expensive than the cocoa jerk tofu, but that one went a lot further for the money (and we liked it more).

The green beans were pretty easy to make and we stuck close to the book for this one. Basically you saute the green beans, salt, and almonds in olive oil in a large skillet on medium high for a few minutes. Then add the balsamic vinegar and cook for another 5 minutes or so. By that point, the green beans should be more tender and the almonds browned.

A helped cook the green beans, which was a huge help because it allowed me to prep the tarragon and chocolate without worrying about the green beans. Once the green beans are cooked, remove them from the heat and add the chocolate, tarragon, and vanilla.

When I added the chocolate, it melted into a thick chocolaty sauce. It didn't look like that in the cookbook photos at all, but here it turned into a sauce. The book says the dish is supposed to be served warm so it wasn't a surprise that the chocolate melted, but I expected it to be more like a light coating than a sauce.

This dish was not at all what we were expecting. It tasted like dessert with the chocolate and the almonds, but it was part of our (savory) dinner. The green beans provided some crunch and texture, but didn't have a ton of flavor on their own. A thought that the balsamic added a bit of a sour flavor that seemed out of place. You couldn't taste the tarragon at all and it was completely overpowered by the chocolate. It was really like eating dessert and so incredibly rich from the chocolate and almonds that I found it hard to eat that much of it in one sitting. A ended up eating whatever was left after our initial servings as his dessert.

We didn't really like this at all and would not make it again. But because of the awesomeness of the cocoa jerk tofu, we knew this cookbook did have good recipes. This one just didn't work for us. We hoped our next chocolate experiment would be more like the tofu and better for us than this one!

Cocoa Jerk Tofu

Have you ever found one of those recipes that just grabs your attention from the moment you read it and then as soon as you taste it, you're just instantly in love with it? That was the case for me with the cocoa jerk tofu from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook. Even though I had a long list of possible recipes from the cookbook for the Week 7 challenge (since everything sounded so good), I kept coming back to the cocoa jerk tofu. I'm so glad I did, as it was a truly wonderful dish.

I often make adaptations to recipes for things that we have at home or things that we like, but when I saw the list of ingredients for the sauce here, I tried to stick to it as closely as possible. (If you want to see the original, it came up in Google Books when I searched the recipe name ... or just get the book.) One of the hardest things to get right in a dish is the seasoning, especially the balance of the seasoning, so I figured I would try the recipe as-written to give it its best chance. Amazingly, we had all the sauce ingredients at home already, which is awesome, because now it means I can make it whenever I want as long as I pick up tofu (or some other protein) and some peppers and onions!

For the sauce, I used (and I actually measured for once since I wanted to get the balance exactly as intended):

- 2 tsp Madras curry powder
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 2 tbsp sriracha
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 1/3 cup vegetable broth (for me, really 1/3 cup water + small spoonful of Better than Bouillon)
- 3 minced garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp agave nectar
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground oregano

The list looks long, but there wasn't anything to actually "prep" other than the garlic. Everything else came straight from the jar, bottle, or container, so it was much easier than it looks.

The non-sauce ingredient list was really short: 1 container of firm tofu, 1 yellow onion, 1 red bell pepper, and 1 green bell pepper. Very easy. Adding this to the sauce, the approximate cost of the recipe was $7.92. It made a good amount of food, so that was a pretty fair price. (It does need a grain or something else on the side, so tack on another $1 or $2 to the total.)

Making the cocoa jerk tofu was really easy. The process reminded me of another baked tofu recipe (here) that I really liked that I also did for one of the cooking challenges. Make the sauce, add the tofu and vegetables, bake, done. It really was that simple. Perfect for a weeknight meal because there is so little work involved! To make the recipe:

1. Mince the garlic and add to a small bowl with all the other sauce ingredients. Mix well.

The original recipe said to blend all of this in a blender, but I just used a spoon and a small bowl and it was completely fine. The only thing that would even really be broken up in the blender is the garlic and we didn't care if there were garlic pieces in the sauce. I mince garlic fairly small as it is, so why waste the blender?

2. Slice the onion and peppers into thin slices. Cut the tofu into blocks (or squares, whatever you want). I tried to make sure the pieces were thin enough to soak up as much sauce as possible.

3. Mix the tofu and vegetables into the sauce so that everything is well-coated. Let it sit for a little bit.

And here's where reading comprehension comes in again (just like here and here). I was reading the recipe right before I was going to start prepping and I saw that I was supposed to let the tofu and vegetables sit in the sauce for an hour. Oops. I didn't notice that the first time around when I read it. I ended up letting it sit for about 15-20 minutes as I let the oven preheat and I did some work. Maybe it would have been even better if I let it sit for an hour, but 20 minutes seemed fine if you're in a rush (or didn't notice the marinating instruction).

4. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring everything halfway through. The original recipe called for 30 minutes of baking and then some broiling, but skipping the broiling and just baking a little longer seemed fine to us. It really wasn't the most attractive dish coming out of the oven, but who cared what it looked like when it tasted so good?

Wow. That was basically our reaction once we tried this dish. It was fantastic! We had both tried a little bit of it before it went into the oven and the sauce was incredible. There were so many nuances to it because of all the different ingredients and you could definitely taste the chocolate, but the flavors were also so balanced. It was even better when it came out of the oven because the heat came through much more than it did when the vegetables were raw (not sure why). We absolutely loved this. I started thinking that maybe I should start adding cocoa powder to everything if it was going to come out this well. So much flavor and completely vegan as well, so we were good to both our taste buds and the environment.

This dish is definitely going on our "make again" list and it's the type of dish that would go into a rotation if we had one, because it's quick and simple to prep, we usually have all the ingredients other than the fresh stuff that we can easily get, and it was so delicious. We loved this so much that it was hard to believe that the other dish we made that night from the same book, which we'll talk about in the next Week 7 challenge post, totally missed the mark for us. We were as unenthused about that one as we were thrilled with this one. But overall, we are just so happy with this challenge because of this awesome tofu dish!

Week 26 - Philippines

We've had the Memories of Philippine Kitchens book on our shelf for some time now, ever since I got a complimentary copy at a work event. I've always wanted to investigate the recipes in that book, as we're not that familiar with Filipino cuisine, but never got around to it. When the theme for Week 26 was announced - the Philippines - I knew that I wouldn't have to go searching around the internet for recipes. I had the perfect book at home already!

CHICKEN ADOBO

Adobo is one of the most famous dishes in Filipino cuisine. We've never had it before, so it seemed like the most logical choice for the challenge. It was also one of the few dishes in the book that I was confident that I had the materials and ingredients to make. Surveying a bunch of adobo recipes, this seems like a fairly standard combination, other than the coconut milk, which sounds like a regional variation. We were happy to be able to try a traditional version for our first time.

The marinade for the adobo consisted of:

- 1.5 cups rice vinegar ($1.50)

- 1 cup coconut milk ($0.50)

- 1/4 cup soy sauce ($0.35)

- 1 head of garlic (plus a couple extra cloves), crushed ($0.20)

- 3 bay leaves ($0.10)

- 1.5 tsp freshly ground black pepper ($0.10)

Once the marinade was mixed together, I cut up and added 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts and 2 boneless skinless chicken thighs (about $4, bringing the chicken side of this to about $6.75) to the bowl. I refrigerated it for about 5-6 hours. I was hoping to marinate the meat overnight but some of the chicken was still frozen and I didn't want to be up until 2 am waiting for it to thaw. When we were ready to start cooking, I just transferred the marinade and chicken into a Dutch oven and turned the heat up to high.

After the mixture starts boiling, you reduce the heat to a simmer, and let the chicken cook, stirring every so often to make sure the chicken stays covered. After about 20 minutes, the chicken should be cooked and tender. At that point, transfer the chicken to a separate bowl or plate, and turn the heat up to medium high to allow the sauce to reduce. I let it go for quite a while until it was very thick. 

Once the sauce was the thickness I was looking for, I put the chicken back into the pot and coated it with the sauce, waiting for the rice to be done. The way I had timed everything, I thought both the chicken and the rice would be done at the same time, but I was wrong.

Cooking chicken adobo is basically braising it in a vinegar-based sauce. I really like braising as a cooking technique, so this was right up my alley. We liked the chicken adobo, but the vinegar was definitely very heavy. We like vinegar, but this was a ton of vinegar! That said, this recipe felt like a success. The only thing that was weird was that the garlic was still a little hard and crunchy after all that braising. I was expecting it to be soft like roasted garlic, but it wasn't at all. Is that how it should be?

MUSHROOM AND BAMBOO SHOOT RICE

According to the book's authors, they serve their chicken adobo with this mushroom and bamboo shoot rice. Well, if they do that, why shouldn't I do the same? I had all the ingredients already, since I bought a can of bamboo shoots ages ago and stocked up on shiitake mushrooms in Chicago, so it was a great idea for an accompaniment. I changed it up a little bit by using brown rice instead of jasmine rice, but otherwise only made small adaptations. Since there were only 2 of us, we probably shouldn't have made the full 3 cups of rice since we still have some leftovers, but lesson for next time.

For the rice, we used:

- 3 cups brown rice ($2)
- 2 spoonfuls of coconut oil for sauteing ($0.30)
- 1 onion, finely chopped ($0.60)
- 2 small carrots, small dice ($0.40)
- 4 garlic cloves, minced ($0.10)
- a few handfuls of dried shiitake mushrooms, rehydrated, stemmed and thinly sliced ($1.25)
- 1 can (10 oz drained) of bamboo shoots, chopped ($1)
- 1/2 tsp ground turmeric ($0.12)
- 6.5 cups of water (including water from rehydrating the mushrooms) ($0)
- salt and pepper to taste ($0.10)

The rice portion came out to about $5.87, which meant the total for dinner was about $12.62. Not terrible considering we had rice for days and days, so much that we still haven't finished it and I'm not sure if it's any good anymore.

According to the recipe, the rice should have taken 30-35 minutes to cook. I'm not sure if it's because we used brown rice instead of jasmine, but in order for it to fully cook through, it took us closer to an hour and I had to add more water halfway through. The basic steps were:

1. Heat coconut oil in large saucepan.
2. Add onion and carrot. Cook over medium high heat until softened.
3. Add garlic. Cook another minute.
4. Add mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and turmeric. Cook until mushrooms give off liquid. (I forgot the turmeric here but added it in the next step instead. Not sure if that makes a difference.)

5. Add (washed) rice and water (4.5 cups). Add salt and pepper, and bring to boil over high heat.
6. Once boiling, reduce heat to medium low, cover, and simmer until liquid is absorbed.
7. If rice still needs to cook longer, add more water and continue to simmer until liquid is absorbed.
8. Take pan off heat and fluff rice. Cover and let stand. Adjust seasonings if necessary (I should have added more salt and pepper.)

The rice was okay. It was really good with the adobo, but on its own, it was a bit boring. It was nice having rice with vegetables in it and the texture was okay, but it wasn't that flavorful on its own.

WEEK 26 OVERALL

This was my first time cooking Filipino cuisine and I think it went well. We enjoyed the adobo with its thick tangy sauce on top of the rice, but didn't love the rice on its own because of the lack of seasoning. Overall, it was good though.

Would we make this again? Maybe. We liked it but when it comes to braising chicken, we preferred the carbonnade from Belgian week a bit more since the chicken wasn't drowning in vinegar and probably would make that again first. I'd like to try cooking more Filipino dishes, maybe some pancit or lumpia. It's definitely a cuisine I want to learn more about.

Nohut Salatası

When looking for Turkish recipes for the challenge other than mercimek kofte, one of the first ones I found was this recipe for a Turkish chickpea salad. It looked delicious and I followed it almost exactly (other than some adjustments of seasoning to taste).

We had most of the ingredients at home already and just needed to buy some fresh green onions and parsley. We needed:

- 2 cans of chickpeas ($1.50)
- 3 tbsp olive oil ($0.60)
- 3 tbsp apple cider vinegar ($0.50)
- salt to taste (about 1/2 tsp salt) ($0.05)
- 1 tbsp lemon juice ($0.10)
- 5 green onions, chopped small ($0.70)
- 1 cup flat leaf parsley, chopped ($0.75)
- 1/3 cup (or more) feta cheese, crumbled ($1)

The total was a little over $5. Not too bad for a big bowl of salad with leftovers.

Making this salad was really easy but for best results, you need to start at least a couple of hours before. I noticed this the first time I read the recipe, but for whatever reason, when I re-read it the day before making it, I didn't see it (maybe I only looked at the top of the recipe where it said the prep time was 20 minutes). It was like the Fainting Imam dish all over again. At least this time I read all the recipes again over lunch on cooking day which gave me time to start the marinating early enough.

First, rinse and drain the chickpeas.

Put chickpeas in a shallow dish and add the olive oil, apple cider vinegar and salt. Refrigerate for at least 4 hours (or up to overnight). I would have done overnight if I read the directions correctly the day before, but at least I was able to get 3-4 hours of marinating in. I do think marinating helps augment the flavor of the chickpeas.

After marinating, put chickpeas in a bowl, and add lemon juice, green onions, parsley and feta cheese. I also included any of the excess oil and vinegar from the chickpea marinating that was left in the dish.

Mix everything together and adjust seasonings to taste.

This was a really good salad. The chickpeas benefited from the marinating, and mixing feta, scallions and parsley together is always a good combination. Very healthy, easy to make, refreshing and light, perfect for summer. Would definitely make this again.

Week 21 - Beer

The theme for Week 21 of the challenge was beer. Although I picked out a recipe for this soon after the challenge theme was announced, I was a few weeks late in doing the beer challenge because... well, life happened. I was on antibiotics for a while which meant staying away from alcohol, so beer week wasn't going to go very well since I like tasting while I cook. So we put it off, but it was definitely worth the wait. 

I decided to adapt this recipe for spicy beer braised lime chicken enchiladas from How Sweet It Is, and it was delicious!

Ingredients:

I made some substitutions to the recipe ingredients to try to use up what we had in the house and also to add onions. The notable changes (the ones that were not just varying amounts) were to (a) swap corn tortillas in for flour, (b) use a shredded taco cheese blend instead of freshly grating monterey jack, (c) use a can of diced tomatoes instead of tomato sauce, and (d) add an onion.

There were a lot of ingredients in this recipe. For the enchilada sauce, you needed:

- 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.40)

- 2 tbsp flour ($0.10)

- 12 oz bottle of beer (I used Trader Jose light, which was basically Corona) ($1.09)

- 14.5 oz can of petite diced tomatoes ($0.85)

- 2 tbsp tomato paste ($0.90)

- 1 tbsp chili powder ($0.50)

- 1 tbsp chipotle chili powder ($1.25)

- 1 tsp cumin ($0.10)

- 1 tsp onion powder ($0.10)

- 1 tsp garlic powder ($0.10)

- 1 tsp brown sugar ($0.10)

- 1/4 tsp smoked paprika ($0)

- pinch of cayenne pepper ($0.05)

- salt and pepper to taste ($0.10)

For the rest of the recipe, you needed:

- 2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts ($2.25)

- 1 tsp lime zest (0.05)

- 1 tsp brown sugar ($0.10)

- 1 tsp ground cumin ($0.10)

- 1 tsp smoked paprika ($0)

- 1 tsp salt ($0.05)

- 1 tsp pepper ($0.05)

- 1/2 tsp chipotle chili powder ($0.42)

- 1/2 tsp onion powder ($0.05)

- 1/2 tsp garlic powder ($0.05)

- 2 tbsp olive oil ($0.40)

- 1 large yellow onion ($0.60)

- 8-10 oz of beer (almost 1 full bottle, same Trader Jose light) ($1.09)

- 1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and diced ($0.28)

- juice of 1 lime ($0.15)

- 6 oz shredded taco cheese blend ($1.50)

- 8 corn tortillas ($0.50)

It was a long list of ingredients, and the total came out to approximately $13.28 ($5.64 for the sauce and $7.64 for everything else). It wasn't cheap but when you get enchiladas at a restaurant, they can be the same price and only give you 2 enchiladas (plus sides, but the sides don't cost them much). 

Process:

1. Combine lime zest, brown sugar, cumin, paprika, salt, pepper, chili powder, onion powder and garlic powder together in small bowl.

2. Slice chicken into smaller tenders (if desired). Rub the spice mix from #1 on all sides of the chicken pieces.

3. Add olive oil to large skillet over high heat. Once oil is hot, add chicken tenders and brown the chicken, about 2 minutes on each side. (A splatter screen would be a good idea.)

4. Remove browned chicken pieces and set aside.

5. Slice onions into thin slices. Add onions to skillet (no extra oil, don't clean out the pan). Allow onions to soften.

6. Add chicken back into the pan.

7. Add the beer, reduce heat to medium, cover. Cook for 20 minutes until chicken is tender. (At this point, the pan was looking a lot like the carbonnade and that made me very, very happy.)

8. While chicken and onions are braising, start the enchilada sauce. Heat olive oil in saucepan over medium heat and then whisk in flour.

9. After flour turns golden brown, add all the other ingredients for the enchilada sauce and stir together. Reduce heat to low and allow to simmer for at least 5 minutes.

10. When braising is done, use forks to shred the chicken and mix everything together. If there's no beer left in the skillet, use a little water to deglaze it before stirring.

11. Turn off heat. Add 1/3 cup of enchilada sauce, jalapeño peppers, lime juice, and about 1/2 cup of cheese. Mix together.

12. Spray 9x13 inch baking dish with nonstick spray. Add 1/3 cup of enchilada sauce to coat the bottom of the pan.

13. Add a spoonful of filling to each corn tortilla. Wrap each enchilada tightly and put in the baking dish.

14. Add the rest of the enchilada sauce and cheese.

15. Bake for 20-30 minutes (until cheese is golden and melted) at 350 degrees.

Review:

We really liked these enchiladas. The first thing we tasted was the sauce on its own, and it really had a kick to it, thanks to all that chipotle chili powder. It was almost a little too strong. But then when I mixed it up with the chicken, onions, and cheese, it was completely different and so much more balanced. Next time, I think I might use a little less chipotle chili pepper to allow the other ingredients to shine more, but it was still good the way it was. A thought it might need a touch more cheese on top as well, but that was the only other minor critique he had.

This was a good recipe on its own, but I'm really happy with my addition of an onion and replacement of tomato sauce with diced tomatoes. Not only did it add some more vegetables to the dish, but it gave it even more body and fullness. I would definitely make these enchiladas again. They were great!