Daring Cooks May Challenge: Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada Bake

The hubby and I had just tried a new (and very delicious) locally owned Mexican restaurant over the weekend. I’m excited to have a source for great margaritas in the suburbs. Check out Viva Mexican Grill in Wayland if you are in the neighborhood. I enjoyed a delectable flank steak accompanied by a chicken enchilada with green chili sauce. The hubby had enchiladas with a trio of three different moles. When I came home to check out the May challenge, I was delighted that it gave me a chance to try making the enchiladas at home!

Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Foodhave 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.

I have been enjoying learning more about Mexican cuisine and cooking at home. I used the recipes provided in the challenge and made a tasty mess out of my kitchen!

When I went to buy the ingredients, my store only had four Anaheim chiles in stock (who knew they were so popular!). I evaluated the other options and decided to use poblano peppers for the other half of the chiles called for in the sauce. I picked up the rest of the ingredients that I didn’t have at home – tomatillos, onions, and 6-inch corn tortillas. Luckily I had frozen some of the homemade chicken stock from the risotto challenge, and I was able to use it for the sauce!

Once I got home and got organized, I fired up the burners under my cast iron grill pan to start roasting and grilling. I underestimated the time I needed to char those chiles and peppers on the grill pan. It probably would have been more efficient to pop them under the broiler, but I had committed myself to using the grill pan. After scraping, scraping, saying a few choice words, and scraping some more, I finally got the skins off the chiles and peppers. While I scraped, I also cooked/roasted the tomatillos on the grill pan.

Once those were pureed in the food processor and the chiles were chopped, everything went into the pot for the sauce. Instead of the oregano called for in the recipe, I substituted the epazote I recently purchased (see the KC Culinary post). It has a more lemony scent than regular oregano. At this point, the hubby was getting a little antsy so I put him to work grating some Monterey jack cheese for the dish. I grilled the chicken on the grill pan and prepared the tortillas for assembly.

After what seemed like hours (and much longer than expected), it was time to assemble. I used my 9x13 glass baking dish so I could see the layers. Into the oven it went and dinner was finally served. We love cilantro at our house, so we generously garnished before serving.

This was just as good (and more gratifying) than the enchilada I had at the restaurant. Next time I’d like to make it a little spicier, use all Anaheims chiles, and maybe use a traditional Mexican cheese.

For the enchilada recipe:
http://www.finecooking.com/recipes/stacked-chicken-green-chile-enchiladas.aspx?nterms=50242,52390

Green Chili Sauce recipe:
http://www.finecooking.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=74368

Slow Braised Beef ... Easy, Flavorful, and Melt in Your Mouth Good

I've got a line up of about five posts, but tonight's dinner was so good I wanted to write it up right away!

A few weeks ago I was a lucky winner of some delicious pesto courtesy of one of my favorite food bloggers, Alicia at The Clean Plate Club Blog. Lauren from Pestos with Panache was nice enough to let me pick my choice of the tasty flavors to try. I've been really into spicy chocolate recently, so I chose the Decadent Dark Chocolate & Ancho Chili Pesto. According to their website:

"Decadent Dark Chocolate & Ancho Chile Pesto marries some of the New World’s flavors—70% dark chocolate, ancho chilies, clove and vanilla—with the Old World’s fresh basil Genovese pesto. Hovering in the background is just a touch of smoky cumin to form a truly complex flavor."

I wanted to make something interesting with the pesto and had been tossing ideas around for a week or two. I had decided to make a roast beef this weekend to use for lunches during the week. When I got home from the store with my chuck roast, I went to my cookbook shelf for inspiration. I found a recipe for a slow-braised lamb (or goat!) Jalisco-style in my Mexican Everyday (Rick Bayless) cookbook. What I love about this cookbook are the riffs that follow each recipe. Following this recipe was a riff called Northern Mexican Barbacoa - using a beef chuck roast and potatoes. I had bought a yucca, so I swapped that in for the potatoes.

This was the easiest roast I've ever made - thanks to using the pesto in place of the marinade. When the roast was done, it was so tender it just melted in your mouth. The yucca held up to the long slow braise and the leftover juice made a great sauce. Delicious!! This is getting added to the favorite recipe/cooking method list.

Good Cook Doris' Riff on Rick Bayless' Riff on Slow Braised Lamb (or Goat) Jalisco-Style
1 3-3.5 pound beef chuck roast, tied
2 tablespoons Decadent Dark Chocolate & Ancho Chili Pesto, thawed
1-3 medium yucca, peeled and sliced into 1 inch rounds
1 tablespoon kosher salt
Enough water to cover the yucca and about a quarter of the roast
An extra tablespoon of pesto for the sauce

I used my 5-quart slow cooker for this.

Cover the bottom of the slow cooker with the slice yucca
Sprinkle the salt over the yucca
Massage the pesto into the roast - making sure to cover all sides evenly
Place the roast on top of the yucca
Pour in enough water to cover the yucca and about a quarter of the roast
Turn on the slow cooker to the High - Six Hour setting
Go about your day!

The hubby is very proud of this aerial photo.

When the roast is done, take out very carefully (mine practically fell apart) and remove the string
Remove the yucca and put into a bowl
Carefully ladle out (or pour) liquid into a dish
I made my roast in advance, so I let it cool and then put in the fridge for tonight

To prepare the juice
Scrape off any fat that has gelled on the top of the juice
Pour the leftover liquid into a sauce pan and add the additional tablespoon of pesto
Bring to a boil
Cook for 10-15 minutes, until the juice has reduced and concentrated

Reheat the meat and yucca with some juice in a 350 degree oven for 10 minutes
Serve, ladling more juice on top

Kansas City Culinary Adventure

When I travel, I find that food is a great way to get immersed in the local culture. Even when you’ve been to a place more times than you can count there is always a new place to discover along with your old favorites. Growing up in St. Louis, we had family and friends in Kansas City and were frequent visitors (a 4 hour drive). On my recent trip to Kansas City, to surprise my friend of 29ish years for her big 30th birthday (our birthdays are 3 weeks apart), I ate my way through the weekend.

(We had matching surfer shirts when we were 8 too)

No trip to Kansas City is complete without barbecue. I started my visit with a trip to Oklahoma Joe’s BBQ. The original location is a true Diners Drive-Ins & Dives kind of place – inside a gas station! We hit the new non-gas station location for a Carolina style sandwich. Mine included almost a whole bird’s worth of smoked turkey, spicy coleslaw, and BBQ sauce on a soft roll. With a GIANT side of fries, I was pretty full through the next BBQ stop.

Saturday started with a trip to downtown Overland Park, Kansas. While you might not think of KC as a foodie destination, you’d be proven wrong by downtown OP. Anchored by the long-standing Culinary Center of Kansas City, this is a happening food place! The Culinary Center has been teaching Kansans how to cook since 1998! My uncle works with them on their graphic design, so he took me in to meet the owner. Owner Laura Laiben O'Rourke started her career as a lawyer before deciding to head to culinary school and open the culinary center. It was interesting to talk with her about the business and how it has grown and evolved over the years. Check out the website to see everything they are doing. They have everything from classes to lunch to cooking supplies (in the retail shop). After seeing a cookie decorating class in action we headed out to see a few other fun food spots. We were too early in the season to see the weekly farmers’ market, but there were other stops to make.

Just down the street we stopped into the local outpost of Penzey’s Spices (based out of Wisconsin). Wow! I picked up a few spices on my wish list – Mexican epazote for my Rick Bayless recipes, smoked Spanish paprika to remind me of my recent vacation, and lemongrass to add to my many Asian recipe creations. It was hard to resist buying one of everything. I could have spent hours smelling all the spices in the store, but I had a BBQ lunch date and had to keep moving.

Next up, we stopped into an olive oil shop that had just opened. You could mix and match numerous varieties of olive oils and balsamic vinegars in any combination you liked, with suggestions of course. They also offered one of my favorite things – samples! The best combination we tried was a blood orange olive oil with tangerine aged balsamic vinegar. It was tangy, citrusy, and delicious. I can imagine picking up produce at the farmers’ market and then stopping in to get some oil and vinegar to dress it up for the table.

The culinary weekend was capped off with a trip to an old favorite – Fiorella’s Jack’s Stack. You could make a meal out of the side dishes, but why skip the expertly smoked beef brisket? We started off with a few giant onion rings to keep us quiet while we waited for lunch. I had a jumbo sized beef brisket sandwich accompanied by their famous cheesy corn and baked beans. There is nothing healthy about the cheesy corn – but it is delicious. Here’s the link to try it out yourself . The beans could stand alone as a full meal – according to the Jack’s Stack website, 15% of the side dish serving of beans is hickory pit roast beef. They describe the dish as “plump beans swimming in a savory sauce with man-sized chunks of fork-tender beef brisket.” You can’t go wrong with that!

With a quick weekend trip it was hard to even make a dent in my KC Restaurant ‘To-Do List’. The next time you find yourself heading KC, let me know and you can try a few places for me. I’m already thinking about the places I am going to visit on my next trip.