Chicken Enchiladas with Green Chili Buttermilk Sauce and Three Cheeses

Welcome back scrabblers! I know I haven't posted much lately but it's been a long summer growing and canning. I'm planning some more videos once the weather cools down. It's hard to get good audio when the window AC is roaring away in the kitchen, trying to beat the Texas heat! It'll be time to process hogs soon, so I may try to make a sausage video. But for now let me share something else. This is a recipe I've been perfecting over the summer that I think you'll really like. It's a little labor intensive, but the flavor depth of this dish makes it worth it. So before we get cooking, lets get the ingredient list.

Ingredients:

sauce
1/2 cup mild green chilies roasted and peeled and chopped(store bought will do, fresh is better)
3 TBS flour
1 cup buttermilk
1 cup reserved stock

filling:
1 small can tomato sauce
1 clove garlic minced
1 lb boneless chicken breast
remaining reserved stock

enchiladas
1/2 medium white onion chopped
yellow corn tortillas
Cotilla cheese
Oaxaca cheese
Sharp chedder cheese

butter and oil

Just a note on the chilies. I used Hatch chilies this time because they were in season but I've also used Poblano and Anaheim. Canned are okay too, especially in the winter when fresh chilies are overpriced. This is the Hardscrabble Gourmet and cost matters. On the chicken, dark meat works just as well if you want to go cheaper and frankly taste better. I just used white meat to give the fataphobes something they'd like. No judgement here! Use tofu for all I care. Anyway, lets cook!

First place the chicken in a medium sauce pan and add just enough water to cover. Add a teaspoon of salt and bring the pot up almost to boiling. Reduce heat and simmer covered for about an hour. Remove chicken and set aside to cool. Measure out 1 cup of cooking water for the sauce and reserve the rest for the filling.

To make the enchilada filling, first shred the cool chicken and put aside. Then in a large skillet brown the garlic at medium high in a little bit of oil. Add the reserved cooking liquid(stock in chef speak) and the tomato sauce. Bring to a boil and reduce to about half, stirring constantly. Turn down the heat and add the chicken. Continue stirring and reducing the liquid until barely wet. Test for saltiness and add more if it needs it. It should look something like this:

Next we need to flash fry our tortillas. You can watch one of my videos demonstrating the technique here. It starts 7min 20s in. I did a partial tray of 12 enchiladas but you'll have enough filling and sauce to do a full tray if you wish. Also, the left over filling makes great chicken tacos. Once the tortillas have cooled place some meat and chopped onions in the tortilla like so,

roll them up and place them in the tray.

There's no hard fast rules for how to lay them out. Use what ever works best with the shape of the pan your using. Now we make the sauce. In a sauce pan on medium melt two tablespoons of butter then wisk the flour into the butter. Wisk in one cup of stock and one cup of buttermilk. Bring heat up to medium high. Stir in the chopped peppers and continue stirring until it becomes thick and bubbly. Remove from heat and pour over the enchiladas like so:

Now we want to grate our cheese onto the enchiladas. Start with a thin layer of queso Cotilla, a generous amount of chedder, and a good layer of queso Oaxaca. It should look like this:

(A little party planning tip. You can prep the enchiladas to this point the day before and pop the tray in the fridge overnite. Then pop them in the oven when your ready.) Next place the tray in the center of an oven preheated to 350 degrees for twenty to thirty minutes until the cheese is hot and bubbly.
Serve with your favorite Tex-Mex sides and some good hot sauce and chow down. Them's good little doggies. Until next time, keep on scrabbling! And I don't mean the stupid word game.