Mexican Rice

This mexican rice recipe makes a super-side dish to go along with enchiladas - or any other Mexican meal!

You need:

• 2 c. rice
• 1/3 c. oil
• 1 14-oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 medium white onion
• 2 or 3 medium jalapenos, seeded (optional - leave the seeds in if you like it hot)
• 4 minced garlic cloves
• 2 c. chicken broth
• 1/2 c. minced cilantro
• 1 lime

To make:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Rinse the rice under cold water for about 2 minutes. Shake to remove excess water.

Heat oil in oven-safe 12 inch pan over medium high heat. Drop a few rice grains in when you think it is ready, and if they sizzle, it is ready. 

Add all of the rice and fry about 6 to 8 minutes.

In the meantime, process the tomato/onion in a processor until smooth,

pour into large bowl or 4 c. measure, and add the chicken stock,

and prepare jalapenos and garlic.

Reduce the heat to medium and add in chopped jalapenos and minced garlic.

Cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant (about 1 - 2 minutes).

Pour in tomato mixture. Stir.

Increase heat to medium high, and

bring to a boil. Then, cover the pan and transfer it to the oven.

Bake for 30 minutes. Stir after 15 minutes. After 30 minutes, stir in cilantro, extra jalapeno if desired, and sprinkle the juice from one lime on top.

Enjoy with enchiladas, quesadillas, or inside of a burrito!

Enchiladas Part II

I promised I would post pictures showing how to assemble the enchiladas for which I described how to cook the meat for in this post: Enchiladas Part I. Well, here they are. These enchiladas are absolutely delicious, and I would highly recommend that you make them ASAP.

First, make the meat in this post: Enchiladas Part I.

After the meat has been simmering for about an hour, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

When the meat is tender, strain it apart from the sauce and tear or chop it up into small pieces. Reserve the sauce.

Mix the meat with 1 c. cheese, about 1/4 c. chopped cilantro, and about 1/4 c. chopped pickled jalapenos.

Spread 3/4 c. sauce into the bottom of a 9 X 13 baking dish. Heat up 6 tortillas in the microwave for 1 minute.

Spread about 1/4 c. beef mixture on each tortilla,

roll up,

and place in pan.

Repeat for all 12 enchiladas.

Pour remaining sauce over the top, 

and sprinkle with 1 cup cheese. 

Wrap with foil and bake about 20 to 25 minutes, until heated through. Remove foil and let cheese brown for 5 to 10 minutes.

Serve with black beans, rice, guacamole, or whatever else you'd like! Enjoy :)

Chocolate Sheet Cake Cupcakes

My favorite cake is chocolate sheet cake, and here is the secret recipe:

The recipe has been "passed on" to me by my grandma - who makes this cake every time we visit. I always think it tastes better when she makes it, even now. The reason I say "passed on" in the way that I do is because the first time I asked her for the recipe, she told me to go online and look up "Texas Sheet Cake". So there are various versions of this cake floating around, but my favorite is Grandma's.

Throughout the - let's say 10 - years I have been making this cake, I have learned many things:

1. You have to mix the ingredients in the specified order
2. You have to wait for the chocolate mixture to cool before adding it to the other ingredients
3. The cake will come out really badly without baking soda

To start out, combine flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl.

Then on the stovetop, heat up butter, water, and cocoa.

Bring to a boil and let cool.

In another bowl, combine eggs, buttermilk, soda, and vanilla.

Pour the cooled chocolate mixture over the flour/sugar combination.

Stir in the egg mixture as well,

and finally add cinnamon if you wish.

Then, you can bake it in a sheet cake pan for 20 minutes at 350 and ice it with the icing glaze (Classic Style), or you can get crazy and pour it into cupcake pans and bake at 350 for about 17 minutes (what I did.)

17 minutes-ish later:

Yum.

Then, for the icing, I used the recipe on this site: Obsessed with Baking. It is similar to this recipe: Pioneer Woman's That's The Best Frosting I've Ever Had. I made the PW version for a different set of cupcakes I made a couple of days before, and I'll have to say that despite the different methods, they both came out pretty much the same. I had a slight problem with getting the Obsessed with Baking version to really come together nicely but it tasted great. To cover up the imperfections, I decided to cover the icing with sprinkles, which was a great idea. They turned out gorgeous!

And check this out:

WoW!

Zatar Bread

Okay, so I know I've had this "Zatar Bread Coming Soon" post up for like a month... I've been super busy and haven't had time to write out the recipe. The gallery of pictures above shows the steps I took the first time I made zatar bread myself - the bread came out SO delicious, and the pictures came out pretty great as well, so I really wanted to share the recipe. The only problem with it was that it took FOREVER to make and had way too many steps. It called for letting the bread rise about 5 different times. The bread was really good, though, so I thought that I would keep the recipe and try it again.

Then, thanks to Lisa, I came across a miracle bread recipe. It is a bread recipe in which you can make a large batch of dough, keep it in the fridge for up to two weeks, and use it throughout those two weeks to make all different kinds of bread. I used the first batch I made to make pita bread, zatar bread, and a baguette - all from the same batch of dough that took me about 10 minutes to make.

I will share the EASY zatar bread recipe soon as well as the other bread recipes I mentioned, as I didn't take pictures the first time I made them and I want a chance to make them again and document the steps with pictures. I adapted the recipes from Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day (click on book title to see book on Amazon), but I adapted the methods used in the book to make them friendly to the tools and equipment I already had on hand in my kitchen. I would highly recommend this book, as I have had great success so far with every recipe I have tried!

And finally, for those of you who don't know, zatar bread is a Middle Eastern flatbread made with olive oil and zatar (a spice blend). The zatar spice blend I use came from Jamie's family and I am almost out. I probably have enough to make one more batch, so I'll have to get some more! Zatar is a strong spice made from thyme, oregano, and other spices - at first I did not care for it - but it has grown on me and now I enjoy it a lot on flatbread. It is great to dip freshly baked zatar bread into homemade hummus or just eat it by itself!