Cheese Enchiladas or Casita Burritos

My favorite mexican restaurant was Casa Melinda's in Bountiful. Painfully it no longer exists. We would always order their cheese enchiladas. After years of experimenting this is the closest we can come to their delightful cheese enchiladas. And they are pretty close.

6" Corn Tortillas (not flour)

Shortening

1 can mild red enchilada sauce (soup can size)

2 T. flour

Colby Jack cheese shredded or monterey Jack and Colby Jack

Sauce

Take 1 can enchilada sauce and add 1 can water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil. In a separate bowl combine 1 C. water and 2 T. flour. Stir until not lumpy. Once red sauce has boiled, add a little red sauce to your flour mixture to heat it up a bit. Whisk flour mix into red sauce and cook on Medium-High heat until gravy consistency. (I didn't have enough time tonight because Jason had a mtg...so in my pic the sauce is runnier than normal).

Cooking the tortillas

In a frying pan melt some crisco. Cook a corn tortilla for a few seconds on each side, do not let them get crispy. Set aside tortillas on a plate covered with paper towels until you have cooked enough tortillas as you need.

Assembling the enchilada

Take a tortilla and fill with cheese. It is best if you use 3/4 monterey jack and 1/4 colby. But often I just use colby because I don't want to buy two kinds of cheese. Roll the tortilla and place it seam side down on an oven safe plate. Top with enchilada sauce and then sprinkle more cheese on top. We usually do 2 enchiladas per plate.

Baking

Place our plates (oven-safe ones only) with the prepared enchiladas in the oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 min. Remove from oven with a hot-pad. Plates and food will be VERY VERY hot.

Serving

Serve with sliced lettuce, sour cream, salsa and corn. If you wanted to you could put refried beans topped with cheese on your plate before baking (my family doesn't care for them).

When Casa Melinda would bring you your plate they would say "The plate is hot". So as our family joke we always say that too. (and the plate is VERY hot.)

Okay, so that is Cheese Enchiladas. Now on to Taco-Time's Casita Burrito's...

Casita Burritos

Make the same sauce as above.

Put refried beans and taco meat inside a flour tortilla (only a little bit of beans and meat...not very much). Roll up. Place on oven-safe plate seam side down. Top with sauce. Cheese on top. Bake in oven (on plate) at 350 degrees for 8-10 min. Remove plates with hot-pad.