Creative cook shares her invention for Enchilada Soup.

Byline: Home Cooking by Jim Boyd The Register-Guard

MARILYNNE ADAMS of Blachly, today's featured cook, offers her recipe for Enchilada Soup for others to try.

She is married to J.D. Adams, a logging contractor, and is the mother of two grown sons.

A homemaker who once owned a delicatessen and worked as a cake decorator, she considers herself an artist now.

"I do decorative painting on furniture or anything else that doesn't move," Adams said. "What I've been doing is buying old dressers and headboards and things like that. And then you refinish them and repaint them. and then paint designs on them."

Country Woman magazine just purchased one of her craft designs for a Christmas ornament. It's a plan for a 4-inch-by-4-inch cabin glued together using stick cinnamon for the logs.

As a cook, Adams has done prom dinners and catering for friends. However, she said, "I think the most challenging thing I ever did was cook for the search for Nathan Madsen up in the Cascades in '89."

Nathan, a 9-year-old Veneta boy, disappeared in October 1989 during a family cattle roundup and his remains were not discovered until July 1990 despite a continuing search by friends of the boy's parents, Jerry and Sarah Madsen. J.D. Adams, Madsen's logging partner, was one of the first to join the search.

"We searched for him for nine months," Marilynne Adams said. "The first week was 800 people. And that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done as far as cooking. I had a lot of help, a lot of good help. All the women who could cook just pitched in and started doing it.

"But nine months it took to find him, so every weekend we were there. And we had to organize and cook every time a crew went up there to look for him. Every weekend we had to be able to feed them. So that was probably the hardest thing I've ever done, especially the first week."

Her cooking specialty: "Main dishes. Even though I'm a cake decorator, I don't eat sweets. It's more fun to do main dish cooking and hors d'oeuvre cooking," she said.

How she began cooking: "I think because I like real food, I never liked cooking out of cans and boxes," she said. "And I live 40 miles from town. So you don't run to the fast food on the corner and you don't shop in a supermarket every day. So you cook with what's on hand, and you make do with what you have.

"You just keep trying to make it better, make potatoes and meat taste different every night. I think that's probably where I got creative."

Her biggest cooking success: "I suppose the weddings I have catered, wedding meals, hors d'oeuvre-type meals."

Her biggest cooking failure: The most embarrassing moment, she said, was the time she had company over when she was about 19.

The guests could see through the living room to the kitchen, so it was no secret when she picked up the roast chicken and it slipped off the pan and onto the floor.

"Good thing they were very understanding people," she said. "We did go ahead and eat the chicken. But that was pretty embarrassing."

Her favorite cookbooks: "Really, the only books I use are the 'Joy of Cooking' and the 'Farm Journal Cookbook,' she said.

"I think I like community cookbooks and magazines and Taste of Home because they are just real people sending in real recipes that are tried and true with their families. Cookbooks kind of make you feel like you have to go by the rules, and I'm not a rule kind of girl."

Why this recipe was chosen: Ann Sumich nominated Adams for this Home Cooking column. "She 'invented' a spectacular soup recipe that I served to company during the holidays," Sumich said in an e-mail note. "They raved about it."

So that's the recipe Adams has provided for today's Home Cooking feature.

Adams originally made this soup with her own home-canned enchilada sauce.

"When people started asking for the recipe, I had to figure out how to convert it to cans and measurements, because I don't usually measure anything," Adams said.

"I did work it out to where you could buy enchilada sauce and do it. And I guess it's a success because the lady that sent this in (Sumich) cooked it for a Mexican priest who was a visitor at Christmas and he just raved about it."

Adams said she serves this soup to the 30 women who attend the daylong "wreath party" she holds every Christmas season.

"We have lunch and we make wreaths," Adams said. "Every year, they ask me to make this. I usually have two or three soups for lunch. And everyone says, 'Make the enchilada soup. We love it.' That's where Ann Sumich got the recipe."

Enchilada Soup

1 pound lean ground beef (or ground venison, elk, chicken or turkey)

1 large onion, diced

2 to 3 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tablespoon chili powder

1 teaspoon cumin powder

1 can (4 ounces) chopped mild green chilies

4 cups beef stock (use chicken broth if using ground chicken or turkey)

4 cups homemade or canned enchilada sauce (red) (see note)

2 cans (each 16 ounces) or 1 large can (1 pound 15 ounces) refried beans, or 3 cups cooked pinto beans with juice

1 dozen corn tortillas, cut into 1/2 -inch strips

2 cups or more grated sharp Cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, or 1 can (10 3/4 ounces) condensed cheese soup, or 1 package cheese sauce

Brown the ground meat in a 6-quart Dutch oven with onions and garlic. Add spices and green chilies. Add stock and enchilada sauce. Stir in beans. Simmer on low or put in a 325-degree oven for 1 1/2 hours, or until flavors are blended.

Add the grated cheese or cheese soup or cheese sauce mix. If using grated cheese, remove enchilada sauce from heat before adding the cheese.

Stir in tortilla strips. They will soften like noodles. Do not overstir or tortilla strips will fall apart. Salt to taste. Serve at once.

Note: Choose a hot or mild enchilada sauce based on your own taste preference.

To nominate a cook for this feature, mail it to: Home Cooking, P.O. Box 10188, Eugene, OR 97440; contact Jim Boyd at 338-2363, or [phone]; or e-mail it to jboyd@guardnet. com. Include the nominee's name and phone number and your name and phone number.