My Dad recently had heart surgery so I wanted to try to make some recipes for him that would be heart healthy as well as good tasting. This recipe is chock full of veggies, uses whole grain corn tortillas and substitutes low fat cottage cheese for full fat jack or cheddar cheese. I thought a green sauce would be best for this dish, but most of the store bought sauces are full of nasty, un-natural things and are especially high in sodium content (The Frontera sauce had 35 mg of sodium compared to 200 mg and up in the canned green enchilada sauces). Generally I would make my own sauce, but this week I was in a hurry. I found a jarred green tomatillo sauce made by Frontera (who incidentally makes a line of excellent salsas) that is made for livening up guacamole. But for my purposes, I used it as my enchilada sauce. Perfect. I even surprised myself at how good these enchiladas tasted. For this go round I used kale, orange colored cauliflower (which has more beta-carotene than white, and looks really terrific) and fresh mushrooms. You can substitute just about any kind of veggies you like. Next time I’m going to try artichoke hearts, carrots and asparagus.

Ingredients

• 1 package Trader Joe’s brand Corn Tortillas
• 1 8 oz. jar Frontera All Natural Guacamole Mix
• 1 16 oz. container low fat Cottage Cheese
• 2 tbls Olive Oil, divided use
• 1.5 cups chopped fresh Kale
• 1.5 sliced fresh White Mushrooms
• 1 cup diced Yellow Onion
• 1 4.5 oz. can chopped Green Chilies, rinsed
• 1.5 Cups chopped fresh orange colored Cauliflower

Instructions

Start by spooning the cottage cheese into a fine wire mesh strainer over a bowl, to allow some of the liquid drain off; ten or fifteen minutes ought to do the trick. Preheat your oven to 425 degrees. In a medium sized skillet, sauté the diced yellow onions in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until just soft, add the mushrooms and stir until they just start to brown, then add the rinsed green chilies (they’re rinsed to remove most of the added sodium) until heated through. Empty the mushroom/ green chilies mixture into a bowl and set aside. In the same skillet, sauté the orange colored cauliflower in 1 tablespoon of olive oil until it just starts to brown, then set the cauliflower aside. Meanwhile, spread about 4 tablespoons of the Frontera All Natural Guacamole Mix into the bottom of a glass 11 inch by 7 inch glass baking dish. Take 2 of the corn tortillas out of the package and cut them in half (because of the round shape of the tortillas and the rectangular shape of the baking dish, you will need four half sections of tortilla to fill in the middle spaces in your dish). Place two whole tortillas and one of the halved tortillas into the bottom of the dish to cover the bottom. Spread a thin layer of the cottage cheese over the tortillas, and then spread the mushroom/green chilies mixture over the bottom layer. Put down another layer of tortillas, spread another thin layer of cottage cheese over the tortillas, and then spread the chopped kale over this layer. Drizzle about 6 tablespoons of the Frontera sauce over the kale. Add another layer of tortillas and cottage cheese, and then spread the chopped orange colored cauliflower over this layer. Add one more layer of tortillas and cottage cheese for the top layer and pour the remaining Frontera sauce over the top layer and down into any crevices. Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, or until bubbling and hot. This may sound like a lot of steps, but the prep time took me only about 20 minutes. I chopped and sautéed the vegetables while the cottage cheese was draining.

Added Monday, Sept. 21, 2009