Gluten Free Rainbow Enchiladas

Seriously.  This is why my posts have dropped in quantity.  I truly think all of us cook like this, so it feels awkward to post this but here goes nothing.  Maybe someone hasn’t made an enchilada before?  Maybe you are stuck in a rut (like I usually am…lol) making the same-old-same-old meals day in and day out?  Okay.  Well then, for you, I post this.

Usually our enchiladas are chicken + whatever veggies are in the fridge/freezer (typically some squash/zucchini and some frozen corn).  Seems strange to me to say that we have zucchini on hand (it’s definitely not my fave veg) but for a while, it was the main “green” veggie that the girls would eat in order to “Eat The Rainbow” everyday.  Somehow, they’ve moved away from zucchini as their green and are much more content to eat edamame.  (Whatever works.)  Last night, I had them thinking that the fresh peas from the CSA were “just like edamame only you can eat the pod too”  (insert parental “oohs” and “ahhs” in order to make story more “exciting”).  But they busted me.  However, they did both consume at least two tablespoons of peas sans the pods which I ate (I LOVE the fresh ones from the CSA).

Into these enchiladas, I tossed the veggies that they DO eat and that make up the rainbow:  carrots, corn, roasted red pepper strips, green zucchini (had to slide in something green) and some chicken.  Zoe kept telling me that she want broccoli in hers, but I realized that she was just trying to appease me and would only take a smidgen of food if that is what really ended up on her plate.  Thus the zucchini was stealthy added before they realized the evil plan.

All of the veggies were stir-fried/sautéed (whichever works for you) until crisp-tender and seasoned nicely with salt/pepper and a little chili powder.  The chicken was actually from a grocer rotisserie (yes, I checked, it is gluten free.  Thankfully, knowledgeable staff helped out!).  Hey – short cuts are highly encouraged with little feet and hands “helping” in the kitchen and demonstrating new dance moves when things are busiest. 😀

So here is what I did to throw this inexpensive dinner together.  It served the four of us for dinner and lunch the next day.  I made one 8′ by 12″ pan with the fixings I used.  The measurements below are estimates for some (like seasoning and frozen corn) as I do most of my cooking by taste and appearance when it is something like this.  Baking… well… I usually measure unless I’m making a riff on something like pancakes that I’ve made a million times for the girls this summer.

PS.  This picture doesn’t do it justice.  My kitchen helper added an extra cup of chicken broth to the top when we had finished putting it together.  Thus the extra soft/lack of rolled enchilada.  I hesitated to even share the photo, but you know what?  I’m just a home cook like you!

Rainbow Enchiladas – gluten free

Ingredients:

2 cooked chicken breasts, roughly chopped (bite-sized if you have little ones)
2 small zucchini, sliced into 1/4″ rounds and quartered
3 small carrots, sliced into 1/4″ rounds and quartered
1 cup frozen corn
1 small can (5 ounces?) diced mild green chiles
1 red bell pepper
1 green bell pepper, if desired
salt/pepper to taste
cumin (2+ teaspoons) and red chile powder (2 teaspoons +) to taste
4-6 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 small sweet onion, minced
2 cups of shredded melting cheese (Monterrey jack or queso quesadilla) for the topping
**optional:  2 cups of shredded melting cheese (Monterrey jack or queso quesadilla) added to the filling
16 corn tortillas (be sure these are gluten free)
2 cups enchilada sauce, gluten free (see note and a recipe below)

Directions:

1. Roast the red and green peppers under the broiler in order while you cut/prep your other veggies.  It’s easy to roast your own.  Split the bell peppers in half and seed them.  Lay them open side down on a parchment or tin foiled lined sheet (with a lip, the juices might run while they roast).  Keep your eye on them.  Once the skins blacken, remove from the oven and place into a paper lunch sack (and on plate or something to prevent dripping, etc).  Set aside until cool.  Once cool, you can easily peel the blackened skin off and then slice/chop the roasted peppered into your desired size.
2. While roasting the peppers, prep other veggies.  Quarter and slice zucchini and carrots. Mince garlic and onion. In a frying pan large enough to hold your veg, add a teaspoon of olive oil.  When hot, add carrots and onions.  Sautee for 2-4 minutes until *just* beginning to become a bit tender.  Add garlic, zucchini and corn.  Sautee an additional 3-4 minutes until everything is crisp-tender.  Remove from the heat.
3. Mix together veggies, chopped roasted pepper, green chiles (cheese, if using) and chicken.  Season generously with cumin, chile powder, salt and pepper.  Taste.  Adjust seasonings.  If it is bland now, it will be super bland later.
4. Warm your enchilada sauce.  Working in batches, warm your corn tortillas (half at a time) in the microwave wrapped in a damp paper towel for 20-25 seconds.  You just want them to be pliable so they won’t break.  Drizzle the bottom of your baking pan with a 1/2 cup of the warm enchilada sauce. Spread it around.  This will help prevent your enchiladas from sticking to the pan.
5. If baking right away, preheat your oven now to 350F.  If freezing (almost typed freaking… nice), feel free to obviously skip this step.
6. Dip an individual tortilla into the enchilada sauce, flip it over and then lay it on a cutting board or clean prep surface (yes, it’s messy).  Place 1/3 cup (or so) onto the tortilla.  Roll it up.  Lay it into your prepared pan at one end.  Continue this way, tucking each enchilada next to the previously created fabulous enchilada in your pan.  You will need to pack them tightly.
7. Once you are done, pour the remaining sauce over the top of the enchiladas.  Brush it over to cover them to prevent the tortillas from getting dried out/burned and all around yucky.  Top with shredded melting cheese.    Bake at 350F for 15-20 minutes or until the cheese if melted and golden.  (Cheese coloring will changed depending on which cheese you have chosen.  Please cook to your desired doneness as you would watch your pizza cheese.)
8. Serve with avocado slices, sour cream, diced jalapeño (for the heat lovers in your house), shredded lettuce, pickled carrots/radishes, Mexican rice, beans, etc.

A NOTE ABOUT ENCHILADA SAUCE:

Gluten free enchilada sauce is easy to find.  I like Frontera and Victoria – the green sauces are my favorites.  Read the ingredients, obviously, but I bet you will find one that you like as well.  If you want, there is a red sauce enchilada recipe from Rick Bayless that is ah-mazingly good.  This recipe for green enchilada sauce looks quite similar to what I make too.  However, that is so just-for-the-weekends-in-the-summer for me now.  (It involves an easy step of rehydrating dried Mexican chiles (red sauce) or roasting the tomatillos (green sauce), etc – easy… but not for me at the moment.

 I regularly use the recipe below to make a red enchilada sauce when I want them in a pinch and don’t have the convenience of a canned sauce on hand.

Whatever-you-got Red Enchilada Sauce

Ingredients:

3 teaspoons of minced garlic (yes, we love garlic)
1/4 cup minced sweet onion
2 Tablespoons + chile powder (we like to vary this and use ancho or pasilla or whatever we have on hand)
1 12 (or so) ounce can of fire-roasted diced tomatoes (sometimes with green chiles, but never the Ro-tel stuff)
1 cup gluten free chicken broth
2 Tablespoons GF flour mix (OR sweet rice flour)
2 teaspoons cumin
salt and pepper to taste
jalapeño, optional (if you want to add some more heat)

Directions:

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a pan.  Saute onions until translucent (or even slightly browned/caramelized if you like that add flavor/smokiness).  Add the chile powder, cumin, garlic and gluten free flour.  Sautee until fragrant (2-3 minutes).  Add tomatoes and chicken broth.  Simmer over medium for 10 minutes.  Adjust seasoning.  Blend with an immersion blender (what we have from 1988, tyvm) or be brave (AND CAREFUL!) and transfer/blend it in batches in your blender.  It need not be perfectly smooth sauce.  It’s up to you.

Happy GF Eats, everyone
Kate

GF Tortilla Soup

GF Tortilla Soup, originally uploaded by Kate Chan.

Sorry for the blogging lags, everyone. I really do have things to share… just not a lot of computer time to share them!

And forgive the photo… it was taking without much broth so you could see the ingredients and with a HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPO begging for MORE MORE MORE in the background. (Okay… so she’s hardly a hippo in her teeny bod, but you get it, right?)

Yesterday we had a visit from our social worker. Adoption doesn’t end at the arrival of the baby. Nope, there are six more months of social worker visits, reports, photos back to Korea for foster mom/birth mom and Korean social workers, doctor forms, etc. After six months, we can then officially petition the courts for Zoe to become legally OURS OURS OURS! (After that, we start the whole process for her to get her Certificate of Citizenship for the US, new birth records, social security, etc…. a whole new paperchase that HOPEFULLY will *not* last as long as the first several!)  The great news:  we will most likely be able to begin our “finalization” paperwork in September.  This news just about brought me to tears.  She is already such a natural part of who we are.  I can not even begin to imagine my life without her in it.  OH!  Soon she will be ours on paper too!  (Thank goodness heart-strings DON’T need paperwork!)

Oh! Could you not just eat up this cuteness!?!?!?!

SOON!

I had an enjoyable little fruit/coffee luncheon with the social worker while Zoe climbed all over me, played a little next to us and read her books. Really though, she just wanted to sit in my lap so she could eat my fruit and watch the social worker. She’s quite the monkey, but was also well behaved for her almost 15 month old self. She even “said” (sign language) please when asking to get up on my lap. (Let’s not mention the fact that she wanted to put her feet all over the table though, k?)

When the social worker left, I put Z down for her nap and then began to clean up the book piles, the luncheon dishes, pay the bills, organize my menu plan, etc. (Yes! I’m back to menu planning! I think it will help save my sanity once I return to work…. what do you think?) I realized that I had forgotten to pick up the pork chops for dinner (oops) but that I had some frozen chicken breasts. Menu plan swap-a-roo and TA-DAH! It’s tortilla soup night instead of pork chop night!

Here’s the beauty of this: the chicken breasts did not defrost in time. I had even popped them in the microwave for the defrost… didn’t work because the two breasts were clumped together. Ah, well. I figured this was probably MUCH more like a typical work-week anyway. I often forget to defrost something for dinner the next night and have to rush or pick something up on the way home. I know Zoe is probably NOT going to be happy with me if we have to stop for groceries after a long day at daycare (at first, anyway), so this was good practice.

And guess what? This soup came together in a snap. And Zoe likes it! (Okay.. she ate the carrots, black beans, avocado and a few bites of chicken…LOL) I’m sure as her ability to chew grows, this will be something that she will like more and more because she can add her own toppings – thus making a food adventure at dinner. My nephews said they would like that idea too!

So… all you non-defrosting folks – worry not! This will work with your partially frozen chicken breast too! In fact, I think it made cubing the chicken that much easier.

If you are up for a great tasting soup with a decent amount of veggies, I highly suggest this. In fact, I was quite happy to realize that I had made enough for today’s lunch for all three of us too!

Gluten Free Tortilla Soup
Makes enough for dinner for 4
Ingredients:
1 – 15oz. can organic diced tomatoes
1 – 15 oz. can organic black beans
3 pasilla peppers (large, mild peppers)
3 medium-large carrots (1 cup diced carrot)
1 sweet onion (1 1/2 cups diced onion)
1 cup fresh corn kernels (or frozen)
3 Tablespoons minced garlic
2 chicken breasts
4 -5 cups of water or chicken stock  (tastes better with stock, IMHO)
2 teaspoons cumin
1 1/2 teaspoons chile powder (or more depending on taste)
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 bunch cilantro, diced
2 Tablespoons olive oil
salt/pepper to taste
2 jalapeños, diced (optional: can be used as a topping or soup ingredient)
6-8 old GF corn tortillas (fried to a crisp and sliced/chopped) OR GF corn tortilla chips
sour cream (for topping)
avocado, diced (for topping)

Directions:

1. Char the pasilla peppers over an open flame or under your broiler until blackened ALL OVER.  Put the charred peppers into a paper bag and set aside while you prep the remaining ingredients.
2. Chop and prep your carrots, onion, corn (if using fresh), garlic, tomatoes (if using fresh), and cilantro.
3. Over medium-high heat in a stock pot, saute onion, carrot and half of the garlic in olive oil until the onion begins to become slightly golden and the carrots are tender (about 5 – 6 minutes).
4. While the onion, carrot and garlic saute, cube your chicken breasts into 1/2 – 1 inch cubes.  (This is really quite easy if your chicken is still semi-frozen!)
5. Once the onion/carrot/garlic mixture is ready, add the chopped chicken and the remaining garlic.  Stir frequently and cook until the chicken is cooked through.
6. While the chicken is cooking, remove the pasilla peppers from the paper bag (feel free to reserve any juices from the peppers and add it to the pot!).  Under cool water, rub your fingers over the peppers to remove the skin.  The charred skin will come off easily.  Remove the stem end and seed the peppers.  Once you have completed this with all 3 peppers, cut each pepper into strips and then dice/chop the pepper into smaller pieces.
7. Once the chicken is cooked through, add the chopped peppers, black beans, corn, tomatoes and cilantro. Stir.  Add the stock or water.  (Add the diced jalapeño at this stage IF you want a hotter soup otherwise reserve it for people to add to their own individual soup bowls.)
8. Add the seasonings and taste.  Adjust the seasonings to your preferences, PLEASE!  (Sometimes we add much more chile powder or cumin, but rarely do we add too much more oregano).  (Other spices to consider:  red pepper flakes, a touch of fennel, green onion, pasilla chile powder, tabasco sauce, etc.)
9. Heat thoroughly. Taste again… and again….. 🙂  While this is heating, fry up some old corn tortillas in olive oil (additional) until golden or browned.  Drain and cool.  Slice into strips then chop into chunks.  Reserve for topping soup bowls.
10. Serve soup along side bowls of toppings for people to make their own adventure (or top and serve).  Top with:  diced avocado, a  handful of tortilla strips or tortilla chips, a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkling in diced jalapeño.  You may even enjoy some more cilantro sprinkled on top.

I hope you enjoy this.  We really like it.  I think I will add some fall vegies as we get them in too.  It will be great with slices of autumn squash etc.  Yum!!

Happy GF Eating!

~Kate

PS.  My next post will be about sugar cookies.  Zoe and I have been taste-testing and today I brought some over to my sister’s house for her and her boys (husband and 2 boys) to taste and vote on.  There’s definitely a love of both recipes I’ve been playing with.  Guess I will have to make more before I decide which recipe to post!  Or…. better yet:  How do you like your sugar cookies?