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Bean enchiladas

Ben — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:41:05 +0000

Even though enchiladas is a delicious dish, it is very simple to prepare. There’s a saying in Mexico that goes: Pues no son enchiladas (It’s not like making enchiladas, you know?) that we use when a task is not easy. I think every Mexican is born with the skills to make guacamole, pico de gallo and enchiladas. It must be in our genes.

I have posted some recipes for enchiladas before here, here, here and here. So what’s special about the enchiladas for this post? This time I made them meatless, I stuffed them with homemade refried beans (without the chorizo), I “cooked” them as a casserole (something I’ve seen people do here in the U.S.), but most importantly, I used homemade spinach corn tortillas. And how do you make those?

It is actually very simple. All you’ll need is 3-4 cups of corn flour (the kind that is specifically made for corn tortillas), about 10 oz of spinach and 3-4 cups of water (you can use chicken stock to make them even more tasty). Bring water to a boil, turn the heat off and add spinach. Let the water cool for about 5 minutes and blend. Be very careful here because if the water is too hot it will “explode” in your blender. If you have a submerge blender that would work better. Pour the spinach mix over the corn flour and mix very well until it all comes together.

In order to be able to press your tortillas, the masa has to be soft, but not too soft. If it is too soft and sticks then add a little bit more flour. If it is too dry and hard and falls apart when you are shaping the balls, then add more water. I don’t have exact measurements for this since it varies depending on the flour, weather and elevation. You have to play with it to get it right. To shape the tortillas follow these instructions from my friend Kelly’s blog. She just made tortillas for the first time and she did an awesome job! For a more visual explanation you can watch this video. I am sure you will get it right the first time. It is not that difficult

Once the tortillas are made, fill them with whatever you want, in my case refried beans, roll them and lined them up in a baking dish. Pour some tomato sauce (I used the same one I use for my pastel azteca recipe), top them with cheese, onion or anything else you’d like and bake them for 20 minutes at 350°F. Easy, right?

Remember that this month’s Homemade challenge is tortillas. We want to see your homemade tortillas and how you ate them. The possibilities are endless! Also remember that food pictures are wanted for Food Photography Critics Club, a place where we share our pictures to be reviewed in order improve our photography skills. Don’t be shy and give us your pictures and opinions!

¡Buen provecho!

This is my entry for Ivy’s food event Celebrating Mother’s Day. My mom doesn’t celebrate it and this dish would be something completely new for her, but I am still dedicating it to her for all the knowledge and love that she gives me. Para ti mamá. And HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO ALL OF YOU!

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© Ben for What's cooking?, 2009. | Permalink | 13 comments |
Post tags: Easy recipes, Enchiladas, Mexican food, Salsas and ssauces, Tortillas

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Fruit crepes

Ben — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:48:47 +0000

Like I’ve said many times before, breakfast is the most important meal of the day for me. Some of my friends look at me funny when the first words that come out of my mouth after good morning are I am hungry. I guess I am this way because back at my parents’ home we ate breakfast religiously. Even when I had to be at school at 7 am, my mom would get up at 5 to make me a hearty breakfast, not to mention the banquets we ate on the weekends for breakfasts.

No matter what else we ate, there was always fresh fruit for breakfast. Papaya, melon and bananas were the base for our fruit salads and they were topped with other seasonal fruits, homemade yogurt, nuts and honey. That is one nutritious way to start your day, isn’t it?

I had a couple of whole-wheat crepes left over from this dinner the other morning and I decided to eat them for breakfast filled with fruit. I topped them with blueberry syrup and walnuts and served them with cottage cheese. There were fruit, proteins and carbs on that plate so I can call it a complete, and delicious, breakfast.

For this pictre I tried many different angles and lighting settings, but I am really not satisfied with the result. I have posted it on the Food Photography Critics Club on the forum. I’d appreciate if you guys give me your honest opinion over there. Also, remember that you can post your pictures there and get tips on how to improve your food photography skills there.

¡Buen provecho!

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© Ben for What's cooking?, 2009. | Permalink | 8 comments |
Post tags: Breakfast & Brunch, Crepe, Easy recipes, Fruit, Healthy food

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Working out at home

Ben — Thu, 07 May 2009 15:07:56 +0000

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Click here to get the recipe for Working out at home

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© Ben for What's cooking?, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments |
Post tags: Exercise, Health & Fitness, Home workouts, Swiss ball

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Homemade #4 - Tortillas

Ben — Tue, 05 May 2009 18:17:41 +0000

Better late than never, that’s what they say. I should’ve posted this last week, but I really don’t know where my head was. But finally here it is. The round up for last month’s Homemade event and the challenge for this month. Let’s start with the roundup of Homemade Bars. We didn’t have many entries last month. It is in part my fault because I kept myself away from the blog-o-sphere for awhile. But the entries we got are just amazing:

Finsmom made Superpower Granola Bars with Dried Blueberries and Raspberries:

Soma made Sweet Peanut Brittle Bars:

Yasmeen made Well-Balanced Chocolate Granola Bars:

Psychgrad made Peanut Butter Banana Bars:

Thank you very much for participating! Your recipes will give us more inspiration to try new homemade bars.

And now to this month’s challenge. I had two options for this month. I have been making this two things at home for a while, but since today is cinco de mayo and taking in consideration my friend Joan’s suggestiong of making something Mexican, I decided this month we all could make our own tortillas. Nothing represents better Mexican cuisine than corn tortillas. They were consumed by the native peoples of Mesoamerica long before the arrival of Europeans and they are still the most important food in the Mexican diet.

Their popularity has increased in the US and Europe where Mexican food is now more common. Even though the original pre-Columbian tortilla was made with corn, the wheat variations are more common in the U.S. and their popularity has increased in Mexico.

Homemade challenges you this month to make your own tortillas at home. I prefered corn tortillas because of their flavor and nutritional value, but you are welcome to submit flour tortillas to the event as well as how you ate them, tacos? quesadillas? enchiladas? nachos? The possibilities are endless!

You might be wondering why the tortillas in my pictures are green. And that’s because they are spinach corn tortillas, an idea that I got from my friend Capricornio when he made a green lasagna with green tortillas. Next week I will post the recipe for this unique tortillas and what I did with them. For now you can get some ideas on how to make your own here, here and here.

Remember the simple rules to participate in this event are:

Prepare any kind of tortilla at home.
Take pictures (if possible) and post about it on your blog (If you don’t have a blog skip to step 3)
Post the permalink to your entry on this topic of the forum. If you don’t have a blog post your picture and recipe there.
You might send as many entries as you wish. Tortillas are a versatile ingredient that you can use for many different dishes.
The deadline is May 31st.

I am looking forward to seeing what you come up with.

¡Buen provecho!

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Lighting in Food Photography

Ben — Fri, 01 May 2009 17:01:42 +0000

Several weeks ago I published the first post on what I’ve learned about food photography. It was so well received that I decided to continue with this series of posts. That first post was about some of the basic features most modern digital cameras (point and shoot included) have. I also mentioned that the single most important thing to always consider when taking pictures of your food (and in other kind of photography, too) was the lighting. In this post I will try to explain how those two things come together, your camera’s features and lighting. But as I’ve always said, the best way to understand your camera and take better pictures is by experimenting as much as you can.

For this little exercise I am going to use these beautiful guys, Mr and Ms Tomato and Mr and Ms Tomatillos. As in the last post, the only editing the following pictures went trough was compresion and resizing. You can see al the technical information of these pictures on their flickr pages.

Keeping in mind that lighting is the most important thing in photography let’s start with some advice. The most common advice any experienced food photographer will give is to shoot in natural light with your camera’s flash turned off. I agree 100% with them. If you are just learning the tricks of the profession, that is the single best first thing you want to do. Shoot your food on a table next to a window. If the sun is hitting that window use a thin curtain or close the blinds. You want the light to be evenly dispersed and not too harsh on your subject.

Get your camera on Manual mode and use a small number for the aperture and a somehow fast shutter speed, 1/250 (this terminology is explained in my last post) could work, and shoot.

For this picture I used my 50mm lens at f/1.8 aperture and 1/250 shutter speed which let too much light onto the camera’s sensor and overexposed this shot. What do you do next? Experiment, the magic word.

For this second shot I used a faster shutter speed, 1/500, and the same aperture, f/1.8. This settings were still overexposing the sensor to the natural light from the window. So I figured that by closing the blinds to let less light into the room and using a smaller aperture (a bigger f number) would do the trick.

Since I had less light coming through the window I reduced my shutter speed to 1/125 (I rarely shoot faster than 1/250) and used a smaller aperture, f/3.5. These settings gave me the result I was looking for. This is the same picture I used to introduce this post (after some editing with photoshop) because I was happy with the exposure, direction of the light and shadows. Which brings me to the next point I want to write about on this post: light direction and shadows.

Another great advice I’ve read all over the foodie blog-o-sphere is to use a white board to reflect light. Shooting with one source of light (in this case natural light through a window) will inevitable create shadows. Shadows are good for your pictures because they give them a sense of dimension. But too many shadows can make your pictures look dark and cause distraction. Using a reflective surface opposite to the source of light will soften shadows (note that I didn’t want to get rid of the shadows, only make them less noticeable)

My personal advice here is again to experiment. Move your food and reflecting board around (btw, the board can be anything that reflects light well. I use a white piece of foam, a white umbrella and sometimes the same white paper I use as a background). Position the food and yourself in front of the window, next to it, in an angle. Play with the settings until you get the results you are looking for. Square food pictures are boring, imho.

But what do you do when there is no natural light? The problem of not having enough light has haunted me in this old 1913 house for a long time. So I’ve acquired some inexpensive equipment to solve it. I first got two lamps like the one you see in the picture above. They were inexpensive (40 dollars for both I believe) and they do a decent job creating something very similar to natural light. But you don’t have to spend all that money. You can get only the bulbs at your hardware store and screw them into any lamp. You just need to make sure they are 5000k - 5500k to give you that natural light feeling.

However, they don’t give as much light as I’d like. I can get good results if I use very slow shutter speeds 1/10 to 1/60 but that requires using a tripod, which I don’t necesarily dislike, but that doesn’t give you as much freedom to move around trying to find the perfect angle of your enchiladas platter. That’s why I got these two guys:

The wirless flash on the right is a very inexpensive (around $35) and will work with any digital camera (that’s what the maker claims) and the one on the left is a Canon flash with a lot of more features (it is more expensive, but all the features make it worthwhile) However, the use of wireless flashes or other kind of lighting is a little bit more advance and I’ll talk about it in future posts.

To end this post I want to answer a question somebody asked on my last post. How do you make the background of a picture look blurry?

What we call depth of field (DoF) is a optical term that refers to the part of the picture that is in focus. A large DoF will have more of your food picture in focus and a small DoF will have less of your food picture in focus.

And how do you achieve a smaller DoF? This is closely related to the aperture of the lens on your camera. Small f numbers will give you small DoF (blurrier) and bigger f numbers will give you bigger DoF (sharper). However, this works better with SLR cameras. I can’t really explain the technical reasons, but they are related to the construction of the lenses. This means that shot and point cameras can’t achieve the same small DoF than SLRs. But don’t worry, there are some ways (cheats) to achieve this effect on your pictures using photoshop. Here’s the link that explains the how-to.

Remember that on my forum there is a section where I am inviting people to share their food pictures so others can share their ideas on how to improve them. The best way to improve our skills is by learning from others, don’t you agree?

¡Buen provecho!

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Orange and chocolate cookies

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