Spinach Enchiladas

At last! The spinach enchilada recipe. I made these a few weeks ago. I blogged these a few weeks ago. I’ve been too quiet and lazy to add the photos to the blog and post it for your lovely eyes to read.

Which brings me to a very important lesson I just learned: when sharing a camera with your spouse, make sure all your pictures are off of it before it is his turn to use it. Since this recipe is somewhat complicated I took a ton of pictures for you. Oh yeah…they’re gone. Gone baby gone. Written over by Texas Longhorns chasing pigskin balls.

Oh well. I’ll give you the recipe anyways. I don’t have pictures for half the recipe. Sorry!

As you know, I love the vegetarian combo plate at Trudy’s. I particularly like the spinach-filled enchilada. Rather than make the drive to Trudy’s every time I want these yummies, I decided to learn to make them at home.

Before I begin my enchilada tutorial, I must tell you, these were a bit of an experiment, so some of the measurements and ingredients were guesswork. I’m not a professional people! I’m just a home cook, just like most of you. However, they were yummy and I think I did iron out the details for you. If not, you’ve been duly warned.

Also, I must tell you a few other things. First: these are pretty spicy. I give some ideas at the end to cool them down a bit if spice is not your thing. Second: I used corn tortillas. Don’t do that. They went mushy. I will stick with flour tortillas next go around. I think they hold up better in baking. Last: the construction of these is fairly time-consuming, so don’t make these on a hungry whim. However, they do hold up well if you make them ahead. I also think they would freeze well if you really want to make them ahead.

Here are the ingredients (Please NOTE that some items are not pictured) :

2 thawed 10 ounce packages of frozen spinach

1 1/2 chopped onion, divided

2 minced cloves of garlic, divided

5-6 tablespoons of oil, divided (lard, vegetable, canola, olive…whatever. I used canola.)

1 15 ounce container of ricotta cheese (Mmm…this is probably not really a Tex-Mex ingredient. Got any suggestions for a more authentic substitute? Anyone? Anyone?)

4 cups shredded monterey jack or pepper jack cheese, divided. (I used equal parts of both.)

1 cup sour cream

3 tablespoons ground cumin, divided

20 tortillas (I used corn. As I said before, I don’t recommend doing that as they didn’t hold up well. Next time, I’ll try flour tortillas.)

1 15 oz can of crushed tomato

1 8 oz can of tomato sauce

1 7.5 oz can of chipotles in adobo sauce (We’ll only be using part of this can, but I think that is the smallest can you can buy.)

1 tspn basil

1 tspn oregano

1 tbspn sugar

1 tspn salt

Whew! That was a list. Don’t let it scare you away! You can do this! I’ll show you how.

First, squeeze all the extra water out of the thawed spinach.

Chop the onions and mince the cloves of garlic. Divide the garlic in half and set aside 1/3 of the chopped onion for the sauce. We’re going to work on the filling first.

Heat 2-3 tablespoons of oil on high in a skillet. You’ll know the oil is hot enough when you sprinkle a couple drops of water on it. The drops of water should dance. (Stand back! Don’t get splattered with hot oil!)

Add all of the chopped onion other than the amount you’ve reserved for the sauce and 1 clove of the minced garlic.

Saute until the onion starts to turn translucent. Stir frequently. This will take about 1-2 minutes at most.

Add the thawed, drained spinach. Cook another couple minutes, breaking up the spinach and incorporating the onions into it. Remove from the heat and let it cool a bit.

Transfer to a large bowl and add 2 cups of shredded cheese, the 15 ounce package of ricotta, the cup of sour cream and 1 tablespoon of the cumin.

Stir together.

OKAY FRIENDS, HERE IS WHERE WE BRAVE ON TOGETHER WITHOUT THE AID OF PHOTOS. PUT ON YOUR IMAGINATION CAPS PEOPLE.

One by one, warm the tortillas in a skillet on high heat for about 15 seconds each. No oil is needed here! You’re doing this step to make them more malleable for filling and folding.

As you take a tortilla off the skillet fill it with a few spoonfuls of the filling. Roll it up and place it seam side down in a greased casserole dish. I think an 8X13 should be large enough.

Do this until all the filling is gone and all the tortillas are used.

Now for the sauce.

Meet my new best friends in the kitchen, chipotle peppers.

Oh wait! No! I can’t show you pictures of my new best friends, chipotle peppers, because I only have pictures of these Longhorn fans. Hook ‘Em Horns!

Chipotles are smoked jalapeno peppers in a nice hot sauce called adobo sauce. Look for them in small cans in the authentic Mexican food section of your grocer. Usually I find them on the shelves near the floor. Beware these little guys are hot! A little goes a long way. We’re not going to use the whole can because the fire department would have to visit our mouths.

Open the can of chipotles. Dump the whole thing into a blender and pulse until the whole mixture is nice and chunky. Reserve 1/4 of the mixture for this recipe. Do what you please with the rest. I divided it up and froze it for future use.

Remember that remaining 1/2 of a chopped onion and minced clove of garlic? It’s their time to shine.

Heat 2-3 more tablespoons of oil in a hot skillet. When the oil is hot, add the onion and garlic and saute for 1-2 minutes.

Then add the can of crushed tomato, the can of tomato sauce, the 1/4 a can of blended chipotles in adobo sauce, 2 tablespoons of cumin, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of basil, 1 teaspoon of oregano and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Mix together and bring to a boil. Then lower the heat, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Remove sauce from the heat and pour it over the enchiladas. Sprinkle the enchiladas with the remaining 2 cups of cheese.

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes.

WARNING: In my personal opinion, this sauce was at the hottest end of heat I can take. I generally fall somewhere in the medium-hot category. For more heat, use more of the chipotles. For less heat, use less chipotles and consider this alternate sauce I made for Josh, since he has a baby mouth. (Josh is the summer intern who was living with us. He is a young adult and not a baby…so don’t feel bad if you too have a baby mouth.)

Alternate Sauce:

I pulled aside 5 of the enchiladas and covered them with this sauce for Josh. Since I was only needing to cover 5 enchiladas, I reserved 1/3 cup of the hot chipotle enchilada sauce we just made. I put it in a separate skillet on medium heat and added 1/2 cup of sour cream. I stirred it all for a couple minutes while the sour cream melted and the whole lot mixed together. Then I poured it over Josh’s enchiladas, topped them with cheese and baked them.

I’m not really sure what the best route would be for someone making a whole pan of the alternate sauce. I think it depends on how hot you like things. If you think you want to give this a try, feel free to comment and we can bounce some ideas off each other to come up with ingredient ratios that might work for you.

Yummy!

P.S. So after all that, I’m pretty sure it’s faster to just drive to Trudy’s. Ha!

Tags: Chipotles, Spinach Enchiladas