27.11.11

Nothing like kicking around an empty tortilla bag to break a girl's pride

Another blog in response! Abaw posted a great sounding recipe for enchiladas, and I tried them tonight with, as she proposes, "anything you like" tossed in. Well I found myself with a festival squash, a red pepper, a can of black beans, and a bunch of cilantro. And by golly, they were soooo delicious. Here's what I did and what you can do if you want to recreate what I did:

Halve squash, rub with olive oil, place cut side down on baking tray and roast at 400F for 40 minutes.
Meanwhile, saute chopped onion, red pepper, and garlic in 2tsp olive oil over medium heat until veggies are translucent, then add 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp chili powder, 1/2 tsp red chili flakes.

In a large bowl, mix together:
1/2 cup cottage cheese
1/2 cup salsa
1 small can black beans rinsed and drained (14oz maybe?)
1/4 cup chopped cilantro
1/4 cup corn (frozen then thawed)
sauteed veggies
flesh from half the roasted squash (discard skin)

I used fajita size flour tortillas, and greased a 9X13ish baking pan.
Place a bunch of mixture into a tortilla, roll up and put seam side down into the baking pan. Repeat. Mine made seven rolls but I definitely could have filled them less to make more rolls.
Pour some enchilada sauce from a jar (yep, you read that right) across the tortilla rolls, mostly down the middle and leaving the very ends of the rolls dry. Sprinkle the sauce with enough cheese to satisfy you.

Cover with foil and back at 350F for 30 minutes. Remove foil and bake another 10 minutes.

Ooooooh yeah! We'll be making these again, and soon! It should be said that I had a minor catastrophe with a pack of corn tortillas at first, which resulted in me cursing repeatedly and drop-kicking the empty bag of useless, crumbly, asswipe corn tortillas, which only resulted in greater frustration since an empty plastic tortilla bag really doesn't feel the brunt of a forceful drop-kick motivated by sincere anger. Suffice it to say that the Vancouver city compost is going to be the unwilling recipient of 50 shards of corn tortilla, and that I had to start over again with the rolling with flour tortillas that I no longer think I should be eating because of a suspected gluten intolerance. Blah blah blah, we had amazing flour tortilla enchiladas. Really, really very good. Sorry no pics!
Go make this!

If you're interested, I used the day to prep food for the week because otherwise I resort to some pretty embarrassing eating choices when the week gets busy. So I put half the squash in the enchiladas (more would have definitely been overkill) and made a really simple and really tasty squash and carrot soup with the other half. Here's the deets.

Melt 1-2 Tbsp butter in a large soup pot.
Add 1 large onion, chopped. Reduce heat to medium-low, cover with a lid, and sweat onions for 5 minutes.
Add 3 large or 4 medium carrots cut into chunks. Stir, replace cover, and sweat for 10 to 15 minutes.
Add the flesh of half a roasted squash (any variety will do: acorn, festival, kuri, even pumpkin), and 3-4 cups vegetable broth and a dash of nutmeg. If you don't have broth then 3-4 cups water, a bay leaf, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp black pepper, and possibly a drizzle of soy sauce.
Bring to a boil, then cover, reduce heat and simmer for 15 or so minutes. Add 1-2 tsp vinegar to taste like white wine vinegar or apple cider vinegar, or lemon juice.
Blitz until smooth with a hand blender, or in a blender or food processor. Adjust seasoning and viscosity to taste.

So we have a couple enchiladas left over and now a pot of soup that would feed four. Since there's two of us here, we have three meals in a minute to rely on during the week. Better than a kick in the head! Or certainly better than a kick at an empty tortilla bag. I promise.

2 comments:

  1. I'm having a good laugh thinking of you taking out your frustration on the corn tortilla bag. Hilarious.

    What did you think of the canned enchilada sauce. maybe I'll try that next time. Or maybe I'll find a fabulous recipe for enchilada sauce that we can try.

    Yum!

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  2. Yeah, I def have to plan ahead for busy times or I'll just eat crackers for dinner, maybe with cheese melted on them. Weekends are all about bulk preparation and Paul and I have a system hammered down for getting our breakfasts and lunches sorted for the week as well.

    Sorry to hear about the possible gluten intolerance. I just finished reading a heart breaking book about how grain heavy diets are destroying the planet, and our bodies. I don't agree with all of it and I'm not about to turn back to meat (but I did give it a serious think, seriously, this book made me consider it) after nearly 20 years, but I'm thankful for anything that makes me think so hard about my food choices.

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