Erin’s Veggie Enchilladas

The other night I bragged on facebook about my delicious homemade veggie enchilladas. Since I made them up, here’s my attempt at a recipe:

Erin’s Veggie Enchilladas

The impetus for this recipe was the desire to use up some things I had in the fridge, mainly:
left over homemade salsa
fresh (from Mexico) corn tortillas that, due to their lack of preservatives, don’t keep well
left over zucchini vegetable salad
a batch of homegrown green beans
Probably, if I were starting from scratch, I would use a different sauce than the pureed homemade salsa, but it actually worked out quite nice. So, here you go:

El Pato Sauce

Homemade Salsa:
3 medium tomatoes (fresh from the garden or vine-ripened is better than store-ripened)
1 bunch of cilantro
1 red onion
1 can (7.75oz) of El Pato Jalapeno Sauce or similar
1 16 oz can of tomato sauce (or simply more chopped tomatoes)

Chop tomatoes. Chop onion. Cut up cilantro. Mix it all together. Add El Pato sauce slowly, to taste. If you need to make it more mild, add tomato sauce. Salsa is better after it sits (refrigerated) for a bit.

Zucchini Corn Salad:
1 Zucchini, sliced in thin strips
1-2 cups corn (frozen is fine, fresh is fresher)
1 red pepper, chopped to desired size
handful of cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
A few basil leaves
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Salt
Pepper

Slice the zucchini, put it in a bowl with some sea salt, cover it with a moist paper towel, and let it sit in the refrigerator for an hour or two (or less, if you don’t have the time).  Take it out, rinse it, and dry it off.  Add chopped red pepper, defrosted corn, halved tomatoes and chopped basil. Add oil and vinegar and salt and pepper to taste.

Finally, the enchilladas:
As I said, I had all the above already sitting in the fridge, which made this a quick and easy recipe.

Heat oven to about 350.

Puree salsa in a blender. It will still have texture, but be more soupy. Put it in a flat bowl. Heat frying pan. Put in corn tortillas. You can put them in oil to soften them, but I prefer to just sprinkle a bit of water on them, which softens. The point is that you want them to roll easily.

Once tortilla is warmed, take it out of pan, put it in pureed salsa mixture to coat both sides. Fill with zucchini salad mixture and roll, placing in a baking dish, seam side down. You might also want to put some grated cheese in with the veggies.

Repeat this for as many tortillas as you have. Ideally, they will fit snugly in your baking dish. Pour remaining salsa puree over the nestled tortillas. Cover with grated cheese. Bake for 10-15 minutes, or long enough for cheese to melt.

Serve as is or topped with sour cream, cilantro, slided avocado and sliced tomato. Yum.