Gluten-Free Enchilada Bake: Roasted Green Chile and Cream Cheese

Gluten-free tortilla bake with cream cheese and green chiles.

Planted on the coast of Cape Cod for years (forever, it seemed, on gloomy January days blanketed in gray) I daydreamed about fire roasted chiles. The smoky pepper sweetness that flirted with your senses as you walked in Santa Fe. The luxury of buying bags of freshly roasted chiles by the roadside- still warm, soft as butter, and charred. In fact, I may have moved here for the chiles alone.

That's entirely possible.

I may have been so drop dead in love with chiles when we bought this casita that I didn't notice I'd be stuck out in the desert with so few neighbors. No bookstore, no cafe- no movie theater. What was I thinking? Only my analyst knows for sure (if she remembers me; it's been years since Jungian analysis).

Along with dreaming of Val Kilmer (not the rock scrambling Thunderheart Val, the seasoned, voluptuous new Mega Val- and why he showed up in my dream, I've no clue- better ask my analyst about that, too) I've been craving roasted green chile this month like mad as we approach our second anniversary of moving to New Mexico.

And wouldn't you know it! I'm out of last year's roadside bags of chiles.

They're long gone (my freezer is annoyingly, shall we say, petite). Until roasting season starts I have to settle with buying frozen Bueno chiles. And they're not bad, exactly. They are pretty dang good.

Yet, as I sit and crave and daydream, the big question becomes: Do I really still want to be here in August when chile roasting begins? Is my chile love a devoted, true love, or simply an infatuation? A passing fancy? Will your intrepid dusty goddess remain here in the coyote hills of O'Keeffe country or soon be walking Venice Beach in her Rocket Dogs?

I tell myself, just breathe.

There are Bueno chiles to defrost.

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