Assemble your own meal places are popping up left and right. In fact, prior to discovering my love of cooking I did partake at a place called Super Suppers. My main problems were 1) I like to buy certain things organic, such as spinach, apples and sweet potatoes and 2) I am not a huge proponent of white sugar, flour and full fat dairy. I do, however, love the idea of the pre-prepped meals. What is better than having a light, delicious home cooked meal prepared to pop right in the oven when you get home from a long day of work?........If someone else makes it and you get a night off! (I love cooking mind you, but it IS nice to take it easy every now and then.)
The idea of a weekly or bi-weekly break is what prompted the idea of recipe swaps between me and my best friend Justine (who gave me the Roasted Vegetable Meatloaf recipe). What is great about Justine is she is a superb cook, she likes to lighten things up like I do and we pretty much know what the other one (and their husband) would like and dislike.
The way this works is, we each come up with a recipe we want to make and send it to the other person for final approval. It must be one where each of us can keep half and freeze half or bring it to the other person fresh, prepped and read to go so they can cook it that night and skip the freezing part if they want to. This idea is terrific because we can try twice the number of delicious recipes!
We went through a phase where, I swear, we tried every recipe from Holly Clegg’s Trim and Terrific Freezer Friendly Meals (which rocks by the way) and would bring in a sample for each other to taste, but this way we will get a different full meal plus leftovers and will not have to cook that night!
My first recipe was actually found on Stylish Cuisine. I adapted it a little to make it a bit lighter, to serve 8 and I used rotisserie chicken so I could skip the step of cooking the chicken.
Recipe Swap Spinach Chicken Tortilla Bake
Serves 8
Ingredients
EVOO Spray
1 rotisserie chicken, meat removed and shreddedpepper, to taste
3 cups store-bought salsa verde (green salsa)
1 1/2 cup part skim ricotta cheese
6 large 100 % whole wheat flour tortillas, cut into wedges
2 large flour tortillas, cut into wedges
3/4 red onion, thinly sliced
5 cups baby spinach
2 cups shredded 2% Mexican Blend cheese
Tony Chachere's Cajun seasoning, to taste
Directions
1. Preheat the oven to 450°.
2. Mix the ricotta, salsa verde and pepper to taste. Spray two 9 inch square baking dishes with EVOO spray and layer about 3/4 cup of the ricotta mixture on the bottom of each dish, top that with tortillas, chicken, onion, spinach, cheese, repeat this three times but with the top layer end with tortillas (instead of putting them on top of the last ricotta layer.)
3. Spray the top with EVOO and sprinkle some Tony Chachere's Cajun Seasoning.
4. Cover and bake (your half) for 15 minutes, remove foil, bake for 5 minutes more. Remove from oven. Let rest 10 minutes.
5. Give the other half to a friend!
***Please note, next time I would cook the onions a little beforehand. Even though they are being cooked in the dish, they still came out fairly crisp and pungent.
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