Thursday, October 7, 2010

Salsa Verde

I made a green sauce the other day for chicken enchiladas. This would be called Enchiladas Rancheros in my local Restaurante Mexicano, I believe. I'll show ya how it's done.

Here's what you'll need:
1 lb of chicken breast
1 lb of tomatillos ( toe - ma - tee - ohs, this looks like a green tomato but has this dryish peely skin around it) I've cut one in half so you can see the inside too.
1 or 2 Serrano peppers (watch out they're spicy)
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
6 oz of white American cheese or to your taste
About half of a bunch of cilantro
A medium to large onion
A few cloves of garlic
12 corn tortillas In a large-ish sauce pan bring water to a boil, add in the tomatillos (whole please or you'll have lots of retained liquid), add 1/3 of the onion and about 2 cloves garlic (I chopped mine). The idea is not to over cook the tomatillos. Cook them just until they turn from bright green to a sort of "army" green color.
At this point reserve half of the remaining onion and toss the rest of the ingredients together in your Mexican clay pot/bowl and add less than a cup of chicken or vegetable stock. You can add more later if you wish to thin the sauce. If you don't have your very own Mexican clay pot, you can use any old bowl you have in your kitchen. Since my hubby took our blender with him to the Air Force Base I blended my sauce in batches with the Magic Bullet. You can see how it will turn out in the bowl to the left. Once you have your sauce ready you can begin cooking the chicken. I dice up the previously set aside onion and get that cooking for a bit. I like my onions good at cooked. Well done even. I diced my chicken up pretty small but that takes some time. If you're in a rush you can chop it in larger chunks or cook it whole and pull it apart later. Any way you like to do it is fine. I added the cheese just as the chicken was finished cooking.
After the chicken is ready, form an assembly line near your stove. You'll need a small skillet to heat the corn tortillas in, dishes to plate your finished enchiladas onto, and plenty of elbow room. A second set of hands would come in handy too. I cook my tortillas one at a time in a small skillet, this keeps me on top the my game. Here's what I do: heat a tortilla, scoop some sauce onto a small plate nearby, toss the hot tortilla onto the sauce and scoop a little more on top. Throw another 'tilla into the pan to heat while you fill the first tortilla with some chicken and then roll it up. Gently slide the enchilada onto a warm serving plate and begin again. Add a little more sauce to the top for extra scrumptious-ness.

I took mine to bible study so I put them all together in a casserole dish. They get a little soggy but they still taste great! Feel free to garnish with shredded lettuce and sour cream or an extra dash of cheese. Any way you serve it, it'll be so good!

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