Philoxenos

The longer I have lived in New Zealand, the more I have adapted my cooking to New Zealand tastes. But one flavour that I desperately miss is Mexican food. I remember the day I discovered tortillas at the supermarket. I was excited. Until I tasted them. They were imported by Old El Paso, with one of those flavour saver things inside, so who knows how old they were. But then, one of the local bakeries started making tortillas and selling them fresh, nationwide. I was literally jumping up and down in the aisle. I raced home and rang the company to say PLEASE DON’T TAKE THEM AWAY. And they haven’t (although they’ve raised the price by $1.30). I can make my own tortillas from scratch, but it takes forever. So every once in a while I will plonk down $4.60 for 8 tortillas so that I can make burritos, or in tonight’s instance, chicken enchiladas.

What follows is the recipe I’ve been using for years to make chicken enchiladas. NZ readers you will notice an unfamiliar ingredient, but I’ll give you a substitute. This recipe came from allrecipes.com

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS II

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles (can substitute lots of bell peppers)
• 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups cubed cooked chicken breast meat (I used leftovers from last night - Chilli Lime Marinade chicken YUM)
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
• 6 (12 inch) flour tortillas (I find that just 4 means you get lots of filling in each)
• 1/4 cup milk

DIRECTIONS

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking dish.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and saute the green onion until tender (about 3 to 4 minutes). Add the garlic powder, then stir in the green chiles, cream of mushroom soup and sour cream. Mix well. Reserve 3/4 of this sauce and set aside. To the remaining 1/4 of the sauce in the saucepan, add the chicken and 1/2 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese. Stir together.
3. Fill each flour tortilla with the chicken mixture and roll up. Place seam side down in the prepared baking dish.
4. In a small bowl combine the reserved 3/4 of the sauce with the milk. Spoon this mixture over the rolled tortillas and top with the remaining 1/2 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Kitchen stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.