VeganMoFo day #8 - Chile Relleno Wannabes semi disaster & Enchiladas

Taco night continues in spirit. I decided to veganize a favorite of mine, Chile Rellenos, but in my own way. When I looked online, I found that Chile Rellenos are peppers filled w/ cheese, coated in an egg type batter and deep fried. The mexican restaurant that I went to growing up, did things a bit differently, they had more of an eggy mixture on the outside. Well, memories and time warp things and I wanted mine to be sort of like a scramble covering the cheese filled pepper. So they should be called Chile Relleno Wannabes that ended in a semi disaster.

I took 3 poblano chiles and roasted them. When they had cooled down a bit, I made a slit in them and removed the seeds, but left the rest of the pepper intact. I filled them w/ some fake cheese. Not a ton, they still laid flat on the plate. Then I whipped up a batch of Susan V's omelette for one batter. I put some of it in the frying pan, then put the peppers in, then put on more of the batter. I think that is where I went wrong. For some reason, it was a big gloppy mess. I sort of got myself out of the mess by removing them from pan #1 and putting them in pan #2 for better frying. They did taste good even though it was sort of a mess to prepare.

This is a work in progress, so please please please don't blame me if you try it and it's a total mess. Next time I will either:

• prepare the omelete w/out the peppers. Then heat up the peppers in a separate pan. Then add them in the omelette just before folding.


• bake them in the oven w/ the batter. Then once it is solid, I would pan fried them to get a crust.

Oh well, live and learn. Mistakes are less annoying when they at least taste ok. You definitely need to add heated up enchilada sauce to the rellenos.

Enchiladas. These are pretty brain dead, I feel sort of stupid writing this down since it's probably obvious to everybody. Literally less than 5 min of prep. Here is the pan w/ 1 taken out. And then there were 4...

• 15 oz can enchilada sauce
• 5 small flour tortillas
• 15 oz black beans
• optional fake cheese (I used follow your heart)
• I also used some leftover ravioli filling from last night. I guess you could just use plain canned pumkin.
• optional filling - diced green chiles from a can
  

1. slop some enchilada sauce in the bottom of a glass baking dish. not a big one or you will need more stuff. I used this strange small rectangular pan that fits about the same volume as an 8x8 or a 9x9 pan.


2. make a line of black beans and whatever else you want in a tortilla. fold the sides over onto each other, so it makes a tube. Don't fold in the ends. that way some of the enchilada sauce can get in there.


3. put it in the pan. repeat step 2. make sure there is enchilada sauce between them in the pan


4. dump the rest of the sauce over the enchiladas, you want everything to be wet. don't want it drying out in the oven.


5. sprinkle on optional cheese. It really is optional because you won't even notice if it's not there.


6. bake in a 350 degree oven for maybe 20 min. shouldn't take too long, you just want to heat them up.