Enchiladas Verdes

I had a bunch of left over roast turkey from another recipe I was making for a friend so I decided to try my hand at enchiladas verdes!

Here is the recipe I came up with after reading through several recipes I found on the internet (as mentioned previously on this blog, I tend to Frankenstein recipes together to get the exact recipe I want -- or I just make one up myself!)

 

Sauce:

• 3 cups tomatillos remove husk, rinse, cut them in half or quarters
• 2 TBS minced garlic
• 1” slice of onion optional (or you can remove before blending if someone doesn’t like onions)
• Water or soup stock enough to just cover the tomatillos (I use either stock from the meat or Better Than Bouillon)
• 3-5 serrano peppers discard stems, seeds, and pith (the amount you use depends on pepper size and how spicy you want it)

Throw the first four ingredients into a saucepan. Cook until the tomatillos dull and become somewhat translucent. Add the serranos and blend. Cook a couple minutes more and remove from heat or turn the heat to warm if you will be serving right away.

Filling:

• 4 cups shredded roast meat - chicken, turkey, or pork
• 3-4 TBS olive oil
• 3 TBS minced garlic
• 3-4 bay leaves
• 1 cup water or soup stock  (I use the stock from the meat, or Better Than Bouillon)
• 1 TBS chipotle pepper ground
• I use 3-4 TBS of Badia fajita seasoning, but you can add your own spices. Try this mix:

                1-2 tsp red pepper flakes (depending on how hot you want it)

                1 tsp paprika (can use smoked)

                1/4 tsp cayenne pepper (leave out if you don't want it very spicy)

                2 tsp chili pepper powder

                1/2 tsp cumin

                1/2 tsp onion powder or 1 tsp onion flakes

                1/2 tsp garlic powder or 1 tsp granulated garlic

                1 tsp salt

                *Add more of any of these spices until the meat tastes the way that you want it to!
                  You can add a variety of peppers (eg. poblano/ancho) for a richer flavor.

Add meat to a large, hot skillet. Stir until heated. Add oil. Once oil is heated, add garlic and seasoning (except bay leaves). Cook for a couple minutes stirring to keep from burning. Add stock and bay leaves. Turn down heat to a simmer. Add more water if needed. Simmer on low for 10-15 minutes to set in the flavors.

Assembly:

• White corn tortillas
• Filling
• Sauce
• Chopped cilantro

Heat a pan (preferably cast iron) on high. Put a tortilla on the dry pan for 30 seconds, turn over and cook another 30 seconds. There should be some browning, and even a little scorching is good. They should lose some of their translucence but still be flexible. Remove from heat and throw another tortilla on. Repeat process with all the tortillas you will need.

On one end of the cooked tortilla, spread about 1/8 cup hot filling. Roll. Put on a plate and pour the heated sauce on top. Sprinkle chopped cilantro over the enchilada.

Eat!

Spinach Stuffed Chicken Breasts

There has been a constant sale on boneless, skinless chicken breasts lately, and the champagne chicken was such a success; I decided to try another stuffed chicken breast. Since I had fresh spinach, I decided to use that. I looked at a couple of spinach stuffed chicken breast recipes and created the following.

• 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1 to 1-1/2 cup chopped spinach
• 3-4 sliced garlic cloves
• 1/2 cup French onion dip (because I had some and thought onion would go well with this) or sour cream for milder flavor or even cream cheese for creamier filling
  
• 1/4 cup cheese (I was going to use colby jack, but used pepper jack instead)
• sea salt and pepper
• olive oil

Mix the chopped spinach, sliced garlic and French onion dip until the spinach is completely coated and the garlic is evenly distributed.

Butterfly the chicken breasts and stuff the filling into the chicken. Top the filling with cheese.

Fold the chicken back up and sprinkle with salt, pepper and oil.

Bake in the oven at 400F for 1/2 hour, or pan fry over medium heat until completely cooked.

This was a very tender, flavorful chicken breast. I definitely want to try this with just sour cream or cream cheese to allow the spinach flavors to show through better. But with the French onion dip the spinach tasted very much like artichoke, which was nice.

My family loved this. I would make it again. It was easy! This can even be made up ahead and stored in the refrigerator until ready to cook.

Champagne Chicken

This is a great way to use up left over champagne from any celebration, mine was Valentine/anniversary weekend. I had this at a local Italian restaurant a couple of times and liked it enough to try to make it myself. I like mine better.

• 3 large boneless skinless chicken breasts
• 6-8 sprigs of fresh young rosemary
• 6-8 cloves garlic (sliced)
  
• 1/2 tsp dried sweet basil
• 2 TBS butter
• a little flour
• 8oz fresh mushrooms
• 2-3 TBS olive oil
• 2-3 TBS butter (optional)
• 1 - 2 cups champagne (I like Ballatore Gran Spumante)
  
• 1/8 cup half-n-half
• salt & pepper

Butterfly the chicken breast (slice the breast like a hot dog bun). Rub each chicken breast with a little sea salt. Stuff each breast with 2-3 sprigs of rosemary, a sprinkling of dried basil, a TBS or more of sliced garlic, and 1/2 TBS of sliced butter. Pepper each breast and refrigerate for at least an hour to allow all the spices to penetrate the meat. The longer you leave it, the more the meat will absorb the flavors. If you like, you can set the chicken in 1 cup champagne about 1/2 hour before cooking.

When ready to cook, heat a frying pan on medium heat. Add 2-3 TBS olive oil. Place the breast in the pan and dust with a little flour. Keep an eye on the heat; you don't want to burn the flour. Flip them carefully away from the cut side and dust the other side with flour. Once the one side is seared, flip again to sear the other side.

Push the chicken to the side of the pan and add the sliced mushrooms and the additional butter if desired. Once the mushrooms are seared, add the champagne - you can add the champagne that the chicken was sitting in as well.

Turn to low heat. Cover and let cook for about 5-10 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Take the chicken from the pan. Turn the heat back to medium. Add the half-n-half to the pan. If you would like a thicker sauce, mix a little flour to the half-n-half before adding to the pan.

Serve the chicken topped with the sauce.

This, as I said, was delicious. The sauce had a tangy, almost bubbly zip. I served this with a cabbage salad and fried mashed potato patties.

Pomecranapple Chicken

This was the recipe on the opposite page of the Turkey Madeira. Well, actually the recipe was "Chicken in Pomegranate Sauce" but once I started making it I realized that I did not have the 1 cup pomegranate juice that it called for, so I substituted 1 cup cranapple juice instead.

Another slow cooker recipe! I really like cooking in the slow cooker because I don't have to be home all while it is cooking. It is great for throwing together in the morning before I go to work, and having a nice hot meal by the time I get home!

1 lb chicken
1 pomegranate
1 large sweet onion, sliced
1 cup 100% cranapple juice
2 cinnamon sticks
salt and pepper

You can use any cut of chicken for this. I used regular chicken breasts because the meat will be tender enough to take off the bone with just a fork and there are a lot of fantastic nutrients that are added to the meat and sauce from the bones while it cooks - wouldn't want to miss out on that!

Salt and pepper the chicken and place in the slow cooker. Add onion, all the arils from one pomegranate (I bought some back before Christmas and they kept very well in the veggie drawer in my refrigerator), cranapple juice, and cinnamon sticks - seriously.

Cover the pot, set to low, and cook for 8-10 hours. Just in time for you to get home for dinner - unless you are a masochistic commuter!

I served this with a side of whole kernel corn mixed with sea salt and a couple tablespoons of dried cilantro - yummy! And raw baby carrot sticks, as you can see.

This was very similar to the Apple and Herb Chicken I did a while back, but with a little more tanginess due to the cranberry juice.

It was very good, not as good as my Apple and Herb Chicken, but I think I would make it again before I would make the Turkey Madeira. Next time I would add some actual cranberries to the pot for added zip!

Creamy Italian Chicken Soup

This is another of my invented recipes. Despite the name, this has no dairy in it. The creaminess comes from throwing the broth into a blender.

• 1lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cubed
• 32oz stewed tomatoes
• 1/16 cup Italian seasoning
• 1 tsp basil
• 1 tsp oregano
• 3 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2 tsp sea salt
• dusting of cayenne pepper
• 1 sweet onion, chopped and carmelized
• 4 carrots, chopped

Put everything but the carrots in a crock pot and cook on high for about an hour.

Separate the chicken from the broth. Place the broth, chunks and all, into a blender and "liquify" for a minute or so until smooth.

Throw everything back into the crock pot with carrots.

Let this cook on low for another few hours.

When we got home and were hungry cause it smelled SOOO GOOD!! Although the picture doesn't show it, I did cook up some egg noodles to add shortly before serving. This soup was a big hit with my family. My son ate almost all of it!

Piña Colada Kabobas

My friend made kabobs for us when we visited her last weekend. I thought that would be a good thing to try myself, as we often get good deals on boneless skinless chicken breast, but it can grill up kind of tough and dry.

And sure enough, the very next time that we went grocery shopping after having the kabobs, there was a sale.

I was planning on doing the Marmarumalade marinade but, alas, the Captain was on vacation. But I did have a half bottle of Malibu (stop that snickering - it's good stuff!) so I decided to do a Piña Colada marinade.

Really simple:

1. get a large bowl
2. cut the chicken into skewerable pieces and place in the bowl
3. pour the Malibu in until the chicken is covered half way
4. pour thawed pineapple juice concentrate in until the chicken is covered
5. let marinade for 20-30 minutes, stirring every so often




6. skewer the chicken and selected veggies



7. and then grill!

We did one package of chicken in the Piña Colada marinade and one package in an Asian pepper sauce marinade. The Piña Colada Kabobas were great hot, but weren't quite as good once they cooled off. The Asian Pepper Kabobs were good either hot or cooled. I think that the Piña Colada Kabobas could be better with a little tweaking - like maybe coating with grated coconut, using a little brown or demerara sugar, or adding a little cayenne pepper to the marinade.

Marmarumalade Chicken

Today I was inspired by the large quantities of clemetines that were left over from when I had a cold and the marmalade that I made with some of them for my son the other day. I thought the marmalade would go very well with chicken, so I devised a recipe to bring the two together.

1 whole chicken

8 clementine sliced thinly

1/4 cup lemon juice or 1 thinly sliced lemon

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 cups spiced rum

2-3 TBS cilantro - fresh or dried

2/3 of a can of apple/passion/mango juice concentrate

In a large bowl, mix everything but the chicken. Place the chicken in this marmarumalade(by the way, my clever husband came up with that name. I like to name my dishes fun names, and I think that name fit well). Marinade for about 20 minutes. Flip the chicken over and marinade for another 20 minutes.

Then it was into my clay pot cooker. I stuffed the chicken with the sliced clemetines and poured the marinade into the cooker.

I let it cook in a 450 degree oven for about an hour and twenty minutes.

It came out a little crispier than I had intended but the clay pot cooker did its job of keeping the chicken moist, and it was DELICIOUS!!


I would definitely make this again!

Coronation Chicken Salad

Coronation Chicken was invented by Constance Spry who wanted to serve something new and special for the Queen's Coronation lunch in 1953.

I learned about it while in Scotland. I was getting lunch from at the Dalkieth Palace (where I was taking classes). Along with various cold cuts and cheese was a dish of something that I could not classify. I asked the chef and he told me all about Coronation Chicken.

Always up for something new, I took some. I was the only one who did. But that just left more for me. It was DELICIOUS!!

Today, I came home for lunch with not much time to eat. I decided to see if I could recreated Coronation Chicken. I think I did pretty well. Of course, my recipe is a highly simplified version of the real thing; but it tasted fab anyway. And who doesn't like easy?

• canned chicken (drained)
• mayonaise to desired consistancy
• curry powder to taste
• chopped nuts (I used pecans, because I LOVE pecans!)

Mix it all up and pile on bread for a sandwich, or you could just eat it plain.
Yummy!!

Chicken Sum'n Sum'n

I was asking my husband what he wanted for dinner. He said that he didn't know. I said that I could make chicken... er, sum'n sum'n. He laughed and said that I should actually come up with a recipe and call it that.

So I did! And now you too can make chicken sum'n sum'n.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1/2 bottle wine
• 1/4 cup hoisin sauce
• 3-4 TBS thyme
• 1 tsp celery seeds
• 1-1/2 TBS sea salt
• 4 TBS pomegranate arils
• 1 medium sweet onion
• 1 tsp ground rosemary

In a stain-free bowl, mix wine, hoisin, thyme, celery seeds, and 1 TBS sea salt. Marinade the whole chicken in this mix for at least an hour.



Place the marinaded chicken in your chicken pan of choice. I used the clay pot cooker, but you could use regular pan or a dutch oven. In a non-clay cooker, I would suggest adding about 1 inch of the marinade to the bottom of the pan to keep the chicken from going dry.

Sprinkle 1 tsp sea salt, 1 tsp ground rosemary over the chicken. Add pomegranate arils and a onion cut into 2 inch pieces into the pan around the chicken.

In the clay pot cooker, I cooked it for two hours at 450F. I'm not sure what it would be in a regular pan: 1-2 hours on 350F? I would cover with tin-foil for first hour if in a regular pan, and then crisp the skin for twenty minutes without tin foil.

When cooked in the clay cooker it is so tender that you can use a fork to get meat off the chicken.

I served this chicken with garlic & rosemary mashed potatoes and a salad made with red lettuce, chopped pecans and the rest of the pomegranate's arils with a fat free honey dijon dressing. Oh Joy!!

Apple and Herb Chicken

I created this recipe for my clay pot cooker, but you can use it for how you normally roast a chicken.

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 medium sweet onion
• a few potatoes
• a few stalks of celery
• 2 cups baby carrots
• 1 TBS ground rosemary
• 2 TBS thyme
• 1 packet apple cider mix
• sea salt

While the clay pot was soaking in water (you need to soak it in water for 10-15 minutes before putting the ingredients so it will keep your food moist while it cooks) chop up the sweet onion, potatoes, and celery. Grind the rosemary and thyme in a mortar. Once the pot has soaked up enough water, dump the apple cider drink mix in the bottom, pile in a cut whole chicken, sprinkle it with sea salt and the ground spice, then dump in the chopped veggies with the baby carrots. On goes the lid and into a cold oven. Turned on the oven for 450 degrees (100 degrees hotter than you would usually cook the food). Bake for about an hour.

When I made this I ran some errands and came home a little late. Doesn't it look delicious even if it is a little, er, toasty?

IT WAS! The apple cider mix was a great inspired touch, too! And even though it cooked long, it was still moist.

Rosemary Basil Chicken with Spaghetti

This is one of my very own recipes that I made when I needed something quick for dinner. Fast and yummy chicken pasta.

• 1lb boneless, skinless chicken breast
• 1 lb pasta
• 2 cloves garlic
• 3-5 medium tomatoes
  
• rosemary, fresh or dried
• feta (optional)
  
• basil, fresh or dried
• olive oil
  
• sea salt
  

The best way to chop chicken is while it is partially frozen. It's more like chopping celery than like chopping over-ripe tomatoes. If your chicken isn't frozen, make sure you have a sharp knife.

While I was defrosting my frozen chicken(about two minutes on defrost in the microwave), I started a pan of water for the pasta. I chose spaghetti because we had just bought some. You could use any plain pasta. I always put salt and oil in the water. They help heat the water faster, season the pasta, and they help keep the noodles from sticking to each other.

I heated up another pan, my cast iron fry pan, of course. Once it was hot, I put in about two tablesoons of extra virgin olive oil (cause you only live once) . While that was heating up I chopped up the still mostly frozen chicken into one inch cubes. You can chop them up however you like. I made sure that the pan was good and hot before throwing in the chicken. This sears the outside to keep the juices inside, plus it makes it taste better. Start stirring right away to make sure that no side gets over-cooked and all sides get seared fairly evenly.

Once the chicken cubes are fully seared, turn down the heat to about medium. Make sure that there is still moisture in the pan to keep the chicken from getting dry. Add a little water if you have to. Mince two cloves of garlic and add to the chicken. Grind up half a tablespoon of rosemary and throw that in. Add about a tablespoon of basil- or more if you like. Add a couple of big pinches of sea salt (or regular salt, or garlic salt, whatever). I like sea salt because regular table salt is too harsh for my tastes, and sea salt gives the food a nice flavor.

The pasta water should be ready by now. Add the pasta, stir, reduce the heat slightly, and cover.

Dice up the tomatoes into thick chunks. Throw them into the chicken pan. I never peel tomatoes. Peeled tomatoes are for wusses. The tomato peels add a nice bright red garnish to the dish. Cook the mix down until the tomatoes make a pseudo sauce. Add a little black pepper if you like. I did.

The pasta should be done, or at least when it is done, drain and add to chicken mix. OR you can do it the lazy Sylvana way- just tong the pasta out of the pan you cooked it in right into the chicken mix pan. What's a little pasta water among friends, eh? Stir the whole thing together. For added zip, add a couple handfuls of feta cheese (good stuff, that feta). And serve.

Beer Butt Chicken

This was a recipe from my dad. He loves recipes that sound like jokes. Butt this chicken is so good, it's not even funny!

• a whole chicken
• a whole sweet onion
• a can of great beer

Quarter the onion and stuff it into the neck of the chicken. Pour half the beer into a glass for drinking while you grill; you should never cook with alcohol you wouldn't drink - and I LOVE Leinenkugel's!! Mmmm...

Put the 1/2 can of beer into the cavity of the chicken. I used this handy chicken-footed stand, but it is not necessary. I rubbed the chicken in ground rosemary and sea salt. You can use what ever spices you like. Put the chicken on the hot grill and cover. It takes about an hour to fully cook.



It is a tender, flavorful chicken - a gourmet chicken with a funny name.