Monday, August 18, 2008

MEXICAN CASSEROLE

~ Janni Pacchetti

8 flour tortillas
1 large can refried beans or 4 c. crockpot beans
32 oz. cottage cheese
8 oz. shredded mozzarella
1 small can enchilada sauce

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix refried beans and cottage cheese together. Pour thin layer of enchilada sauce into 9x13 pan. Place two tortillas side by side (they'll overlap) in bottom of pan and cover with enchilada sauce. Spread with 1/3 of bean mixture. Sprinkle with 1/4 of cheese. Repeat layers two more times. Top with remaining tortilla, cover with enchilada sauce and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake for 30 minutes.

Notes: This can be assembled in advance and frozen. You can also assemble it with one half of the recipe in each of two pie pans, freezing one for later. That's how I did it before we had enough people to polish off a pan in a night and I simply lined one pie pan with foil before assembling. The unlined pan went in the oven and the lined one went in the freezer. Once the food is frozen, then I add more foil to the top, take it out of the pan, then pop it back in the freezer. I just don't like keeping pie pans in the freezer for the sake of space. I usually use green enchilada sauce with homemade beans, but red enchilada sauce and canned beans (or whatever combo you prefer) is also good.

Linked up at: Eat at Home Ingredient Spotlight - beans

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Love your new site Bethany. And I always love your recipes so this is perfect for me. ;)

Anonymous said...

I love this recipe! It's tasty and quick. : ) My kind of cooking!

BETHANY said...

I must agree that tasty and quick is a great combo. Glad you liked this one!

Kelly said...

This looks fabulous!

Shira said...

oh yum! I totally do something similar. Since I'm a vegetarian I use the morningstar farms veggie crumble and add that to a layer. I also do a cheesy rice layer. I make my own enchilada sauce and then use the 1/2 sauce 1/2 water to cook the rice. So 1 layer is beans and cheese, 1 layer cheesy rice, 1 layer meat/corn/black beans. I top with sliced olives to make it pretty! So yummy! It's different every time. Sometimes I premix black beans, corn, and fire roasted green chili's (now that I am not using canned stuff I just chop up a jalapeno or two and toss it in with the beans and corn. So many ways to do it but it always turns out fantastic!

I'll have to try adding to cottage cheese into the beans. Never though of that. Thanks for the inspiration for tonight's dinner. ;)

Shira said...

PS....if you are making all your own beans make your own enchilada sauce too then you will have nothing out of a can. oh just realized I use canned tomato sauce and paste....hmmm. Anyways...just tomato sauce, tomato paste, green chili's or jalepeno's, cumin, coriander, onion, salt & pepper. Simmer together 20 minutes and then I puree it. Cook down till you get your desired thickness or add a thickener like tapioca flour because it's a bit sweet. Sometimes I toss in 1 tsp sugar sometimes I don't.

Hope you try it and enjoy! Now just to figure out a way to get around the canned tomato......hmmm. Time to start jarring during high tomato season. ;) I start making this around 2pm so it's ready for dinner. I'll also make a big batch of the sauce to store in the fridge for breakfast burritos with some enchilada sauce added to the eggs for flavor. oh I could go forever. I will stop now.