The Spice Satchel: enchiladas

Adding more tomato and using flour tortillas (instead of corn) in place of cheese really helps my enchiladas not to be too dry. I really enjoy making Mexican food and embracing my heritage that way. In October we visited my Nana in Florida, and learned a very easy (and delicious) way to make salsa- a can of crushed tomatoes, 4 jalapenos, 2 cloves minced garlic, diced onion, a little salt and pepper. Nana has a molcajete she crushes the jalapenos in and then just stirs the other stuff in. Let it sit for a while so the flavors mix and enjoy!

Back to the enchiladas. My major grievance of our grocery store is that I never know what sorts of chilies they will have, or how spicy they will be. The jalapenos can even range in spiciness from one to the next. For this recipe I recommend using one jalapeno or serrano (medium spiciness) and one poblano chile pepper (mild spiciness) for the 2 green chiles. This time of making them, the store didn't have any pobalnos (which are dark green and medium sized) so we got a light green large one and it ended up being very mild, almost lacking in flavor completely, so our enchiladas where not as spicy as we like, but they still smelled really good (which made it harder to tell that they weren't going to be spicy).

Anyway,
1 lb. ground turkey
1 diced onion
3 tbls. minced fresh parsley
1 tea. pepper
3- 8oz cans tomato sauce with no salt added
2/3 c. water
3 cloves minced garlic
1 diced green bell pepper

2 minced green chiles
1 tbl. chili powder
1 tea. dried oregano (2 tea. fresh)
1/2 tea. ground cumin
10 medium (soft taco size) flour tortillas

Heat oven to 350. Cook turkey over medium heat until brown, drain.
Stir in onion, parsley and pepper, cover and remove from heat.

Heat tomato sauce, water and the remaining spices in 2-quart saucepan to boil, stirring occasionally. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 5 minutes.
Mix meat mixture and sauce in large bowl.

Line 13 X 9 baking dish with foil and spray with cooking spray. Dip each tortilla in the sauce, fill with a little filling and roll tightly- folding in edges. Pour remaining filling over enchiladas, if necessary cover with a can of diced tomatoes (plus a little more pepper, chili powder and oregano) to cover the tortillas completely- this will prevent the tortillas from becoming crunchy in the oven.

Cover with foil and bake for 30 minutes. I enjoy these enchiladas served with cilantro-lime rice.

The Spice Satchel

Paul and Cori

Friday, December 10, 2010

enchiladas

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