Cooking Challenge #1

A few weeks ago my friend Emily invited me to participate in a blogging cooking challenge. Her friend Cassie has challenged herself to cook something new out of all her cookbooks. Emily and several other bloggers (including myself) decided to join Cassie and try new recipes ourselves. Each month we will link back to each other from Cassie's blog and share our cooking triumphs/failures.


Let me start by saying I was hesitant to join this challenge. Not only am I a novice cook but I'm also a picky eater. Often recipes in cookbooks don't appeal to me because of all the ingredients that they call for. In addition, I don't own many cookbooks either. However, one of my goals for 2011 is to eat at home more often so I figured what the heck and told Emily I'd participate.


For my first recipe I wanted to cook something from my family cookbook. Several years ago we had this cookbook put together to save all of our family recipes. The cover shows the Dempsey family in 1942 in front of their house in Greenville, Kentucky. My grandfather is the one on the far right. He is my mother's father. The recipe I chose is cousin Jonathan's enchiladas. When I normally cook Mexican food I do the Old El Paso soft taco kit. It is easy, tasty and (almost) everything you need is in 1 box. This would be a challenge for me to buy everything individually. I stopped by Kroger to pick up my ingredients seen below.

Ingredients:
1 pkg of enchilada sauce mix
1 (8 oz.) can of tomato sauce
2 cans of enchilada sauce (I only bought 1 and it was fine!)
1.5 cups of water
1.5 lbs. of lean ground beef (I used less)
Medium flour tortillas
3/4 cup grated Cheddar cheese
3/4 cup grated Monterrey Jack cheese
1/3 cup minced onion (optional - I did not use)



Combine sauce mix, tomato sauce, enchilada sauce and water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil and simmer 5 minutes. Mix cheeses together (I bought them already mixed). Brown ground beef and onion; drain. Stir in cheese and sauce mixture until cheese is melted.
Spread 1/2 cup of sauce mixture in bottom of baking dish. Put 1 tablespoon of meat mixture on each flour tortilla and roll up. Place seam side down in pan. Pour any leftover meat/sauce over tortillas. Sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Verdict: I went into this meal thinking I wouldn't like it because typically I think enchiladas are a little too wet. I accidentally only bought 1 can of enchilada sauce but I think that was actually perfect because they weren't as runny. I really enjoyed these enchiladas and they were perfect for me because they were just cheese, beef, sauce and tortillas. They were simple and I liked that. This recipe made 6 enchiladas so hopefully they will also re-heat well too.