Tomato Sauce | Dolly Domestic

No shopping today. Dinner was tamales (made from scratch several months ago and vacuum-sealed) served with a faux Spanish rice, salsa and enchilada sauce (also pre-made from scratch and frozen in silicon muffin pans then vacuum-sealed). The boys were so hungry that we ate all the tamales before my husband even came in from working on the workshop. He had a burrito with more of the shredded beef we’d had the other day and a homemade tortilla.

Here’s my enchilada sauce recipe:

Enchilada Sauce

2 tbsp Oil
2 tbsp Flour
1/4 cup red chile powder — mild
2 cups beef broth — fresh or canned
2 cups tomato puree — canned
1/2 tsp Oregano
1/4 tsp Cumin — powdered
1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Salt

Heat oil in large saucepan. Add the flour to the oil and make a roux. Stir and cook over medium heat for 2 minutes until it becomes brown in color. Add the chile powder, beef broth, tomato puree, oregano, cumin, garlic and salt to the roux and simmer over low heat for 15 minutes.

Notes: I’ve substituted tomato sauce for the puree and nobody noticed. Chile powder and chili powder are NOT the same thing. Chile powder is actually powdered chilis, and chili powder is a mixture of seasonings to make chili and usual includes chile powder, salt, garlic, etc.

I frequently make a double batch of this sauce, since I’m going to freeze most of it anyway. I have 3 silicon muffin “pans” that I freeze this and other sauces in. Because the silicon is so flexible the sauce pops right out; each piece being about 1/3-1/2 cup. My experience is sauce quantities are somewhat forgiving, so I’m not worried too much about being exact.

I really blew it today. I *should* have gone to the store to pick up some milk, pizza fixin’s, etc., but just couldn’t get my butt in gear, so now those items will end up in the budget for the week we’re vacationing.

We used up some produce in the fridge for dinner — my husband made stuffed bell peppers. We always have plenty of rice on hand (I buy it in 25 lb bags at the warehouse clubs for about $12), and we had the hamburger in the freezer too. The recipe he made was from a Betty Crocker cookbook from the 70s and the recipes are mostly mid-western versions of food. It called for pre-cooking the hamburger and even mixing some of the tomato sauce with it and the rice and a few spices then stuffing the par-boiled peppers. Then topping with more tomato sauce and baking, adding mozzarella cheese to the top during the last 15 minutes in the oven. Very odd, but probably the best way to go if you’ve only got regular ground beef on hand and not lean.

My normal recipe calls for mixing the raw hamburger, salt, pepper, rice, chopped onions and a tad of garlic up and stuffing that into raw peppers. Then cooking that on the stove in a mixture of tomato sauce and chopped tomatoes, seasoned with oregano, bay leaf, salt & pepper (and whatever strikes me at the moment), sometimes adding a little red wine. If you use full-fat hamburger you’ve got a bit of problem on your hands with that recipe, though if you poke holes in the bell peppers before stuffing them the fat drains out okay.

With the stuffed peppers, my husband also served corn & peas, and mashed potatoes. Yum! Nice dinner, and even better since I didn’t have to cook it.