Category: Vegetarian Dishes

Smothered Cheese & Bean Burritos

Perhaps like us you have been blessed with a vegetarian in your family. If so, give thanks for Cheese and Bean Burritos. Even a confirmed carnivore like me finds them a tasty and satisfying main dish for a meatless meal.

Our grandson Will is a vegetarian who really does not like vegetables very much. Going on eleven, he is doing much better than one of his distant cousins who seems to subsist exclusively on a diet of bread and ketchup. Will does like beans and cheese, which explains how I came upon this recipe.

He and I have made these cheese and bean burritos together a half dozen times now. He grates the cheese and sprinkles it on the filling as I spoon on the bean mixture and roll the tortillas.

We make an even better team eating them. Though I have never managed more than two, he once downed three of them. He is, after all, a growing boy.

INGREDIENTS:

1 medium onion (3 inch diameter)
4 garlic cloves
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 (16 ounce) can black beans
1 (16 ounce) can pinto beans
2 cups enchilada sauce
1/2 cup salsa
1 T cumin
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. black pepper
8 – 10 large flour tortillas
2 T water
2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese

PROCEDURE:

Preheat the oven to 350º.

Peel and chop the onion medium fine. Peel and mince the garlic. Open and drain the beans. Put three tablespoons of vegetable oil in a two quart saucepan over low heat and cook the garlic and onion until it is translucent.

Spoon half of each can of beans over the onions and mash them with a potato masher, then stir in the rest of the beans. Add a cup of enchilada sauce, a half cup of salsa, the cumin, salt and pepper. Stir over low heat and simmer for three or four minutes.

Grate the cheese while the bean mixture is simmering.

Put about three tablespoons of bean mixture in a row about a quarter of the way up on a tortilla. Sprinkle the mixture with cheese. Fold about a quarter of the tortilla over the mixture, then fold in the ends and roll up the tortilla to make a burrito. Arrange the burritos seam side down in a greased 9 x 13 inch glass baking dish.

Mix the two tablespoons of water with the remaining enchilada sauce and pour it evenly over the burritos. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over the sauce and bake, covered, for about twenty minutes.

Pass extra salsa and serve with your favorite beverage. Try a glass of root beer or a good ale.

NOTES: We use medium salsa, so our burritos are pretty mild. If you prefer spicier food, try hot salsa or add some hot sauce to the bean mixture.

Burritos are the Mexican version of a sandwich, a hand-held food you can eat on the go. Fast food vendors were selling tortillas with various fillings in Tenochtitlan (modern Mexico City) five hundred years ago, but the modern burrito apparently was invented in the 19th century. If you cook burritos with sauce, like enchiladas, they are “smothered” and meant to be eaten with a fork.

Jerri’s Potato Soup

When I was growing up, there was a potato bin in our basement. It was eight feet long, six feet wide and about seven feet high. Trust me when I say that it held a lot of potatoes and that filling the bin explains why I hated potatoes for a few years.

Not to eat them of course; we ate lots of potatoes and I still love them. But planting them, weeding them, digging them, picking them, bagging them and helping haul them from the potato patch to the basement tainted my attitude to the tubers. And guess who had the late winter job of removing the sprouts from the three or four hundred pounds of potatoes left in the bin?

We kept my grandparents in potatoes, gave some to other family members and shared a few with neighbors. Wisconsin is good potato country. When Dad was growing up, Wisconsin was the third ranking potato producer in the United States, and Grandpa Rang’s farm had the right soil for growing potatoes.

Potatoes were a cash crop that helped Grandpa support his family. My father told me that the field between the house and the road was so productive that Grandpa bought a 1929 Ford touring car with the profit earned from that one small field, and we have a photo of the proud family with the car.

Thanks to Grandpa Rang, Dad was a perfectionist when it came to potatoes. In early spring we would visit two or three different farmers to buy good seed potatoes. We planted Triumphs, red potatoes with thin smooth skins for eating as new potatoes, and Russets, big brown potatoes that kept well over the winter.

Dad was proud of his potatoes. Once when we were visiting after Jerri and I were married, he showed me a huge potato he had grown in the garden at the house. He no longer had a large potato patch, but he still planted some Triumphs and grew enough russets to last for much of the winter.

As I recall that big potato weighed over three pounds. They were Dad’s potatoes, but I’m sure that Mom talked to the garden every day. When I asked her what she did to rejuvenate the sick and dying flowers people brought to her, she said she just talked to them. “I just try to be friendly and encourage them. Plants are like people and need that.”

Her technique worked with other plants too. Once someone gave her a little yellowed palm tree that she nursed back to health. It turned green and got so tall that she sold it to the local bank where it would have a good home.

I can almost hear her tell Dad’s potato plants, “You’re looking good. Now just keep getting bigger to surprise Harry.”

One of the ways Mom used Dad’s potatoes was to make potato soup. Hers was a simple cream sauce spiced with salt and pepper. Jerri uses onions and celery in her recipe. It is still an easy soup to prepare, but I think the result is terrific.

Here’s how to make six servings of Jerri’s potato soup.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups diced potatoes
About 4 cups water
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped onion
5 T butter, divided
4 T all-purpose flour
2 tsp. salt, divided
1/2 tsp. white pepper
6 cups milk

PROCEDURE:

Peel and cut the potatoes into a half inch dice. Clean and chop the onion and celery fine. Chop any celery leaves on the stalks as well, as they have lots of flavor.

Put the diced potatoes into a medium sauce pan, add a teaspoon of salt and cover them with water. Bring the potatoes to a boil and cook them so they are tender but not soft. Drain them in a colander.

While the potatoes are cooking, sauté the onion and celery and make the sauce. Melt a tablespoon of butter in a small skillet and sauté the onion and celery over low heat until the vegetables are tender but not browned.

To make the sauce, melt four tablespoons of butter in a large saucepan or Dutch oven over low heat. Add four tablespoons of flour and stir with a wooden spoon for three or four minutes to cook the flour. Stir in a teaspoon of salt and a half teaspoon of white pepper.

Add three cups of milk and stir continuously until you have a smooth sauce, then add the rest of the milk, potatoes, celery and onions. Simmer the soup for five minutes, taste and adjust the seasoning.

Serve alone for a light lunch or with salad and sandwiches for dinner or supper.

NOTES: Whole milk makes a richer soup, but 1% and 2% low-fat milk work all right. We have not tried using skim milk. We use russet potatoes for this soup, but other varieties should work fine too. Garnish with parsley for a gourmet presentation.