Dice up the onion... you can use a whole medium onion if you like a lot of onions... If you have access to fresh jalapenos, just buy one or two (unless you want more spice, I never use more than one) and clean them and dice them up as well.
Next you will want to put two table spoons of oil into a deep skillet or a pot over medium heat. I use a skillet that is two inches deep, probably ten inches wide. Heat oil slightly, not to where it wants to explode when you throw something in there, just enough to where it moves around in the pan easily. Add one and a half cups of rice and stir occasionally to keep it from burning. Making Spanish rice is an art, I swear. Half the time I make it, it's fabulous and sometimes it flops, it's like the first pancake, except you don't get to make two :-) See how the rice is starting to turn white, that's what we want.
Now we are going to add the onions and jalapenos. You can add a diced fresh tomato here as well if you like, but we are going to add salsa later so you don't have to. You'll want to stir almost constantly because the onions and tomato will want to stick and you don't want to. Also, at this point, everything's gotten pretty hot so you want to keep it from burning. Your rice should start to brown a little, but not too much. Maybe two or three minutes of stirring before we add the bouillon.
You want one cube of chicken bouillon and one cube of tomato bouillon. Mush them up with your stirring spoon as quickly as possible and get them mixed in. As soon as you do, you may notice everything is wanting to stick at this point, add three cups of water, stir it all up and lower the heat to medium low.
Now I have a theory that you should only have the rice covered up about three fourths of the time that you are cooking it so that it doesn't end up mushy. I want it cooked all the way but not too much. So I usually uncover mine several times through out the process and check on it. When I think it's time, I leave the lid off so the rest of the liquid can escape, like I said, it's an art. In the bottom left photo, you can see what the consistency of the rice was when I uncovered it. I added 1/3 to 1/2 cup of salsa to it and stirred it up and lowered the heat to low to cook the remaining liquid out of it.
Now, while you were letting the rice cook, you needed to be starting the enchiladas. For this, you will want a 9x13 glass pan. It doesn't have to be glass, but it's better this way. Trust me. Poor a third of the can of enchilada sauce into the pan and make sure it is coating the bottom.
Wrap about fifteen tortillas into a few paper towels and microwave them for about two minutes. You want them to be hot enough to be pliable but not so hot that you make them hard. If you roll it, it shouldn't break. In each tortilla, put about two tablespoons of cheese and roll it up and set it in the pan. You can do two layers of enchiladas for a total of thirty. Drizzle remaining sauce over enchiladas and then sprinkle with cheese.
Bake in the oven at 350 for about twenty minutes or until the cheese on top is melted and you are confident that they are hot and then EAT! SOOOO good :-)
Labels: cooking, recipes, sisters, stuff I like
