Espresso Cardamom Crumb Cakes

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the big bake sale that was being planned to raise funds for recovery efforts in West, Texas. I’m thrilled to report that it was a huge success, and we’re all so thankful to everyone who came out for the sale and made donations online. The total raised was over $19,000! As planned, I baked more of the Chocolate Chip and Cherry Scones, and I wanted to bring a second option to the sale as well. I was in a crumb cake kind of mood, and really, I’m always in the mood for a crumb topping. I found a great recipe in Baking: From My Home to Yours for a Cardamom Crumb Cake that has orange zest and espresso powder in the cake itself and in the crumb topping. I had to try it. Since I was baking for a bake sale, I made individual, small cakes in paper molds that are actually made for crumb cakes or so says the label. The little cakes were easy to slip into cellophane bags. I doubled the recipe in the book, lined up the paper cups on a baking sheet, and started filling them until the batter was gone. I ended up with ten little cakes. These paper molds are sturdier than a regular cupcake liner, but they didn’t hold their shape perfectly. What was perfect was the aroma of cardamom, espresso, and orange zest as the cakes baked. 

You start with the most important part—the crumbs. Flour, chopped toasted walnuts, sugar, orange zest, instant espresso powder and I always add a little extra, and cardamom were combined in a bowl. Butter was then worked into the flour mixture but not overworked. Big pieces of crumb topping are always a good thing. For the cake, flour, baking powder, and salt were combined with more cardamom and espresso powder. More orange zest was mixed with sugar, and Dorie suggests rubbing the sugar and orange zest together with your hands. It releases the oil from the zest and ensures the zest will be well-distributed in the batter. The wet ingredients included melted and cooled butter, eggs, whole milk, brewed coffee, and vanilla extract, and they were whisked together and then stirred into the dry ingredients. I scooped the batter into the crumb cake cups and topped each cup with crumb mixture. My little cakes baked for about 20 minutes. 

I only kept one cake at home to taste and soon wished I kept at least two. But, luckily, it’ll be quick and easy to mix up the batter and crumbs again. In the book, Dorie includes a tip about baking extra crumbs on a baking sheet and using them to top pots de creme or ice cream. That’s one more reason I’ll be making this again soon. 

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Skewered Tamarind Fish with Dried-Lime Butter and Chives

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been cooking from the new Malouf book, New Middle Eastern Food, of which I received a review copy. This is a beauty of a cookbook. You might say it’s a coffee table cookbook, but that doesn’t mean the recipes are very difficult or overly complicated. This latest book brings together the authors’ favorite dishes from all their earlier books with some updates and a few new things as well. Right away, you’ll notice the stunning photos and food styling. A simple Tabbouleh with Roasted Hazelnuts is presented in a pretty mound surrounded by the nuts, the Egyptian Eggs with Dukkah is shown with a coated, soft-boiled egg perched in a nest of very thinly sliced dried chile shreds, and on it goes with eye-catching photos throughout the book. The first dish I tried was the Crunchy Red Lentil Kofte with Fresh Mint made with bulgur and Turkish red pepper paste which caused me to fall hard for said pepper paste. I found it at Phoenicia, our neighborhood Middle Eastern market, and it’s not hot and spicy but it’s not sweet either. It just has a lovely pepper flavor, and I’ll be putting it in all kinds of things from now on. The kofte were served in little lettuce cups and topped with a lemon and olive oil dressing. I also made the Sis Kebabs with chicken instead of lamb, and the meat was marinated with lots of warm spices like cinnamon, allspice, paprika, nutmeg, and black pepper. The spiced, skewered chicken was delicious with Basil Tzatziki. Then, I discovered the wonder that is Preserved Lemon Guacamole. I’m usually particular about my guacamole and prefer it very simple, but I wanted to give this a try. It’s made with smashed avocado as usual, and diced tomato, chopped cilantro leaves, finely chopped hot green chile, a little lime juice, some minced garlic, finely chopped onion, and the finely chopped rind of half of a preserved lemon. It quickly became my new favorite thing. 

Since it didn’t seem right to make an entire meal out of the guacamole although I probably could have, I turned to the page with the Skewered Tamarind Fish with Dried-Lime Butter and Chives. Dried lime is an ingredient I’ve mentioned before, and I do enjoy any opportunity to use it. The limes are brown, a little shriveled, and completely dried. You can pierce them and drop them into a simmering soup or bash them into pieces and then grind the pieces in a spice grinder. The flavor is just as you’d expect: intensely of lime. Here, the dried lime was broken apart and simmered with water, lime juice, some sprigs of thyme, and I used white wine and a little vinegar rather than verjuice. The reduced liquid was strained so all the hard bits of dried lime were removed, and it was set aside. Meanwhile, chunks of fish, and I used black cod, were marinated in a mixture of tamarind paste dissolved in water, turmeric, and grated onion. After twenty minutes, the fish was skewered with bay leaves and quickly cooked for a couple of minutes per side. To make the sauce, some butter was added to the reduced and strained liquid. This was whisked to emulsify, and then slowly, more butter was added one cube at a time while whisking until incorporated. The sauce can be kept warm while the fish cooks and the salad is made. The salad was a tossed mix of long, thin slices of shaved cucumber, purple basil leaves, edible flower petals, and a lime juice and olive oil dressing. 

The rich butter sauce with bright lime was lovely with the flaky, white fish, and the fresh, crunchy salad was nice and light on the side. There are so many more things I want to try from this book like the flatbreads and crackers, and rice dishes and couscous, and the cute, little falafel made with favas and chickpeas. This book is definitely inspiring me to bring Middle Eastern flavors into my kitchen much more often. 

Skewered Tamarind Fish with Dried-Lime Butter and Chives 
Recipe reprinted with publisher’s permission from New Middle Eastern Food.

1.2 kg firm fish fillets, skin removed 
2 tablespoons tamarind paste 
50 ml hot water 
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric 
120 ml olive oil 
1 onion, grated 
12 bay leaves 
rice , lemon wedges, fresh herbs, and Arabic flat bread to serve 

Dried-Lime Butter 
1 dried lime, cracked with a rolling pin 
100 ml water 
50 ml verjuice 
juice of 1/2 lime 
 3 sprigs thyme 
160 g unsalted butter, diced and chilled 
2 tablespoons finely snipped chives 

Shave Cucumber Salad 
2 Lebanese cucumbers 
1/2 cup black basil leaves 
1/3 cup tarragon sprigs 
edible flowers 
 juice of up to 1 lime 
60 ml extra-virgin olive 
oil sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 

Remove any stray bones from the fish, cut it into 24 large chunks, and transfer to a shallow dish. Whisk the tamarind paste with the hot water until dissolved, then whisk in the turmeric and oil. Stir in the grated onion and pour the mixture over the fish. Cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes. 

While the fish is marinating, make the dried-lime butter. Put the cracked dried lime into a small saucepan with the water, verjuice, lime juice and thyme and simmer vigorously over a high heat until the liquid has reduced by half. Strain, discard the solids, then return the liquid to the pan. Add half the chilled butter, then reduce the heat to very low and whisk vigorously until the mixture comes together as a creamy emulsion. Slowly drop in the remaining butter, whisking all the time, until it has all been incorporated. Remove from the heat and keep in a warm place until ready to use. 

To make the salad, use a vegetable peeler to shave the cucumber fl esh into long strips, being careful not to include any seeds. Discard the seedy core. Tip the shavings into a colander set on a plate and refrigerate for 10 minutes. 

When ready to cook, preheat a barbecue or griller to high. Thread the fish chunks onto six metal skewers, interspersing two bay leaves on each. Grill for 4–5 minutes, turning a few times to prevent them from burning, and brush with the marinade as they cook. 

To finish the salad, combine the shaved cucumber, herbs and flowers in a large mixing bowl. Whisk the lime juice and oil together and pour over the salad. Season with salt and pepper and toss gently. Pile the skewers onto a warm platter. Stir the chives into the dried-lime butter and spoon over the fish. 

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Kouign-Amann

When I look at recipes for cakes, I make mental notes like “this one would be great for a birthday,” or “this is the cake for a spring party,” or “I have to remember this one during the holidays.” But, with the new book from Gesine Bullock-Prado, I was making all those usual mental notes and also thinking “I want to bake this cake just to see if I can do it.” The new book is Bake It Like You Mean It, and I received a review copy. There are showpiece cakes with intricate layers and beautiful frosting; there are meringues layered with fillings or built into a torte; and there are cheesecakes, mousse cakes, and even simple pound cakes. The Banana Caramel Slices are layered with chocolate sponge cake and caramel cream and topped with a chocolate glaze and caramelized bananas. The Citrus Angel Food Cake combines lime, orange, and lemon batter baked in one pretty cake. And, there’s a Checkerboard Cake, a Puzzle Cake, and a big roulade turned on its side that looks like it’s made with vertical layers when sliced. I want to make all of these cakes. There are clear instructions and tips, a good bit of humor to keep the book feeling fun, and helpful photos show the process for some recipes. After reading through recipes and looking at photos, I had several aha moments of realizing these cakes look more complicated than they might actually be to make. In addition to all those stunning layer cakes, there’s also a chapter for yeast-risen goodies like Brioche, Tangerine Dream Tea Ring, and Kouign-Amann. Since I didn’t have a handy occasion for a big cake with several layers and Kouign-Amann is something I’ve wanted to try making for the longest time, I started with that. 

This is a Breton cake, or mini cake depending on how it’s made, and the name quite appropriately comes from the words for cake and butter. There are only a few ingredients here which means it's a celebration of butter and sugar. So, this is a time to splurge on really good butter, and I used vanilla sugar from a jar where vanilla pods get stuffed after scraping out seeds. Making the dough for the little cakes is a lot like making puff pastry. A simple yeast-risen dough was rolled out, a block of butter was placed on one side, the dough was folded over, and it was rolled and folded, chilled, and rolled and folded again. For these cakes, the dough is rolled in sugar rather than flour. So, you end up with layers and layers of butter, dough, and sugar that are cut and folded into squares that bake into sweet, little, tender cakes with crispy, sugary edges. 

I love finding out things aren’t as difficult to make as they look, and the Kouign-Amann was a perfect example of that. This will be the book to grab when special occasions demand an impressive dessert. And, it’s also the book to grab when you just want to try baking something new and fun. 

Kouign-Amann 
Recipe reprinted with publisher's permission from Bake It Like You Mean It.

If you’ve had the pleasure of spending time in Brittany, no doubt you have had a taste of a kouign-amann. If you’ve had the pleasure of spending time in Brittany and you didn’t eat kouign-amann, then you never really went to Brittany at all because you can’t fully appreciate the place and her people until you take a bite of that crispy, sweet, buttery, slightly-chewy-in-the-center-and-caramelized-on-top-and-on-the-edges pastry. 

2 1/4 cups (450 g) granulated sugar, divided 
2 teaspoons salt 
5 cups (625 g) all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting the work surface 
2 tablespoons instant yeast 
 1 pound (455 g) unsalted European butter, at room temperature 

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the hook attachment, combine 1 1/2 cups (360 ml) water, 1/4 cup (50 g) granulated sugar, and the salt. Add the flour and yeast and mix until a smooth, shiny dough forms, about 10 minutes. If the air conditions are very humid, you may need to add a bit more flour. If dry, add a few tablespoons of water. The dough should be smooth and pull away from the sides of the bowl. 

Spray a large bowl with nonstick cooking spray. Place the dough in the bowl and turn it over a few times to coat thoroughly. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm area of your kitchen to allow to proof until doubled in volume, about 1 hour. 

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and 1/2 cup (100 g) sugar. Mix until the two are well blended and the butter is smooth but not soft. Transfer the mixture to a piece of plastic wrap and shape into a rough 8-by-11-inch (20-by-28-cm) rectangle. Cover completely with plastic wrap and, using a rolling pin, gently even out the butter into an even block. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. 

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface. Lightly dust the top of the dough with flour as well. Roll the dough into a rough rectangle, approximately 12 by 18 inches (30.5 by 46 cm). Place the butter block on one side of the dough and fold the second half over the dough block. Press along the edges of the dough block to secure the butter inside the dough. 

Sprinkle the work surface evenly with 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar. Place the dough on the sugar and roll out into a rectangle approximately 12 by 18 inches (30.5 by 46 cm). Sprinkle the top with 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar. Fold one short half toward the middle and fold the other half over on top of that, as if you were folding a business letter. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 20 minutes. 

Again, sprinkle your work surface with 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar, and sprinkle 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar over the top of the dough in an even layer. Roll out the dough into a rectangle 12 by 18 inches (30.5 by 46 cm) and fold into a business letter again. Cover and refrigerate for 45 minutes. 

Preheat the oven to 400°F (205°C). Line a half sheet pan with parchment paper. 

Sprinkle 1/2 cup (50 g) sugar onto the work surface and roll the dough into a rectangle 8 by 16 inches (20 by 40.5 cm). Using a very sharp pastry wheel, cut the dough into eight (4-inch / 10-cm) squares. Prepare each pastry by folding each corner of the square toward the center and pressing the corner to seal into place (you’ve just created a smaller square). Continue until you’ve finished folding all the squares. Sprinkle the squares with the remaining 1/4 cup (50 g) sugar. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 20 minutes. 

Bake for 20 minutes, or until the top is a deeply golden brown and caramelized. Eat while warm! 

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Inspired by Brazil

I had no idea how little I knew about Brazil. Obviously, I need to visit this country. Happily, I’ve learned a few new things during the Central Market Passaporte Brasil event which continues until May 7. For example, I was previously completely unfamiliar with Brazilian wine. Now, I know there’s a very active wine industry there making fantastic wines of all kinds. One of my favorites that I tasted was a sparkling wine from Casa Valduga which was crisp with acidity and perfect for pouring this summer. I also learned about Shrimp Moqueca which is a spicy stew with bell peppers, chiles, coconut milk, coconut shards, and dende oil but more on that in a moment. Throughout the two-week event, there are tastings, musical and dance performances, special products in the store, and classes focused on Brazilian food and wine. I attended the Inspired by Brazil class taught by Susan Feniger with a media pass and received a copy of her book Susan Feniger's Street Food. She demonstrated several Brazilian-inspired dishes while explaining knife techniques and cooking tips and teasing the cooking school staff. She said in her restaurants, her own staff often says “here comes Susan, quick add acid, add salt.” That’s because she wants every dish to taste like the best thing you’ve ever eaten. If a salad or sauce was made in advance and has been sitting, the flavor has a chance to dull. You need to taste it again before serving and perk it up. Everything served that night was full of exciting flavors with citrus, chiles, ginger, and cilantro. 

She started off by making a ginger and lemongrass tea with honey. Once steeped, it’s lovely by itself or makes a great base for a cocktail. And, then she realized everything we would be tasting that night would have ginger and/or cilantro in it. I was perfectly happy with that. Our first course was Ceviche with Mangos and Sweet Potatoes. Feniger’s preference is for ceviche to be about one-half fish and one-half other ingredients. The result is a nice mix of textures. Here, the ingredients were diced fish, lime juice, red onion, jalapeno, mango, diced and roasted sweet potato, aji amarillo, minced ginger, chopped cilantro, pickled red onion, and plantain chips for serving. You could fry long slices of plantain and pile the ceviche on top, or serve smaller chips for scooping. 

Next was a salad that could easily be a meal in itself, and it will when I make it at home. The Vegetable Salpicon was a mix of julienned carrots, chayote, and radishes, blanched green beans, red cabbage thinly sliced, chives, and cilantro leaves. All of those vegetables were tossed with a dressing made with garlic, ginger, lemongrass, jalapeno, white wine, and champagne vinegar which were simmered until reduced. Then, saffron was added and allowed to steep before mayonnaise was incorporated. Crispy, shoestring potatoes were tossed with the vegetables and dressing, and the salad was topped with more potato strings. 

And, then I was introduced to Shrimp Moqueca (photo at top). This lovely, spicy, shrimp stew can be dressed-up and garnished in various ways or kept simple as you wish. It’s started by cooking diced onion and bell pepper to which tomatoes and chiles are added. Fish stock and coconut milk are poured over the vegetables, and it’s left to simmer. Meanwhile, shrimp were cooked in a separate pan, and sliced green onions, lime juice, dende oil, and cilantro were added. Just before serving, the shrimp mixture was added to the simmering coconut milk mixture. To garnish, toasted coconut shards, diced lime supremes, and sweet-spicy little peppers like peppadews were placed on each serving. I’m so happy to have learned about this dish. 

The last course of the evening involved a few different parts. First, there were quartered, cooked artichokes topped with an oregano salsa verde and served with olive aioli. Dipping the salsa-dressed artichoke leaves into the aioli was delicious. And, that was served next to sliced grilled skirt steak that had been marinated with a thick, pureed mix of jalapenos, garlic, lime juice, cilantro, and olive oil. Feniger suggested trying that marinade on fish before grilling, and I can’t wait to do that. The skirt steak was topped with a hearts of palm chimichurri which would also be great with fish. I’m not sure when I’ll get to Brazil, but in the meantime, I have several new dishes to make at home while dreaming about it. 

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Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones

The Austin Bakes group has a couple of big bake sale fundraisers under our belt, but because these bake sales were organized to help recovery efforts after terrible events, we all agreed we never wanted to host another one ever again. Sadly, following the tragic events of the explosion in West, Texas on April 17, we started planning the next event to bake for our fellow Texans. The bake sale is happening this Saturday, May 4 at eight different locations in Austin, and there is an online giving page for donations as well. There will be a huge variety of baked goods both sweet and savory from volunteer home bakers and professional bakeries in addition to jams, preserves, sauces, and pickles. We’re hoping for the biggest turnout yet. I’ve been looking through baking books and trying to make decisions about what to bring to the sale. I knew Kurt would be happy to taste test a scone trial run before this weekend, so from several options I wanted to try, I picked the Chocolate Chip Cherry Scones from the Bouchon Bakery book. They’re as easy to make as any other scone, but being from this book, the recipe of course included some attention to detail. Dried, tart cherries were soaked overnight in a sugar and vanilla syrup, and all that time in the syrup plumped the cherries and made them delightfully juicy once they were baked into the scones. Then, the drained syrup was used in making the luscious glaze to top the scones. This was definitely a successful test, and I’ll be baking another batch for Saturday. 

You do need to plan ahead to follow the instructions exactly. First, a simple syrup with scraped vanilla seeds is made, and dried tart cherries are added to it. The syrup is simmered for a moment and then allowed to cool. Once cool, the syrup with the cherries needs to be refrigerated overnight. Then, the dough for the scones can be made, but that needs some resting time in the refrigerator and the freezer before baking. The cherries should be removed from the syrup and drained, and the syrup is saved for use in the glaze. Meanwhile, flour, baking soda, and salt are combined in a stand mixer, and then cold, cubed butter is mixed into the flour. Once incorporated, cream is added and just mixed into the dough. The drained cherries and chocolate chips are then folded in, and the dough is covered and refrigerated for two hours. The recipe suggests making the scones by scooping the dough into mounds with an ice cream scoop. Instead, I patted the dough into a circle before covering with plastic wrap and refrigerating. Then, I cut the circle into wedges. Either way, once the dough is portioned and placed on a baking sheet, the sheet is then placed in the freezer for a couple of hours or overnight or up to a month. The scones were baked directly from freezer to oven for about 30 minutes. The glaze was made with confectioners’ sugar, some of the cherry vanilla syrup, and cream and was spooned onto the scones after they cooled a bit. 

I don’t always chill dough for scones so thoroughly before baking, and I wouldn’t have thought to soak the dried cherries for as long as suggested here, but the results clearly proved those steps were worth taking. If you’re in Austin, come on out on Saturday to taste these scones (and lots of other things) while supporting our neighbors in West. 

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Black Olive Gourgeres

I always get excited about cookbooks that include great tip and techniques. When things are explained in ways that give you choices for customizing recipes and make you understand what affect those customizations will have, it’s eye-opening. Dan Lepard’s latest book, Short and Sweet: The Best of Home Baking, is full of tips just like that. It was published in the UK in 2011, but the US version was just recently released. When I received a review copy, I couldn’t put it down. The Tips and Techniques at the beginning of each chapter not only give you details about ingredients, baking times, etc. they also lead you along the way to making your baked goods your own. For example, when you know how salt, sugar, and different liquids affect bread dough, you can start tweaking recipes for the results you want. In the cake chapter, there are so many recipes I want to try, I might just have to start at the beginning and bake my way through it. The Carrot, Orange and Pistachio Cake is a nice twist on classic Carrot Cake; the Coffee and Ricotta Marbled Cake includes a great tip to prevent it from sinking as it bakes; and I have to try the Marrakesh Express Loaf Cake made with coffee, cardamom, cinnamon, pomegranate syrup, and dates. There are cookies and crackers, doughnuts and crepes, frostings and variations on buttercreams, pies and tarts and steamed puddings, and candies like lovely caramels. And, somehow, after reading about all those delicious sweets and looking at all the tempting photos, I ended up making a savory recipe first. When I saw the page for these Black Olive Gourgeres, I realized it had been far too long since I last made gourgeres, and this version was very different from any I’d ever made. 

You start by quartering pitted Kalamatas and combining them with a minced garlic clove, some chopped, fresh rosemary, olive oil, and salt and pepper in a saucepan. Yes, these gourgeres are made with olive oil rather than butter. When the olive mixture comes to a boil, flour is added and stirred until it forms a ball. It’s at this point in the process of making choux paste that I usually take a tip from Ina Garten and transfer the dough to a food processor for mixing in the eggs. It’s much easier than beating them in by hand. However, with the nice chunks of black olives in this dough, I didn’t want the blade of the food processor to reduce them to tiny bits. I still took a lazy approach by mixing in the eggs one at a time with a hand mixer. Grated parmesan was mixed in as well. The size of the gourgeres is up to you, and the recipe includes baking times for smaller, olive-size ones and for larger tablespoon-size ones. I went with the larger size. I brushed the gourgeres with egg wash and sprinkled the tops with more grated parmesan before they went into the oven for about 25 minutes. 

They were puffy and light just as gourgeres should be, and the black olives and parmesan made them delightfully savory. These were perfect little treats to accompany a cocktail. In the section of the book on choux paste, there’s also an interesting suggestion for making the dough into tiny pea-size pieces for sprinkling over soup or salad like croutons. I wasn’t kidding about all the smart tips in this book. 

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Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas with Swiss Chard

I realize it’s customary for food cravings to strike when you miss a particular dish, when you haven’t had the chance to taste a favorite thing for a long time, and when you can’t wait for the next opportunity to have whatever that is once again. However, even though I live smack in the middle of Austin where you can’t take too many steps in a row without tripping over another Tex-Mex restaurant, I constantly crave Tex-Mex food. I can order tacos for breakfast, burritos for lunch, and enchiladas for dinner by traveling a few blocks from home in any direction whenever I want, but sometimes, home-cooked Tex-Mex is the way to go. Our favorite spots do get crowded causing long waits for a table at peak times, and besides, by making my own enchiladas, I can do things like add some sauteed CSA Swiss chard and top them with sliced, fresh jalapenos for even more heat. These Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas are found in The Homesick Texan Cookbook as well as on the website, and this tangy sauce is one I’ll now be making often. The sauce is quick to make, and it starts like a veloute with a serrano chile-spiced roux to which chicken broth is added. Sour cream and roasted tomatillos are blended in to finish. It thickens as it bakes with the chicken- and cheese-filled enchiladas and makes you happy you’ll have some leftovers, which is another advantage of cooking at home. 

The recipe includes instructions for cooking chicken breasts for the enchiladas, but any cooked and shredded chicken will work here. With your chicken ready and some Monterey Jack cheese shredded, it’s time to make sauce. To start, I broiled a pound of cleaned tomatillos until well-browned on all sides, and transferred them to the blender. Then, butter was melted in a saucepan, and diced serrano chiles were added followed by minced garlic. Flour was whisked in to make a roux, and then chicken broth was slowly added while whisking. It was cooked until thickened, and I added sour cream, cumin, cayenne, and chopped, fresh cilantro off the heat. The sour cream mixture was poured into the blender with the tomatillos, but it was a little too much for my blender pitcher. I ended up pureeing in two batches. With the sauce completed, you can begin assembly of the enchiladas. I set up a row of warmed corn tortillas and started topping them with the fillings. A little shredded chicken was placed on each, followed by shredded cheese, and in my case sauteed Swiss chard. I skipped the suggested chopped onion because I tend to skip onions most of the time. With all the fillings in place, you just roll each tortilla into a cylinder. A cup of the sour cream sauce is poured into an oiled baking dish, and the filled tortillas are placed seam side down in the sauce. When all the enchiladas are in the pan, the remaining sauce is poured over top, the remaining cheese is sprinkled over it, and the dish is baked for 25 minutes. I gave it a few minutes under the broiler to brown the cheese at the end of the baking time. 

Not all of my food cravings are this crazy. Of course, I crave fresh, ripe tomatoes when there are none to be had in the winter, and I even start to long for dark, leafy greens when they just don’t grow here in the heat of summer. But, I don’t think a day will ever come when I won't crave a Tex-Mex meal either from a restaurant or home-cooked. 

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