At the beach this weekend, cooking with friends. We each volunteer for a night and cook something for the gang.
The beans are cooking, so they can be refried at dinner time. I sauté some onions and garlic in a lot of olive oil, then mash the cooked beans in with the,….
Queso and some guacamole to start, with tortilla chips.
The enchiladas will be onion, peppers and cheese, in a creamy sauce. The sauce is dried peppers that I toast and reconstitute, then they go in the blender with tomatoes, Mexican oregano, cumin, and coriander. Once that is nicely pureed and smooth, it goes into a sauté pan to fry in some olive oil — this step wakes up the flavors and lets them meld nicely.
When the sauce is thickened a little, and the cheese and onions/peppers filling is ready, I toast the tortillas to soften them, then dip them through the sauce to coat, stuff them with the filling, and roll them up into nice enchiladas. “Enchilar” is to coat or season with chiles, so this is the key step that turns these delicious monsters into enchiladas.
Fill a baking dish with them, then add a generous cup or more of Mexican crema to the sauce and cover the enchiladas. This is a riff on a famous Mexico City dish called enchiladas suizas (Swiss enchiladas), so called because of all the dairy in the sauce. Usually the sauce is green (tomatillo-based), but for an unforgotten reason, the first time I made these I did a red sauce, and it was good, so now that’s the way I make this dish….
Throw some nice thin-sliced onions on top, then into the oven for 25 minutes to get nice and hot and melty, then serve….
I like to pickle some red onions and serve them as a garnish, with some fresh chopped cilantro….