Lazy, Lazy, Stir Crazy

I am B-O-R-E-D. I have spent today at home courtesy of the lovely March snow, and I have barely budged from my sofa and now I'm BORED. So just in case you are housebound like me and have spent hours clicking on everything you ever bookmarked online or hitting refresh on your browser while hoping desperately that someone has e-mailed you, here's a little something to perk you up. If you haven't started making dinner you can even use it as an excuse to get off your lazy butt. Not that you're lazy. That's probably just me.


In the interest of fighting boredom I present you with my mother's list of ingredients recipe for enchiladas, with some slight modifications (including directions, which she did not include). These are not restaurant quality enchiladas. I made those once from a Cook's Illustrated recipe and it took a few hours and about half the dishes I own and a strainer. We still have them occasionally, but Ryan makes them, because I refused. So yeah, not best-restaurant-I've-eaten-in quality. They are however easy, tasty and good home cooking.

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS:

INGREDIENTS:

FOR SAUCE:
1 C broth (use whatever broth matches your main ingredient if possible - beef broth for beef chicken broth for chicken)
1.5 C chopped canned tomatoes
1/2 t garlic powder
4 T chili powder (feel free to up this if you like more spice, I was running out)
1 t cumin
2 T cornstarch (I have never in my life cooked with cornstarch. I usually make a slurry, but I could not even begin to tell anyone how to make a slurry so buy some cornstarch and make things easy on yourself.)

FOR FILLING:
1/2 C chopped yellow onion
3 garlic cloves minced
1 lb chicken sliced thin
1/3 C chopped black olives
1 C sauce (see above)
1 C cheddar cheese

TOPPING/ENCHILADAS
1 package flour torillas
1 C cheddar cheese (additional to what's in the filling)
sauce (whatever's left after you've used the 1 C for the filling)
sour cream

Directions:
Preheat your oven to 350 F.

Combine the broth, tomatoes, garlic powder, chili powder, cumin and cornstarch in a small saucepan. Cook on medium high heat until it thickens and reduces. I'm not sure how long this will take as I used a different thickening method, but it should reduce by about a third and the sauce should be thick enough that it leaves a coating on a spoon. Lower or turn off heat and set aside.

In a nonstick pan, saute the garlic and onion in a tablespoon of olive oil, until golden, about 3 minutes. Add the chicken and cook for about 6 minutes, turning once, so that it is mostly white, not pink. Add 1 C of the sauce you made and the olives. Cook the chicken in the sauce for about another 4 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. Using leftover cooked poultry? Just add the cooked meat to the garlic and onion and toss with sauce, only heat up until the meat is warm again.

Find a large baking dish, my 9 1/2 x 11 was too small. Along the bottom, smear some of the remaining sauce. Lay down a tortilla. Scoop 1/3 C of enchilada filling into the tortilla and give it a good sprinkling of cheddar.



Fold up the right edge like so:


Then fold it over one more time so the seam side is facing down. Continue until you've filled your whole pan with enchiladas. Take whatever sauce you have left and combine it with any of the saucy bits left from your filling and pour this all over the enchiladas in the pan. It is very important that the tortillas have sauce over all of them or they will become hard and yucky in the oven. After the sauce, sprinkle the remaining cup of cheddar over the top like this.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes. Top with a dollop of sour cream.