Enchiladas Rojo

This weekend, my friend made the most amazing enchiladas for dinner.  Her husband had sent her with a jar of his homemade enchilada sauce to use for the dish.  It reminded me of the enchiladas I learned to make when I was in college.  I'd learned to make them from my neighbor who had immigrated to the states from Mexico.  These are the notes I wrote down on how we made them.

• 1 pound ground beef ( or other cooked meat )
• 1 package cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
• 1 small can sliced ripe olives
• 1 chopped onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 dozen tortillas (either flour or corn)
• 4 or 5 large red dried chillies 
• a small amount of flour to use to thicken the chili sauce
• cooking oil or lard

If you are using ground beef, brown it.  If you are using another type of cooked meat, shred it.

Quarter the onion.  Chop 3 of the four quarters of the onion finely.  Shred the cheese.

Boil chilies until soft and take out the seeds of the chilies.  Put the chili remains into a blender.  Add the remaining quarter of onion and the garlic cloves to blender.  Add enough water to just cover the chilies in the blender and blend.

To make the enchilada sauce chilies, you will be making a chili gravy out of the blended chilies.  Pour the blender chilies into a deep skillet and heat it over the stove.  Mix together a bit of flour and water in a bowl to form a runny mixture.  Add a bit of this mixture to the chilis in the skillet to thicken the enchilada sauce.  The aim is for a runny enchilada sauce not a thick gravy.  

Heat cooking oil in a frying pan to fry the tortillas.   After each tortilla is fried, dip the tortilla in the enchilada sauce and set in a 8x13 inch casserole dish.  Fill each tortilla with onions, cheese, meet and olives.

Bake for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. 

As for my girlfriend's enchiladas, she referenced the Once Upon a Chef recipe which uses baking soda when cooking the ground beef.  Rather than frying the tortillas, she brushed them with a bit of oil in advance.

My friend's husband shared these tricks for his amazing enchilada sauce.   He toasted guajillo, New Mexico and California red chilies in a pan, oven or microwave plus added these tips:

Heated some oil (I used chicken fat) and further toasted the chile powder with minced garlic. Added chicken stock and simmered for about 45 minutes. Strained the solids which I then returned to the blender with a bit of the flavored stock and blended more. Stirred solids back into the sauce, cooked for a few minutes, strained once more and tossed the solids. Put flour and oil/chicken fat in pan and cooked for a few minutes until blended. Returned sauce to pan. Salt and pepper to taste plus some sugar for balance. Also added a hint of acid - I used leftover champagne for fruitiness though white vinegar would work fine. Cook 5 min or so to consolidate latter additions and assure flavor and thickness is what you want.