Enchiladas I Got I Got

We had my parents up for dinner, yesterday. Because we were eating at 1 o'clock I didn't want to serve anything so heavy we would all need post-dinner naps, but I still wanted something cheesy and comforting to combat the meteorological ickiness forecast by our intrepid weathermen.

After much back-and-forthing, I made chicken enchiladas from Cook's Illustrated's The Best Make-Ahead (America's Test Kitchen, 2007) and served them with tomato-rice and a big green salad.

As with all Cook's Illustrated recipes I found myself, about half way through prep, thinking the editors were too goshdarn persnickety and that the recipe was too fiddly for my taste. Bring on the canned enchilada sauce, I thought. But, oh, it was good I followed the recipe! The enchiladas I served Saturday afternoon were scrumptious -- cheesy, spicy, filling but not heavy. The corn tortillas remained crisp despite having been assembled the previous evening and the sauce beat any canned enchilada sauce hands down. If, in the past, I've made Kraft's "Creamy Chicken Enchiladas" and been pleased with the results, that was only because I didn't know better.

Basically, I'm saying I'll be making these enchiladas again.

We ate the enchiladas with tomato-rice, which was a dish I cobbled together after browsing too many recipes for "Mexican" or "Spanish" rice and deciding I had neither the time nor ingredients to make those exact dishes. My mother asked for the recipe and The Husband avowed he would eat the rice again, so I must have made a pretty good hack of it:

Tomato Rice

In my dutch oven, I heated a splash of olive oil over medium. Sautéed 1 cup long grain white rice with 1 finely chopped onion and 1 finely chopped green bell pepper until the rice was browned. Stirred in 2 cups of low-sodium low-fat chicken broth and one can of Muir Glen fire-roasted diced tomatoes with chilies. Seasoned with fresh pepper, chili powder, a bit of cumin, and a dash of paprika. Covered and simmered until the liquid was absorbed and the rice was tender (about half an hour).

For dessert, I made up a box of King Arthur Flour's "Lemon Magic Cake Mix" which came out so well that my mother took home the two leftover cakes. I can't blame her -- these were perfect little tart sponges drenched in a sweet-tart sauce that had me scraping my plate clean.

I had made King Arthur Flour's Chocolate Lava Cake Mix over Christmas weekend and those were incredibly good -- darkly, bitterly, sweet and gooey -- but the lemon cakes win.

Yes, it's probably for the best that my parents took the extra cakes home with them or I would be eating lemon cake for breakfast when I'm trying to go back to healthy breakfasts like muesli and yoghurt.

I like muesli and yoghurt, but cake's .... cake is not to be denied.