Enchiladas

1 lb lean ground beef

1 medium onion, chopped ½ cup

½ cup sour cream

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

¼ teaspoon pepper

1/3 cup chopped green bell pepper

2/3 cup water

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 ½ teaspoons fresh oregano

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

1 can (4 oz) chopped green chilies, drained

1 clove garlic, finely chopped

1 can (15 oz) tomato sauce

8 tortillas

Shredded cheese, sour cream, and onions if desired

1.       Heat oven to 350

2.       In 10 inch skillet, cook beef over medium heat 8 to 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until brown; drain.  Stir in onion, sour cream, 1 cup cheese, parsley and pepper. Cover and remove from heat

3.       In 2 quart saucepan, heat bell pepper, water, chili powder, oregano, cumin, chilies, garlic, and tomatoes sauce to boiling, stirring occasionally; reduce heat.  Simmer uncovered 5 minutes. Pour into ungreased 9 inch pie plate.

4.       Dip each tortilla into sauce in pie late to coat both sides. Spoon about ¼ cup beef mixture onto each tortillas; roll around filling. Place seam side down in ungreased 11x7 inch glass baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over enchiladas

5.       Bake uncovered about 20 minutes until bubbly.  Garnish with shredded cheese, sour cream and onions. 

When you’re learning how to cook, just like when you’re learning how to bike, it’s always good to have someone close by, just in case you fall or almost dump too much of something in (unless it’s vanilla; my brother claims you can never put in too much vanilla).  Fortunately for me, Hannah was busy reading the literary theorist Spivak, who is about as dense as the ingredient list, when I happened to comment that I thought this recipe called for a lot of garlic.  Hannah inquired how much, and I held up the whole garlic (which I now know, thanks to Google, is called the head).  She gave me a quizzical look, and asked “are you sure it called for that?”  To which I replied, “Yeah, it called for one clove of garlic.”  Hannah laughed, and said that a clove of garlic was actually just one little chuck of the garlic head.  Thanks to Hannah, disaster was averted.   

                While the rest of the cooking went as smoothly as possible for someone of my talent, with me only almost forgetting to mix in the first four ingredients with the beef, the enchiladas turned out to be edible.  Hannah like them more than I did, but sour cream doesn’t sit well with my taste buds; I naïvely thought that the sour cream flavor would bake out, just as the rum bakes out in a rum cake.  As usual, my logic ended up proving false.  The onions also were a bit of a spoiler, since I forgot to cook them with the beef so when they came out of the oven and into my mouth, they were a bit crunchy. Next time, I think I’ll make extra sauce to mix in with the meat, since the sauce was quite good.  However, they were much improved the next morning.  I made the full recipe so I had eight enchiladas to eat, so I figured that I better beat the moldy microbes to my Mexican fiesta.