Spinach Enchilada Pie

I finally started cooking again! With a long weekend in DC, a week of evening events, and Memorial Day weekend on the boat, I literally hadn’t made more than a sandwich or cereal in what felt like an eternity.

Luckily, Tortilla Land provided me with some inspiration in the form of LOTS of fresh tortillas.

After lots of fun eating and drinking, I decided to whip up a semi-healthy dinner a few nights ago, using the Tortilla Land tortillas as my base. A little too lazy to make neatly rolled enchiladas, I went with an enchilada pie.

First, I cooked up the Tortilla Land tortillas. These arrive uncooked, and while the packaging says to cook them for 30 seconds on each side, it took me about a minute on each side for the tortillas to get browned and puffy.

Once the tortillas were cooked, I set them aside and made my filling, a mix of about 1/2 cup Neufchatel cheese (lower fat than cream cheese) and about 1 and 1/2 cups of low fat cottage cheese, my new high protein obsession. Into the cheese mixture went an entire Vidalia onion, sautéed in olive oil and a box of chopped spinach, thawed with the liquid squeezed out.

This mixture was good enough to eat alone. I love how the cottage cheese kind of hid the spinach. I added some crushed red pepper flakes to add a teeny bit of spice and then got started layering my pie.

To top the enchilada pie, I just used store brand enchilada sauce, though I am sure I can do better homemade. Still, this sauce was really flavorful and added a lot to the dish.

I popped the baking dish into a 350 oven for 15 minutes, making sure everything was nice and hot, and dug in so quickly I forgot to take a photo of the finished dish until after I started eating.

Mmmmm. . . the cheese mixture got nice and gooey. The tortillas were great, a little crunchy in parts from being cooked earlier and a little soft from the enchilada sauce. This made four large servings, leaving enough for lunch the next day, a lunch we definitely looked forward to!

Do you have a favorite way of sneaking veggies into a recipe that has a reputation for being unhealthy?