Enchiladas are arguably the most comforting of all Mexican entrees. Perhaps that's because they most closely resemble a casserole -- with protein, grains and vegetables all baked together and topped with delicious, flavorful red sauce and a layer of melted cheese.
Whether filled with beef, pork, chicken, fish, cheese, beans or any combination of those ingredients, enchiladas can often be complicated dishes, like these with homemade sauce and fresh cilantro from Flickr user purdyinblue. But the Mexican one-pot meal is also a great way to feed lots of people with very little effort, especially if you use a Dorito-encrusted recipe from the likes of Emeril Lagasse... or Charlie Gibson, depending on who you ask.
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Emeril Lagasse is expanding his culinary empire this month with his first hamburger joint.
Burgers and More by Emeril will bring the world-famous chef's signature flair to the basic burger. It's slated to open Nov. 22 at the Sands Casino Resort in Bethlehem, Pa.
"I really want to be the real thing," Emeril told Slashfood at the restaurant's unveiling at New York City's famed Carnegie Deli. "This is not going to be the dollar menu here."
Everyone from Anthony Bourdain to John Besh to longtime friend Jacques Pépin has a memory about the woman who taught America how to cook
Known for her distinctive chirruping voice and down-to-earth attitude towards French cooking (and one famously dropped roast chicken), Julia Child maintains an everlasting influence on generations of professional and home cooks.
On "The French Chef," Child taught America that anybody can cook with the right instruction while managing to be the best of both worlds: educational and engaging.
With the biographical movie, "Julie & Julia," hitting theaters nationwide on Aug. 7, AOL Food chatted with notable chefs and food personalities about their personal memories and thoughts of Child and her considerable impact on the way America cooks at home.
"[She] singlehandedly created the cooking show as we know it, started the whole notion of the celebrity chef, created a market in which me and many of my friends have prospered," said Anthony Bourdain, chef and host of Travel Channel's "No Reservations." "She changed not just the culinary world -- but the whole world."
With Child's trademark sign-off -- a jolly "Bon Appétit!" -- her knowledge and quirky charisma allowed Julia to teach America that any one can cook, even a 4-hour long boeuf bourguignon, with the right coaching.
Chef Jacques Pépin, Julia's longtime friend and collaborator, remembers what the 6-foot-2 doyenne of French cooking taught him when he first started doing television.
"I learned to be a bit more casual," Pépin told AOL Food.
But Pépin said while Julia might sometimes make mistakes in the kitchen, for her, the focus of cooking on TV was "what did I learn today?" Viewers, she thought, "should be learning something."
Child was a mentor to Chef Emeril Lagasse, and he made several appearances on her show 'Cooking with Master Chefs'. In the video below, he explains just what he loved about her "I don't give a crap" attitude.
Celebrity chef Sara Moulton, executive chef of Gourmet magazine, TV personality and cookbook author, first met Julia in 1979 while working as a food stylist on her PBS cooking show "Julia Child & More Company" and remained friends until Child's death in 2004.
"She was so spontaneous which is why everyone loved her," Moulton said, adding: "You never knew what she was going to do."
Chef John Besh of Restaurant August in New Orleans and cookbook author of "My New Orleans" went so far as to name Child "the ambassador of French Cooking."
"She was the first one to take the mystique out of cooking," Besh told AOL Food. "She was the pioneer of speaking about food in everyday terms and removing a lot of the snobbery from it."
See what else Chef Besh told AOL Food about Julia Child. Click the arrow to start the video.
Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard spoke with AOL Food about Julia Child's influence on her career. Click the arrow to start the video.
Michael Psilakis, New York City chef and TV personality, raced home to watch Julia Child on television growing up because she reminded me of his grandmother -- "a big woman with big hands and funny accent."
More than that, Psilakis said Julia spread the culinary world to a lot more people than chefs like himself could ever touch in a dining room.
"What she really is teaching, more than the process of how to cook something, is the gift that food really is," Psilakis said. "She showed people that food is this glorious gift."
Child taught that life should be lived with an amount of joie de vivre and unashamed passion as Matt Lee of the James Beard Award winning cookbook author duo The Lee Bros. shared in this memory of Julia that involves bubbly and a sword.
"She was the speaker at a black-tie holiday dinner of an ancient Harvard arts organization. I don't recall a thing she said, but that she elicited plenty of laughter from the crowd, a mixed group of about 100, students, faculty and alumni," Lee said.
"Nearing the end of her remarks, she called for a saber and champagne bottle, and the dining room fell silent as she proceeded to perform that Napoleonic trick (shearing the cork and glass collar clean with a brisk stroke)," he continued.
"In this case, the cork sailed out over the crowd in a wide arc, taking what seemed like a full minute to cross the room, all eyes following," Lee said. "It nailed the economist John Kenneth Galbraith's red wine goblet, which shattered and dropped its full load on the tablecloth, at which point the entire room stood up and gave her a standing ovation."
With her undeniable presence and zest for life, Child reached out and touched audiences by being unpretentious and real -- changing foodways by convincing the home cook that "you can do it too."
Kat Kinsman and Sara Bonisteel also contributed to this story.
To much of the country, charismatic Food Network star and restaurateur Emeril Lagasse has become, well, just another household name. But in Bethlehem, Pa., tucked in the foothills of the state's Pocono Mountains, Emeril has become a culinary heartthrob whose embrace has sent the locals into a frenzy.
For the residents of this overhauled steel town already gaga over the coming of its first casino, the addition of Emeril's Chophouse side-by-side with the slots is a coup. After all, the Yankee (he hails from Fall River, Mass.) bypassed New York City (where he has a second home) and Boston (an hour from his birthplace) for "Christmas City" to house his first northeast eatery.
The Bam! man was on hand Tuesday for a media luncheon, and is currently in Bethlehem overseeing a test run of his 230-seat restaurant for its sold-out Friday opening. Located inside an old steel mill building, the restaurant is fittingly outfitted with cast-iron steel flourishes and a menu combining Emeril's bayou style with the no nonsense meat and potato sensibilities of the region: "We are very sensitive to the market no matter where we are," he told us.
The chef, cookbook author and television legend talks gumbo, Julia Child and why it's easy for him to be green.
If a couple of chefs hadn't taken note early in his career, Emeril Lagasse might have ended up beating the drums, rather than the New Orleans cuisine for which he's become legend. AOL Food sat down with the BAM! Man to talk about his famous catchphrase, key influences, his adopted hometown and just what made him change his tune about cooking.
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To much of the country, charismatic Food Network star and 
