Rolled tacos/enchiladas, friends and beer

It don't get any better than that.

I am wiped out. Yesterday I spent all day drinking Pacifico and making enchiladas/rolled tacos, & last week I was in LA. If there are major brain farts in this post, let me know and I'll fix it when my brain recovers :)

My friend came over and helped me with them. We had a blast. We haven't spent the whole day together in I don't know how long. At one time she teased me about my "filing cabinet" in the freezer until she came over one day and I had a great Mexican meal on the table in a half hour. I took out 2 8x8 pyrex dishes, stripped the ziploc bags off of Enchilada sauce, laid it frozen on top of the frozen enchilada rolls, microwaved the enchiladas, microwaved the frozen beans, cooked a (cheater) Rice-a-Roni Spanish rice package and fed 4 people all inside a half hour.

Everybody loves them so here's the recipe. It's a lot of work, but with all the extra you make, you don't have to do it very often. The red basket pictured is my "filing cabinet" for the freezer.

1 1/2 split chickens barbecued over mesquite and then cooled in the fridge and de-skinned, de-boned and diced no larger than 1/4 inch squares
4 lbs Jack Cheese, grated
2 large or 3 medium onions softened in olive oil
3 7 oz cans diced (mild) green chiles
3 X 36 count corn tortillas softened (very quickly fried) in oil

quart size ziploc type freezer bags, labeled and dated with a permanent marker

Mix all ingredients together and roll the taquitos/enchiladas and place in bags and lay flat in the freezer the ones you won't be using for dinner (pizza boxes are a great flat surface). Each bag should hold 6 to 8. These can be taken out of the freezer bags one or two at a time and fried (taquitos) and dipped in guacamole or salsa

Guacamole

1-2 fresh garlic cloves minced finely
1/2 onion minced finely
3 key limes
salt
2 avocados

Salsa (everything is fresh, and hand diced from an 1/8 inch for the peppers to 1/4 inch for the onion and tomato, I tried to cheat and throw everything in the blender once and it sucked)

3 Yellow chiles
3 jalapeños
1 Anaheim chile (mild green)
1 red bell pepper
2 medium sized onions
1/2 bunch cilantro
juice from a dozen or so key limes
4 medium tomatoes (ripe, preferably sent to the market still on the vine!)
salt to taste

Enchiladas
the rolled enchiladas can be taken out of the bags and put into whatever pan you want to bake them in and doused with your favorite enchilada sauce or you can make your own. I've gotten lazy so I don't make my own any more. I like El Pato, but I just paid $1.5o for this can, not $4.00. It's not hard to make, just tomato sauce, fresh garlic, fresh onion, oregano (Mexican, not Mediterranean) and a bit of dried ground cayenne pepper. After rolling over a hundred taquito/enchilada thingys and making sure they lay flat on a pizza box in the freezer, I generally don't feel like screwing around with making the Enchilada sauce too. Especially since it's hot outside the last couple of days and hotter inside softening the tortillas.

Best served with your choice of beans and Spanish or Mexican rice (there is a difference)

My favorites are frjoles negritos (refried black beans) and (my) "Mexican rice"

my "Mexican rice"

2 cups Brown rice (20 minutes in the rice cooker, eh?)

7.5 oz can of El Pato hot tomato sauce or jalapeño sauce
1 medium onion diced
2-3 cloves garlic
3/4 cup frozen mixed vegetables
Mexican ground oregano (no more than 1/8 tsp)
chili powder (? to taste)
cayenne

Saute onion, garlic and veggies in olive oil till onions are translucent
add everything else and cook on low till the veggies are done