Cheese and Onion Enchiladas With Red Chile Sauce

09dEnchiladasBakedbfLOThese enchiladas, like the very pleasant New Mexican Red chile sauce that goes with, are recipes from the nice folk at Cooking Light, who qualify this as a ‘light’ recipe by using reduced-fat cheeses. You are more than welcome to try it that way, but I roll with full-power cheese.

The CL folk also called for layering the tortillas and cheese mixture as in a lasagna, but I did a bit of research and came up with a way more better (I think) way to put these fine little tubes o’ goodness together.

01aCottageCheeseProcessorbfLOINGREDIENTS
•3/4 cup cottage cheese
•2/3 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese
•1/4 cup chopped onion
•1/8 teaspoon seasoned salt
•2 cups red chile Sauce
•Canola oil
•Corn tortillas – I had enough filling for 7
•1/2 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese

03ChilesProcessorbfLOHeat your oven to 500°.

Make the onion and cheese filling by first creaming the cottage cheese in your food processor.

Note: before you go all ‘oh, why do I have to get the food processor dirty just for this?’ – recall that you also used it to grind the chiles to make the red sauce, and that was a dry processing; so now you can just give the bowl and blade a light wipe out (or not, I thought a little chile dust a fine thing in my 02OnionCheeseMixedbfLOcheese), and then cream your cheese before washing the works. It’s all in the planning.

Back to the enchiladas…

Stir the creamed cottage cheese together with the shredded Jack cheese, the onion, and the seasoned salt and set aside.

Here’s where I change things up a bit from the original recipe:

03TortillasBrushOilbfLOArrange your corn tortillas on a rack fitted into a baking pan and brush one side with just a little bit of canola oil.

Flip the tortillas on the rack and pop ’em into the oven for four to seven minutes – keep an eye on them, you want them lightly toasted, not crisped – tho’, if you cook a batch too long and they come out crispy, you can save ’em for salad or tortilla soup.

Reduce the oven temp to 350°.

06aEnchiladasRollCheesebfLORemove the tortillas from the oven and set aside with the cheese and onion mixture.

Lightly brush a baking pan (mine was 11-3/4 x 8-/3/4) with canola oil, then cover the bottom of the pan with a thin layer of the red sauce.

Transfer the rest of the red sauce to a flat bottomed dish and dip a tortilla in the sauce to coat, shaking off any excess sauce.

Transfer the tortilla to the baking dish and add about 2 tablespoons of the cheese mixture down the center. Fold one side over, 08EnchiladasSauceCheesebfLOthen the other, tighten up your roll a bit, then place, seam side down, in the pan.

Repeat with the remaining tortillas, tucking them up against each other in the pan as you go. I ended up with seven that very nicely filled the dish, but mebbe if I’d gone a bit stingier with the filling, I could’ve managed an even eight.

Pour the remaining red sauce over the filled tortillas then sprinkle with the cheddar cheese. I used a four-cheese Mexican blend.

CheeseOnionEnchiladasPlateAltbfLOBake for 20 to 25 minutes, until the cheese is nicely melted and mebbe just a touch crispity in places.

Remove from the oven and let rest for five minutes before serving.

We had ours with shredded romaine, sliced black olives, scallions, and a bit of sour cream and were most well pleased.

Note: this is sorta, kinda vegetarian, except for the chicken stock I used to make the red sauce. Substitute veggie stock for that, and you are good to go totally meatless.

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