recipe: enchis on the grill

When Tony and I lived in Phoenix, we ate a lot of really great Mexican food, and we started experimenting with Mexican recipes at home. We eventually added enchiladas to our regular dinner rotation, and it's something we still eat regularly. (Tony and I call them "enchis" for short.) They're even better with a fried egg on top, a trick I picked up at one of my favorite restaurants in Phoenix.

Of course, now that the D.C. summer temperatures have reached yucky, and the humidity has reached disgusting, I haven't been turning on the oven very much. Instead, I've been trying some tried-and-true recipes on the grill, and I've had some great success so far. And I'm happy to report that enchis on the grill are just as fantastic as they are in the oven.

Enchis on the Grill

• 1 can enchilada sauce
• 4 8-inch tortillas
• 1 can refried beans
• 2 tomatoes, diced
• 2 jalapeños, diced
• several handfuls of cheddar cheese
• 4 eggs
• cilantro

Line bottom and sides of a 9x13 baking dish with non-stick foil. Pour about 1/3 of the enchilada sauce in the bottom of the pan.

Assemble the enchiladas. Spread 1/4 of the beans along the center of each tortilla. Top with tomatoes and jalapeños and other toppings of choice (such as green olives and onions). Sprinkle a handful of cheese in each enchi. Fold the enchi sides over to close them.

Flip the enchis over and place in the baking dish. Spread remaining enchilada sauce over the top of the tortillas. Add another handful of cheese on top of each enchi.

Cover top of baking dish with foil. Also cover bottom of baking dish with a piece of foil to protect it from the flame.

Grill on medium-high heat for 20 minutes. Remove foil top and grill an additional 5 minutes.

While the enchis are grilling, fry the eggs, over easy, in olive oil or butter.

With a spatula, transfer enchis to plates. Top with eggs and a handful of cilantro to taste.

Serves 4.

Note: Tony and I took the two leftover enchis for lunch the next day. And they were just as good (maybe even a little better) than the night before.

dining out: amsterdam falafelshop

On a Friday earlier this month, Tony picked me up from work, and we made our way to Adams Morgan for some dinner at Amsterdam Falafelshop. This commute, by the way, involved driving northbound on Rock Creek Parkway during rush hour ... and holy moly. No drivers ed class in the world could prepare you for that. Both the northbound and southbound lanes funnel only northbound traffic in the evenings, which would be fine except the exits are not labeled clearly at all and drivers zoom by at extremely high rates of speed around the curves, and the whole thing resembles a real-life Mario Kart race.

Anyway, we got to the restaurant safely. Adams Morgan in general and Amsterdam Falafelshop specifically are teeming with young people. When we got inside, there were not one, but two, foursomes of young women who could be right out of HBO's Girls. Have you seen it? Tony and I just finished watching the first season on Netflix. (He was very vocal in his complaints for about half of the season ... and then he admitted that he actually enjoys complaining about watching it, haha.) The show is about four 24-year-old-ish women who live in Brooklyn and are starting careers and sustaining friendships and working on relationships and all of that. Someone said it's like Sex and the City, only Carrie and her friends were all older and established in their careers and apartments and lives, while Lena Dunham et al are just figuring that stuff out.

Watching Girls -- and then walking into Amsterdam Falafelshop -- got me thinking about that time in my life, when I was 24. I was in a new city (Phoenix), working at my first job, spending nights and weekends with some of the best friends I've ever had. And we had so much fun. All the time. This is how Tony and I spent our nearly 100 percent of our free time: bars, restaurants, used book sales, street fairs, dancing at clubs, lounging by the pool, house parties, reading magazines, wine bars, happy hour, playing video games, barbecues ... and more bars.

I mean, 24 and 29 don't sound that different. But it's so clear that chapter in my life is over. Free time these days occasionally includes things like happy hours and house parties and video games, although more infrequently. (And in the case of clubs ... nuh-uh, not in several years). These days, you're more likely to find us doing: home improvement, brunch, dinner parties, DVDs, games nights ... and more brunch. (And for the record, I'm having just as much fun these days as I was having five years ago.)

Bars vs. brunch. When you boil it down, that's the difference between 24 and 29, isn't it?

So, Amsterdam Falafelshop. I told Tony I was ruining my street cred by being seen with him in the restaurant. (He's 31!)

There's a very Cool Kids/In Crowd feel to the restaurant. There are signs instructing you how to properly order, assemble and eat your falafel sandwich, lest your stupidity be filmed and put on You Tube for the world to see.

The food itself was very good. Loved it. I'm big on falafel, and it was the perfect indulgence to end the week.

You finish your own sandwiches from the toppings bar. Tony, who is generally a more adventurous eater than I am, chose only colorful toppings (like pickled beets). Ha!

Falafel for the main course. Introspection on the side.

entertaining: rickeys on the patio

Ben and Mandy, college pals who live in D.C. now, came over Friday evening for cocktails on the patio as a belated birthday celebration for Ben. I was expecting we'd have to move the party indoors because several things were working against us: (1) the heat (2) the rain and (3) the mosquitos. Turns out, the temperature dropped to the 70s, the rain left as quickly as it arrived, and we successfully repelled the mosquitos.

Ben's a gin guy, so we had a bottle of Tanqueray on hand and mixed up some gin rickeys, which were the perfect citrus-y drink for a summer evening. As I was reading about gin rickeys last week, I learned they're actually a take on the less-well-known Joe Rickey, a bourbon drink that seems to have been created here in Washington. And since Mandy is a bourbon girl, we had rickeys all around. 

Gin Rickey / Joe Rickey

• 2 ounces gin for a gin rickey OR 2 ournces of bourbon for a Joe Rickey
• Juice of 1/2 lime
• Club soda (or tonic water) 
• Ice

Fill glass with ice. Add gin and lime. Fill with club soda or tonic to taste. Garnish with a lime.

<3

We drank our cocktails out of these fun striped glasses, which I picked up earlier this month at a flea market. The colors made it easy to keep track of whose drink was whose. 

To snack on, I put out a plate of veggies with hummus and ranch dip on a cool lunchtray I bought at a sweet little vintage shop in Phoenix earlier this year.

And anyone who lives in D.C. knows that mosquitos can ruin a night on the patio. They love this city's humid climate, and this is supposed to be particularly bad year for mosquitos. The good news is that I came inside Friday night with exactly two bites. Not perfect, but it wasn't the bloodbath I'd expected.

I took several repellant techniques, throwing everything I had at the buggers and seeing what stuck. I'm not sure whether my success can be attributed to one particular technique or some combination of them. I set out a citronella candle, of course, and I also put seven votive candle holders around the table, hoping the extra smoke may be unattractive to the mosquitos. And apparently the little guys hate the smell of several plants. I have garlic and rosemary growing in our backyard, and I also put a marigold on the table and surrounded ourselves with four big basil plants. On a whim, I also crushed up some basil leaves and rubbed them on my arms and Tony's arms. I'm not sure if that was the action of a crazy woman or whether it's a legitimate mosquito-repelling technique, but, hey, I'm going to try anything.

Despite the two bites, I'm counting Friday as a win for me.

Jessi: 1. Mosquitoes: 0.