Green Enchiladas (boy, it's been awhile!)

Well.  Here I am after a year.  It's been a long, strange trip indeed!
I just turned 32 on Sunday.  I made green enchiladas today.  A friend asked for the recipe, so here we go!

I wasn't planning to blog this. The image was done with my cell phone camera.  We must all deal with it.

I didn't use a recipe!

But, I'll make one up for what I did!

Useful tools:
a saucepan that will hold at least four cups of liquid
a baking pan with high sides (I used a 9X13 Wilton baking pan.  Glass casserole dishes are handy, too)
a sharp kitchen knife (you'll need to to cut your onion)
a stick blender (or a heat resistant blender/food processor)
tongs (for gently frying the tortillas and not your fingers)
a whisk if you don't have a stick blender
a sexy ladle (or a non-sexy ladle, if you prefer)
measuring cups, spoons
head-sized bowl
a couple forks (to shred the chicken)

Ingredients:
For the sauce
1 28 oz can of Tomatillos (or similar amount equaling 1lb, 12 oz)
4 cloves of garlic, mushed or whole.  Whatever!  No pesky, smelly dicing!
1 half a yellow or white onion (or go nuts and try a red onion!), roughly chopped
a handful of cilantro, which is approximately 1/4 cup of loosely packed leaves and stems (please rinse it!)
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 cup sour cream
salt to taste (I sprinkled in maybe a half a teaspoon at most)
(optional) a tablespoon of starch mixed with about three tablespoons of water to thicken stuff up at the end
the water leftover from poaching the chicken (I guess there was about 2 cups of chickeny water in there)

For spicy heat:
I used one little bird chili pepper.

1 jalapeño would be good, instead (pickled would add more tang to the flavour of the recipe).  Maybe a teaspoon of cayenne, if you'd really like some kicky heat.  A single scotch bonnet/habanero would also provide a great deal of burn.  To reduce the heat of a fresh chili, CAREFULLY remove the seeds.
I think a little experience with chili peppers would come in handy, here, but you can be ballsy and try something new!


For the rest:
about a pound of chicken breast, poached (check this out for how to do that!)
12 corn tortillas
about 1 cup of oil for frying the tortillas (a note on that video: PLEASE do not fry your tortillas with your FINGERS.  :(  Use tongs.  Sheesh.)
about 2 cups of shredded cheddar, monterey jack cheese or similar textured cheese, separated into 1 cup each


HOW TO PUT THIS ALL TOGETHER


1. Poach your chicken.  Save your water for the sauce.
2. While the chicken is cooking, get the skins off your garlic cloves and prep your onion.
3. Pop open your can of tomatillos.
4. Remove cooked chicken from the water and set it aside to shred.
5. Pour all contents of tomatillo can into the saucepan of chicken water.  Add onion and garlic and any heat seasonings you wish to use.
6. Bring to a boil until onion is soft.
7. Reduce heat to a simmer.  Season with cumin and salt.  Add the cilantro.
8. Blend the heck out of it with your stick blender or in your heat-resistant blender/food processor.  Blend 'til smooth.
9. Optional thickening: Return to heat and slowly add the starch and water mix.  If you are using the stick blender, keep it running while you do this.  If you do not have one, use a whisk during this stage.


You should have a pretty decent amount of enchilada sauce now!


10. Take two forks and use one to hold the chicken in place and the other to drag across the surface of the chicken.  This action should produce shredded chicken!
11. In a head-sized bowl: mix chicken with sour cream, about 1/2 cup to 3/4 cups of your enchilada sauce, 1 cup of cheese.  Set aside.  This is your filling.  Stuff is really coming together now!
12. Ladle a coating of enchilada sauce into the bottom of your baking pan.  Make sure it's all covered or things might stick to the pan and then you have enchilada mush!
12. Fry your tortillas in hot oil.  Just barely.  If it's hard and crispy, you're set for tostadas...  I usually fry 3-4 at a time and then...
13. Place about 2 tablespoons of filling in your fried tortilla and roll it up.  Place it seam down in the pan.  Lay them side by side.
14. Once you have all your rolls done, spoon more sauce over the top and then sprinkle with the other cup of cheese.
15. Cheat time and put your oven rack up high, turn on the broiler and brown the top of your enchiladas until they're bubbly and awesome.  Be careful!  Don't leave the stove for a second.  It WILL burn when you turn away, out of spite.
If the broiler makes you uncomfy, try baking at about 450°F and see how that goes.  I should try it so I can tell you if it works or not!  Maybe one of you can!  Assignments for everyone!


I served dinner with some shredded iceberg lettuce, partially smooshed black beans, a squooze of lime over it all and a dollop of sour cream.* 

*Sour cream not included in photographic evidence.

(I stole the chili pepper photo from here: A blog! If this does not agree with you and you are responsible for the photo, please contact me and I will remove it with my apologies.)

Chicken Bother: We call it broth

For those who like soups, but don't know much about cooking, there is an important feature to it. It's called broth. Broth is basically made up of some vegetables and assorted carcasses, depending on you want. If you use chicken then it's chicken broth. If you use beef then it's beef broth. If you use your imagination then it's vegetable broth. It's all about personal preference there.

I've been a vegan for 8 going on 9 years. This might make you think that I was going to talk about vegetable broth but as the title says that's a rather big lie. I'm going to talk about making chicken broth because I just got to make some and it was delicious. This makes me a bad vegan (actually it makes me not a vegan at all, but that's for another time) but I feel the need to share this with those who might not know how to do it.

Step 1. Get yourself a chicken
Preferably dead and mostly eaten. You can have roasted it yourself, of purchased it from the store. We aren't picky and you shouldn't be either. What you want to do is break apart the chicken and pull all the meat you can off of it. You can use it for the soup later, but right now what you really want are the bones, and some of the skin if you can pull it off.
When you've got it all taken apart, put the chicken bones in a pot and put the chicken meat in the fridge.

Step 2. Water, water everywhere
You can fill the pot with water, enough so that it covers the chicken bones completely. Don't do anything just yet, but it's good to have the water ready.

Step 3. Vegetables
Despite the fact that this is a chicken broth, vegetables are totally needed. You're going to want to use the troika of vegetables. The Onion, the Carrot and the Celery. These three vegetables will make your broth amazingly awesome.
This is reason 58187298722 why making a broth is a good idea. You know how you get those bags of vegetables that you never seem to fully use? This is where they're going to go. I know I have never, ever used a full bag of onions before they've gone completely and created their own zombie onion hoard on me. Putting them in broths is a great way to deal with that. Same thing with carrots and celery though I tend to have less carrots and celery that goes bad. They don't really go bad, they just kind of wilt and get all emo on me.
Thankfully when you use these three vegetables you want to use double the amount of onions over the other two vegetables. That means if you use a couple of carrots and a couple of stalks of celery then you want to use two to three whole onions. No need to be fancy, just chop 'em in half and throw them into the pot.

Step 4. Na-Cl

Salt is perhaps one of the most important things in cooking. It does wonderful miraculous things to your food, especially if you put it in while you're cooking instead of afterward. You're going to want to put some salt in now. At the very least you want a couple of teaspoons, you may even want a tablespoon or two of the stuff. Some people might be cringing but understand this is going in several cups of water. It's a lot less salt per unit then if you just sprinkle the damned stuff on your food directly.

Step 5. Boil-boil-boil-boil
Now, you're going to want to top up the water so that everything is covered up nicely, put the lid on the let that sucker sit on a slow, gentle boil for a while. You'll let all those flavours marry in the pot and then you're going to want to go play a video game, read a book, grab your loved one and spend several hours of bliss. Whatever you want to do to make that time pass easier, go for it.

Step 6. Strain!

You've finished your extra-culinary activities and you feel that the broth is ready to go. Excellent, now you want to take all the things you put in there to make the water taste good and take them out. A colander will go far in this, as well as a bowl.

For the love of god finish reading this first because if you empty the stock into the sink because I told you to use a colander and you went in pasta auto-pilot and dumped it into the sink do not blame me. Seriously.

Step 7. Use!

Now, you can use the broth, or not. You can put it in a container and freeze it. You can use it add some non-wilty carrots and celery, a cup of rice and some of the chicken you ripped off to make some nice chicken and rice soup.

That's how you get a pretty serviceable chicken broth in seven steps.

-Jonathan

Shredded Chicken and Butter Chicken: Together, at last!

I've been passing this recipe around for a while now. I think it's time to put it in writing. Butter chicken (Murgh makhani) is delicious Indian food and quite popular amongst western/British populations. Its origin (according to the ever-useful wiki page on butter chicken) lies in the Punjab region of India and is reputed to have been made by one of the kitchen staff at a restaurant called Moti Mahal.
Recipes vary greatly and I definitely can't claim the one I use as AUTHENTIC, but it sure is tasty. If your food isn't satisfying, why eat it?

So, after a lot of poking about I settled on this recipe for the meal. I'll embed it here for convenience!

Chicken: How To Make Butter Chicken

I tend to cut large chunks of onion. I like the rustic look and the texture it provides.

Instead of using the cut up chicken, I use shredded! Here's how I do it:
*as a note you can do this with any large chunk of chicken/turkey. Thighs and breasts are best!*

SHREDDED CHICKEN
Take your chicken pieces and place them in a pot with a lid. Barely cover the meat with water. I sprinkle a little salt and pepper. This is to your taste!
Bring the water to a boil. Cover the pot with a lid and reduce the heat to a low simmer. Leave it alone for a good 15-20 minutes.
Remove it from the heat and shred it on a plate or a cutting board with two forks.
In the case of the butter chicken, add it when the recipe calls for you to place the meat in the sauce at the end.

The shredded chicken will stretch the recipe a bit further than the small chunks of chicken.

Other uses for shredded poultry: chili, tacos, salads, burritos, samosa filling, spring roll filling

I serve butter chicken with rice, naan and sometimes some salad for greenery!
I hope this comes in handy!