Apple Pie Enchiladas

These delicious, easy apple pie enchiladas will be a hit with your family.  Bake them while you enjoy the chicken enchiladas with green chile sour cream sauce.   Best served warm.  There are hundreds of versions of this recipe floating around the internet, but I adapted this one from allrecipes.com.

Serves 8

Ingredients
1 can (21 ounces) apple pie filling
8 flour tortillas
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup white sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
2/3 cup water

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Grease an 8x8 baking dish.
2.  Spoon about one heaping quarter cup of pie filling evenly down the center of each tortilla.  Sprinkle with cinnamon.  Roll up, tucking in edges, and place in prepared dish, seam side down.
3.  In a medium saucepan over medium heat, combine butter, white sugar, brown sugar, and water.  Bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  Reduce heat and simmer 3 minutes.  Pour sauce over enchiladas and let stand 15 minutes.
4.  Bake in preheated oven 20 minutes, or until golden brown.

Serve warm.  Very delicious when served ala mode with vanilla ice cream.

Chicken Enchiladas with Green Chile Sour Cream Sauce

Tonight we are trying a new recipe I found on FoodGawker courtesy of letsdishrecipes.com for chicken enchiladas with green chile sour cream sauce, with my picky modifications, as usual.

It was very easy and the whole family enjoyed it.

Serves 4

Ingredients

8 soft flour tortillas, taco size

2 cups shredded colby jack cheese

2 cups shredded chicken (we used rotisserie chicken to save time)

3 tablespoons butter

3 tablespoons flour

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup sour cream

4 oz mild green chiles, drained

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Grease a 9x13 pan.

3.  Mix shredded chicken and 1 cup cheese.  Roll up in tortillas and place in pan seam side down.

4.  In a sauce pan, melt butter.  Stir in flour and cook 1 minute.  Add broth and whisk until smooth.  Heat over medium heat until thick and bubbly.

5.  Stir in sour cream and chilies.  DO NOT BOIL!  Very important so you don't curdle the sour cream.    Be patient.

6.  Pour over enchiladas and top with remaining cheese.

7.  Bake 20 minutes, then under high broil for 3 minutes to brown the cheese.

This was a hit.  So creamy and cheesy.  It would definitely be a good dish to bring to potlucks.  Serve it with apple pie enchiladas for a sweet ending to your meal.

Try it with your additions and post your ideas in the comments.

Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup with Bacon

Cream of Chicken and Wild Rice Soup with Bacon

Ah, soup!  As I have shared before on this blog, I love soup.  I love soup any day of the year.  I also love bacon, rice, and chicken.  Tonight's delicious offering came from PinchofYum.com with my picky modifications and omissions, and I offer my sincere thanks for the perfect storm of flavors.

Prep time: 30 minutes        Cook time: 1 hour (give or take)

Serves 6

Ingredients

• 3 (10¾ oz) cans condensed chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• 1 cup uncooked wild rice, rinsed
• ½ cup butter
• ¾ cup all-purpose flour
• ½ teaspoon salt
• ¼ teaspoon poultry seasoning
• 2 cups half and half (but I used whole milk)
• 1½ cup cubed or shredded cooked chicken (we used a rotisserie chicken to save time)
• 8 slices bacon, crisply cooked and crumbled (I baked mine in the oven)

Instructions

In a large saucepan, combine chicken broth and water. Add wild rice. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover and simmer 30-45 minutes (or until rice is tender). Once the rice is cooked, there will be some additional broth – do not drain.

Wild rice mix simmering in the chicken broth

In a medium saucepan, melt butter and stir in flour, salt, and seasoning. I mixed my flour, salt and seasoning together first and then slowly added it to my melted butter.  Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly, until smooth and bubbly.  Mine was very thick.

Gradually stir in half and half with the butter/flour mixture and cook until slightly thickened, stirring constantly.  Keep the heat medium and keep stirring.  Mine got a little lumpy.

Add this creamy mixture back into the saucepan with the rice/broth. Add the chicken and bacon. Heat on low, stirring every once in a while, for at least a half an hour. Do not boil. The mixture may look thin, but the longer you heat the soup, the more the flavors blend and the more it will thicken. 

Serve with warm rolls for delicious meal.  

New Year's Day Ham and Beans with Cornbread

Time for another delicious soup!  This was my first attempt at ham and beans and I'm surprised to say it came out excellent. My husband usually cooks all of the delicious things we eat, including this, but he went golfing for the day.  He put the beans to soak for me before he left so I tried to do it on my own.  It was even better the next day!

This is just a traditional ham and bean soup recipe that you can find anywhere.  Feel free to modify it to your tastes.  I saw many recipes that included vegetables, but that wasn't happening in my soup.  No how, no way.

Serves 10

Ingredients

1 pound of navy beans (or great northern beans) 

8 cups of chicken stock 

1 ham bone or ham hock

2 cups diced ham

Instructions
Make any cornbread mix to serve with the soup.  There are many out there, but my family prefers a sweeter honey cornbread mix.  

Eating ham and beans soup is a New Year's Day tradition.  It is supposed to bring you luck all year long if you eat ham and beans on New Year's Day.  I love it with cornbread crumbled up in it, but you can serve it without, or on the side if you prefer.

To prepare the beans, spread them out on a cookie sheet and check for small stones. Remove any small stones and broken or discolored beans.  Rinse the beans under cool running water to wash.  Soak the beans for at least 6 hours or overnight by placing the beans in a bowl and covering with cool water. 


**If you don't have that much time, you can try the quick soak method. Place the beans in a pot and cover with water. Bring to a boil for 2 minutes. Then cover tightly and remove from the heat. Let rest for one hour. Or use canned beans, but I prefer the long soak method. 
Discard the water regardless of which method you choose.

Once the beans are prepared, they are ready for your soup.
1. Prepare the beans by your preferred method listed above.
2. In a stockpot, add the chicken stock and the ham bone or ham hock and the diced ham. 
3. Add the beans to the soup. 
4. Simmer for 60 minutes.  Beans are ready when they are soft to the tooth.
5. Remove the ham bone.  If you are using a ham hock, remove it from the soup and remove the meat from the bone. Add the meat from the bone to the soup. 
7. Season to your own taste with salt and/or pepper.  Definitely taste it first, because it was nearly perfect on its own.


Enjoy your good luck for the remainder of the year.  Happy 2013!

Roasted Asparagus Risotto

Asparagus, round 2.  I'm going to give it another shot.  I love risotto, so let's see how this goes.

Ingredients

Roasted Asparagus
20 fresh asparagus spears, ends trimmed.
2 tbs olive oil
Pinch of salt
Fresh grated Parmesan

Risotto
3 tbs olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced (I used black garlic)
1 c arborio rice
1/2 c dry white wine
4 cups chicken broth
1/4 c freshly grated Parmesan

To roast the asparagus, place the stalks, 2 tbs of olive oil, and a pinch of sale on a baking sheet.  Roll the spears through the oil and salt to coat.  Bake in the oven at 350 for 15 minutes.  Set aside.

For the risotto, heat chicken broth in a saucepan over medium heat; reduce heat to simmer throughout cooking.  Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium heat.  Stir in minced garlic and salt.  Add arborio rice and stir until lightly toasted (about 5 minutes).

Pour white wine into rice, stirring constantly, until the liquid is evaporated, about another 5 minutes or so.  Stir chicken broth in, one ladleful at a time, allowing liquid to absorb completely before adding more while stirring constantly, about 20 minutes.  Turn off heat, and grate parmesan onto hot rice.  Top with roasted asparagus spears.

Hmm...this was ok.  The risotto was good, but the asparagus was just ok.  I still don't love it, but it was better than the last one.  I think it was better because the asparagus spears were thinner, so there was less to taste.  The kids loved it, so it will stay in the rotation, at least occasionally.  One more way to get my veggies!

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Sopapilla Cheesecake

Ready for an easy dessert the whole family will love? Thanks to Pillsbury, you can have this in your oven in about 10 minutes. It's like a cheesecake, but like a bar, and filled with cinnamon sugary goodness. Pillsbury has this recipe on their site and I basically made it "as is" but added extra vanilla and cinnamon sugar topping.

Ingredients

16 oz cream cheese, softened

2 cans of Pillsbury crescent rolls

1 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1/2 cup butter, melted

3/4 cup cinnamon sugar

Preheat oven to 350. In a 9 x 13 greased baking pan, unroll one package of crescent rolls and line the bottom of the pan.

Mix together cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla. I used a whisk, but it would have been faster and easier to use a mixer. I was just too lazy to break it out. When smooth, spread over the crescent rolls.

Unroll the other can of crescent roll dough and place on top of cream cheese mixture.

Pour one stick of melted butter over the top and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Be as generous as you'd like. It will form a yummy crust of goodness.

Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Chill in the fridge, then cut and serve. It's tasty while it's warm, but it's gooey and really should be allowed to set up before cutting. If you don't mind it gooey, dive right in. Enjoy!

 

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Cream cheese grits with bacon

I love grits. Grits for breakfast, grits with chicken, cheesy, sweet. So versatile! Here's an easy, quick recipe that might just make a believer out of you grit naysayers. Serve it with broiled pork chops or fried chicken and you might just think you have gone to heaven. I adapted my recipe from Country Roads magazine, with some special additions like bacon.

Ingredients

2 cups heavy cream

2 cups whole milk

1 cup stone-ground grits

1/3 cup cream cheese, softened

1 cup chicken broth

Bacon pieces

Salt to taste

In a medium saucepan, bring heavy cream and milk to a simmer over moderately low heat. Whisk in grits and cook, stirring often, 25 minutes. Slowly incorporate chicken broth as grits thicken, stirring them through completely. Reduce heat to low and stir in cream cheese until melted throughout and season with salt to taste. Top with bacon pieces.

Easy and delicious. So good with any meal! Let me know how you serve your cheesy grits--I love new ideas.

 

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