Chicken and Spinach Enchiladas
I’ve been off food lately, surprising, I love food, cooking it, eating it, writing about it, photographing it and shopping for it. Lately the thought of it turns my stomach, pasta with butter has been the most appetizing thing to me. My husband has been wonderful and has been doing most of the cooking lately, but I’ve been avoiding the kitchen, and therefore not even photographing his efforts. My archives are dwindling and my desire to even look at the photographs has been negative, so I’ve been off the blog for a while, but I don’t want to leave it hanging, because my love for writing this blog is greater than my turned stomach.
I made enchiladas a few weeks ago, tried it out with some chicken and corn tortillas. They were delicious though I am ashamed to admit that I prefer flour tortillas over corn, they are easier to manage and have a texture that appeals to me more than the grainy corn tortillas. I essentially used the same recipe for these guys that I had used for the black bean enchiladas that I made a few months ago from Diana Kennedy’s wonderful cookbook The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. A friend of mine from Mexico confusedly asked about the fact that milk was one of the ingredients in the salsa verde, I was surprised by that too, but I haven’t tried a different recipe at this point, this one is pretty amazing.
Chicken and Spinach Enchiladas
- 8 flour or corn tortillas (depending on the size of the tortillas, corn tortillas are more traditional for this recipe and are smaller than most flour tortillas, use as many as will fill the dish)
- 2 cups of cooked chicken, shredded
- 2 cups of baby spinach
- 6 ounces of queso fresco
- salsa verde (recipe below)
- cilantro for garnish
- sour cream
You can cook your chicken anyway that you prefer. I browned chicken thighs and then baked them, which made the process a little longer, but gave wonderful flavor to my chicken. You could also poach chicken breasts, which would make it a lot faster, less messy and less work, but you are foregoing flavor. I also recommend grilling too much meat the next time you have a barbecue and using the leftover chicken the next day in your enchiladas, wonderful flavor.
Preheat the oven to 350°. Drizzle some extra-virgin olive oil at the bottom of a 9″ x 13″ baking dish. Crumble a few tbsp of queso fresco in a tortilla, put a few leaves of spinach and a small handful of chicken in a tortilla and roll it up, placing it in the baking dish. Repeat with the following 7 tortillas, filling in the entire dish. Pour in the salsa verde and smother the tortillas.
Bake for 30 minutes.
Plate the enchiladas and sprinkle with queso fresco and cilantro. Serve immediately with sour cream on the side.
Salsa Verde:
- 2 cups cooked tomate verde, drained (see below)
- 4 serrano chiles (I used half of a jalapeño since my husband doesn’t take well to too much heat)
- 3 sprigs cilantro (a lot more!)
- 1/3 cup milk
- 1 garlic clove
- salt to taste
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 tbsp sour cream
Remove the husks from the tomatillos, wash them and place them on an ungreased cast iron skillet or grill pan, cook them over medium heat, turning from time to time, until they are fairly soft and slightly charred.
Blend the tomate verde with the chiles, cilantro, milk, garlic and salt until smooth. Heat the oil in a large skillet and cook the sauce over fairly high heat until reduced and seasoned – about 5 minutes. Remove from heat, add the sour cream and set aside.
Italicious 