To kick off my year of cooking two new recipes each month, I decided to make dinner on January 1. Woo! No time like the present! Let’s get it going!
I had printed out Audrey’s recipe for delicious-sounding enchiladas weeks ago, and since I’m trying not to accumulate new recipes before trying out what I already have, it was a good candidate for my inaugural attempt. I had never made enchiladas before, either, but I’ve always enjoyed them when others have made them, so I was glad to have the prospect of my very own (borrowed) enchilada to serve.
Well. By no fault of the recipe or its recommender, I was a glaring failure at making sour cream enchiladas. I got through cooking the chicken, rolling up the enchiladas, and placing them in a purple baking dish, but things fell apart when I was making the creamy sauce to pour over everything. The construction of the sauce was simple: use butter and flour to make a roux, add chicken stock, thicken, add sour cream. Inexplicably, I could not make the roux form properly. When I cooked the flour and butter together, it bubbled up nicely, but it never melded into a paste. Instead, it stayed wimpy and thin, so I added the chicken stock in a panic, where nothing thickened, of course.
Nonplussed, I wiped out my pan to try again. In went another half-stick of butter and a quarter-cup of flour. Once more, the sauce refused to form in spite of my frantic whisking. Is the heat too high? Has my hand-me-down pan finally seen its last days? What is wrong with me that I can’t making a freaking roux?! I asked JG to diagnose the situation and he posited that I was overcooking the roux.
RA: Is the heat too high? Because it’s not forming a paste.
JG: I think that’s okay. It’s overcooking before it can thicken anything.
RA: But I thought I was supposed to wait until it formed a paste!
JG: It should have done that way earlier…
I tossed out the second sauce attempt in a huff, scattered handfuls of shredded cheese on the now-tepid enchiladas, and threw it all in the oven, which had been pre-heated for at least 35 minutes. To my consternation, the tortillas had split from being rolled; the enchiladas were now a conglomeration of tattered tortillas, lukewarm chicken, and Fancy Nacho Taco cheese. I was so annoyed.
When I finally brought over the dish to the table, I was in a foul mood. I had spent however much time in the kitchen, wasting a stick of butter and four cups of stock, only to result with a baking dish of unattractive quesadillas. Ugh. JG made a good show of eating what I considered to be a large portion, but I threw out the remaining two enchiladas after dinner so as to dispose of the last traces. My one consolation was that I managed to toss together a decent black bean salad, which I didn’t even enjoy that much because I was too busy fuming.
I should pause and note that another facet of this recipe resolution is for me to have a better attitude when I am trying something new. I am not comfortable with cooking, which is the idea behind this goal, but my nerves make me more twitchy and tightly-wound than normal. If I can’t understand why something isn’t working, I ask JG to help me because he’s much more intuitive about cooking than I am. Unfortunately, then I feel like he’s horning in on my culinary ambitions, and I get snappy. That’s nice of me, huh? “JG, please help me, but don’t be too right or helpful, because my cooking insecurity is so delicate that I can’t withstand the obvious implication of your suggestions that I am a blithering idiot.” It really encourages him to take me up on the request for help, I’m sure.
This first recipe was an eye-opener for me. Maybe it was best to start off with something unsuccessful to knock the stars out of my eyes and remind me that I am trying to building character along with cooking skill. I was ready to wave the white flag to new cooking methods and search out eleven new casseroles to try — since I am awesome at them, if I do say so myself — but that’s not the point at all. I need to learn to be comfortable with the basics so that I don’t get flustered the moment something doesn’t brown or boil or crisp exactly when the recipe says it should. I need to learn to restrain my sharp remarks and take suggestions more gracefully because the help is really for my own good.
All of this character-building is great and all, but I really wish I had managed to make the enchiladas because they sounded so good, and really, why couldn’t I make the darn roux? JG says that I’m too hard on myself because my mom is one of those kitchen magicians who can really, truly “throw something together” from scraps in her fridge and it turns out to be amazing, and that’s probably fair. Despite this first bumpy experience, I’m looking forward to trying out a new dessert recipe later this month. I figure that, with baking, I have a much better chance of improving my new recipe record from 0-1.
10 comments
I was so STARTLED by the revelation that you snuck in here that you are not comfortable with cooking. You make all these amazing recipes and post gorgeous photos of the results; here I was, thinking of you as a master chef, and now I found out that you aren’t even comfortable in the kitchen. My GOD. Also, that enchilada recipe sounds very complicated. I make a Weight Watchers recipe for spinach enchiladas that is easy and yummy. And I bake them in a purple dish too, so we have that in common.
Anyway, keep trying! I’m sure your next recipes will turn out much better.
I should clarify that I love to bake, but JG is the real cook in the house. In the holiday spree of eating, he made the turkey, gravy, and stuffing, while I followed up with mashed potatoes, green beans, and dessert. I only feel comfortable with cooking when I’ve made stuff a few times; the first tries are always tense. I just do not do well with hot pans, flame, hot oil, or knives. Give me a mixer any day.
Oh no! I find that with a roux it usually is best to cook it at a lower temperature for a bit longer, but then, I’ve never made a sour cream roux before. Maybe there is a secret to it? And I do the same thing with asking Chris for help, then biting his head off when he points out how I am doing it incorrectly so that he can show me how to do it correctly.
I guess I don’t mind being wrong so much as having it pointed out in such clarity.
Yes, exactly. But my logic falls apart because — why would I ask JG for help if I didn’t think he’d have the answer?
I totally cheat on things that don’t turn out well the first or second time, it’s called either “Take Out” or “Slather it in Cheese, Hope for the Best.” Hope your next round of The Kitchen vs. RA turns out more successful!
xox
Yeah, on this one, I went with Option B. I hate that it feels like an inanimate recipe got the best of me; am I not smarter than it?
I’m so sorry this didn’t work out for you! Both because it sucks being frustrated and because you are missing out on some delicious enchiladas. I don’t know if this makes any difference, but when I make the sauce, I am cheap and use margarine instead of butter. And the margarine and flour kinda clumps together but never bubbles, and then I just whisk in the stock and carry on. The sauce kinda sorta thickens as it cooks, but adding the sour cream at the end really brings it all together. I also kinda cook the sauce and the chicken at the same time so the rolled enchiladas don’t just sit there becoming tepid while the sauce cooks. And I like to soften tortillas in the microwave (about 30 seconds will do it!) so they’re more flexible for rolling and don’t crack. If you ever try it again (maybe with JG’s help?) I hope it turns out better. Otherwise, you are welcome to come to Colorado for enchiladas at any time!
I hope the rest of your cooking adventures are a lot more fun and successful than this one!
I didn’t think to soften the tortillas, but I will keep that in mind. And, enchiladas at La Casa Sangria? I’m in! (I assume you cover airfare, yes?)
I didn’t have time to blog this, but I totally had this experience when making my mom’s swedish meatballs for AS’s family Christmas (talk about pressure!). Sometimes the second time goes better, though!
And rouxes are just touch-and-go for me, too. It might go just right next time!
The second time is usually better for me, too, so I’ll take a deep breath and try this again in a bit. Here I was thinking that I had picked a slam-dunk recipe to start, too.
Just as a side-note, enchiladas are always made from corn tortillas, not flour in real Mexican food. I grew up in Texas and then moved to Utah, and when I went back and told my Mexican friends that Utahns make enchiladas with flour tortillas, they laughed. I’ve expressed my concerns about that here, and usually people tell me that they don’t like corn tortillas. One person said she uses flour tortillas because they are easier to roll, but corn tortillas are perfectly easy to roll if you put them in the microwave for 20 seconds.
I hope your next attempt goes better!
Our town has a surprisingly large Mexican population, so our grocery store has an awesome Mexican foods aisle, and we’re able to get tortillas whose ingredient list is simply “corn, water.” But, I should microwave them to soften them up next time.
I made these on January 1st too! I had some trouble with the whole roux situation as well, but I added the stock and the sour cream anyway and the sauce seemed to thicken okay by the time I poured it over the enchiladas. I didn’t heat the tortillas and we had some breakage, but it didn’t seem to have any impact on how they turned out overall.
TTO’s mom has a great recipe for spinach enchiladas that I never seem to be able to get out of her. Since we aren’t big lovers of green chilies around these parts I substituted them with canned spinach. They turned out fabulous (although next time I’ll use frozen spinach instead).
Oh, that’s a good idea to substitute! I love frozen spinach; we use it in everything. We always have at least 2 boxes of it in the freezer just in case.
Crazy! Ted and I made enchiladas last night too! We didn’t use Audrey’s recipe, though…it really does sound tasty. I’m happy to say that, because Ted was cooking, our enchiladas were tasty.
I love baking, but I’m extremely intimidated by all other forms of cooking. Especially when it involves touching raw meat…yuck.
The way I see it, cooking is an art and baking is a science. In cooking, you can be a little looser about times, temperatures, and measures of ingredients, but in baking, it’s all about precision. Which is why I am a pretty good baker (if I do say so myself), but not a good cook.
I’m impressed you even attempted a roux! Better luck next time…
The most frustrating thing is that I have made a roux before, you know? It should not have been the sticking point in this recipe, darn it.
Good for you for trying something new! (I would have been annoyed if my recipe didn’t work out properly, too. But at least they were edible!)
And that black bean salad recipe looks mighty good, too. I’m going to save the link!
Yes, it was edible, so we don’t have to resort to take-out. But thank goodness for that black bean salad! JG likes it as a sort of salsa with tortilla chips. The original recipe makes way more than we can eat, so I usually halve it.
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