the review: enchiladas verde

I think I might be a snail. Truly. It took me two hours to make enchiladas verde (Cook's Illustrated Cookbook, page 350) tonight. And my kitchen looked like this when I was done.

It was good. Not exceptional, but good. I felt like it was kind of dry. My husband said the consistency was good, but it needed either a little more sweet or a little more spicy. Or maybe both. He still said he would eat it again. And the kids ate two servings of the chicken but wouldn’t touch the tortillas.

The flavor of the salsa verde was good and was easy to make. I couldn’t find poblano chiles, so I used pasilla. A little online research (completely unverified, mind you) indicates that these are in fact the same pepper. There is a huge debate about pepper nomenclature apparently. Trust me on this one.

Since you don’t have access to this recipe online, it involves a few pretty simple steps. Saying it outloud actually makes me feel more like a slow-poke. The chicken is boiled in stock and smothered onions, garlic and cumin, then needs to cool in order to be shredded for the enchilada filling. Meanwhile, the poblano peppers and tomatillos are roasted, peeled, cooled, then pureed with garlic, a little broth, salt, pepper, and sugar.

Finally, the chicken, shredded cheese and cilantro are rolled into tortillas and stacked together in a pan with a layer of verde sauce below and a nice covering of sauce and cheese on top. Bake for 20 minutes. Why did this take me two hours? Who knows.

The roasting of the peppers and tomatillos is very simple. I would recommend the old bag the pepper trick after roasting. Surprisingly, it isn’t in the recipe, but try throwing your roasted peppers in a bag to steam for a bit. The skins will come off quickly this way.

One tip I would suggest is to get your chicken started right away. Or maybe cut your chicken into smaller pieces to decrease the cooking time. You can still shred it after it is cooked, but the waiting for the chicken to cool ended up being a time waster for me. I could have roasted the peppers while the chicken was cooling and been ok but instead, my chicken and peppers were cooking at the same time, resulting in a bit of waiting time for the chicken to cool with my sauce already complete. No biggie unless you are in a hurry to serve dinner.

If you are following along, one of the indicators of a successful dinner around here is that the adults think it is tasty and the kids don’t need to be bribed with oreos to eat it. This dinner fit the bill. Tasty but not too strange. Will probably make this again when all the kids are here. It is a great meal for a cold night.