Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Heavily Adapted from Cooking Light

The original recipe for this is very involved. Very.

 You have to sear chicken thighs, then roast them in the oven, then shred them and then there’s like a bazillion other steps and pots and pans and blenders and all sorts of high drama.

 I thought, really, it doesn’t have to be that complicated.

So this is the lazier version of that casserole but in my opinion, just as good.

It does have a lot of ingredients, but most of it is stuff you’re likely to already have on hand.

 Plus, the bonus is that this is a lighter recipe, coming to around 400 calories per serving, and you get a good hefty serving for that.

No reason not to make it!

Ingredients

1  lb ground chicken

1 onion, finely chopped

6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

1 teaspoon crushed chili flakes

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon oregano

salt to taste

1 cup frozen corn kernels

1/2 cup chopped cilantro

1 plum tomato, chopped

3 oz reduced fat cream cheese

2 tablespoons chopped pickled jalapenos

1 cup chicken broth, plus 1/4 cup water

2/3 cup salsa verde

9 corn tortillas

1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Method

For Filling

Coat a non-stick pan with cooking spray or a small amount of oil. Saute the ground chicken, along with half of the onion and half the garlic. Break up the chicken with a wooden spoon. Add the chili flakes, cumin, oregano and salt and mix well. Toss in the frozen corn kernels and cook until chicken is no longer raw, onions are translucent and corn is warmed through.

Set aside to cool for about 5 minutes.

Once the chicken has cooled, add and stir in the chopped tomato, cream cheese, pickled jalapenos and cilantro.

For Sauce

In a medium saucepan, saute the remaining garlic and onion in  a small amount of oil or cooking spray. Once they’ve softened, pour in the broth, water and salsa verde. Simmer for 15-20 minutes.

To Assemble

Pre-heat the oven to 425.

Cut the corn tortillas into quarters.

Place half a cup of the salsa verde sauce in the bottom of an 8×8 baking dish coated with cooking spray.

Arrange 12 tortilla pieces on top of the sauce. Top the tortillas with half of the chicken mixture.

Repeat this procedure, ending with the tortillas on top. For the final layer, add the rest of the sauce and sprinkle over with the cheese.

Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the cheese is golden brown and the casserole is bubbly.

Makes 4 huge servings for rule-breakers of all kinds. Even those on a diet.

Overlooking The Ordinary

As John Lennon so rightly said – life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Usually, those other plans are the big things – some day I’ll be famous, rich, married, published and generally so fabulous that people will be falling at my feet and showering me with rose petals every hour on the hour.

Mm hmm. Right.

In the meantime, there is life. The quiet overlooked moments. The dishes in the sink, the trillionth re-run of America’s Top Model, the tattered t-shirt you refuse to throw away, the yet un-read pile of books on the nightstand, and recipes like this one for Chicken Noodle Salad.

So ordinary that you overlook it. Not special, not trendy. No one’s tweeting about it and it’s not going to win any awards. People might even wonder what kind of an imbecile would post such a recipe (because clearly, people have nothing better to do).

But the fact is, these recipes are what happen while you’re busy making plans for bigger, more spectacular, award-winning, attention-grabbing, book-proposal-launching recipes.

Like when you’re too tired to think and you just want a bowl of starchy rice with some soy sauce and hot sauce splashed on top for dinner.

Or butter. And pasta. Sprinkle of parmesan.

Leftover chicken stir-fried with rice, chilis, peas and crushed bouillon. Yes, I said bouillon. Get over it. It’s not the enemy and works in a pinch. Because I walk to and from the grocery and those freakin’ cartons of chicken stock are heavy.

Ramen. Endless ramen. Veggies, scrambled eggs, soy. Will remain your friend long after your twenties have come and gone.

Fried egg and bacon sandwich with mayo and hot sauce. And chips. And Diet Coke. (Excuse me, you DO save calories from Diet Coke, okay?)

I love those non-recipe recipes. The ordinary “recipes” of daily life. What we eat while we’re watching stuff on Top Chef that most of us, probably, will never eat or attempt to make.

To me, those overlooked eating moments are not throwaway. They are more deeply revealing of who you are than the fanciest recipe you make from following someone else’s instructions. That food speaks more truly to the soul of your kitchen than anything else.

Not many food writers go into that kind of thing – Nigella refers to it a lot which is why I love her. You only have to see one of the midnight fridge raid portions that close her TV shows to relate immediately.

These aren’t the kind of recipes you’ll ever be known for, perhaps it’s not even the kind of recipe you want to write about, but it is still a recipe with a story and a more intimate, revealing story than all the buttercream recipes ever compiled in the world.

Because it’s just what you do in your kitchen, by yourself, that neither you nor anyone else would even notice.

And that’s where life happens.

Chicken Noodle Salad

I think what I had in mind while I was half-consciously tossing this together were the cold noodle salads I used to get at my school cafeteria. Now I know cafeteria food is normally the kind of thing you want to forget, not re-create but just call it one of the perks of going to school in Bangkok. There was a noodle stand where we would buy hot bowls of “sen-mee lukchin” or white rice noodles with meatballs (what the meatballs were actually made of were a source of great debate amongst  7^th graders).

By the noodle stand were several bowls of condiments – 9 or 10 of them. The condiments are key to creating noodle soup and my friends and I would spice up our bowls like they were works of art and then have a taste of each others creations to see who had done the best that day.

Quite a world away from a cold turkey sandwich and an apple.

Some drowned their soup in soy, others liked the tang of a particular condiment made from vinegar and red chilis, I was always partial to the fish sauce with thai bird chilis (nam pla prikinoo). You had to sprinkle with crushed red pepper and of course you got extra points for having the spiciest noodle bowl at the table.

You could also opt for noodles without broth, and you had a choice of egg noodles instead of the thin rice noodles. When I was in an egg noodle sort of mood, I would skip the broth, the noodle lady would put on lots of cilantro and bean sprouts and I would douse the whole thing in soy, nam pla and crushed red pepper.

The noodle salad I created here is a much tamer, sub-conscious version of that memory.

Ingredients

4 oz angel hair pasta

¼ cup sliced red onions

1 cup cooked chicken, shredded

2-3 tablespoons soy sauce

3-4 Thai bird chiles, chopped

Big handful cilantro, roughly chopped

1 tablespoon toasted pine nuts

Method

Soak the red onion in some cold water for 10-15 minutes, then drain and squeeze out the excess water. This takes some of the acrid bite out of the onion.

Cook the pasta then drain and rinse under cold water until the noodles are cold.

In a large bowl, toss the chicken, onions, pasta and soy sauce together. Add the remaining ingredients and toss well.

What can I say, it’s that simple.

Serves 2 extraordinarily ordinary people.

Smug

Sometimes, unfortunately, you just have to eat salad.

I have to admit that in a world full of sugar-and-fat-laden culinary possibilities salad just doesn’t make it to the top of my wishlist very often. As luck and karma would have it though, you can’t get away with not eating your veg. Sooner or later, all that butter catches up to you. There’s a reason why the word butt is in butter. These things are not coincidences you know.

So unless the universe flips the scales one morning and we all wake up to find that butter, sugar, flour and fried food is not only good for us, it actually helps us lose weight (maybe if we all pray hard enough?) it’s probably a good idea to make friends with the bag of pre-washed greens we so tiresomely yet dutifully buy at the supermarket.

But the situation isn’t so bleak. Salad-making does lend itself to endless possibilities and salads can be satisfying – even if they’re never going to win a popularity contest against fried chicken. The key, as in all cooking, is to make a salad that works for you.

Nothing puts me off a salad faster than bland and boiled toppings. This is usually standard at a salad bar – plain boiled beans, for instance, or dry, tasteless chicken. I mean, just because a salad isn’t the most exciting meal of the day doesn’t mean we have to ring the death knell for it. Raw greens may not be curling my toes, but get creative with the toppings and you get a fulfilling meal that makes you feel smug and wholesome and healthy.

Smug, by the way, is what you feel after you do stuff you really don’t want to do. After a workout? Smug. After eating a light salad? Smug. After cleaning out your cupboards? Smug. Cheeseburger and fries for lunch? Not so smug. Tasty maybe. But definitely not smug.

So anticipate and practice that warm smuggy feeling, make a salad and maybe, just maybe the whole healthy lifestyle thing (and the billion-dollar industry spawned by our collective inability to grasp it) will be a little more tolerable.

Believe me, I need all the persuasion I can get.

Mixed Greens with Chicken, Pine Nuts & Golden Raisins

I’ve never really quite understood the 3 to 1 olive oil to vinegar ratio in standard vinaigrettes. To me, that’s just too oily. I like the tang of vinegar in salads, and I would rather taste it than the oil. I’m also a fan of warm dressings and if I’m going to be heating up the pan anyway – as I will here to sauté the chicken – then I make use of that flavor by de-glazing the pan with the vinegar. I don’t know if that’s weird or what, but it works for me – plus it’s full on flavor. I find I don’t need any additional oil here, but you could add some olive oil to the chicken pan along with the vinegar if that is more to your taste.

But really, I would save the calories for dessert.

Ingredients

1 teaspoon garlic oil  *see Note

2 chicken tenders

Pinch dried thyme

Pinch red chili flakes

2 cups mixed salad greens

1 tablespoon pine nuts, toasted

2 tablespoons golden raisins

½ tablespoon cider vinegar

¼ teaspoon Dijon mustard

Method

Heat the garlic oil in a small sauté pan over medium high heat. Cut the chicken tenders into bite size pieces. Toss the chicken pieces into the pan, season with salt and add the pinch of thyme and red chili flakes. Stir until cooked through.

Place the salad greens in a bowl. Remove the chicken pieces from the pan and scatter them over the greens along with the toasted pine nuts.

Put the pan back on the stove over very low heat. Add a tiny splash of water (no more than a teaspoon) just to deglaze the pan, then add in the cider vinegar, mustard and golden raisins. Whisk everything together until heated through. You want the raisins to be slightly soft and the liquid to be reduced just a tad.

Pour the dressing over the greens (scrape the pan with a spatula to get every bit of dressing out). Season with salt and pepper to taste and toss everything together making sure to coat the greens well.

Serves 1 very smug person.

*Note: I make garlic oil at home by gently warming through 1 head of garlic (cloves peeled and crushed) in 2 cups of oil (canola or regular olive oil). Discard the cloves and store the oil a decanter (fancy word for bottle). For this recipe, you can obviously just toss in some chopped garlic when you’re sautéing the chicken. The garlickiness is stronger this way but that’s not the end of the world.