Hello everyone. What a fine day it is today! School is done. Bread is baking. All is right in our little world. Last night's dinner was a success. What else could I ask for? Well, I'm sure I can come up with a couple of things.
Last night dinner was fun to make. It took me the entire hour that Connor was at karate. Part of that was the chicken needing to be cooked. I bought a beautiful chicken from the farm. I have been buying organic roasting chickens or breasts at
Wegmans. I got to thinking though that I can't really know how these chickens were raised. When I was at the dairy last week, I ventured over to the section in their little freezer that had chicken in it. I picked up a near 4 pound chicken. I'm not going to lie. It was expensive. It was $17. BUT, it's from a local farm, it was a pastured chicken and it was organic. I swooped it up and took him home.
The bird was a whole roasting bird so I had to chop him up and boil him. I had Tim help me chop the chicken up a bit. Big knives tend to scare me sometimes because I'm not the most graceful person. Sadly, Aidan seems to have inherited this trait from me too. We are both accident prone. Tim did most of the chopping but then he had to leave to take Connor to karate, or else Connor would be late. I was kind of grossed out hearing the bones crack and feeling the raw chicken flesh in my hands. Tim then, ever so kindly, reminded me that when we get to the point of having some land and raising animals that I better get used to it. I think I'll let him do it. =)
Once the chicken was all chopped up it went into a big stock pot and boiled for about 30 minutes. While it was cooking, I prepped everything else for the dinner. I chopped onions, opened cans of diced chillies, grated cheese and got tortillas ready (as in nuked them because I didn't want to fry them again). After the chicken was done, I shredded the meat off of the bones. I started frying the onions and then added the shredded chicken to the pan. Then I threw in half of the chillies. After than cooked for a bit, I added a half cup of the chicken broth and a half cup of cream. A dash of paprika was added to the mix and this pan was done and set aside while I started on the next part.
The next part of the meal was the cheesy part. Yum. I melted a couple of tablespoons of butter and then whisked in a couple of tablespoons of flour. I then added a cup and a half of chicken stock, a half cup of sour cream, and about a cup and a half freshly shredded
Monterrey Jack cheese. Oh, and I threw in the rest of the green chillies. This all melted together into a glorious cheesy gravy.
Then came the fun part. Putting it all together. I took the corn tortillas out of the microwave, slapped a bit of the chicken/onion mixture into it, topped it with a sprinkle of cheese, wrapped it up and plopped into a baking dish. I ended up with a 13x9 pan full and a 9 inch cake pan filled. Over the top of the rolled up little enchiladas, I poured the cheesy sauce. It went in the oven for 30 minutes. That's it.
White Chicken Enchiladas
I topped the enchiladas with my favorite salsa. I usually make my own salsa, but when I can't get to it, I always get
Frontera salsa. I love the
chipolte one, the
tomatillo one and the jalapeno cilantro one. Yum! All natural goodness.
Three out of four of us liked this dinner. Aidan said he didn't really like it, but he ate a few bites. I think I like the other enchiladas I made a couple of weeks ago because they were more flavorful to me. Although, these were really good too. I guess it is a milder flavor on this one. Tim and Connor loved them. Thankfully we had a ton of leftovers, so I know what lunch is going to be today!
I think that is all I have for now. I am going to run out to the dairy today. I have to get into the habit of Thursday shopping. Our farmers market starts in three weeks and it's on Thursday. I am going to make Thursday my market day. That means I better get into the habit of doing my menus and shopping lists on Tuesday and Wednesday. Until later, happy cooking!
