Ancho-Chipotle Vegan Enchiladas
I learned how to make an awesome ancho enchilada sauce from scratch from the great musician/musicologist/chef D’Jalma Garnier, who got it from an authenic Mexican source. It keeps morphing over the decades. I started adding chipotle peppers to the mix, and now I have a vegan version. You can roll anything in an enchilada, I suppose. I’m still looking for the ideal vegan stuffing, but the one in this week’s batch worked out well. The recipe is good for about 2 dozen enchiladas.
First the Sauce
- 5-6 ancho peppers, deseeded
- 4 chipotle peppers, deseeded
- 1 onion, chopped
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 tbs veggie base
- salt to taste
- 15-16 oz. can of tomato sauce
I prefer to use dried chipotle peppers, which I used to get bulk at Wheatsville Food Co-op in Austin. I haven’t found them here in the Greenbelt, Maryland area, so I use canned chipotles from the local Latin market. The veggie base I used this time was very salty, so I didn’t need any additional salt. With non-salty base, I would use up to a tsp of sea salt.
Put 16 oz. water in sauce pan and bring to boil. Add veggie base, anchos, and chipotles. Simmer about 5 minutes, until peppers are soft. Put chopped onion, garlic and the peppers with all the fluid in a blender. Puree until smooth. Put contents back into sauce pan. Add the can of tomato sauce. Use 6-8 oz. of water to swish out the tomato can and blender and add it to the sauce pan. Simmer the sauce 20 minutes or more to cook onion and thicken.
Enchilada Stuffing
I continue to experiment with stuffing for vegan enchiladas. No failures yet. Asside from this batch, I have recently used black beans and tofu. This batch used the following ingredients:
- 1 onion
- 2 jalepenos
- 3 clove garlic
- 2 yellow squash
- 10 oz. frozen corn
- 1 package seitan
Saute these ingredients in 1 tbs of olive oil. Add about 10 oz of the enchilada sauce to the mix.
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling
In a greased pan, roll heaping tablespoons of your stuffing into softened corn tortillas. Getting the tortillas soft for this task has been its own challenge. I used to soften them up by heating briefly in simmering watered down sauce and oil, but the tortillas tend to fall apart if you heat them too long. This past year I discovered a great microwave tortilla warmer, La Tortilla Loca. It is well worth the investment, as I use it several times a week.
After rolling all your tortillas (I got 22 out of this batch, in 2 pans), cover them with a generous layer of sauce. You could cover them with shredded vegan cheese also, but I prefer not to. Cook about 15-20 minutes in the oven at 325˚. Sorry I didn’t get a picture of them, I was ready to eat!
