Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.
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I am soooo excited to be posting up my very first Daring Cooks Challenge this morning! I have to say, it was difficult for me to keep this meal quiet for as long as I did. It was so tasty and not too difficult to make. I made it twice over the course of the month. Once with seafood and once with chicken and both times I felt like I was eating authentic Texmex Mexican food. Que bueno!
If you don’t know what Daring Kitchen is, the basic premise is that you are given a cooking recipe once a month on the 17th that is a challenge; something you’ve more than likely never done before. You have some artistic freedom with parts of the dish and others need to be followed according to the rules of the person who laid down the challenge. You have one month to complete the challenge and then on the 14th of each month, you share your results with the world. So world, here are my results.
Stacked Green Chile and Marinated Seafood Enchiladas
The Ingredients needed for the Green Chile Sauce:
7 to 8 oz. tomatillos (about 5 medium)
1 qt. homemade or low-salt chicken broth
1-1/4 to 1-1/2 lb. fresh Anaheim chiles (6- to 8-inch chiles), roasted, peeled, and seeded, coarsely chopped
2 tsp. minced yellow onion
1 tsp. dried oregano (or 2 tsp. chopped fresh oregano)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. kosher salt; more to taste
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
2 Tbs. cornstarch, dissolved in 2 Tbs. water
Your favorite hot sauce (optional)
1 qt. homemade or low-salt chicken broth
1-1/4 to 1-1/2 lb. fresh Anaheim chiles (6- to 8-inch chiles), roasted, peeled, and seeded, coarsely chopped
2 tsp. minced yellow onion
1 tsp. dried oregano (or 2 tsp. chopped fresh oregano)
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. kosher salt; more to taste
1/4 tsp. ground white pepper
2 Tbs. cornstarch, dissolved in 2 Tbs. water
Your favorite hot sauce (optional)
You can roast your chiles on the grill or under the broiler. I chose the broiler because I’m grill illiterate. I placed my chiles, lightly oiled, on a cookie sheet lined with aluminum foil for easy clean up and put them under the heat for about 15 minutes turning a couple times. One tip regarding the chiles, as tempting as it may be to wash your chiles, don’t do it. They lose a lot of their flavor and punch if you wash them off.
They’re done when the skin looks all black and blistered like this:
Are you starting to feel the chile sauce love yet? The smell of those chile’s roasting was so amazing! Peel off the skin, remove the seeds and chop your chiles up small.
Put a medium saucepan of water on to boil and remove the papery outer skin from the tomatillos. Boil the tomatillos until soft, 5 to 10 min. Here are mine getting ready to be boiled:
Once you’ve cooked your tomatillos, drain and purée them in a blender or food processor. Here’s what my pureed tomatillo looked like:
Return the tomatillos to the saucepan along with the chicken broth, chopped green chiles, minced onion, oregano, garlic, salt, and pepper.
Bring your mixture to a boil over medium-high heat and then reduce the heat and simmer for 10 min. Add the cornstarch/water mixture; stir well. Simmer, stirring occasionally, until the sauce is thickened slightly and reduced to 4 to 4-1/2 cups, another 5 to 15 min. Adjust the seasonings if needed, including hot sauce if the sauce isn’t spicy enough to suit your taste.
Once your sauce if finished, transfer it to your blender/processor and process the sauce until smooth. And here’s your final product. Isn’t it beautiful?!
Of course, the true beauty is what we actually do with the sauce (despite the fact that I could practically eat the stuff with a spoon it was so tasty).
The next step in the process is to marinate your meat or what ever filling you choose to use. For this recipe we marinated seafood, but we also did it a second time (it makes a good amount of sauce) and marinated chicken in a tequila lime marinade I concocted up. For the marinated seafood here’s what we used:
For the seafood marinade:
1 Pkg of Mixed Seafood (about a pound)
1/4 Cup of Olive Oil
1 Lime, Juiced
1/2 tsp of Cumin
1/2 tsp of Chili Powder
1/2 tsp of Salt
1/4 tsp of Pepper
1/4 Cup of Fresh Cilantro, Chopped
2 Cloves of Garlic, Minced
This was my own little made up recipe for the marinade so feel free to tweek it to your likings. And just an fyi, my seafood mix contained calamari, shrimp, and scallops. You, of course, can use any level of seafood you deem tasty. Get creative!
For the marinade, you basically just throw everything except the seafood into a large bowl or ziplock bag and mix it up well. Then add your seafood and cover or seal tight and let it marinate in the fridge for at least an hour and up to over night. Let me add a note here that if you’re doing “land meat” instead of seafood, you will want to cook up your meat before assembling the stacks. Ok, now that I’ve gotten that out there, here’s my seafood doing it’s “marinating” thing:
While your seafood is marinating, you going to move on to the next step of making your own tortillas. Now, you by no means have to make your own tortillas in order for this to taste good, but I have to say, that store bought tortillas don’t even come close to being at as good as the fresh homemade ones. It’s not that hard, so if you’re feeling daring, go for it and make you own! Here’s what you’ll need:
It already looks easy, right? If you don’t have maseca brand at your grocery store, any brand of Masa Harina will do. So here’s what you do to make your tortillas. For 16 tortillas you’ll need 2 cups of the maseca, 1 1/4 Cups water and 1/4 tsp of salt (I forgot the salt in the picture but I’ll bet you have some lying around).
Combine the three ingredients and mix it together for about two minutes to form a soft dough. Pull off a small handful of dough and cover the rest of your dough with a wet cloth to keep it from drying out. Here’s my dough ball in all it’s glory:
If you have a tortilla press, now would be the time to get it out and use it. If not, then take your ball of dough and put it between two pieces of plastic wrap. I basically pushed it down with my hand to get it started and then rolled it out with a rolling pin to flatten it the rest of the way.
I like my tortillas nice and round, so I used the top of my blender as a large cutter of sorts to make nice round circles. Here are the pictures of the steps. One shows wax paper, but just trust me when I tell you plastic wrap works better.
Hand Smashed
Rolled Out
Cut out and ready to cook
To cook your tortillas, heat up an ungreased skillet to medium high. Put your tortillas in the pan and cook for about 50 seconds on each side and then pull out to cool. Here are mine in the frying pan and then the final product displayed all perdy like.
The Final Product
As a next step, I made the choice to fry the tortillas in some oil on medium high in a large skillet; about 20 seconds per side. It’s up to you whether you want to do this or not. It obviously adds extra flavor, but it also adds extra fat so make your decision based on what you prefer.
Are you still with me? I know this is a long post today, but bear with me, the end result is sooo worth it! Our final step is to assemble and cook ’em up.
Grab yourself a 9×13 pan and slather some of the green sauce on the bottom.
Now put four of your tortillas into the pan, slather a little more sauce on top of each and then put a couple big spoonfuls of your seafood mixture on top.
On top of the seafood throw a handful of your favorite shredded cheese on top. I used monterey jack. Repeat your layers again doing a tortilla, some sauce, more seafood and cheese. Finally, finish off your stack with a third tortilla, more sauce and top it with cheese.
If you’re looking at the cheese on top and thinking it’s not looking a whole lot like monterey jack, that’s because it isn’t. For the top of the stack I used Queso Blanco that I found at my local Mexican grocery store.
Finally, we’re going to throw these babies in the oven and let them cook for about 20 to 25 minutes at 350 degrees or until cooked through and bubbling. Here’s what mine look like out of the oven.
And last but certainly not least, the final product. The little beauties were definitely a fitting challenge, but one that I really enjoyed and would definitely tackle again. I can’t wait to see what the next challenge is!
And keep an eye out for my first Daring Baker challenge to be posted on May 1st. I can’t share what it is yet, but I can tell you I’m excited and terrified to attempt it all at the same time!
Have a great weekend and be sure to check out the blog this weekend when I will be having Melissa from Bon Vivants join me as my first guest blogger!
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That looks super delish, what a fun challenge! I've never done anything like that before, maybe i'll try it some time, anne
http://www.anniebakes.net
I also made corn tortillas, but did NOT think of cutting them out, so my turned out so not-round. Oh well, there is always next time. Good job on the challenge!
Oh, wow, homemade tortillas alone is quite a quest. Congrats on such a lovely outcome. That sauce looks amazing. I'd love to carve out some time and make this. *Drooling*
What a fun challenge, everything looks really yummy!! I'm going to have a tex-mex dinner party soon I think I might try that green chile sauce.
Stopping by from Tickled Pink!
congratulations on your first DC Challenge! you did very well, your results look delectable!
How inspiring and what a challenge! I tend to bake more than cook, so meals like this amaze me! Thank you so much for visiting my blog…I'm glad that I found yours!
First challenge and you hit it out of the park. It looks and sounds fabulous! Thanks for cooking with us.
I am so inspired by your work on this recipe! Everything looks absolutely perfect and I love all your photos of your ingredients and prep. Especially the little tomatillos bobbing in the water, they look so cute and fresh! 🙂
This recipe looks utterly fabulous (as usual). The chilies and tomatillos – yum! Making your own tortillas…you are super cook! Congrats …I think you did a great job.
THANKS for linking up.
Wow looks great and I don't even like seafood, stopping by from SITS!
Happy SITS Saturday Sharefest!
Looks yummy! Stopping by from SITS.
The seafood looks like a really tasty variation! And your tomatillo sauce looks absolutely perfect.
(Although I have to admit it's that avocado and tomato concoction in the background of your picture that I'm really drooling over…)
Yum! I am so jealous that you are a Daring Cook! I applied to be a Daring Cook & Daring Baker. Haven't heard back, yet. Your meal looks amazing!
this looks like an amazingly brilliant challenge!!!!i really want to try it , but im moving next week and ive packed up most of my kitchen equipment!! maybe i will be able to give it ago sometime and post my results on my page!!! it looks soo delicious!
ps thank you for following ! 🙂
You have way way way too much patience, my friend! Those look insane…what time should I come over? I'll bring margaritas! 🙂
Lots of yummy love,
Alex aka Ma, What's For Dinner
http://www.mawhats4dinner.com