Happy Cinco De Mayo

We were invited to a Cinco de Mayo party so I sacrificed 1/3 of our weekly budget money to make two giant pans of gourmet enchiladas and then at the last minute our host family got sick so we had to eat them all. Darn. I got the recipe from Bon Appetite this month and is actually on the cover called Shrimp and Cotija Enchiladas with Salsa Verde and crema Mexicana and it's excellent. We've been eating them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. In fact, I think I'll make myself a sunny side up egg for breakfast tomorrow and plop it down on top of one. Delicious!

Here are the instructions in a nut shell. Don't be frightened by the title. It's easier than you think!

Ingredients:

4 Tbs oilve oil
2.5 lbs or more fresh or canned tomatillos
4 large poblano chiles, cored and seeded or canned and roasted chiles
4 unpeeled garlic cloves
2 cups packed chopped fresh cilantro
1 cup packed chopped green onions
1 1/4 cups chopped red onion plus thinly sliced rounds for garnish
2 lbs uncooked medium shrimp
2 Tbs chopped fresh oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
12 small corn tortillas
12 oz crumbled cotija or feta cheese
plus Crema Mexicana. I just used my homemade yogurt and it was delicious.
Also optional is avocados. I didn't have any but wish I did.

First make your salsa with either fresh or canned ingredients. I went canned because already roasted and canned tomatillos and chiles are way easy to work with and since they're just going to be pureed you can use canned. So I got a giant 6 lb can of tomatillos, a medium can of roasted, peeled and seeded poblano chiles(you can really use whatever chiles you want. Green chiles are fine), a couple bunches of cilantro and a couple bunches of green onions and a half a head of garlic. Basically just put them all in a blender and blend! Voila, salsa verde! If you want to go fresh, you have to roast everything and then blend.

THEN... saute red onions in olive oil for a few minutes, add shrimp, oregano, cumin, and the last cup of poblano chiles and cook for a few minutes until the shrimps are almost cooked.

Coat your corn tortillas with salsa, fill them with the shrimp mixture, add a teaspoon of cheese (I used fresh feta and it was incredible), roll up, and place them seam down in a baking dish and start stacking them together to fit as many as possible. When you are done filling and stacking, cover the enchiladas with two more cups of the salsa verde and put in the oven for 20 minutes and you're done!

Way easy and as Justin put it "the best thing you've made in months." and I cook gourmet on a regular basis so that's saying a lot!