Enchiladas were always a big hit in one of my previous cooking jobs, and they’re still a big hit when I make them at home for dinner today. Presenting 13-9: Enchiladas as a vegetarian dish (using vegetables as filling instead of meat) is pretty avant-garde for a 1980s cookbook, but you can always adjust the fillings as you wish.
If you want to add some options to your combination plate, you can add in 8-65: Sizzling Skirt Steaks, 3-15: Quick Mexican Soup, or 9-6: Filled Tacos.
Enchiladas were usually (and still are) one of my top choices when going to a Mexican restaurant, and the method here is not that far off from the traditional way to make them.
However, as much of a stickler as I am for authentic/homemade, I like the canned enchilada sauce you buy in the supermarket SO much better and will pretty much always just use that. Can’t tell you why, just my personal preference.
This version features eggplant, raisins, and cashews as the vegetarian filling–I think they were trying to simulate “meat-like” textures. If I were making vegetarian enchiladas not as part of this recipe, I’d use beans, other veggies like zucchini or squash, or even some of the meat substitutes available today (in addition to canned pre-made enchilada sauce).
Ingredients. Fresh coriander = cilantro. I’m using fake cheese, so these will be vegan instead (I think the sour cream was a non-dairy one, hidden by the cilantro). I’m also cheating by using diced canned tomatoes instead of breaking down fresh ones.
Diced up the eggplant.
Sautéing the chopped onion.
I chose to add the cashews, so they’ve been chopped as well.
Onions have cooked down, along with the garlic.
Added in the cheater tomatoes.
Warming up another pan to sauté the filling ingredients.
Getting some color on the eggplant cubes.
I put the filling into a bowl and added the chopped cilantro and sour cream.
Mixed up the filling.
I put some of the filling in each tortilla.
I was able to get 5 into this 1/3 hotel pan, but you may be able to get more into whatever pan you use.
I topped the rolled-up tortillas with the tomato sauce and then layered a few different types of cheese for variety.
After baking. Real cheese looks better, but I’ve learned to live with the fake stuff (most of the time).
Final plate, extracted from the pan. They were okay, but I like my method (somewhat similar one here) better.
Grade: B
