100th Post

Ever since I graduated from college my Mother has given both Jessica and me subscriptions to Cooking Light magazine. If you look at my blog then you probably have noticed that I make quite a few recipes from Cooking Light and that Jess frequently comments on them as she has either made it too, had seen it in the magazine, or wants to try it out. Well, what you may or may not know about me is that fondness for Cooking Light may have turned into a slight obsession over the years. You see I know each month about what day it should be in my mailbox and I get pretty excited when it shows up. I treat each issue the same way by flipping through the food section first checking out the recipe titles, pictures, and the index (which is very interesting with lots of good info!). Then I go back through and read the food section in its entirety dog-earing any pages that have recipes I want to try. Lastly I go back to the front of the magazine and read through all the health and fitness articles. At some point in this process Jess and I usually converse about what we thought of the issue and what recipes we want to try. I save every issue for the year and will only throw them out once I have the Cooking Light annual for that year because I can’t seem to live without knowing that I have access to all the recipes all the time and yes, I do realize they are online, but the internet could be down or the power could go out... And speaking of online, Cooking Light has a website where you can rate the recipes and see what other people have rated them and there are the bulletin boards where other Cooking Light readers talk about the recipes they tried and what they thought of them and other food topics…. All this to say that it seems very fitting that my 100th blog post is a Cooking Light recipe.

I love enchiladas and would love to have the perfect enchilada recipe, so I am always excited to find another enchilada recipe to try. This one is for Green Chile Chicken Enchiladas. I will start off by saying that this is a rather time consuming dish to make, but many of the parts can be made a day or two in advance and then just assembled and baked the night you are having it. To start with you preheat the broiler and then put the Anaheim chiles on a baking sheet in the broiler for a few minutes on each side until charred. Once they are good and black then you put them in a zip lock bag, seal it, and leave it alone for about 15 minutes. After wards you peel them, remove the seeds, and chop them up. Then sauté chopped onion and garlic in a little oil until softened. Stir in some flour and then add the chiles, coriander, salt, and chicken broth to the pan. Bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat and let it simmer. Once it has simmered for about 15 minutes take half of the mixture and puree it and then add it back to the pan. Set this aside for now. Next prepare the chicken by boiling it in a pot of broth seasoned with chopped onion, garlic, dried oregano, bay leaves, and salt. Bring this to a boil and then reduce it to a simmer until the chicken is just cooked through. The recipe calls for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, but I used bone in, skin on breasts. I think the bone in breasts have more flavor than boneless, skinless when preparing chicken this way (and they are cheaper). Once the chicken is cooked and has cooled then you can shred it and add it to the rest of the onion (which I sautéed in a little oil first) and sour cream. Now it is time to assemble. Start by putting part of the chile sauce in the bottom of your pan. Then start filling the tortillas (I used flour as Russ doesn’t care for corn) with the chicken mixture and then placing them seam side down in the pan. Once you have filled the pan, top the enchiladas with more chile sauce and finally cheese. These bake until they are heated through.

The green chile sauce has a great smoky flavor with some real heat to it from the roasted peppers. The texture is perfect being a little chunky, but somewhat smooth at the same time. I thought the chicken was flavorful, but overall the inside of the enchiladas seemed to be missing something to me. As for the tortillas while I like the flavor of the flour they don’t hold up as well as the corn when they are baked. Next time I might do flour for Russ and corn for me. All in all they were very flavorful and yummy, but not the perfect enchilada. I am not quite sure what the perfect enchilada will be for me, but I’ll keep looking for new, different recipes and experimenting until I find it. Russ rates the enchiladas a 9.