Blake Makes

I love cheese enchiladas- they are my most favorite food ever, ever. Well, actually, cheese is my most favorite food. But, when you stuff it inside corn tortillas and bake it to bubbly perfection, it doesn’t get much better.

I stumbled across this recipe for veggie and cheese enchiladas when I was skimming through Susan Spicer’s Crescent City Cooking, and the photograph looked so mouth-watering, I had to try to make them myself.

I will warn you that the enchiladas do take a while to make, but you can make the sauce a day ahead and save yourself some time later. Having made these before, you would think that I would do that, but, alas, I am a procrastinator. (Blake, don’t you and my mom always say the Johnson motto is “Why do today what you can do tomorrow?”; Guess it’s in my blood.)

The time it takes to make these, however, is totally worth it. They are so yummy and satisfy all my Tex-Mex cravings. Plus, the veggies actually add nutrition to my favorite meal! Yay!

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I love my Blake Makes readers. I love them even more when they send free food!

McQuade’s Celtic Chutneys sent me a few jars of their delicious chutney a couple of weeks ago, and I’m just getting to posting the amazing meals we made.

With their Elgin Habanero chutney, we made these caramelized onion quesadillas.

I thinly slice 2 onions and cook them over medium-low heat in a little olive oil and butter for about 45 minutes.

When they’re coffee-colored, they’re done.

Spread the onions on a tortilla, and dollop hunks of Camembert. Place another quesadilla on top and cook until golden and crusty.

We garnished with the chutney. To be honest, I was a little hesitant to eat it because it was Habanero and I didn’t want it to blow my head off. It was spicy at all. It was this really nice mix of sweet and savory. To me, there was a faint mini-gherkin quality about it.

It went very well with this meal.

I love food, that’s no secret, and I’m a big guy, but it’s rare that eat until I’m sick (except for the holidays).

I ate until bursting yesterday and today because of the two things we made. This is the first.

This Mexican Chicken Tortilla soup is amazing. Subtle spice, very Mexican, and Bridget shredded the chicken to make the consistency of the entire dish just perfect.

We garnish it with sour cream (this is a photo of left-overs without sour cream because I wasn’t happy with any of my first photos), cheese and tortilla chips.

It’s soup, but eat enough of anything and you’ll get stuffed. Believe me, you won’t be able to get enough of this one.

Okay, so tomorrow we’re posting an amazing dish (hint: lemons and mac & cheese).

Green wrap black bean burritos, guacamole & fresh tortilla crisps

Bridget’s been making these black bean burritos for years. They’re very simple. She sautees yellow onions, garlic, mushrooms and black beans until they’re all hot and bubbly. A little S&P and then she wraps them in some green tortillas and bakes them at 350 for 10 minutes.

I made the guacamole tonight. Two avocados in the bowl. Squeeze over a lemon to keep them green and beautiful. Dice an onion (I used white, red would probably have been better), toss it in. Dice a garlic clove, toss it in. S&P and few dashes of hot sauce, and we move on to the tomato.

Cut a tomato in half and squeeze out all the seeds. Dice it, toss it in. Mix everything up until it’s still chunky, but well combined. Taste it. I wanted a little more heat, so I picked a couple jalapeños from our garden. Dice them, throw them in.

We were out of chips, so I quartered a stack of corn tortillas and fried them up. Three minutes and a little kosher salt later, we had chips.