Cena de Martes!

Today we planned the rest of the first week of guest dinners. We are excited to feed them well! We also made our best staff dinner so far -- a Mexican one.  In addition to the Mexican theme, we also had a kitchen-side theme of trying to get things out absolutely on time or early, which we also managed for the first time today (after running ~10 minutes late for the first two meals).  Here is what we had:

Chips with Two Salsas
Store-bought tortilla chips with one bowl of store-bought salsa (since there's a big jar in the fridge anyway), and one bowl of mango-cucumber salsa (to use up a lone mango that was hanging around).

Creamy Corn Soup with Chipotle
We had planned a cucumber-avocado gazpacho, but today was so chilly and drizzly that we couldn't stand serving a cold soup when we could serve a hot one.

We used this recipe, aiming for 2x their sizes, using 1 40-oz bag of thawed frozen corn, and adding 1 canned chipotle pepper.  Spiciness was well-received by staff, but expected to be too much for kids.  We blended the soup before serving, and it turned out rich and thick.  We could've added dairy (milk or heavy cream) but the soup was fantastic without that addition.  Quantity was great for 10 people.

Chicken Enchiladas and Refried Black Bean Enchiladas
These were delicious.  One staff friend even called them "insane", which we took as a high compliment.  We had 16 to feed 10 people, and should've probably had 20.

Enchilada Sauce
2x this recipe from allrecipes.  Substituted 2 huge cloves fresh minced garlic for garlic salt, and skipped onion salt altogether.  Also upped cumin to ~1.5 tbsp.  Taste and texture were great, quantity was about 30% too much.

Shredded Chicken Filling
We used this recipe from food.com.  Substituted 1 tsp herbes de provence for marjoram, and omitted bell pepper.  Result was delicious, but we'd like to get an earlier start next time and leave the chicken in the stewing stage for longer, maybe with a couple cups of diced canned tomatoes, in the hopes of further softening it.

Refried Beans
We cooked up 4 cups of dried black beans, and used about 1.5c worth tonight.  For refried beans, we sauteed half an onion, a big clove of garlic, 2 skinny celery stalks, and half a fat carrot, then added black beans, 1 tsp herbes de provence, and 1 tsp cumin, and mashed it up with some veggie broth.

Enchiladas
We used 8" flour tortillas.  Grease a pyrex dish.  Dip a tortilla in enchilada sauce, put some filling in, then roll it up and jam it into the dish open side down.  Once all the enchiladas are rolled, pour remaining sauce over them, then top with an appropriate amount of grated cheese (we used about a bag of pre-grated Mexican cheese blend).  Bake at 350 for 15 or 20 minutes, until cheese is melted.  Longer and lower-temp if starting with cold ingredients, instead of hot like ours were.

Flan with Strawberries
We tried following this recipe, but had two big problems.  First, the caramel sauce didn't really work out.  It turned out that by using a small pan and stirring too much, I did everything that I was cautioned against in the comment on that page.  Second, I forgot that 2/3 of the sugar was reserved for that caramel sauce, and I added all of the sugar to the custard mix.  Fortunately, I remembered this before pouring the mix over the dodgy caramel sauce, so we just tossed that stuff and skipped sauce entirely.  It wasn't missed, and I would probably repeat the accidental version, maybe reducing sugar by ~25%.  I also added a pinch of cinnamon.

12 eggs worth of mix made 36 muffin tin flans, with some mix leftover -- way more than we expected to have for "12 servings".  I greased the tins before pouring in the mix, then baked them with the muffin tins inside roasting pans with water.  They mostly released well at serving time, but about 30% had sticking problems (only 1-2 of which were fatal).  To release, I ran a knife around the edge of each flan, then inverted the muffin pan over a baking sheet and knocked the bottom hard.

We served each flan with a few strawberry slices and some chiffonaded mint leaves from the garden.  The visual impact was excellent, and they were also very tasty.