Shredded Chicken Enchaladas with Roasted Tomatillio sauce and Habanero Salad

This is a quality recipe. Many thanks to Ash from A Year in the Kitchen for posting her enchalada casserole which was the inspiration for this recipe.


You will need

• Jalapenos
• 1 or 2 Onions
• Dozen or so Tomatillios
• 4 Cloves of garlic
• 1 whole chicken
• Adobo seasoning
• Corn Tortillias
• 1 Habanero
• Scallions
• Roasted Corn Salsa 
• Cheese (mexican or cheddar or manchego if you're super fly)

So let's start with the chicken.
Pictures of me hacking apart a chicken aren't entirely pleasant so I'll just tell you what I did. I quartered the chicken into 2 leg/thingh pieces and two breast/tender pieces. Throw those into a pot and cover with water. Just enough to cover all the chicken, Add 2 tbsp adobo seasoning boil for 30-40 minutes.

Crank your oven up to 350 after you have the chicken going and wash and roughly cut up 1 onion 2 jalapenos, 4 cloves garlic and tomatillios.

Throw those in the oven and let them bake 15-20 minutes till the tomatillios are tender.

After they come out of the oven we go right into a blender and that is our salsa verde.

After your timer goes off for the chicken we are going to pull it off the bone. It'll be hot so I use a pair of tongs to get everything separated you want just meat no skin or bones/cartilage.

Save your stock!
Shred the chicken with a fork and add some of the remaining liquid from the pot you boiled everything in until chicken is moist and juicy but not swimming.

After you have all the ingredients prepped we can go into assembly mode.

Put a little of the salsa verde in the bottom of the pan to prevent burning.


From right to left. 

1. Tortillia
2. Green onion (largepieces)
3. Shredded Chicken
4. Roll
5. Place in pan in a vague geometric shape (a row)

Now you're ready to cover with the rest of the salsa verde. Top with shredded cheese and bake for 20-30 minutes until the cheese looks nice and pretty.

I made a little habanero salad to go along with the dish because I like it HOT. 

Thinly slice habaneros, onion and scallion.

 I was cooking at night so the artificial light did not help the pics but the salad was beautiful orange white and green.

To plate put them on the plate top with roasted corn salsa and habenero salad.

Enjoy!

Yum.
 

Bacon, Cheddar and Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos

Hmmm. What are those? Well they used to look like this.

Yup. Let's take a trip down jalapeno lane.

Bacon, Cheddar and Cream Cheese Stuffed Jalapenos

You will need

• Jalapenos (let's start with 20)
• Cream cheese (1 block)
• Shredded Cheddar (2 cups)
• Apple wood smoked bacon (1 pound chopped and cooked till you have bacon bits)
• 1/4 cup bacon grease
• 6 eggs (beaten)
  
• breadcrumbs

So you start this one by putting on gloves. 

These things are spicy and if that spicy gets on your hands you could be signing up for some pain. Anyway all that aside cut all the jalapenos in 1/2 length wise and remove all the white stuff and seeds. (A spoon usually works best for that task)

Now we need the filling. Throw the cream cheese, cheddar cheese and the bacon grease (ouch, my arteries) and mix it up in a Cuisinart.
These things can run you from $30 to a couple hundred. Regradless, you need one.

Throw in the bacon at the very end so it retains it's bacony goodness. At this point you can probably just fold it in with a rubber spatula.

OK now the fun begins. Get a good friend and get to work.

You will need to take a spoon and put a dollop on each jalapeno half. Don't skimp. These are going to end up round like a jalapeno but only half of one is in there.

Then while one person is stuffing the other is shaping them and ||: putting them through egg wash, then the breadcrumbs. Then on a rack to dry. An oven rack works just fine. :||

So those of you who are musically inclined know what ||:    :|| are... Repeat signs!

Let the japs dry for 30 minutes and put them through the egg and crumbs again.

Do it again.

And FREEZE!

These after they are frozen are ready to be fried at 350 degrees.

For a dipping sauce you can do ranch OR you can take Hot Squeeze and add tons of orange zest. 

Yum.

There's no picture of the finished product because they didn't stay out long enough for me to snap one.  Oh well.