Recipe Roulette

My brilliant friend Maggie started a blogging game of Recipe Roulette in an effort to put away the frozen pizzas and unearth some new recipes. These dishes are meant to be quick and easy.

The rules (as I understand them):
1) Post your recipe and these rules.
2) Link back to the Recipe Roulette post of the person who tagged you.
3) Tag someone else (or multiple people) and link to their blog/s. (Don't forget to notify them that they've been tagged!)

Below is my recipe.
Here is my link back to Maggie's original Recipe Roulette post.
I'm tagging my sister Beth of Two Little Tidbits. Check back later on Beth's blog once she's had a chance to post her recipe.
(If you want in and need me to tag you, too, leave a comment.)

Vegetable Enchiladas
This recipe is great because it's cheap, tasty, plentiful, and easy. Also, it satisfies our family's weird meat rules for 2009, because it's vegetarian. Bonus: it can easily be divided in half so that you end up with one freezer meal for later, and one fresh meal for right now.
Georgia did not like it the first time I made it, but I think it could be made "kid friendly" by making sure you use a milder enchilada sauce, and/or cutting the spice factor of your child's serving by dousing it in sour cream or extra cheese.

Serves 8

• Olive oil or cooking spray for baking dishes
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• Salt and Pepper (to taste)
  
• 3 cups grated pepper Jack cheese (12 ounces) [or whatever other cheese you like]
  
• 1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 box (10 ounces) frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
• 1 box (10 ounces) frozen corn kernels, thawed [or you can used canned corned, drained]
  
• 6 scallions, thinly sliced, white and green parts separated
• 16 corn tortillas (6-inch)
• About 2-3 cans of store bought enchilada sauce, or 1 jar if it's really large. You'll just have to eyeball it as you pour the sauce on. [See "Notes/Tips" below.]
  

1. Make filling: In a large bowl, combine 2 cups cheese, beans, spinach, corn, scallion whites, and 1 teaspoon cumin; season with salt and pepper.
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Lightly oil two 8-inch square baking dishes (or 1 larger baking dish); set aside. Stack tortillas, and wrap in damp paper towel; microwave on high for 1 minute to soften them. Top each tortilla with a heaping 1/3 cup of filling; roll up tightly and arrange, seam side down, in prepared baking dishes.
3. Dividing evenly, sprinkle enchiladas with remaining 1 cup cheese, and top with enchilada sauce. Bake, uncovered, until hot and bubbly, 15 to 20 minutes. Cool 5 minutes; serve garnished with scallion greens.

To freeze half: Line baking dish with aluminum foil (with enough extra hanging out so that once you've placed food in the dish you can use the overhanging foil to cover the food). Prepare enchiladas through step 2; top with cheese, and cover baking dish with overhanging aluminum foil. Place sauce in an airtight container (if you've already opened the can/jar, that is). Freeze enchiladas and sauce for up to 2 months. To avoid losing the use of your baking dish for so long, once frozen the foil-wrapped enchiladas can be removed from the baking dish and placed (still in the foil) in a ziploc bag in the freezer until you are ready to cook them. When ready to cook, just pop the foil-wrapped, frozen enchiladas back in to the same baking dish that you originally froze them in.

To bake from frozen: Microwave frozen sauce on high 2 minutes, stirring once halfway through. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Remove foil from top of baking dish, and pour sauce over enchiladas; cover with foil. Bake 30 minutes; remove foil from top, and bake until bubbly, about 15 minutes more. Cool 5 minutes before serving.

NOTES/TIPS: I found this recipe on MarthaStewart.com, and the original version calls for making your own sauce, which is why the recipe above doesn't specify an exact amount of sauce to use. I've just used store bought sauce to save time. You want to douse the enchiladas pretty well, because they will soak up the sauce. The proper amount of sauce should be that happy medium somewhere between "topping" (too little) and "soupy" (too much).

You could use flour tortillas if you prefer.

I use an ice cream scooper to more quickly fill the enchiladas with about 1/3 c of filling each.

We usually use plain yogurt in lieu of sour cream as a condiment. Tastes the same but makes me feel like we are being healthy somehow. : )