Turkey and Sweet Potato Enchiladas with Chipotle Sauce

It isn’t often I get to sit down and peruse cookbooks to my hearts content. Sometimes I feel like I’m reading in sound bites, so to speak.

Being surrounded by many great blogger recipes, countless pinterest creations and too many to count food magazines, sometimes means not getting enough of my favorite reads.

You see, I love to read cookbooks. To me a cookbook is worth its weight in gold if I can find just one recipe that is worthy of cooking on a daily basis.

I love the story behind cookbooks.

I love knowing about what goes into the thought behind the recipe and whether it is traditional or new, creative or classic.

I want to know the history behind something and I want to know about the ingredients I’ll be using.

I love reading about  my favorite foods and that doesn’t just include dessert!

Recently I received a  new cookbook specializing in enchiladas.

It is written by a team from San Antonio; Cappy Lawton who owns three restaurants in San Antonio and Chris Waters Dunn- a former songwriter turned culinary honors student from the Culinary Institute. Together these two have turned out quite a book.

Reviewing Enchiladas-Aztec to Tex Mex, was a no brainer for me! With a Texan husband and both of us confirmed Mexican food lovers, this was a simple send it to me now.

It arrived two days later and I’ve been perusing it ever since. To tell you the truth it wasn’t just the subject that caught my eye, it was also the cover.

Mexican tiles, fabrics and folk art are some of my faves and the cover of this book with its tile styled book jacket makes me wish my kitchen walls were covered in this!

But on to the food. I’ve never counted the number of enchiladas I’ve eaten, but my favorite involves lots of cheese and red and green chile or as New Mexicans say, Christmas style.

Yes, I’m drawn to New Mexican style Mexican food, but I’m also not one to turn down Tex Mex.

And traditional Mexican? Well, you can’t go wrong there.

This book has a huge, gigantic, enormous amount of recipes to choose from and the recipes are divided into categories based on the main ingredient.

The sauces are killer and I love the description of ingredients and the basics on making tortillas and rice and beans.

One could look at this as an introductory cookbook to enchiladas but it holds so much for those that have already been introduced.

The book reviews the various types of chiles and other Mexican ingredients.

Mexican cheeses and lard vs. oil are other discussions. Fundamentals such as making your own tortillas and making beans and rice, and even chorizo, is all in here.

Chilies. Yes, you knew they wouldn’t forget those. Ingredients galore are in here.

Now if only someone could find me some huitlacoche, I’d be a happy camper. Love the stuff, but have only had it in restaurants. (If you don’t know what it is, I guess you’ll just have to buy the book!)

Then it is on to the recipes.

Pork, beef, poultry, seafood and dairy, vegetable and Tex Mex are all covered to the extent that I counted over 53 different types of enchiladas.

One sauce that I’d never heard of contains eggs and chilies and reminds me of a Mexican Hollandaise.

There are enchiladas with duck confit and then there are the favorites such as enchiladas suizas and enchiladas rojas.  

And then there is another sauce with peanuts that caught my eye. There are mole type sauces and even a recipe for Tex Mex brisket and ancho chile gravy.

My mouth is watering as I write! The only thing I can think of to miss in this book is the lack of more photos.

I love what they have, and there are a lot, but I would have really loved more!

How I decided on Turkey Sweet Potato Enchiladas:

I decided to take a chicken enchilada recipe and make turkey enchiladas, given that the turkey holiday is right around the corner.

I also took their sweet potato enchilada recipe and added some sweet potatoes to the turkey. The possibilities in this book are endless!

Choosing the enchilada sauce was hard work because there are so may to choose from, but I ended up with a chipotle sauce because I love the smoky heat of chipotles.  

Combine the turkey and sweet potatoes with a chipotle red enchilada sauce and you have not only a healthy dish staring you in the face, you also have a perfect way to use Thanksgiving leftovers.

Yes, these easily also become leftover turkey enchiladas or just call them Thanksgiving enchiladas.

With so many combinations,  I could make a different type of enchilada each week for the rest of my life. Well, let’s not figure that out!

And if anyone knows where I can score some huitlacoche, please let me know!

Need a gift for someone? This would be perfect! Kind of like gettin’ the Whole Enchilada!