Black Bean Tortilla Casserole

Hi, folks, and welcome back to Cèpage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Several months ago we resolved to have at least one day per week in our dietary routine that is completely meatless.  You may remember a post back in September about our homemade veggie pizza.  Our meatless day per week experiment is actually going very well, but we had to find a reasonable variety of meatless main dishes that are satisfying and don’t leave us feeling deprived.  That is a bit of a challenge, but we have a repertoire of about 8 meatless dinners that are working out just fine.  Today, we’re describing another of those. 

This dish is a black bean tortilla casserole.  It is a single dish dinner with vegetables, tortilla chips, and cheese.  It’s great on a cold night, delicious and satisfying.  If you like, combine it with a fresh green salad.  It’s also a great way to use up a bag of tortilla chips with all those little bits of chips at the bottom of the bag or the chips left over in a bowl after watching the big game.  Here’s Mary talking about the prep of one of our easiest dinners.

Ingredients are onions (whatever kind you want, I used yellow onions), olive oil, chopped tomatoes, corn, black beans, lime juice, spinach, tortilla chips, cheddar cheese (not the orange stuff in a bag) and salsa. Pretty simple!  The photo below is of the same ingredients, just chopped, grated, and ready for cooking.  

Separately, I blanched the spinach in boiling water, then plunged it into cold water, then drained it. I also crushed any chips that weren’t already crushed in the bag.

I sautéed the onions in olive oil, then added the tomatoes, corn, black beans, lime juice and salt & pepper.

 Now comes the fun part -- layering the casserole for baking.

 Bottom layer is half the chips, then all the cooked veggies,

then half the cheese,

 

 then all the spinach,

 then a layer of salsa,

 the other half of the chips,

another layer of salsa,

 

and the last half of the cheese. 

That’s it!  

The photo above is a view of the side of the casserole dish before baking.  I baked it for 40 minutes in the oven until the cheese was brown and bubbling.  That looks so good I'm ready to make it again!

 YUM!  Here's an inside view after we plated the casserole.

 Let it cool a little bit, and dish out with a dollop of sour cream on top. Enjoy!    

Here’s Brian again to talk about the wine.  He always chooses just the right wine for the food.

For a hearty comfort dish like the black bean tortilla casserole, I selected a hearty, somewhat rustic red blend from the Languedoc region in the south of France.  Wines from this area are usually blends of several red varietals, but typically based on Grenache and Syrah.  They have great wild fruit characteristics and an herbal aroma and flavor of thyme, sage, and rosemary, often termed garrigue, and sometimes with savory meaty notes.  These wines pair well with a variety of hearty dishes and would go great with classic American comfort foods like meatloaf, pizza, and nachos.  Here are my notes on this wine.

Chateau de Lascaux Coteaux du Languedoc 2004.  This was an enjoyable wine on a cold winter night.  It was dark ruby in color with nice aromas of oak barrels, berries, and herbs.  The palate shows low to medium acidity, a smooth texture, velvety but not quite silky, full body, and delicious blackberry, raspberry, ripe plum, and savory earthy and herbal characteristics.  Nicely balanced, modern in style, moderately complex, medium in length, very nice.  60% Syrah, 35% Grenache, 5% Mourvedre, 14.0% alcohol.

That's our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  Keep coming back for more wine and food adventures at Cèpage et Cuisine.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian