Vegetarian Enchiladas

This week, we had green tomatoes in our farmer's box. Last time I got green tomatoes in the box, I made a green tomato and swiss chard gratin. There are very few recipes that I don't finish, but this was one of them (oddly, the other one of recent memory also had swiss chard, so I might just hate swiss chard). When I saw green tomatoes on the list this time, I thought, "oh, crap. What am I going to do with them?" Additionally, we get four ears of corn every week. We are up to our eyeballs in corn. We have a bunch frozen in the freezer, and yet it just keeps coming. So I wanted something that would make use of both things. Googling recipes for green tomatoes I found that you could make enchilada sauce with them, so we went in that direction.

Enchilada Sauce

Ingredients

• Olive Oil
• Medium Onion, diced
• Garlic, minced
• Approximately 2 lbs green tomatoes, quartered
• 4 Peppers, roughly chopped (we used bull's horn peppers, because we had a lot from our box. They were mildly spicy, so this had some heat. You can use whatever combo of peppers you want.)
• Half a bunch of cilantro, destemmed
• 1.5 teaspoons Salt
• <0.25 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1.5 teaspoons cumin
• Juice of one lime
• 4 cups broth (we used veggie bouillon, since I've not yet made broth this year. You can use chicken, as well)

Steps

1. Put all ingredients from tomatoes to lime juice in a blender and puree. This may take multiple batches.
   
   
   
   
   
2. In a medium/large stockpot, heat the olive oil and saute the garlic and onions until fragrant.
3. Add the pureed tomato mixture and chicken broth into the pot and bring to a boil. Once it's reached a boil, lower the heat. Let simmer uncovered until it's at the thickness you want. We simmered for an hour and a half, or so. Stir occasionally and give it a taste every so often. If it's too sour, you can add some sugar. We didn't, since enchilada sauce tends to a be on the tart side. Once it's done, feel free to blend further. I used an immersion blender, because any time you get to use an immersion blender it's a good day. You can also put in in the regular blender, but you have to be careful about steam and overflow.

The finished product. Ours turned into a red sauce, even though we used green tomatoes, because the peppers were red.

Now, on to the enchiladas!

Corn, Black Bean, and Spinach Enchiladas

Ingredients

• Olive Oil
• Half an onion, diced
• Garlic, minced
• One can black beans
• 2 ears corn, shucked
• Half a bag of frozen, chopped spinach
• Cumin
• Juice from half a lime
• Corn tortillas
• Green Tomato Enchilada Sauce (see above)
• Shredded cheese (we used the Mexican cheese blend from Trader Joe's)

Steps

1. Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees Farenheit.
2. Saute onion and garlic in olive oil in a large frying pan until fragrant. Add the black beans, corn, spinach, and cumin. Once cooked, add the lime juice.
3. Pour a small amount of the sauce on the bottom of a square baking dish.
4. Fill the tortillas with the filling, and then roll the tortilla. Place it seam down in the baking dish. Continue until the dish is filled.
5. Pour more enchilada sauce over the tortillas until they are covered. Sprinkle with shredded cheese.
6. Bake 15-20 minutes, until the cheese is golden brown.

The finished product! Garnish with avocado, diced tomato, and sour cream (we used low-fat Greek yogurt, since it's tangy).

Note: You will have lots of extra sauce. You can just freeze the leftovers for later. We also had some leftover filling, since our baking dish only held six enchiladas.