Chicken Enchilada Casserole

We made another casserole recipe from Family-Style Meals at the Hali'imaile General Store tonight. This time, 'Mexican Chicken Enchilada Casserole.

The recipe calls for 10 cups of chicken stock, and 3 cups of cooked chicken. So to cut costs a bit, I pulled two frozen chicken breasts out of the freezer that we'd been saving for awhile, and a bunch of chicken bones and wing tips I'd saved from previous meals. Rather than discarding bones when I butcher meat, I bag them up and freeze them for making stock - which takes some time, but saves a lot of money. I chopped up a white onion, 4 carrots, and 4 stalks of celery, cooked them in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes to help tease out more flavor, and put them in a stockpot where I was already boiling 3 quarts of water with all the chicken parts. I added parsley stems, basil, and thyme from our garden, plus dried black peppercorns and garlic, and let it simmer for several hours. When it was done, I strained it into some mason jars and put them in an ice bath to start cooling it down, then put them in the fridge until I needed them. It made more than enough stock for the recipe.

We made some slight edits to the recipe (reflected below) to make it a little quicker & easier to make. For example, we didn't toast and then grind our own cumin - which would've offered more flavor. And we used canned corn and beans, so the quantities were slightly off from the recipe, but not enough to matter in a casserole.

Mexican Chicken Enchilada Casserole
1/2 Tbspn chili powder
1 Tbspn cumin
2 tspn garlic powder
2 tspn dried oregano
1 pinch cinnamon
2 tspn cocoa powder
6 Tbspn all purpose flour
10 cups chicken stock
1 15oz can tomato sauce
1 tspn salt
1 lb roast chicken meat, cubed
1 15oz can garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
1 15oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
1 15oz can corn kernels, drained
1 2.25 oz can sliced black olives, drained
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
1 Tbspn finely minced garlic
1 1/2 cups grated white cheddar cheese
1 1/2 cups grated chipotle cheddar cheese
2 dozen tortillas

In a saucepan, combine the chili powder, cumin, garlic powder, oregano, cinnamon, cocoa and flour, mixing well. Slowly add 6 cups of chicken stock, whisking well to break up any clumps of flour. Place over medium-high heat, stirring often, until the mixture thickens (this may take 10 min or more). Add tomato sauce and salt, blend well and heat through. Remove from the heat and set aside. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9x13 deep baking dish. Heat the remaining 4 cups of chicken stock in another saucepan over medium-high heat, keeping warm. In a large mixing bowl, combine the chicken, beans, corn, onion, olives, cilantro, and garlic. Season with salt and black pepper. In a medium mixing bowl, combine the cheeses. To assemble, dip each corn tortilla into the warm chicken stock for about 5 seconds. Layer 6 tortillas in the bottom of the baking dish, overlapping the edges to cover the bottom. Cover the tortillas with 1/3 of the chicken mixture. Ladle 1 1/2 cups sauce over the mixture and sprinkle with 1/4 of the cheese. Repeat 2 more times, ending with a layer of tortillas. Pour 2 cups of sauce over the last layer of tortillas and sprinkle with the remaining cheese. Bake for 30 minutes, until bubbly on top. Remove from oven and let stand 5 minutes before serving.

While making the recipe, we noticed that it called for a full cup of cilantro, but we didn't see where it was used. Then we noticed the 'continued on page 94 note tucked at the bottom of the page, near the binding. Turns out that the recipe - including the list of ingredients - continues on the next page, and calls for mixing sour cream & lime juice, and chopped tomatoes and cilantro to make toppings for the sauce, as well as roasted pumpkin seeds. We were fine without these additions, and both agreed the casserole was delicious and filling... and it makes 8 servings, so it's a good thing we liked it!




As an after dinner treat, Dan came up with an idea for a little sundae. We have a ton of ice cream leftover from the Super Bowl party, so he thought we could make some rum-caramel sauce to go with it. We put about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar in a saucepan, spread evenly on the bottom. We turned the heat up to high, and watched until the sugar began to melt a bit and bubble. Then I poured in a couple splashes of dark rum, and let the mixture bubble and reduce, shaking the pan a bit to make sure the sugar was dissolving into the liquid. Once it began to thicken up, we took it off the heat, and I tilted the pan a few times to cool it before pouring it over the ice cream. When it hit the cold ice cream, it cooled to a rich, gooey caramel sauce with a hint of rum flavor.