My husband, Eric, went to New Mexico a few weeks ago for work. I was so jealous that he was enjoying both green and red chile sauce on basically everything he ate. Though he was nice enough to bring back jars of both, it’s just not the same. Not to mention the red sauce jar seal popped during the flight, well, that’s what Eric says. I’m just hoping that it wasn’t tampered with….we’ll soon find out.
Tonight we finally tried the red chile sauce on enchiladas. Now, I have done enchiladas many ways, but after some trial and error, I’ve come up with the most delicious chicken filling. I think I adapted it from a Cooks Illustrated I found a few years ago. This works well with tacos too. Here’s what I do:
Chicken Enchilada/Taco Filling (makes 5-6 enchiladas depending on how much filling you want)
2 chicken breasts
water (enough to cover chicken in pot)
2 cloves of garlic, smashed
1 small onion, chopped
1/2 Tbsp. cumin
Directions:
Place chicken in a 4 quart pot, cover with water and add all the ingredients. Bring to a boil and then simmer for about 25 mins. Once done, take the chicken out and let cool on a cutting board, do not discard the seasoned water. As soon as the chicken is cool enough to handle, shred it and put it in a bowl. Strain out the onion and garlic and add to the shredded chicken. At this point you can leave as is or add enchilada sauce, green chiles, cheese or jalapeno. Now the filling is ready and you can begin assembling your enchiladas.
Tonight I added two jalapeno. We’ve had great success growing them ourselves this year, though I should have checked their potency before I added both, they were very spicy. Unfortunately, they burned my face off and I could only eat half an enchilada. No worries though, Eric ate the rest of mine and finished the other 4 in the pan.
Even though my portion of dinner was a bust, we made up for it by taking a walk to Rita’s Italian Ice. I love italian ice on a hot summer day, but I like a twist custard sugar cone even better. I’m probably going to pay for it later as I need to watch my dairy intake (TMI?) but so far it was totally worth it, ask me in a few hours and we’ll see how I feel about it then.
Custard always brings me back to summers growing up. We had many ice cream places in upstate NY, but the favorites were definitely Orbaker’s (yummy sundaes), Abbott’s (the best custard ever!!) and Chill and Grill (the biggest kiddie sized ice cream cone I’ve ever seen!!). Tonight was just lovely and even though I’m not 5 years old anymore, an ice cream cone seems to make everything better in the world.
Oh, For Food's Sake! 