Friday PIE Day: South of the Border

It's been a long time since I've done a Friday Pie Day post, but this recipe I made last night was too good not to share!

When the Mister's grandparents downsized to an apartment last year, they were kind enough to let us come by their house and grab some goodies before they sold/gave away what they weren't taking with them.  One of the items I claimed was a cookbook published by the Greenville, South Carolina, Junior League in 1988 that looked promising.  I adapted this pie from a recipe I found in that book.

Ingredients:
- 1 pound ground beef (I usually cook with ground chicken or turkey, but I went with 93% lean beef this time, and it was yummy!)
- 4 7-inch flour tortillas
- Olive oil
- 1 15-ounce can tomato sauce
- 1 1/2 teaspoons cumin
- 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 clove garlic, crushed
- 1 small red onion, chopped
- 1 6-ounce can green chilies, chopped
- 6 ounces prepared guacamole
- Monterrey Jack cheese, sour cream, and guacamole for topping

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Brown meat in skillet and drain.  Place the meat to the side, rinse the skillet, then soften the tortillas by frying them for 5 seconds on each side in 2 tablespoons of olive oil. Place the tortillas to the side, rinse the skillet again, then combine tomato sauce, onion, garlic, cumin, and chili powder in the skillet.  Bring the sauce to a boil, then reduce heat and allow it to simmer for 10 minutes, uncovered.  Remove 1/4 cup of sauce from the skillet and place to the side as well.  Add half of the chilies and all of the ground beef into the larger portion of sauce and stir.  Grease a 9-inch pie pan, then begin building your pie in this order -

- one tortilla on bottom
- 1/2 of meat mixture
- another tortilla
- guacamole and remaining green chilies
- another tortilla
- remaining meat mixture
- last tortilla
- 1/4 cup of reserved sauce

Bake uncovered for 45 minutes, slice like a pie, and serve immediately with desired toppings.  Enjoy!  I served ours with refried black beans and Mexican fiesta corn.

The original recipe calls for cheese to be baked into the pie in the guacamole layer and added to the top during the last five minutes of baking, kind of like a Southwestern lasagna, but I'm avoiding dairy right now as we think Liesl may have a slight intolerance.  The Mister didn't mind just having cheese as a topping, though!

Recipe adapted from Uptown Down South by Greenville Junior League Publications