Mole Enchiladas

So I don't really follow recipes very often. The way I cook is usually taking something edible and making it better. Last night I made chicken mole. I had the intention of also making vegetarian mole, but my vegetarian friends didn't come over and my potatoes grew small trees out of themselves. Maybe next time.



Ingredients:

1 jar of Dona Maria Mole
1 pound of chicken (I used breast meat)
1 quart of vegetable broth, chicken broth (optional, water is also okay. I used half water, half vegetable broth)
2 1/2 tablespoons unsalted butter
3/4 cup of feta cheese
12-16 corn tortillas
salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to taste
1 table spoon of bacon fat or lard (optional)
1 table spoon of brown sugar (optional, if you like your mole a little sweeter)

Boil chicken until done. Shred by hand or with a food processor and set aside.

Empty contents of jar into sauce pan and add broth or water. Place on low heat and stir constantly until all the mole is dissolved (this takes about fifteen to twenty minutes). When it's finished dissolving, set aside two cups for topping the enchiladas. Add the shredded chicken, butter, bacon fat (optional), brown sugar, salt, pepper, and crushed red pepper to remaining mole sauce. Stir until butter and bacon fat dissolve.

Heat up the corn tortillas using your preferred method. I used a large non-stick pan placing them on a plate in the oven to keep them warm.

To serve, place the tortillas flat on a plate, filling with chicken/mole sauce and feta cheese. Roll them over and top with plain mole and feta cheese.

I served vegetarian refried beans and salsa as a side (I wish I would have made rice too).

I was born on September 16, Mexico's independence day, so I have a soft spot for all kinds of Mexican food (it helps to live here), and this is a pretty authentic taste. American food doesn't really do spicy chocolate goodness like this.

Quick & Easy Meal

If you're looking for a quick & easy Saturday night meal, I made this for dinner a few nights ago. With only 4 ingredients (not counting salt & pepper), chances are you have everything you need for this sitting in your kitchen right now!* FYI, the chicken was perfectly cooked, and tasted terrific over a box of Goya Mexican Rice.

All credit goes to Kristin of Cheap Healthy Good. Check out her interesting feed-my-fiancee-for-a-week on-$25 experiment, going on right now.

*Note to New Mexicans: If you can, use the El Pinto Medium Salsa that comes in the really big jar--perfect seasoning.

Spinach-Leek Egg Drop Soup

I kind of combined a few recipes to make this, namely this one and this one. I added the leeks and the spinach, because I really like leeks and because I eat spinach with basically everything. I also think they look pretty in the soup.

Unlike most soup (which I find tends to be most flavorful 1-2 after days initially cooking), this soup tastes the best when eaten immediately.


Spinach-Leek Egg Drop Soup

Ingredients:
2 cans of low-sodium chicken broth
1 cup water
2 tbsps cornstarch
1 leek, chopped
4-5 handfuls of fresh spinach, torn (2-4 cups)
3 eggs
1 egg yolk
garlic salt to taste
1 tsp ground ginger

You will also need a fork. Conveniently, I used the one I had just whisked my eggs with.

1. Put the broth into a soup pot on medium-high heat. Let it warm up a little.
2. Chop leeks and tear spinach; add to broth.
3.In a small bowl, combine the water and the cornstarch, then add to broth and stir.
4. Add salt and ginger. Stir again.
5. Crack eggs into bowl (or, in my case, a really large measuring cup with a spout. Spout is good for pouring the eggs in) and whisk until blended.
6. Turn off heat. Don't forget to do this!
7. Slowly, very slowly, pour the eggs into the broth (here comes the weird part) through the tines of the fork. This keeps the eggs from meeting the water too fast, and it also seperates them into smaller "ribbons." It should take 2-3 minutes to pour all of the eggs in.
8. Periodically while pouring the eggs, stir the soup in one direction.
9. When all eggs are gone, stir and eat! Optional: more garlic salt

A bonus to this recipe is that it is extremely low in calories. A leek has about 54 calories, baby spinach has 15 calories per 2 cups, and eggs are about 100 calories each, with one yolk being about 54. The brand of broth I used (Albertson's Fat Free) has about 10 calories per can. I'm not good at math or at figuring out servings, but it's pretty clear that this is a healthy soup.

Some people have referred to this soup as "girl food," but the soup is way more filling than it looks, due to the protein in the eggs. I like to eat it with toast.

hello fellow cooks, eaters & writers

Welcome to MFE, Master of Fine Eats, brought to you by Robert Alan Wendeborn and Carrie Murphy. We are friends and colleagues in the MFA program at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. We are poets and we like to eat. The purpose of this blog is to bring you ideas, recipes and reports on eating well in graduate school: where we eat, what we eat, how we eat.

We will try to post three times a week, so check back soon for quick/easy/cheap recipes, restaurant reviews and our thoughts on good eats and good writing.