Enfrijoladas

Frijoles = beans

This very simple black bean sauce is amazing. If it was up to Matt, he would eat it every day on EVERYTHING (meatballs, chicken, rice, etc). We are eternally grateful to my friend Rebeca for teaching us how to make it!

Last Friday, as I mentioned in my last post, Matt requested enfrijoladas for dinner, so with Emily as my sous-chef, we started cookin'. The easiest way to explain an enfrijolada is an enchilada, where the green or red sauce is substituted for bean sauce. Does that make sense? You can really put anything inside, but we chose the simple route. After all, Matt loves the sauce more than anything else. Below are the ingredients we used:

• 1/2 onion
• 2 cans of black beans (I used Goya)
• Corn tortillas
• Shredded cheese (I used mozzarella)
• Shredded chicken
• 1/3 cup milk
• 1 tbs chicken bouillon (also used Goya)
• Canola oil
• Onions/avocado/alternate cheese (optional)

Saute the onion in a pan (did you know that eyes water much less, if at all, when you wear contact lenses?) with about 1 tbs of canola oil, until they are golden and soft. Then, let cool.

Pour the entire contents of the can of beans into the blender, along with the onion. Add milk (the more you add, the less thick the sauce becomes) and bouillon (this is optional, but I use it to season, instead of salt) to taste.



We were a bit lazy pressed for time and I have a bit of an aversion to shredding chicken (it's complicated), so we bought a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken instead and Emily shredded it for us (thank you!!) You can really fill the tortillas with whatever you want, once we used chorizo instead of chicken (here) and they were just as yummy.

This step is optional, but the "typical Mexican way" of doing it. I think the sauce tends to stick better when the tortilla is lightly fried. In a pan, add the oil and once hot, slip the tortilla in for a few seconds. You do not want it to crisp too much (as it still needs to fold and is not a tostada). However, if you would like to be healthier, you could skip this step and simply heat up the tortillas (we'll probably do that next time).

As you remove the tortillas from the oil, the "proper" next step would be to dip it entirely in the bean sauce and then put the shredded cheese and chicken inside, then fold. However, once again we were a bit lazy pressed for time, so I put a layer of sauce on the bottom of this dish, started filling the tortillas and then poured more sauce over them.

Finally, it was time to eat! You can choose to put a few slices of onion, avocado or even more cheese (my stepmom will use queso fresco and it's delish) on top of the enfrijoladas, but we ate them au naturale. Emily also made a salad, to get "our greens in", which went along with the main dish rather well. *Random side note: We keep seeing our plates (from Target) on several TV shows, like Modern Family...!

More visitors and celebrations this weekend! My colleague reminded me that it's my "last birthday as a single lady". Ooh la la....

"When I remember that my birthday is approaching" - courtesy of #whatshouldwecallme