Enchilada Lasagne

Tonight I planned to make enchiladas. I've written up the recipe before, when I thought my brother would be going to university. It's a fairly long recipe, so click 'read more' at the bottom of this post to see it in full. The rest of the post will be discussing the changes I made to this recipe.


So, the major obstacle today was that the supermarket had no tortilla wraps, so I bought taco shells instead. When I unpacked them, one box's worth was broken, so we broke the rest and made enchilada lasagne. We lined the bottom of 2 trays with tacos, dolloped refried beans on it, spooned the mince mixture over, layered more broken taco shells, poured over the remaining sauce, covered with grated mozzarella.

Quantities used: 5 onions, 3 garlic cloves, 3 boxes of passata, 3 packs of mince, 1 red pepper, other spices/herbs/etc proportionately.

We also made our own refried beans: 1 tin of red kidney beans, heated in the microwave, heated on the hob with spices, salt+pepper, and part mashed. Very easy and very nice.

My enchilada recipe comes from an American exchange student who lived with us in our first term at university. We didn't try cooking it ourselves till we moved to Hawai'i last year, and since then it has been one of my absolute favourite meals. This substitute was also really nice - my boyfriend preferred the thinner lasagne with crispy tacos, whereas I preferred the thicker one where the tacos had gone kind of soggy.


Also, on second thought, it's fairly similar to this Butter & Onions recipe.

Enchiladas

For two people

Takes about 45 minutes

You will need:

Olive oil

1 onion

1 pack of mince

Mayonnaise or sour cream or crème fraiche

Grated cheese

4 big wraps or 8 small ones

1 tin of chopped/diced tomatoes in sauce

Some spices (chilli, cumin, curry powder – anything spicy)

Mixed spice mix

2 teaspoons sugar

Salt and pepper

2 pans

Tray to cook in

Optional:

1 garlic clove

½ a red pepper

½ a tin of refried beans (try the international section of a supermarket?)

1. Heat some olive oil in each pan. Preheat the oven to about 180 or 200 degrees C. Chop the onion (and garlic) finely.
2. Put one-third of the onion (and garlic) in the first pan, and the rest in the other.
3. Put the mince in the first pan, on a medium-high heat, and stir occasionally.
4. Put the tinned tomatoes in the other pan, on a medium heat, and add seasoning (spices, salt and pepper). Add 1 teaspoon of sugar, stir, and taste the sauce. Add the other teaspoon of sugar if necessary – it should taste a bit like spicy salsa.
5. 
   
   
   
   
   
   If you are using the pepper, chop it and add it to the sauce now.
6. 
   
   
   
   
   
   When the mince is cooked, add a big squirt of mayonnaise and a handful of grated cheese to the mince pan. Stir this and let the mayonnaise and cheese melt.
7. 
   
   
   
   
   
   Spoon about one-third of the sauce into the mince pan. Turn the heat on the mince pan down to medium and allow the sauce to bubble a little so the mince is not too liquidy.
8. Spread the refried beans on the bottom of the tray, if you are using them. If not, spread a big spoonful of the sauce on the bottom of the tray so the enchiladas will not stick.
9. Spoon a quarter (or an eighth) of the mince into each big (or small) wrap, roll them up, and put them in the tray. Pour the sauce over the top, and sprinkle more grated cheese over that.
10. Put in the oven until the cheese starts to go a bit brown – twenty minutes, or ten to fifteen if you preheated the oven.
11. Serve 2 big (or 4 small) wraps per person, scraping up the refried beans, with salad if you like.