One of our favorite foods are enchiladas. There are a number of ways to make them and over time we have come to like these as both the easiest and most flavorful.

The ingredients: corn tortillas that have just been cooked, Oaxaca cheese, homemade refried beans, shredded cooked chicken, jalapeno pepper, Mexican Crema (sour cream), Hatch green chili enchilada sauce, a baking pan sized to hold enchiladas and a glass of wine. We have made our own enchilada sauce in the past, but the Hatch sauce is convenient, tastes great and contains pieces of Hatch chili peppers.

We make two types of enchiladas, chicken and bean. The process is simple. We spread some enchilada sauce in the bottom of the baking pan, smear a tortilla around in it, place either chicken of beans in the tortilla, and add some crema.

On top of this goes the cheese. The tortilla is rolled up and placed in the pan. We alternate the chicken and beans so when we serve them we get one of each style.

The baking pan filled with enchiladas. The small bowls of chicken, beans and cheese make it easy to build the enchiladas. It is messy, smearing the tortilla in the sauce, then taking a hand full of chicken, and later cheese and using the smaller bowls and occasionally refilling them keeps us when getting the ingredients all mixed together.

I like a slice of fresh jalapeno pepper on mine, then the rest of the can of enchilada sauce is poured over the enchiladas and it is topped with cheese. We bake them for 30 minutes at 325 degrees F (163 C). We like our enchiladas wet and sloppy and this gives the result we prefer.

Our enchiladas would never be pictured in a food advertisement, but do they ever taste beyond awesome. (We travel frequently and when we can’t find what we normally use, we use what is locally available and invariably the results are wet sloppy good tasting enchiladas, even if the taste may be somewhat different than these. Other people prefer beef enchiladas with red sauce, that’s just not something we like. It’s the great thing about food, we can make what we like.

In case you noticed the wine wasn’t added to the enchiladas, that’s true, but sure wasn’t wasted.