Foodie Friday - Nate's awesome enchiladas

Happy Friday!  Today I thought I'd do something a little different and share one of Nate's awesome recipes! He is seriously an amazing cook which is good because while I can cook, it's not my favorite thing to do and I am much more like "Semi Homemade with Sandra Lee" than anything else, but Nate will go off book and create and experiment and it always turns out so great!  So, today I'm going to share his enchilada recipe.  He sort of created it last summer when we were in the thick of CSA veggies and it quickly became one of our favorites! So here we go!

Step One: Finely chop an onion, half of a red pepper and half of a green pepper.  We like to mix the red and green peppers for a nice blended flavor, the sweet from the red and spice from the green, but if you prefer one over the other, than use one whole pepper of your choice.  We use the food processor because later we end up needing it to puree the veggies into a sauce, but you can chop by hand if you prefer.  We also add in 1-2 jalapenos.

Step Two: Add in diced tomato and some minced garlic (we just use the stuff in a jar).  When we have fresh tomatoes we use them, but right now tomatoes are not in season yet, so we just used one can instead.  The garlic is as much as you like for taste.  Puree until it's still a little chunky, but somewhat blended.  

Step Three: Put this mixture into a pot, simmer on low for a while (pretty much as long as it takes to get the rest of this put together) - add in chopped cilantro (can be fresh or from a shaker jar) and some salt and pepper to taste.

Step Four - Make margaritas.  This step is extremely important.  We have a great recipe for these too, but I will share that another day.

Step Five - Peel and slice zucchini.  Yes that is right, there is zucchini in these bad boys!  And this zucchini just happened to be fresh from our CSA box this week!  You can pretty much use any kind of filler you want, but this is one we stumbled onto last year that we really enjoyed.

Step Six - Chop up your meat - we use whatever leftover meat we have, be it steak or pork chops, you could probably do chicken as well, but we like something a little less light.  This week we used steak.  Put about a tablespoon of butter into a skillet (we use a cast iron skillet) and add your meat and veggie to the skillet.  Fry up until soft and warmed through.

Step Seven - Drink some of your margarita.  This is important.  Do not skip this step.

Step Eight - Prepare tortillas.  We use corn tortillas and we warm them in the skillet with just a little butter, less than a minute on each side.  Then layer sauce, meat/veggie mixture and cheese.  Roll up and place into baking dish - we use an 8x8 Pyrex.  You also do not need to grease the dish since the tortillas were warmed up in some butter already.

Step Nine - Once all of the enchiladas are rolled up and placed into the baking dish, top them with more sauce and more cheese. Place in a 350 degree oven and bake for about 15 minutes.

Step Ten - Take out of oven, scoop out of baking dish and put onto your plate and then into your belly!  And drink more margarita.  Ole!!

I may not be much of a chef, but I love being Nate's sous chef, there is something that is just more fun about cooking when you do it together. I've been enjoying being able to help out more now that Oliver goes to bed pretty easily at night.  We put him to bed and then we cook our dinner. When Oliver is over we'll make him our junior chef and it will be a family affair!  Do you enjoy cooking?  What's your favorite recipe?