I had an unexpected battle today. The opposer, Enchiladas. I received the best enchilada recipe from my best friend. These enchiladas aren't the 15-minute-dinner-in-a-snap kind of enchiladas. That is why they are the best; they take lots of time and effort to create such a masterpiece.
I had these enchiladas almost a year ago and decided that I wanted to make them for my Easter dinner. I was having Easter by myself and so I got to make whatever I wanted. I chose to make these enchiladas. To my advantage I had help making these enchiladas for the most part from the master teacher herself. We started making these enchiladas on Friday - starting with home-made sauce and home-made tortillas. The sauce making went smoothly and turned out great, but the tortillas were a bit more difficult. We did a half white/half wheat mixture. The dough was not as sticky as it should, they wouldn't roll out or stretch quite like they ought to, and they didn't bubble up to create a soft tortilla when cooking them. But that is all we had time for that Friday evening.
I made the enchilada meat on my own Saturday evening. I thought that I had done it wrong, but after my friend's approval and our test-tasting, I was assured it had been made correctly. Phew! My friend and I ended up having some time that evening to give the tortilla making another try. We went at it and after a good work out of rolling, stretching, and cooking the dough we had success! They were soft and moist. Perfect!
Having everything all ready to make for today's Easter dinner I was excited to get started after arriving home from church. Following a tip from my friend I combined the tortillas and the sauce together before I left for church so the tortillas would soak up some of the sauce creating a juicier enchilada. When I arrived home from church I ran through the verbal instructions my friend had given me in my head to put the enchiladas together. She first told me to heat up the sauce, then dip two or three tortillas in the sauce so they were coated, place them in the pan where I would then fill it with the meat, onions, cheese, etc.
Being the time savor and innovator that I sometimes think I am I placed the tortillas and the sauce that I had combined before church on the stove to heat up together. I figured that the sauce could heat up and I'd just take the tortillas one at a time to fill, roll, and place them in the pan. This is where the battle began. Once the sauce was heated up I reached to grab the first tortilla on the stack, but had a little bit of trouble getting it out. At first I thought I was unsuccessful because I couldn't really see what I was grabbing due to the sauce that the tortilla was completely covered in. After trying to use a fork, a spatula, and any other flat object I could find in the kitchen I realized what had happened. I realized that heating up the tortillas with the sauce caused the tortillas to stick together. My heart sank when I came to this realization and panick set in. I thought I could just peel them apart with a little bit of effort but soon found out that that wasn't going to happen.
My mind raced as to what I could do, but no solution came. I wanted to call my friend in hopes that she would be able to rescue me from my dumb mistake but she was unavailable for me to call. The thought of just bagging the whole thing went through my mind but then I remembered all the work that had already been done to get as far as I was. I wasn't about to throw in the towel now. So the battle continued. The enchiladas were winning. But I continued to do the best I could under the heat and pressure. The outcome of each tortilla was different but all fell under the same category: mangled. I was able to pick, peel, pull apart and make 8 mangled enchiladas that filled the pan I was using. With approximately 2.5 tortillas left I decided to save my insanity and create one last whole enchilada, (that just happened to be rather thick). I sprinkled some cheese on top in hopes that it would disguise the extremely unculinary artistic ability that I have and threw it in the oven.
Down-hearted and disappointed in myself I subjected myself to doing the pile of dishes that had mounted up in the kitchen sink and on the counter. I don't know if I did this to get rid of painful reminder of the disaster I had created or to relieve some pent-up stress and frustration. Either way I got the dishes done.
After about 15 minutes of the enchiladas cooking the aroma filled the kitchen and brought back some hope that these enchiladas would be good. I realized then that all the ingredients were there and in their proper place....as much as they could be....as so there wasn't any reason why they shouldn't taste good. At the ring of the timer I pulled them out of the oven to see these masterpiece enchiladas. They weren't too pretty to look at, except for the last one I made that looked mostly normal. To congratulate myself and express appreciation for everything my friend had done for me and taught me I scooped up the best looking enchilada onto my plate, garnished it with some corn and sat down for my Easter dinner.
To my great surprise the first bite blew me out of the water. It was SOOOO good! I couldn't believe that I had allowed myself or allowed my friend to deprive me of these amazing enchiladas for as long as I had! They are outstanding! There is great gratitude in my heart for my friend and her willingness to share with me her all time favorite recipe as well as allowing me to learn at her side. I am calling this first-time go-around with these enchiladas a practice round. Next time I make them they will be almost as great as if the master made them herself.
It may not be much to look at, and the tortillas may have won the battle....but I won the war!
THANKS FRIEND FOR EVERYTHING! THEY ARE AMAZING, JUST LIKE YOU!
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