Saturday Dinner: Cheese & Onion Enchiladas, Mexican Black Beans

Enchiladas are so simple to make it’s ridiculous.  I couldn’t find a recipe that I was really excited about so I made one up from various others, including this one found on Cooks. com and this one from All Recipes.  Now, mine probably won’t win any awards, but they were easy to make and satisfying.  I used my new food processor (!!!!) to shred some Monterrey jack and cheddar cheese (about a block total, but I didn’t measure).  I dipped 8 tortillas in canned enchilada sauce, filled them with cheese and chopped onions (food processor, again!), rolled them, put them in a big Pyrex dish, and covered them with more sauce and cheese.  Easy, eh?  After spending half an hour in my 350 degree oven, this was the beautiful result:

After my success with Spicy Black Beans (aka “bowl of mush”) and realization that black beans are really yummy, I wanted to try making something else with them.  I thought this recipe for Mexican Black Beans from Bon Appétit by way of Epicurious sounded appetizing.

The recipe is great because, in addition to being easy, almost all of the ingredients were already in my cupboards.  However, I did make a few alterations.  First, I used dried beans for the first time, following the “Cooking Beans, the Quick Soak Way” instructions from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian.  I was really pleased with the way they came out and I hope to continue to use dried beans instead of canned in the future.  (Have you ever looked at the salt content on canned beans?  It’s pretty unbelievable).

I substituted vegetable bouillon for the chicken broth the recipe called for, thereby making it vegetarian.  I also only half-seeded the jalepeno, because if you remove all the seeds then the dish has no spice, and what’s the point of making Mexican food if there’s no spice?  Finally, I didn’t really smash the beans, mostly because I didn’t have a good tool to do so.

I was really pleased with the look of the meal, and the ease with which it was created.  My Man was equally happy, he loved the meal.  The spice in the beans was really good, as was the texture.  The enchiladas were moist and delicious.  Despite our happiness with the meal, new ideas immediately began surfacing: adding tomatoes to the beans, adding various vegetables to the enchiladas, serving the beans with rice.  It was the sort of meal which lends itself to tons of variations.

Best part?  There was enough leftover to serve for dinner tonight.