One week's worth: Mexican Bean Casserole

Is there anything worse than the Sunday-evening Funk? Weekend's almost over and not half the items on the to-do list are crossed off. I'm trying a new solution to combat Sunday gloom-and-doom. Cooking. Ever since my lunch money from the residency program stopped (i.e. beginning of this academic year), I've had to figure out lunch options so I can avoid yucky, unhealthy and expensive cafeteria mush passed off as food. So, Sunday evening has turned into the night to cook a week's worth of lunches and dinners.

The problem though, is that I'll hit upon an amazing recipe and it'll taste wonderful when I cook it for myself, but in a month or so a) I'd have  forgotten all about the recipe and/or b) it'll just not taste as good as the first time (the later will unfailingly happen if I've raved about it to S and try to recreate it for him). Also, being trained in the mom-and-grandma 'a handful of this and a dash of that' school of cooking, recipes never do turn out the same twice in a row. So, here's an attempt to keep an ongoing recipe journal so that 3 months from now, when I fall into a rut of eating moong dal and cereal on alternate days, or when I just can't remember the key ingredient I added to make that curry hit the spot, I have something to refer to (ahem, as if the internet is short on food blogs and cooking websites...).

The great thing about having to cook only for myself is that I have awesome flexibility in playing with weird ingredients, fine tuning fat content (less!) and salt content (unfortunately, more). This week's meal, however has nothing unusual in it. It does have something in it that I've bought for the first time: a can of chipotle peppers in Adobo sauce. Smoky, spicy, vinegery and delicious! The whole Mexican meal idea was an excuse to use up most of this stuff. The reason I bought the chipotle pepper in the first place was to make homemade 'chipotle-mayo', a great dipping sauce to put into and on everything. But since I couldn't use up the whole can with just the mayo, the rest of this week's cooking was born. Recipe below.

Mexican Bean Casserole

Ingredients:

- 1 pack of yellow corn tortilla

- 1 can of enchilada sauce

- 1 red bell pepper

- 1 green bell pepper

- 1 red onion

- 2 tomatoes

- 2 cloves of garlic

- 1 cup chopped broccoli (used frozen)

- 1 can of black beans (drained the frothy gas-inducing liquid it comes in)

- 3 chipotle peppers (from a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce), chopped fine

- ~ 1 Tbsp olive oil 

- Some type of Mexican seasoning (used Chipotle flavored Taco seasoning)

- Cheese (Mexican four-cheese blend)

- 1 small can of sliced black olives

Method:

- Dice onion, red and green bell peppers, tomatoes into large (roughly 1") cubes. Mince the garlic cloves.

- Preheat the oven to 375 C. Grease a 13" X 9" baking tray with a drop or two of olive oil.

- Heat the olive oil a large pan. Add onions and garlic and cook till onions are translucent but still firm. Then add the frozen broccoli and cook for a minute. Next add the red and green bell peppers. Cook for about  2- 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes. Cook for another 3-4 minutes. We want the bell peppers to have a crunch, so don't overcook them.

- Add the chopped chipotle peppers. Add the drained can of black beans.

- Add Mexican seasoning, and after tasting, add salt as needed (the seasoning and beans both have some salt. Also we will be using cheese and enchilada sauce eventually, both containing salt)

- Turn up the cooking flame so the some of the liquid (which the tomatoes release) evaporates. We don't want too much runny liquid, a little sauce is fine.

- Coat the bottom of the greased 13" X 9" pan with about 3 Tbsp of enchilada sauce. Layer it with corn tortillas, in one single flat layer. We'll need to tear some of the tortillas into halves, quarters and random shapes so that the pan is completely covered with only one layer. (highly doubt one needs to be careful  with this; I just wanted to avoid overlapping thick layers). 

- Layer about half the bean-vegetable mixture on this. Put a thin (or thick) layer of cheese. Put a second layer of tortillas. Spoon about 3-4 Tbsp of enchilada sauce on the tortillas. Layer the remaining bean-veggie mix. Layer more cheese. Put last and final layer of tortillas. Coat it with enchilada sauce, and more cheese. Spread the sliced black olives.

- Bake in the oven for about 15 minutes, till the cheese layer has melted

- Done (if you spread it over a week and eat, one feels less guilty about the cheese. Hey, it's better than the greasy slice of cafeteria pizza, right?)

Chipotle Mayo 'Recipe' (if we can call it that). Open can of chipotle-mayo-in-adobo-sauce. Chop up about 3-4 peppers. Lick you fingers and then please wash your hands. Put the peppers into a container that you're going to use to store it in. Dump in some mayo. Add a teaspoon of Adobo sauce from the can. Mix. Titrate by preferred spice level and degree of orangeness you are comfortable eating. Enjoy! Save the rest for a cold week's worth of spicy evening-snack goodness.

Okay then, until next week's recipe. (Or a mid-week one if I eat this up too fast!)

Mexican Bean Casserole