Enchilada Lasagna

I am really excited to be sharing this recipe with you today. I have seen the idea of an enchilada lasagna around for a while, and after making some homemade tortillas, I thought, why not try it out! The tortillas that I made were not the roundest and most even looking tortillas so I thought they would fare well in this recipe.

Tortillas are actually really easy to make and taste infinitely better than most of the grocery store varieties. Not to mention the short ingredient list. Flour. Oil. Milk. Baking Powder. Salt. That's it. No glycerides, no fumaric acid or a number of other presumably preservatives. I used this recipe from the Homesick Texan. I used half whole wheat flour and they seemed to turn out well. When you make these, don't forget to have one when it is still warm and fresh. You will not regret it.

This recipe from Perry's Plate was the inspiration for using the tortillas for an enchilada lasagna, instead of making just plain old enchiladas. The recipe is totally adaptable to your taste and preferences, but this is how I did it:

Enchilada Lasagna adapted from Perry's Plate and Simply Recipes
serves 4-6

Sauce:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 medium onion
3 garlic cloves
1 cup of salsa
1 can of crushed tomatoes
3 tbsp tomato paste
1/2-1 cup of water

Tortillas (I suggest you make these; I doubled the recipe)

1 tbsp olive oil
mushrooms
red peppers
corn
black beans
spinach
shredded cheddar cheese

1. Heat olive oil on medium heat. Saute onion and garlic until cooked. Add salsa, tomatoes, tomato paste and water. Add water to make the sauce according to your desired consistency. You don't want it too thick because it will thicken up even more in the oven, but too thin will result in soggy tortillas.
2. Reduce heat to low and keep warm while preparing the lasagna.
3. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.
4. I decided to do sautéed vegetables. In a large pan, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add all vegetables except for the spinach and beans. Once the vegetables are cooked, add the black beans and stir to combine.
5. In a large greased baking dish, add a little bit of the sauce to the bottom and spread around. Place a layer of tortilla. Add 1/2 of vegetables, top with sauce and spinach. Place a layer of tortilla, add the rest of the vegetables, add sauce and spinach. Place the final layer of tortilla, add a little bit of sauce, and sprinkle some shredded cheddar on top.
6. Bake at 450 degrees F covered with foil for 20 minutes. Remove foil and bake for another 10 minutes. Allow to sit for 5-10 minutes before cutting.

This is an amazing dish. It makes great leftovers, and is very easy to assemble. I cannot wait to make it again!

Asparagus and Mushroom Quesadillas

For the past while I have been baking my own bread. I have yet to perfect it however, and have not been able to slice any of my homemade bread into slices good enough for a sandwich, for example. The bread I have been baking is an oatmeal molasses bread from Good to the Grain. The bread is delicious, and I am perfectly fine eating a jagged chunk of bread (with peanut butter of course) until I perfect the kneading, rolling, rising, and folding process to make a perfect loaf of bread. This has inspired me to try and bake my own bread from now on though. I want to try making all of my favourite baked goods like bagels, english muffins, and tortillas. Since my last stint with making chickpea tortillas did not go so well, I was discouraged and purchased some tortillas at the market on the weekend. Tortillas are notorious for having the longest ingredient list of all, but these ones were the lesser of many evils.

I had many options for ways to use these tortillas. I opted to not go for my usual tortilla/pb/banana sandwich, which is my favourite combination ever, and made quesadillas. Believe it or not, I had never made this really easy meal before. I actually really like quesadillas, so I have no idea why I had not attempted this in the past. This isn't your typical quesadilla as I used ingredients I had on hand, but it was a winning combination.

Asparagus and Mushroom Quesadillas
Serves 2 (meal), or 4 (with a side)

8 white mushrooms, chopped finely
asparagus, chopped to 1-2 cm in length, enough that is about equal to that of the mushrooms in volume
1/2 cup pinto beans
2 green onion
4 tortillas
2/3 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
4 tsp hot sauce
salsa and sour cream to serve with

1. Sautee the mushrooms on a dry pan over medium heat.
2. Once they begin to soften, add the asparagus, and sauté until cooked. Remove from heat.
3. In the same pan, place tortilla on pan, add half of asparagus mushroom mixture, half the green onions, 1/4 cup pinto beans, half the hot sauce, and half the cheese.
4. Place second tortilla on top and press down to anneal the quesadilla. Heat until cheese is melting, and bottom tortilla is crispy. About 3-6 minutes.
5. Flip and cook for another few minutes until tortilla is crispy and all cheese is melted.
6. Repeat with the other half of the ingredients.

These were really good, especially with some good salsa and sour cream. I will definitely have to make quesadillas more often. I think I might wait until I land on a successful tortilla recipe. In the meantime, I am still plugging away in the kitchen finding a perfect recipe to use chickpea flour for. I almost found it yesterday. Let's hope it isn't too long before I can share something with you.

Plantain Chips

I have very limited experience with plantains. It is a cousin of the banana, my favourite fruit, so I figured I should experiment with it out of respect. I can only remember two occasions where I actually have had plantain: 1. In Dominican Republic, I believe it was mashed, and 2. at Margarita's in Waterloo, as a chip to dip into guacamole. Now since avocados are my new best friend, I thought this would be a great thing to do with a plantain.

So I purchased a plantain. It was green. I waited and I waited for it to turn ripe. Finally a few days later it was ripe. Once it was ripe I did some research and found that there are lots of uses for green plantains as well. Aparantly it is best to make baked plantain chips with a green plantain, and to make fried or mashed plantain with ripe plantains. So since I had a ripe plantain on my hand, I had to resort to frying the plantain chips. Of course, my version of frying is merely using about a tbsp of oil in the pan, not really "frying".

Plantain Chips

1 plantain
1 tbsp olive oil

serves 2

So I peeled and sliced up the plantain into 1/2 cm slices. I heated the olive oil on medium-high. I then placed the slices on the pan without crowding. After about 5 minutes, flip the slices and heat for another 3 to 5 minutes. You have to watch these carefully becuase they burn quickly.

These went great with the guacamole that I made, based off of the Avocado Salsa Verde from my Mexican Fiesta post. It is my mom's new favourite.

I have since had a new found love for plantains and bought another one the other day. I thought about making plantain tortillas and found a recipe online. The tortillas didn't really turn out (they kind of crumbled), but still tasted good with some spicy quinoa, tomatoes and cottage cheese.

I really like the idea of making tortillas out of plantains and will hopefully get it to work in the future.

Up next: 2 delicious ways to use up all those Ontario peaches!

Rice Paper Black Bean Burrito Failure

I thought of something that I thought would be revolutionary on the weekend and tried it out on Monday night. Like I have said before, I like Mexican food, including burritos. While tasty and can be healthy when packed with lots of veggies, the tortilla can ruin it. The ones you can buy in the grocery stores are not very tasty and are never as good as the one's in the restaurants.

To find a lower carbohydrate option I thought of rice paper. Ideally it would still hold all the contents together and could be baked. In case you missed the title of this post, this idea was a fail. This was a fail because not only had I never made burritos, I had never worked with rice paper, and therefore, had never used rice paper to make burritos. I will go through how I went about this and discuss some possible reasons for the failure.

I will admit that I was in a bit of a rush when making these. I made the filling using a similar recipe to the Black Bean Tomato Sauce I have made in the past.

Black Bean Burrito Filling

1 tbsp olive oil
2.5 cups cooked black beans
1/2 large onion
2 bell peppers
3 cups diced tomatoes
1/4 jalepeno (this was being timid)
1/2 can tomato paste
chili powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

I highly recommend chopping the veggies up very finely, and slightly smashing up the beans. I didn't do this, but I think this gives it a better texture for a burrito filling.

I heated the olive oil on medium-high. The onions were sauteed for 3-5 minutes and then I added the peppers. After 5 minutes I added the beans, tomatoes, jalapeno, tomato paste and some chili powder. I made sure it was stirred well and allowed it to simmer on medium-low for about 10 minutes before tasting it for spice. From here you can add as much chili powder as you like. Then allow the mixture to simmer until the desired thickness is reached. You do not want much liquid left. You could even reduce the amount of tomatoes and add other veggies instead, be creative!

Like I said, these chunks are just too big (that is what happens when you are in a rush).

Another reason to make burritos is to have another reason to make and eat guacamole (as if I need another reason). I had half an avocado so I whipped up a 2 serving portion of guacamole.

Guacamole

1/2 large avocado chopped
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup diced onion
~1 tbsp lemon juice

Mash it all together or leave it chunky, its up to you!

Now I had the two stars of the burrito show. It was time to attempt to wrap them up in rice paper. To use rice paper, you soak it in warm water for about 5 seconds. I scooped 1/2 cup of the burrito mixture, 1/2 the guacamole and 1 tbsp cottage cheese into the center of the paper. I then folded each side up to form a sac. It held farely well together.

Unfolded rice paper (no guacamole in this one, how unfortunate):

After wrapping, before baking:

I should have saved some sauce to put on top but I forgot :( . I then baked the sacs (I refuse to call them burritos at this point), for 10 minutes at 400 F. The rice paper stiffened a bit and stuck to any rice paper that was close to it, resulting in a big mess! My make-shift burrito project was a fail.

I am wondering if little mini burritos would have been better and then not bake them after wrapping. The rice paper wasn't designed to be eaten with a knife and a fork so making them smaller, to eat with one's hands, may have been a better approach.

Does anyone have any creative burrito-like ideas?

I just though of one now! Burrito potato skins! The skin of the potato is the best part anyway! Into a hollowed out potato, add the burrito filling plus any other toppings (guac and cheese obvi) and bake to melt it all together. I think this would be fabulous; a much healthier alternative to tortillas and a more successful alternative to rice paper.

Now what am I going to do with all this rice paper?!?