Daring Cooks' challenge May: Stacked green chile and chicken enchiladas

I was really excited about this month's challenge. I haven't tried many Mexican dishes, but so far I've always loved what I've tried. I love mole and I love tacos and I love fajitas and I love quesadillas... now I would taste enchiladas for the first time. Wonderful! I was only afraid that this dish would be too hot for me...

MU7WVWJKBEYQ


Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

Fine, so the challenge involved making an enchilada sauce consisting mainly of roasted green chiles and tomatillos, grilling some chicken breasts and making some corn tortillas (I already knew about the tortilla part...). The challenge turned out fantastic despite all the mishaps... First, after learning about the challenge, I located an online source of tomatillos in Spain, because I hadn't even seen them in my life. Perfect. Then, when the time arrived for making the enchiladas, I realized I had forgotten to order them, so I had to use green tomatoes and lemon... not the real thing. Shame on me. Second, I searched for green chiles everywhere... but they were nowhere to be found. I used regular green peppers and then add some mildly hot pickled Spanish green guindillas. Third, I wanted to make my own tortillas with my beautiful tortilla press and then I couldn't squeeze into my schedule going down to Madrid to buy the damned tortilla flour... so we had to manage with store-bought tortillas. But still your heroine (that's me) managed to make some delicious enchiladas, my way... here's how.



Stacked green chile & grilled chicken enchiladas
Serves 4

• 750g green peppers (not bell peppers)
• 2 green pickled guindillas
  
• 250g green tomatoes
• Juice of 1 lemon
  
• 1 clove garlic
• 1/2 liter vegetable stock
• 1 small onion
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp dried oregano
• Salt to taste
  
• 2 boneless chicken breasts
• Olive oil
• 12 small corn tortillas
• 200g Manchego cheese (the recipe called for cheeses not easily found in Spain and... what the heck, Manchego is perfect)

1. To make the sauce, first roast the peppers on an oven tray, at 180ºC, till the skin is dark. Take them out to a pot and cover them till cool. In my case, I also roasted the tomatoes.
2. When cool, get rid of the skin. Fry the minced onion and garlic in a frying-pan with a couple of tablespoons of oil, till wilted. Here I mixed this with the peeled peppers, the tomatos and the chopped guindillas in a food processor and pureed it.
3. Then add the lemon juice, the vegetable stock and the salt and boil the mixture for 10 minutes.
4. Add the cornstarch dissolved in a little water and continue boiling till the sauce thickens, another 10 minutes.
5. In the meantime, salt and oil the chicken breasts, put them into an oven dish, add a glug or two of white wine and cook them for 20 minutes at 200ºC. When done, cut or shred in little pieces.
6. Shred the cheese and set aside.
   
7. When the sauce and the chicken are both ready, fry the tortillas slightly in 2 or 3 tablespoons olive oil.
   
8. Take a large baking dish enough for 4 tortilla stacks or 4 individual oven plates, like I did. Ladle some sauce on the plate base, then lay the first tortilla. Ladle some more sauce on the tortilla, then some shredded chicken and some shredded cheese. Now lay a second tortilla, ladle some sauce on it, more chicken and more cheese. Top with a third tortilla, more sauce and a generous handful of cheese. Make the other three stacks in a similar fashion.
9. When you have 4 nice stacks, put the baking dish or plates into the oven and bake for 20 minutes at 180ºC until the cheese is melted and browned on top.
10. Take the enchiladas out of the oven, let them rest for 10 minutes and... enjoy!

Thanks Barbara and Bunnee for a very interesting and timely challenge!

Eager to know more?

Daring Cooks' challenge April: Brunswick stew

This month's challenge is a United States southeastern classic: Brunswick stew. I must admit I had never heard of it before. But that's not surprising, is it? Have you heard of the Spanish cocido? I thought so. This hearty stew is really not difficult to make... But the essential thing is that it should be so thick that a wooden spoon should be able to stand up in the middle. This recipe yields 12 servings, but somehow I was not aware of it and I didn't halve it... We better like it.


The 2010 April Daring Cooks challenge was hosted by Wolf of Wolf’s Den. She chose to challenge Daring Cooks to make Brunswick Stew. Wolf chose recipes for her challenge from The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook by Matt Lee and Ted Lee, and from the Callaway, Virginia Ruritan Club.

Brunswick stew, slightly adapted

• 1/4 lb / 113.88 grams / 4 oz slab bacon, rough diced
• 2 Serrano, Thai or other dried red chiles, stems trimmed, sliced, seeded, flattened (I used 2 Spanish guindillas, medium hot)
• 1lb / 455.52 grams / 16oz rabbit, quartered, skinned
• 1 4-5lb / 1822.08- 2277.6 grams / 64-80oz chicken, quartered, skinned, and most of the fat removed (I used 1500 g only)
• 1 Tablespoon / 14.235 grams / ½ oz sea salt for seasoning, plus extra to taste
• 2-3 quarts / 8-12 cups / 64.607-96.9oz Sunday Chicken Broth (see below)
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 large celery stalks (I skipped them... sorry, I hate them)
• 2lbs / 911.04 grams / 32oz potatoes, or other waxy type potatoes, peeled, rough diced
• 1 ½ cups / 344.88 grams / 12.114oz carrots (about 5 small carrots), chopped (I used 2 large)
• 3 ½ / 804.72 grams / 28.266oz cups onion (about 4 medium onions) chopped (just used 2 onions)
  
• 2 cups / 459.84 grams / 16.152oz fresh corn kernels, cut from the cob (about 4 ears) ( I halved it...)
• 3 cups / 689.76 grams / 24.228oz butterbeans, preferably fresh (1 ¼ lbs) or defrosted frozen (I added slightly less here)
• 1 35oz can / 996.45 grams / 4 cups whole, peeled tomatoes, drained
• ¼ cup / 57.48 grams / 2.019 oz red wine vinegar (I used white vinegar, I find red vinegar too strong)
• Juice of 2 lemons (I didn't dare to add the lemon juice, I thought it would be too acidic for me)
• Tabasco sauce to taste (I didn't add any)

Chicken broth:
To make the chicken broth, I simply boiled 2 chicken carcasses along with a piece of hen, plus the carrots and the onions that the stew recipe calls for. Boil everything for 45 minutes, while skimming the foam. You'll get a beautiful fatty and yellow stock. It couldn't be easier.

1. In the largest stockpot you have (I used my French Le Creuset oven), fry the bacon over medium-high heat until it just starts to crisp. Transfer to a large bowl, and set aside. Reserve most of the bacon fat in your pan, and with the pan on the burner, add in the chiles. Toast the chiles until they just start to smell good, or make your nose tingle, about a minute tops. Remove to bowl with the bacon.
2. Season liberally both sides of the rabbit and chicken pieces with sea salt and pepper. Place the rabbit pieces in the pot and sear off all sides possible. You just want to brown them, not cook them completely. Remove to bowl with bacon and chiles, add more bacon fat if needed, or olive oil, or other oil of your choice, then add in chicken pieces, again, browning all sides nicely. Remember not to crowd your pieces, especially if you have a narrow bottomed pot. Put the chicken in the bowl with the bacon, chiles and rabbit. Set it aside.
3. Add 2 cups of your chicken broth or stock, if you prefer, to the pan and basically deglaze the4 pan, making sure to get all the goodness cooked onto the bottom. The stock will become a nice rich dark color and start smelling good. Bring it up to a boil and let it boil away until reduced by at least half. Add your remaining stock, the bay leaves, celery, potatoes, chicken, rabbit, bacon, chiles and any liquid that may have gathered at the bottom of the bowl they were resting in. Bring the pot back up to a low boil/high simmer, over medium/high heat. Reduce heat to low and cover, remember to stir every 15 minutes, give or take, to thoroughly meld the flavors. Simmer, on low, for approximately 1 ½ hours. Supposedly, the stock may become a yellow tinge with pieces of chicken or rabbit floating up, the celery will be very limp, as will the chiles. Taste the stock, according to the recipe, it “should taste like the best chicken soup you’ve ever had”.
4. With a pair of tongs, remove the chicken and rabbit pieces to a colander over the bowl you used earlier. Be careful, as by this time, the meats will be very tender and may start falling apart. Remove the bay leaf, celery, chiles, bacon and discard.
5. After you’ve allowed the meat to cool enough to handle, carefully remove all the meat from the bones, shredding it as you go. Return the meat to the pot, throwing away the bones. Add in your carrots, and stir gently, allowing it to come back to a slow simmer. Simmer gently, uncovered, for at least 25 minutes, or until the carrots have started to soften (I skipped this stage, as I already had boiled my carrots).
6. Add in your onion, butterbeans, corn and tomatoes (and my carrots). As you add the tomatoes, crush them up, be careful not to pull a me, and squirt juice straight up into the air, requiring cleaning of the entire stove. Simmer for another 30 minutes, stirring every so often until the stew has reduced slightly, and onions, corn and butterbeans are tender. Remove from heat and add in vinegar, lemon juice, stir to blend in well. Season to taste with sea salt, pepper, and Tabasco sauce if desired (I thought it didn't need it).
7. You can either serve immediately or refrigerate for 24 hours, which makes the flavors meld more and makes the overall stew even better. Serve hot, either on its own, or with a side of corn bread, over steamed white rice, with any braised greens as a side.

My potatos were not starchy enough, so the broth wasn't really thick. In fact you can see the potato dice have kept their shape pretty well through almost 2 hours of boiling. Indeed the whole thing should have been a bit more "amalgamated", but still it was truly stomach-warming.

Eager to know more?

Arsenio's bica

On October 10th I attended another course at La cocina de Babette (I've become addicted), this time on organic corns and the use of their flour in traditional baked goods in Galicia, more exactly in the Orense Province. When I saw the program I couldn't resist myself... it would include making corn empanada and bica... two of my favorite Galician delicacies!


Bica is a kind of popular dense cake, typical in some areas of Orense. I know the bicas of Puebla de Trives, as I've been there two or three times. From the wonderful book Repostería en Galicia (Pastry in Galicia) by Mariano García and Fina Casalderrey, here are a couple of paragraphs about bica (the original is in Galician, the mumbling translation is mine):

The lands of the province of Orense are the masters of the art of baking bicas, and they use that name as of their own property as they claim that right. (...)
It is true that the bica de Trives is the one that outsiders find more familiar, even though, as we learnt in Castro Caldelas, its origin is not very clear and there is a certain rivalry among the neighbouring villages, who claim that right.(...)
The bicas mantecadas (with butter) from Vilariño de Conso or Manzaneda... are equally tasty.

The book includes five recipes for bica, representing the various versions of this cake: yellow bicas, white (only the egg whites are used), corn, mantecadas (with butter), etc. The bica mantecada carries an oscene amount of butter and also bread dough for rising. Strong bread flour is recommended for all of them.


Back to the thread again, this course of traditional baked goods made with corn flour was given by the very charming Mr. Arsenio Landa, owner of an organic farm at the Baixa Limia land. This farm is essentially dedicated to growing native corn varieties. The cultivation of these native corns has been largely abandoned in Galicia in favour of hybrid corn varieties. Besides learning about the virtues of native corn, how it is grown and how it can be used, this course had some added value. All the baked goods that we were going to prepare along the day, empanadas, pizzas, breads and the like, would be eaten for lunch at the very cooking school... I know what you're thinking... yes, all the pupils ended up conveniently stuffed, like pigs.

We didn't have time to make this corn bica mantecada in the class, and Arsenio strongly recommended that we did at home, because it was delicious. And being that I am a very obedient girl, I made the bica a few days after.

Bica mantecada with corn flour

• 180g butter
• 450g sugar (I only added 400 and I found it sweet enough)
• 8 eggs
• 250g corn bread dough
• 250g mixture of strong white flour and corn flour, 50%
• Lemon zest
  

Corn bread dough

• 700g mixture of strong white flour and corn flour, 50%
• 450ml tepid water (mine was at 25°C)
• 1 package dried baker's yeast
• 2 tsp sea salt
  

This makes for almost 1 kg bread dough and you only need one quarter for the bica. You can choose to divide the amounts by four or make the whole mixture and freeze it for a future use (or just use it for pizza, it's wonderful).


First prepare the bread dough. Mix the yeast with the flour and then the tepid water with the salt. Make a well in the middle of the flour and pour the salted water, keeping a small amount for later. Mix by hand, Arsenio recommends this method for a better control of hydration. Knead till the dough is soft but not sticky. Add more water on the go if the dough is too stiff. Then leave it to double in bulk in an oiled bowl, covered, for around two hours depending on ambient temperature.


Once the bread dough is well risen, you can really start to prepare the bica. Cream the softened butter (not melted) with the sugar, until light and fluffy (see picture). Add the eggs in two batches along with the zest and mix until thoroughly incorporated. Then add the bread dough little by little while you go on mixing. Finally add the flour mixture. Pour the mixture into a rectangular or square baking dish, well buttered and floured. Bicas are traditionally baked in a tin. I lined the tin with some waxed paper so that the bica could be unmolded more easily. My baking dish is 35cm x 31cm approx.; it's a bit too large for this amount of cake mixture. The bica turned out not thick enough, it is traditionally a little bit higher, but I had to get by. Then put the cake immediately into the oven preheated to 190ºC and bake it for half an hour. It rises very homogeneously and the surface gets very nicely browned. Check for doneness with a skewer and take it out of the oven. Then leave it to cool a little and unmold it by pulling the waxed paper. When cold, serve it in small square portions, sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinammon.


And Arsenio was right: it is delicious. The flavour is excellent, you can lightly notice the corn bran on chewing (the corn we got from Arsenio was almost whole corn, though with a very soft husk) and the succulent and deep yellow colour in the pictures is not exaggerated at all. This is the perfect cake for a cold and windy Autumn night, by the chimney, with a hot chocolate...

I'm sending this cake to Susan's Wild Yeast, for her weekly YeastSpotting.

Eager to know more?