| You should like this one.
Sauce:
2 cans tomatillos (Mexican green "tomatoes"), drained (save juice)
1 large clove garlic, or 2 small cloves, peeled
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded (pickled or fresh, doesn't matter)
1/2 cup chopped cilantro (or parsley, in a pinch)
Filling:
shredded meat from 2 whole cooked chicken breasts
8 ounces cream cheese
1/2 cup cottage cheese or farmer cheese
1 medium onion, chopped
1 package of 10 wheat-flour tortillas
1 cup heavy cream
1 cup shredded cheese (cheddar, mozzarella, muenster, jack--anything)
1. Make the sauce: In a blender or food processor, puree the drained
tomatillos, garlic, cilantro, and jalapeno. (You might want to
add a teaspoon of sugar--some tomatillos are rather bitter.) Add
some of the juice back in if necessary to make a sauce the consistency
of thick heavy cream. Heat the sauce over low heat in a large frying
pan.
2. Make the filling: Mix the chicken, cream cheese, cottage cheese,
and chopped onion together. (I use the "blunt" blade of a food
processor for this.)
3. Get ready to cook: Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Heavily
butter the bottom and sides of a 9x13 heavy baking dish.
Note: Put 1/3 cup of sauce in the bottom of the dish to keep
everything from sticking later on.
4. Assemble the enchiladas: Have a large plate ready. One at
a time, dip the enchiladas into the hot sauce and let each one sit
for a few seconds, until it's pliable. Quickly pick it out with
two forks, lay it on the plate, and spoon some filling across it
(depends on how big your enchiladas are--I use 3-4 tablespoons).
Then roll it up and put it in the buttered baking dish.
Repeat until the baking dish is full (or you're out of enchiladas
or filling, whichever happens first.) Pour the remaining sauce
over the enchiladas, then pour the heavy cream over that in stripes.
Sprinkle the cheese over everything and bake on the middle rack
of the oven for 25 minutes.
This is delicious served with a fresh homemade tomato salsa and
some Mexican rice and frijoles--especially black ones--on the side.
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| NEW MEXICO STACKED ENCHILADA
SAUCE:
You can buy canned red enchilada sauce and it will work fine.
Or, you can make your own by:
10 dried red chiles (deep red color, approx. 4 inches long)
2 cups warm water
Re-hydrate the dried red chile peppers:
by adding warm water and leaving alone for approx. 1 hour.
WEARING RUBBER GLOVES, pick our any noticable veins from the
chiles and be sure to remove all seeds. Drop the chiles
and approx. 1 and 1/2 cup of the re-hydrating water into a blender
jar along with a couple cloves of garlic and blend until
smooth. The mixture will be watery. Heat over medium heat,
reducing a little, and then add 1/2 cup water with 2 tablespoons
masa harina stirred into it so that there are no lumps, stirring
constantly and cook over low heat until slightly thickened.
This is a hard recipe to write out as I just DO it from years
of practice. Jeff Smith Cooks American may tell you better.
OTHER PREPARATION:
Grate a mixture of LONGHORN cheddar and Monterey Jack cheeses.
(really authentic cooks use Mexican "white" cheese, but it
can be hard to find and is sometimes not made in the best of
environments, so I substitute). You want LOTS of cheese.
Chop up approx. 1 cup of chopped onion
Drain some sliced black olives (2 - 2 small cans)
Fry the corn tortillas (if you use them):
Bring lard or vegetable oil to a depth of 1 inch to frying
temperature in a large cast iron frying pan or equivalent.
Fry up a package or corn tortillas, one at a time, just
until the tortilla is hot, and then drain on paper towels.
IMPORTANT: Don't cook until crisp, just until softened and
kinda floppy.
you can use flour tortillas if you prefer (not truly "kosher"
as they say, but quite tasty) and they require no pre-cooking.
You can used chicken meat if you like. Poach, skin, bone, and shred
the chicken meat and set aside.
ASSEMBLE:
In metal pie plates or cake pans:
place a large ladle of sauce in the pan, lay a tortilla in the
pan, spoon sauce over the tortilla, lay on a layer of cheese,
meat (if desired), sliced olives, and then some diced onion.
Repeat with tortillas for a stack of 4 or 5 tortillas for big
eaters or 3 for smaller eaters...finish with a tortilla, a big
ladle of sauce, and lots of cheese on the top.
Bake in a 350 degree oven until bubbly and done...maybe 30 mins.
Serve topped with (if you wish to be authentic)
a fried egg. You may also top with sour cream, diced tomato,
and sliced avocado.
QUICK GREEN ENCHILADA SAUCE
This sauce makes a nice quick enchilada sauce for those cold
winter days when you gotta have a "texmex" fix. It is in no
way considered authentic, but is the way I learned to make
it from Mrs. Beldonado next door.
Mix two cans of cream of chicken soup, 1 can of milk, 1 cup
of diced green chiles together until hot and smooth. Stir
in a big handful of grated cheeses (mixture above) and stir
until smooth. Use this in the recipe above in place of the
red sauce. Add diced green chiles as you make your stacks.
The chiles used here are the canned, hot, green chiles, but
are not the really fierce pickled jalapenas. You can add
some diced jalapena to enliven the taste some, or you can
use a real spicy salsa from a jar to perk this up. AS I
said, it ain't authentic, it's just GOOD.
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| 12 tortillas and oil for frying
Filling:
1/2 onion, chopped
1 garlic clove, minced
2 T cooking oil
3 c cooked chicken, shredded (use food processor)
1 c sauce (see below)
pepper to taste
1 c Monterey jack or cheddar cheese, shredded
GArnish:
1 c warm sour cream
6 chopped scallions
Saute onion and garlic in hot oil.
Add chicken, brown lightly, stir in sauce and seasoning.
Fry tortillas quickly in hot oil.
Dip in heated sauce, put a strip of filling across each, and roll
tightly.
Arrange side by side in pan, sprinkle with cheese, and heat in 350
oF oven for 10 minutes.
Spoon heated sauce over enchiladas and serve with garnish.
Sauce:
8T mild chile powder
2 canned hot chiles (optional)
1 onion, quartered
1 garlic clove
1 10-oz can tomato sauce
1 t oregano
1 t cumin
1 t sugar
1/8 t pepper
2 T oil
3 c chicken broth
1 c half-and-half
2 T cornstarch dissolved in 4 T half-and-half
Puree the chile pwder, peppers, onion, garlic, tomato sauce, and
spices, then fry for five minutes in hot oil, stirring constantly.
Add remaining ingredients and simmer for two minutes.
Makes enough for wo recipes of enchiladas - you can freeze the extra.
Enchilladas serve 4.
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| I'm replying here since I ***LOVE*** enchiladas!!!
Here's how I do it, as taught to me by a former girlfriend born
in Texas but raised in Mexico by her grandmother (and believe me,
this girlfriend could really cook outstanding authentic Mexican
food, but what follows is the "quick and lazy", non-authentic but
still good eatin' recipes learned after she wound up living and
working in the big-U.S.-city ratrace). One of the happiest
periods in my whole life was when we were whipping out enchiladas
almost daily, no kidding, 5 or 6 nights a week; she had many
variations, what's below are the "basic editions".
NOTE: These recipes are predicated upon using "Las Palmas" brand
enchilada sauce; I've never had entirely satisfactory results using
other brands, so if you're not using Las Palmas, you're on your own
(although my girlfriend could sure make the most superior enchilada
sauce from scratch if she wanted to, but it was quite a bit more work,
especially for green enchilada sauce . . . alas, I never got the
recipes for that, sigh . . . ). Again, if you're not using Las
Palmas, you may do very well to go with one of the other replies to
this note.
Equipment: Frying pan, 5-quart pot or pan, tongs, wooden spoon,
grater, baking sheet with raised edges, cutting board
and kitchen knife, two plates, a large bowl, and a
large (soup) spoon, spatula. A volunteer assistant
is highly desirable.
1. CHEESE or CHEESE & BEEF ENCHILADAS (RED) . . . enough for
12 enchiladas (I usually scale up to do 30-36 at a time myself).
The first few times some folks eat these they don't like it
too much, but even in these cases such folks eventually grow
fond enough of 'em to "go for 'em" anytime.
Ingredients (for the cheese only variant):
1 26 (or is it 28?) oz. can Las Palmas red enchilada sauce
1 10 oz. can of Las Palmas red enchilada sauce (two big
cans is too much and two small cans isn't enough)
NOTE: Las Palmas red chili sauce can be substituted for
the enchilada sauce here; the result will be a
bit hotter, too much for more sensitive palates,
but same amount, 36 oz., or you could use a can
of enchilada sauce and a can of red chili sauce
to get a compromise degree of hotness, which would
be the big can and which would be the small can
according to your taste. Personally, I like 'em
HOT so my preference is the red chili sauce but
the rest of the family insists on straight enchi-
lada sauce. Period.
1 dozen corn tortillas
Cooking oil (I usually use corn oil)
3/4 lb. Monterey jack cheese
1 large onion (a red onion for more sensitive palates,
otherwise a yellow onion)
Optional: one or two cans of sliced ripe olives, sour
cream for garnishing when served, beer for
drinking
For the beef and cheese variant, same as above and add
about a pound of ground beef.
Preparation:
Step 1. Beef and cheese variant only: Start cooking the
ground beef in the frying pan, stabbing and generally
messing around with it with the spatula occasionally
(we ultimately want it browned and crumbled).
Step 1. All variants: Start warming all the sauce in
the 5-quart pan (we want it warm to hot, but defin-
itely not as hot as a boil). Stir occasionally while
warming.
Step 2. All variants: Grate the cheese and chop (dice) the
onion. You can do this ("coprocessing") while the
sauce is warming up . . . if you're doing the beef
as well, you can do this while occasionally messing
with the beef to get it all brown and crumbled.
If you're doing cheese only, put about 3/16" cooking
oil in the frying pan (I usually use corn oil) and
start heating it; we want it "frying" hot.
Step 3. Beef. When the beef is brown and crumbled, I like
to take the spatula and, while tilting the frying
pan, squeeze the beef against the upper side of the
pan, pressing out all the fat which flows down to
the lower side, then, pan still tilted, I spoon out
this fat to one of the now-empty sauce cans to throw
out with the garbage, I don't want all that fat.
Put this defatted crumbled beef into the large bowl.
Wash the frying pan, dry with paper towel, and cover
the bottom with about 3/16" cooking oil (I usually
use corn oil myself) and start heating it like would
be done in step 2 cheese variant . . . the only
reason we didn't do this in step two is because it'd
make 2 frying pans dirty, this way only one is dirty
but admittedly it gets washed twice in the end.
Maybe just my habit from the days I only owned one
frying pan.
Step 4. All variants: Put the chopped onion on a plate and
the grated cheese on a plate. The frying oil probably
isn't hot enough at this point, so we have a couple
of minutes to quickly wash up the knife, grater, and
cutting board (and spatula for the beef eaters).
Now call your volunteer to the kitchen (makes the whole thing
go much faster if you get a volunteer to roll these things).
Here's what you do: Fry a tortilla in the oil, turning
occasionally (this is what the tongs are for). . . when it
starts to stiffen or harden (but don't really let it get stiff
or hard) put it in the warm to hot enchilada sauce and push
it under with the wooden spoon so's it gets a good sopping
bath in the stuff. Start frying another tortilla at this
point. Check frequently the one in the sauce, we want to get
it out when it's soft enough for rolling but not so soft that
it's gonna disintegrate. When ready, toss it on the baking
sheet and tell your volunteer to spread on some of the beef
across the tortilla's diameter (if you're doing beef) next
cheese (or cheese first if you didn't do beef), next some
of the chopped onion. By now you should have the second
tortilla in the sauce and the third one frying in the oil.
Then, with the one on the baking sheet, you put about 3-4
tablespoons of the sauce from the pot over the filling and
tell the volunteer to roll it and start a line-up of these
things on the baking sheet. "Seam side" goes down when
rolling. Tell the volunteer to reserve some of the onions
and cheese for sprinkling over the top of all of 'em when
they're all rolled.
So this is the general scheme . . . you keep one frying,
one in the sauce, while the volunteer is filling and rolling
'em, your only contribution to the filling activity being
spooning out a few tablespoons of sauce over the
(beef) cheese and onion filling before the roll. This
way you stay pretty clean, the volunteer gets enchilada
sauce all over his hands, hee hee.
Somewhere in the middle of this production line activity,
start warming the oven to 325 degrees.
When they're all rolled and lined up on the baking sheet,
sprinkle over the top the cheese and chopped onion that
was held in reserve for the topping. Sprinkle on the
chopped ripe olives if you chose that option. Lastly,
you should have left over sauce, so pour that all around
on top of the whole works. Throw 'em in the 325 degree
oven; depending on how "hot" your oven is and how accurate
the thermostat, they're gonna need 20-30 minutes. Check
once in a while, they're done when the cheese on top is
nice and melty. They need to cool for about 10 minutes
or so before serving. While they're in the oven, you
can wash up the cooking stuff and set the table. By
the way, any left over oil I save for one more cooking,
usually I'll do tacos the following night and reuse the
oil for that before I toss it or else tacos was the night
before and I'm using for the second and final time the oil
left over from taco tortilla frying, a recipe I won't get
into since this isn't the note for that and I don't like
tacos that much to put in all the time to type in my
favorite taco making techniques.
Serve with sour cream for individuals to optionally slather
over the top of 'em once they get 'em on their plates.
Beer is real good with these, too, ice cold beer (just
drink that, don't put it on the enchiladas).
2. CHICKEN OR CRAB ENCHILADAS
For those folks that read through all that above spiel,
you're gonna be rewarded for making it this far. These
are delicious!! and will be liked even by those delicate
folks who won't like the above red sauce version. These
are well worth making.
Ingredients: Same as above EXCEPT we use Las Palmas green
enchilada sauce and no beef.
If you are doing chicken: First, before anything else,
pressure cook the chicken for about 20-30 minutes in a
pressure cooker (one whole chicken, you'll probably have
to quarter it to get it in the cooker). While the chicken is
pressure cooking you can prepare the other stuff as described
above. When the chicken is cooked, you will find that it's
EXTREMELY EASY to debone and deskin the bird, the meat just
easily pulls free from skin and bones. That's what we want,
a bowl of more or less shredded chicken meat. If you like,
you can clean out your refrigerator and toss all your
veggies, after cutting into chunks, into that broth and
pressure cook that as well ending up with real good veggie
soup (that maybe you want to throw some of the chicken meat
into) but that's another recipe as well, but you folks get
the idea . . . real good for a weekly "purge" of the "old"
veggies in the fridge . . . Back to the enchiladas . . .
If you're doing crab instead of chicken: I buy a bit more
than a pound of "imitation crab meat" which the supers
out here have been stocking in their seafood departments
lately . . . don't know what this actually is, but it's good
enough for me. Shred this up. Otherwise, you'll have to
do real crab meat however that's done, beyond the scope
of this recipe.
Then basically it's the EXACT same procedure as above for
the beef and cheese variation except we're doing chicken
or crab instead of beef and we're using Las Palmas green
enchilada sauce instead of the red stuff. But just same
procedure, frying, soaking in sauce, filling with the meat
and cheese and onion and a few tablespoons of sauce,
rolling, sprinkling reserved cheese and onion and leftover
sauce and maybe chopped olives over the top of the rolled
multitude and baking, same time, same temperature, serve
with (optionally) sour cream and beer. MMMMMMMM, good!!
Bill Dickey, specialist
in enchiladas, tacos, lasagne,
pizza, hamburgers, but
especially enchiladas.
Santa Clara, Calif.
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| This is a recipe I came up with for summers when I want
enchiladas, but I don't want all that heavy sauce with
them. If I'm really starved, I'll add a layer of browned
ground beef, shredded beef, or chicken to each tortilla.
Or I'll use different cheeses.
The tortillas have a tendency to get soggy. I fry them a
a couple of seconds longer, but still not long enough to
get them hard, and I drain as much juice out of the salsa
as I can. Even with soggy tortillas, these are still the
best enchiladas I've ever had.
Enchiladas Frescas
Corn Tortillas (3-5 per person, depending on appetite)
Oil for frying
Salsa Fresca
Grated Cheddar Cheese (lots of it)
Dip tortillas in hot oil to soften, drain well on paper towels.
Warm salsa in a small skillet. Place tortilla on plate, flat,
spoon salsa over it, add cheese, add another tortilla and more
salsa, etc. Serve with rice and refried beans (add some salsa
to these, too, if desired).
Salsa Fresca
1 16-oz. can Whole Tomatoes, drained and chopped fine.
1/2 cup Onion, chopped fine
1/4 cup Green pepper, chopped fine
1 or 2 Tomatoes, chopped fine
1 or 2 Chile Peppers, chopped fine (choose your heat, I use
poblanos for mild, jalape�o, serrano or pequin for hot)
Oregano, salt, and pepper to taste
Mix well. Can be used as a salsa for chips, or in recipes.
This makes about 1 quart.
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