Chicken Enchiladas Verdes

Cravings come in many forms, mine are long and tube-like and covered with cheese today.

   It all began when I took my fantastic British boyfriend to the airport to go back home, we stopped and had a drink and a bite to eat at the airport before he left.  It was a small kiosk that has beer, tequila, and the inevitable chips, salsa and guacamole.  The salsa they gave us was a salsa verde, which I had never tried before, (I love things that are green you'd think I would have tried it already, but no!) and fell in love with it.  You see I'm still new to liking guacamole too...there are a great many things that I have learned to love this past year: artichokes, mushrooms, red wine, porter, guacamole, and I'm sure I'm forgetting something...but I have been training myself to enjoy these things because I -want- too. If I can train myself to not smoke tobacco, then why can't I train myself to enjoy mushrooms!!

off topic.

Salsa verde, right.  So this salsa verde the lady gave us was really delicious, and my need for it increased after a few days until I started doing my recipe research.  I find a few recipes, I watch a few YouTube videos, if there are new techniques or ingredients I am unfamiliar with, I research them out.

Tomatillos. Completely new to me.

Not a tomato, but in the gooseberry family

Ripe when the papery outside has split and become loose from the fruit, but not fallen off completely.

I roasted them, sliced in half, with a jalapeno, garlic, and a poblano, until the skin was a bit dark and they had collapsed. Into the processor with some raw onion and garlic, cilantro and lime, very spicy.

I found a jar one that's very nice, and much easier. I know how to make it, and understand the concept, but I was unable to make the right balance (like the simply amazingness of Trader Joe's Pico de Gallo) so I will sadly stick with a jar unless I need to impress someone ;)

What to do with this salsa verde? well, I don't care for either the red enchilada sauce or corn tortillas (I still have not convinced myself  to like corn tortillas, incidentally), but the idea was tempting to try it this way:

Poached chicken (and a bit of the broth)- shredded

cream cheese

sour cream

salsa verde

cilantro

chipotle garlic salsa

cheddar jack blend & Mexican melting cheese with jalapenos

refrigerated flour tortillas

I mixed the cream cheese and sour cream up, until it was still a bit thick, more like a loose mayo consistency, with the salsa verde, cilantro, chipotle garlic salsa ...just a bit of the red salsa and double that of the green. Taste it. Salt and Pepper if you want it. Get that chicken in the bowl!  I'll go into poaching chicken another time, when I'm confident i've mastered it.  :)

   Get your tortillas a bit wet with a mix of the broth and a bit of the salsa verde (smear some onto a paper plate and rub each one in it on both sides. Throw in the chicken and a good handful of cheese onto the tortillas, and fold them up, top with a bit more salsa and the rest oft he cheese.

   You want these to be sealed up, I have two of the same pans, so flip one on top of the other making a little metal box, but you can just put foil over it, but you may lose some cheese. The important thing is, you don't want these to get crispy, you basically want to steam them.

Hotcha!

I liked them with a bit of greens on the side and diced tomato.

Happy eating!
Jen

Orange Chicken

   I didn't know what to make, I had a bunch (5 lbs) of boneless skinless chicken breasts, so I asked Mike (my BBFs  boyfriend) to give me an idea... General Tso was what he wanted, but I have eaters that just can't handle anything remotely spicy...so I offered Orange Chicken, and all agreed.

   I  looked online, YouTube videos, allrecipes, ect.  I took in what i knew already from making teriyaki and tempura dishes and added it into the mix.

  I chunked up my chicken boobs into 1-2" chunks... you will be cooking these in hot oil for a good amount of time, so you do want them on the bigger side to stay moist, and threw them in a bowl with my typical seasonings for the Chinese stuff i make (garlic powder, ginger powder, soy sauce and white pepper) and let it sit for a few minutes while I got the rice soaking.

  I will make a post on perfect sticky rice every time. I learned and it took me years and years to get it right, and finally, as long as I follow my own instructions and don't walk away all distracted by something shiny, or my lovely boyfriend, its consistent.

Right, I flour the chunks up real good, flouring the chunks and letting them sit for a bit is VERY IMPORTANT... if you skip this step, they will get soggy and the batter will come off then you let them sit between batches.
..then make the batter:

1 cup flour
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 tbsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/2 c. milk
and water until desired consistency.
~ which is something like pudding or yogurt

   So, I mix the wet together in a bowl, and mix it into the dry, then when blended in goes the chicken into the bath. When your oil is around 375 or so (i just turn my deep fryer all the way up) get your hand in and slowly let them slip from your fingers into the oil like this nice lady does @ (0:16):

   Her batter recipe I built off of, because when I tried theirs, it was far far far too dry. My way worked to perfection.  Now, she fries it all once, for a long time. I did mine in batches lightly fried, pulled them out, and then once i had them all fried once, i put them all back in at once and cooked them until they were on the dark side and nice and crispy. It just made sense to do it this way, since I could heat and thicken my sauce while they were all in together, focusing on one thing at a time.

For the sauce:

2 cups chicken broth (or 2 cups of water and 1 knorr's chicken cube)

1/4 c . soy sauce

1/2 c. orange juice

1/4 c. lemon juice

1/3 rice vinegar (i used unseasoned if it matters)

1/4 c. rice wine (the amber stuff, not the clear - Shao Xing if it matters)

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 tsp. fresh ginger (more if you like it) julienned or grated

zest of two large oranges about 3 tablespoons - julienne or microplaned

   Get all that in a pot (pull out a few tablespoons for the thickening agent) and let it come up to a good bubble while you are getting those nuggets in a hot oil bath again. Get those nuggets all pretty brown and keep them moving about so its all even, and drain them out onto a paper lined (i find that one brown paper bag fits perfectly on a 1/2 sheet) pan or tray.  Next, add the thickener into your liquid (stirring constantly!!) until it comes to a bubble and gets ooey gooey.  nomnomnomnom

for thickening the sauce:

2 tbsp of cornstarch

and a few tablespoons of the above liquid to thin it into the consistency of milk, stir well--- no lumps!

Pull off the heat and add the chicken and some thinly sliced scallions/ spring onions and toss until everything is completely coated. Serve with sticky rice.

Serves 6 fat people with leftovers to fight over tomorrow. How long did it take?  Too long.

**This was really quite good. I was very proud of how this turned out. Hope you give this one a try soon.

while still in the wok ;)

be well,
Jen

Beef Stew

   Last Monday was Beef Stew day...I know, its June, why did i pick stew!?  Well, we do keep the house at a nice 73 degrees, so its never far from comfortable. Why not? I wanted it.  I enjoy cooking it. So ner.

I decided to try making it a different way, including the crock pot, so I could leave it be and get on with the rest of my day (sleeping), but I ended up learning a few things.

  The night before, I trimmed about 3 pounds of stew meat (that's how its marked in grocery store) that i paroosed over for a great length of time to make sure i was getting more beef than fat. I salted and peppered the meat, added a bit of garlic and onion powder and threw it in a gallon zippy bag.  Mushing it around a bit to distribute the seasonings, and then adding about a cup of flour and shaking to coat it completely. Then I threw the bag in the fridge overnight.

   In the morning, the meat was sticky with the flour, but I just went with it and I browned it off in two batches in a bit of veg oil, sauteed some onion (I cut them into about fingernail size) and had I mushrooms, here is where i would have cooked them a bit as well, quartered.  I moved the meat into the crock pot with the deglazing stuff from the first batch of meat.  To the hot pan, Trader Joe's house Merlot, delicious stuff, $3 a bottle, about 1/2 cup or so. Let that do its thing for a bit until the bubbles get a bit thicker and all the bit are up, adding a bit of beef  and veggie broth to the pan to rinse all the goodies into the crotch-pot (i always call it that, cause I'm silly). I threw in a beef cube and a good splash of Gravy Master, set to high and DON'T TOUCH THE LID for at least 6 hours - or until about 2 hours before you want to eat.

  The flour on the meat will easily thicken this all up eventually, that and the starch from the eventual potatoes and carrots.

    So I let the meat cook for hours, and then got up and put the potatoes and carrots in about two hours before it was time to eat.  FAIL. It was dinner time and the potatoes and carrots were still uncooked.  I dumped the whole thing into normal pot and boiled the heck out of it for 15 minutes, and then it was ready for eating.  The meat was overcooked and most of it had just disintegrated into meat pulp and was swimming in the gravy, next time this is a viable choice, but the meat needs to be in bigger chunks, or the potatoes in smaller bites... or both really.  It shows that its been awhile since I've made stew, and trying new techniques doesn't always work perfectly the first time.

   Usually, I just brown the meat, then add onions and broth and simmer until the meat is satisfactorily tender, then goes in the potatoes and carrots until they are done... peas being an afterthought.  This was another way to over complicate things, and it didn't really save me any time at all.

on to the next!
Jen

Secrets to cooking the best tasting minced / ground meats:

My Salisbury Steaks sizzling away.

     If its ground meat you've gotten from a large grocery chain, it probably looks straight from the grinder and is in little wiggly strings, you are tempted to just pull the plastic and throw it in the pan...but wait!


STOP!!
   Wash your hands and mush the meat. Squeeze it back together, break it apart - don't overwork it but get rid of all trace of the meat noodles before you toss it in that pan, its no bueno!  Now...get the meat into one spread out layer ( if you have too much meat to do it all, you will just have to make two batches, get a dish for the first batch to take a nap in while you make the second, ) across the bottom of the VERY VERY HOT,  oiled pan and...


BROWN YOUR MEAT!!
   Now this isn't about "graying" your meat, (which means moving it around in the pan thats not hot enough, so cramped that it produces steam, releases its juices and then boils) but actually searing the meat until you see dark brown crunchy bits, and please don't get rid of any of those bits, its called fond, and its packed full of flavor. Now, to do this... 


LEAVE IT ALONE!
   Once you've moved the meat, you've lost that opportunity, the pan has not returned to temperature, or else it would be ready to turn (because its at the right done-ness), so you have to learn to step off the food for a minute (but not too long!) and let its do its thing. 

First example: this is from Lilibeth in the Kitchen

In my humble opinion she has crowded the meat and its a big pot of wet oily gray stuff. Opportunity lost. Its not meat-thulu though!

Second example is from Holly at Naptime

Here, she did not smush her meat back together before she threw it into the pan, thus creating the inevitable "meat strings" Her meat is leaner and therefore a bit drier, but i still don' t see much in the way of caramelization on the meat bits. Too much movement in the pan from the get go I think.

Third example is from a post by Carly over at College Candy.com

Looks good, really..not too much in the pan, nice color on the meat, doesn't appear to be any meat twigs. Great job! - I'm coming to her house for lunch.

  Now, if you are making two or more batches, I transfer the meat into a dish, then deglaze the pan with wine or broth, scrape up all the fond,  add it to my cooked stuff, thus cleaning the pan and making it ready for the next batch. Heat the pan and start all over again.

Easy-peasy, right?  Somehow, most of the videos Ive watched on YouTube that brown meat, get it wrong..not to say that its not edible, I'm sure the food is very delicious, and no one would think its even all that important, but once you taste the difference in a tomato meat sauce or chili when the meat tastes like someone has diced a perfectly grilled steak in it, you will never go back to the gray mess of boiled mice. 


--Unless that is precisely what you are going for... 


My mother and grandmother cooked a dish that they called Mincemeat. Not like the pies though, so i have no idea how it gained its name... but its basically meat put into broth and boiled with onion, peas and carrots, and ladled -with minimal juice-  over mashed potatoes.  Cooking it in this method, makes the meat a different consistency, its typically done like this for hotdog chilis - its a consistent small ground, from stirring in liquid when its warm but not yet cooked though.


OH YEAH - back to that pan of meat.


What to do with this brothy, winey stuff?  This is now what will replace the word  "water" in your recipe, and if "oh no, you have too much', just let the stuff cook on a higher temperature for a minute or two and it will evaporate...which condenses flavor and never hurts a thing.  Tacos, sloppy joes, traditional meat sauce, beef stroganoff, salisbury steaks, beef stew, soup, chili, burritos....ect. 


Take the extra time, its worth it. :)
~Jen

YouTube Cooks

    I am a junky for YouTube cooking, every morning, i return home from my delivery route, and watch videos. It may be something i plan on cooking that night and am getting a few more ideas, or techniques under my belt before i begin the adventure...and sometimes i look at things that interest me, or new foods i would like to try.  I subscribe to the ones i enjoy, and skip the ones i don't. I'm learning their names and begin looking forward to more videos and recipes from them.

   There are ones that are excellent, and some that are painful.  Sometimes I see the simple technique mistakes, sometimes I see people cooking things they've never cooked before and are unaware what the final product is supposed to be. Truthfully, at times it can be interesting to see how they recover or adapt (loading my cooking mental toolbox). Some home cooks with a frightening lack of cooking basics, and yet they are teaching others how to make their food, their way.  I do not believe i am one of those that knows more than the average cook.. but i have cooked many, many meals, in both restaurants, and at home for picky eaters, children and more recently, a vegetarian... i have learned from watching others, and lots and lots of practice.

  I hope that what begins here will help and interest others in learning more, from both professionals, and the normal home cook.. we all have something to give, our food, our passion for it, and a bit of ourselves.

Tell me who your favorite YouTube chefs are!