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.

Intrigue

Sometimes you read a recipe and it beckons to you to live it, breathe it – make it. There’s something to that – recipes are like blueprints waiting to be given form, a set of instructions – almost like a poem, waiting to be lived. It’s when you cook that it comes to life.

Until you cook it, you imagine what it will be. Maybe I obsess a bit too much about the trajectory from recipe to cooking to finished dish to eating – but a recipe, in that way, is a particular kind of intrigue, an adventure.

Especially when that recipe is from a culinary sphere very unknown to you. A country you’ve never been to – a culture you don’t know very much about. And yet here I am, looking at the ingredients list for this East African stew, and I know these ingredients – I understand them. I can understand how they would be put together.

It’s just like curry – that ultimate of all ultimate comfort dishes.  These ingredients represent “home” to me more than any other – turmeric, coconut milk, green chiles, lime.

Except the dish is not from “home” at all, it’s from Kenya.

Is it really so unknown then, so unfamiliar? Perhaps not. The truth is, we are all far more alike than we are different. To find the familiar and the comforting in a dish that hails from a faraway culture is what I imagine  delights world travelers – finding the threads that weave humanity together no matter how foreign the land.

I’m much more an armchair traveler – books, reading, recipes is how I do the bulk of my traveling. I know myself too well. A jungle safari or a trek up the Himalayas looks good on paper – so rugged, adventurous and seize-the-day – but my disposition is far too sensitive to handle the reality.

I’m a spoiled brat that way, a total loner. I can barely handle a night at the club. I usually want to be home and in bed with a book just when the party is getting started.

Well, seasons change and so do people. Maybe some day I’ll be up for a bout of globetrotting and a trip to magical Kenya. For now though, Kenya comes to me via this dish because the good people of Saveur were rugged enough and inquisitive enough to do the actual traveling for me.

Kuku Wa Nazi (East African Chicken Stew)

Adapted from Saveur

Though this curry looks fiery and spicy, in reality it’s not. Rather it has a strangely cooling effect – between the creamy calming qualities of the coconut milk and refreshing tanginess from the lime. It’s rich, no doubt – but it’s not a harrowing curry. The only word I have for it is soothing. It’s like the lullaby of curries.

Saveur’s recipe calls for fresh plum tomatoes which I would definitely go for especially since summer is nigh (nigh = favorite word for pretending I’m Shakespeare). I had the equivalent of a small can of canned, chopped tomatoes in my freezer so I used that. It enhances the tanginess of the curry even more deeply but I would think that if you prefer the stronger coconut-turmeric hit to come through, the fresh tomatoes would be a better option.

Obviously you can go with skinless boneless whatever and I know chicken drumsticks don’t make a pretty picture, but sometimes you just have to cook with bones. Okay? They’ve got flavor. If you’re barbarically inclined, you can chew the bones. If you’ve never chewed chicken bones (real, organic ones otherwise don’t bother), you’re missing out on one of life’s great pleasures.

It’s not always about what’s pretty. In fact, with food, it should always be about what’s tasty. And this is definitely tasty.

Ingredients

1 tablespoon canola or vegetable oil

1 medium-large yellow onion, minced

3 cloves of garlic, minced

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 packaged chicken drumsticks (about 1.5 pounds)

1 small (8 oz) can chopped tomatoes, or 3 fresh plum tomatoes

4 green Thai bird chiles, minced (seeded, if you absolutely have to)

Juice of 1 juicy lime (use a bit more, about 1/4 cup total, if lime isn’t juicy)

1 (12 oz) can coconut milk

Method

In a medium-sized pot that comes with a lid, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute until translucent. Add the turmeric and stir – you want the turmeric to lose some of it’s jarred quality. Be sure not to burn the turmeric  – or it will lose its gorgeous golden color and turn brown. If necessary, reduce the heat, or add a splash of water to keep it from burning.

Add the chiles and tomatoes, then carefully drop in the chicken. Squeeze in the lime, pour in the coconut milk (careful not to splash yourself) and give everything a good, big stir. Bring the pot to a boil, then lower the heat to medium-low, cover the pot and simmer for 45 minutes. The longer you simmer, the jauntier everything gets in the pot, so don’t skimp on the simmer.

Serve with steamed rice.

Serves 4 inquisitive souls.

Potato Shock

My first experience with potato salad was tragic. It was cold, grey and weirdly sweet, laced with the acrid taste of stale onions. I mean, it was disgusting. I know that’s not a nice thing to say about food but….it was.

What made it more shocking is that I didn’t know what to expect. In my consciousness up until that point, the closest I had come to eating a potato in some sort of salad was in a Bangladeshi dish called chotpoti. The key ingredient in that is actually a boiled bean, similar to a chickpea, but it is accompanied with boiled potatoes and chopped boiled eggs, just like in potato salad.

But, BUT and this is a BIG ol’ but – it is spicily dressed with sour tamarind, lime juice, green chilies, black salt or rock salt (this stuff is vile but in a strangely pleasing way), raw onion (acrid but fresh) and cilantro (give or take a few ingredients based on the cook or street cart operator in charge). I mean, it is truly a spicy, pungent salad.

Chotpoti Image Courtesy RecipesByThePeople.

Pungent, by the way, is a word foodies use to politely say “it stinks”. You’re on your own if you eat this on a date or you know, out in public. Incidentally, many – most – recipes from Eastern cultures don’t take the whole dating thing into consideration. Way to keep it real – I mean, if a little “pungent” onion breath is going to put you off someone, it’s safe to say it’s not true love.

So anyway, back to the generally more date-friendly American potato salad. I’ve got the spicy-savory chotpoti in my mind, I’m looking at this ….gosh, I can’t even describe the color – it’s a non-color color, neither white, nor yellow, neither beige, nor cream, a color that doesn’t even want to be a color – at any rate…I had my first taste of delicatessen potato salad and I couldn’t understand for the life of me why anyone would want to do that to a potato.

I avoided potato salad like the plague after that. Never before had my palate been so confused, shocked and offended by a food. Chances are, you would feel the same way about chotpoti. It’s karmic food retribution.

It was years of potato-salad-disdain and Food TV watching later that I came to understand the basic combination of components that make the dish. The key demystification for me was realizing that you’ve got to make it at home and you’ve got to eat it fresh, preferably at someone’s backyard barbecue party. You can’t let it sit in mayonnaise clumped goop on a deli tray for days on end and have any hope in hell that it’s going to taste good.

And no sugar. No. Sugar. On. Potato. Non!

Truth be told, this is one of those dishes that I’ll never be able to really crack because I just don’t get it – like I can’t get inside the Mr. Potato Salad Head, so I can’t really formulate what the perfect Traditional Potato Salad should taste like. I guess some things about certain cultures do remain a mystery – and that’s a nice thing too.

It’s diversity that unifies.

Cilantro – Green Chili Potato Salad

I’m sure I’ve seen someone (possibly Ina Garten) bake/roast potatoes rather than boil them in preparation for potato salad before. I simply don’t want a water logged potato and I find baking them makes them more potato-y. I like the textural contrast from the skins as well and love to leave the potatoes in large pieces so we know for certain These Are Potatoes.

For the dressing – ah, so many options – but I wanted to keep it pretty simple here with just mayo and lemon. I’m not a mayo-hater (my French fry dippage of choice has always been mayo rather than ketchup – my thighs have not thanked me) but I did toy around with the Greek yogurt idea. In the end, what I wanted for this recipe was something that was fairly minimal and close to the traditional. I happily replaced the vinegar with lemon juice since finding Laurie Colwin’s recipe in the Potato Salad chapter of her book. This chapter also went a long way in redeeming the general, overall reputation of potato salads in my life.

To make it suit my palate, I’ve added the two unusual and vehemently non-traditional ingredients that I simply cannot live without – Thai bird chilies and cilantro. That’s culture shock in reverse.

Ingredients

1 pound baby Yukon gold (or other baby) potatoes

1/4 cup mayonnaise

Juice of ½ a lemon

1 (or 2 or 3) Thai bird chilies, sliced thinly

½ cup cilantro, roughly chopped

Method

Preheat oven to 400.

Wash and scrub potatoes.  Prick with the tines of a fork. If there are any potatoes that are especially large, you can slice them in half.  Place them on a baking sheet and bake in a 400 degree oven for approximately 35-45 minutes.

Remove them from the oven and allow them to cool until they’re just about lukewarm. Slice potatoes in half.

Moving on to the dressing – whisk together mayonnaise and lemon juice. Add the chopped Thai bird chilies, potatoes and cilantro and toss until everything is evenly dispersed and coated with dressing.

Makes 2 generous servings.