Leftover Creativity

We love it when people come to visit. So the two girls spending Christmas with us was great. The only downside is the constant eating. Now in a perfect world constant eating would be a good thing. In the world where I live, stomach distress and weight gain happens when constant eating occurs! So when guests leave we try to get back on track before the fat globules attach roots and decide to stay. The bad part of this is the leftovers from all the meals that must be eaten first. So last night while I was on the phone with my cousin in Orange County (Hi Chacho!), the girls had an inspiration.

We had eaten tortilla soup, tacos and roasted vegetable. Thus we had corn tortillas, cheese and a lot of roasted vegetables (onions, red potatoes, carrots, garlic and butternut squash, which we call Gubbernut for some long forgotten slip of the tongue). So here is what we had. And the title I just made up.

Vegetarian Deconstructed Enchilada

Leftover roasted Veg.
grated cheese, a mix of what you have in the fridge, we used some cheddar and some jack and Havarti


chopped onions 1/2 cup divided use
cilantro

enchilada sauce of your choice or use what we did.
oil
15 oz. can of tomato sauce
2 Tablespoon Chili powder
2 Tablespoon chopped onion
2 Tablespoon flour
2 teaspoon cumin
chopped garlic (which we had used up so we went with garlic powder and garlic salt)
salt to taste and pepper
water to thin


The great thing about this is you can use what you've got in the fridge. Tara is a vegetarian, so we didn't have any meat meals and so no meat leftovers, but this would be good with chicken, too.

First we made our own version of enchilada sauce. It was kind of thick, but you can thin it with water to the consistency you like. You can also change the spices to suit your tastes. Here is what we did.

Heat some vegetable oil in a large fry pan. Add 2 Tbl onion and the spices. Saute until the onion is soft. Add the flour and cook a minute or so. Add the tomato sauce. After mixing well, thin it to taste.

We only had 6 tortillas left so we couldn't roll them up and so we made things in layers, tearing the tortillas to fit the 8X8 pan we used. I liked the way it turned out and it lowered the carbs, so I may do it this way no matter how many tortillas I had available.




I poured a bit of oil in another fry pan. While it was heating I chopped all the leftover veg much smaller, sort of a hash dice.




Then I added this to the oil and heated it. When it was warm through, we mashed it a bit to make sure you got a mix in each bite. The we started layering.




Put a small amount of the sauce in the casserole dish and then dip each tortilla in the sauce and tear to fit. This is not an exact science, so don't stress about covering everything on each layer. Then add half the vegetables and a layer of cheese and some chopped onions. Repeat once more and then top with a last layer of dipped tortillas. If there is any sauce leftover pour that on top and cover everything with cheese.

Bake for 20 or 30 minutes at 350 until everything is warm and bubbly. Serve with avocado, tomato and cilantro or not. We had some and so used it.


The rest of the avo and tomato went into the salad we had with the enchiladas. It was an experiment, so we weren't sure what we were making, but it was good! The carrots and the butternut (gubbernut!) added a sweetness, so the onions were nice to offset that. Some chicken sauteed with a little cumin and chili powder would have been good also, but we like to go vegetarian quite a bit and always do so when Tara is here. Try it and let me know if you liked it.