Spicefreak

Hey folks, I hope that you’re all holding up well in these hard times.

I am but my access to ingredients has become a lot more limited and so, I’m sad to say, you won’t be seeing the big seafood recipe that I’d had planned for this month. Instead, all I can offer you is another bout of enchiladas from my backlog. A recipe from long ago that got a little lost.

This one, like last month’s recipe, is a twist on a family favourite but, this time around, the salsa’s milder and we’re going back to beans. It’s a vegetarian version, for their sake, with almost all of its heat in the filling.

Heat coming from this old sauce:

Now, if you remember, I didn’t much care for the Cornish Chilli Co.’s chipotle sauce when I reviewed it. It was far too sharp and vinegary for my tastes. I did tell you that I’d find a place for it, though, and here it is.

To make these enchiladas, you will need:

8 tortillas

1 tin of refried beans

220g mature cheddar

350g cream cheese

3 tablespoons of exceedingly vinegary hot sauce

And half a litre of cooking salsa.

For which I tweaked my usual recipe, in order to better support the smoke:

1 tin of tomatoes

1 red ramiro pepper (commonly sold as “sweet pointed”)

2 cloves of garlic

1 shot (25ml) of sherry vinegar

2 teaspoons epiƶoté (explained in a previous salsa recipe)

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon ancho chilli powder

1 teaspoon hot smoked paprika

And, while a lot milder than what you saw last time, the essence of this salsa is the same. Quick and easy to make, yet delicious as a cooking salsa. It’s not great for dipping tortilla chips into but, in a recipe like this, it works wonders and it works them in mere minutes.

All you have to do is de-seed your pepper, peel the garlic and chuck everything into a blender. You don’t even have to chop, if you’re feeling lazy.

Plus, while the changes that I’ve made this time have reduced my salsa to what I’d call an undetectably low

0.5/11

Heat

it picks up a slight sweetness and some nuttier tones from the change in vinegar, while the increased paprika gives it a light tingle to those who are more heat sensitive and a pleasant smoke to pair with Cornish Chilli Co.’s sauce.

I haven’t just mixed things up for the sake of it.

But, speaking of mixing things up, it’s now time to move on to the filling.

Normally, I wouldn’t use cream cheese in enchiladas. There’s already plenty of cheese baked over the top of them, without adding extra inside. Yet, one night, as I was trying to see if that exceedingly vinegary sauce could be used in jacket potatoes, I discovered something interesting.

I found out that, when that sauce was combined with cream cheese, the end result was was a tart, tangy, creamy dairy spread with all the normal qualities of sour cream but a bit more richness and a smooth, strong aftertaste of smoke.

The mix I made doesn’t look like anything special, I’ll admit, but it tempers the sharp sourness of the sauce just enough and adds a real decadent richness to the enchiladas that I’ve cooked it into. So it’s well worth the minimal effort that it takes to stir sauce and cheese together.

After which, it’s time to fill the tortillas. With both a heaped tablespoon of this fake sour cream and one of your refried beans. Like so:

Before rolling them up and placing them into an oiled casserole dish, just like last time.

And, also like last time, we’re going to fill the dish with eight of them before we chuck cheese and salsa over the top and whack the whole lot in a preheated oven.

More specifically, a 180°c oven, where they’ll sit for thirty minutes, until the edges are lightly browned.

And there you have it! Rich, decadent enchiladas with a strong, smoky aftertaste and a low

3/11

Heat

in the throat, barely any milder than the kick of their sauce.

It’s a surprising strength but nothing beyond medium and still, hopefully, within the range where most of you will enjoy all four servings. They are, after all, pretty darn tasty.