Cheese Enchiladas for Flavor and Maybe Catering at Super Pollo in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget
Cheese enchiladas, one of my favorite Tex-Mex dishes, is also what I consider a great catering dish for small dinner parties, office meetings, and team events for several reasons:
-you can count the enchiladas out so everyone gets a fair share
-enchiladas can be made with either corn or flour tortillas (flour tortillas are made with lard whereas corn is sticky enough itself to hold a tortilla together)
-enchiladas can be baked in a tray and served buffet style or plated up at a dining venue
-enchiladas can be made with a variety of melting cheeses or with meat
-the dried chiles used to make the sauce in cheese enchiladas can be mild or spicy and contains vitamin c
-cheese and peppers are both plentiful in California because they are produced here, which keeps purchasing costs down
-cheese has both calcium and protein in it
-Spanish rice is the usual side dish for cheese enchiladas. Rice is a grain that grows in California, which also keeps production prices down on cheese enchiladas
-Spanish rice is usually made with chicken broth and tomato juice with a few whole jalapeño peppers added. This rice has protein, Vitamin C, antioxidants, and carbohydrates for energy
I like the cheese enchiladas at Super Pollo and think they could make them as catering items with advance notice. Interested diners could try them first for take-out for 6 to 8 diners to test flavors and presentation before asking about catering.
Super Pollo’s cheese enchilada combination seems similar to the recipe for them in The Best Mexican Recipes by America’s Test Kitchen (the test kitchen is in Boston).
The sauce makes the dish. The sauce is made with stemmed and seeded dried ancho peppers that are toasted with cumin before being ground into a powder. This powder is added to salt and spices with chicken broth added that reduces the sauce to thick brick red.
Some of this sauce is placed on the bottom of the baking dish. America’s Test Kitchen warms flour tortillas in a microwave. You can also do this with corn tortillas, but they crack easily so you need to be careful wrapping the corn tortillas around grated cheese.
The cheese-filled wrapped tortillas are placed seam-side down on the baking dish. Sauce is spooned over the tortillas. Grated cheese is sprinkled on top of the tortillas before baking.
When the cheese enchiladas are done, chopped scallions are placed on top of the enchiladas before serving.
Spanish rice made with chicken broth, tomato juice, and maybe some whole jalapeño peppers is the side with hot sauces served in small dispenser cups.
Cheese enchiladas with Spanish rice are inexpensive to make, easy to prepare and serve, and very healthy in terms of protein, calcium, Vitamin C, and antioxidants. The salt used has iodine in it I assume as well.
i understand how Texas is Football Nation with a great catering dish like cheese enchiladas to serve player and everyone involved in making football games a profitable venture.
Personally, I am a fan of the cheese enchiladas at Super Pollo in Salinas, California and think anyone involved with having to organized catering might want to try this dish.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France and developer of the Novgorod and Bento War Games
