Every week we’ll post a recipe that we both made. This week’s recipe was White Chicken Enchiladas, found over at Joyful Momma’s Kitchen. Printable recipe can be found at the bottom of this post.

Robyn’s Take:

This week’s recipe was my choice. I don’t have a clue how I happened across it (Pinterest, maybe?), but I know we like enchiladas around here, and it looked fairly easy. Also, I feel like I pick a LOT of desserts, so I was trying to mix it up and make it all exciting and such.

Ingredients:

That jar on the left is canned chicken – which I canned myself – and the one on the right that is kind of oddly colored and looks like spaghetti sauce is actually chicken broth, which I also canned myself. Because I am JUST that domestic. Also: sour cream, flour, butter, tortillas, chopped green chilies (that can in the lower right part of the picture), and Monterey Jack FANCY shredded cheese.

Mix your chicken and 1 cup of your cheese in a bowl. Like such.

Slap a couple of spoonfuls of the chicken/ cheese mix in the center of each tortilla. Roll it up and put it in a greased (I used Pam) 9×13 pan.

It was a tight fit, but I got all 10 of them in there, by god.

Toss your butter in a saucepan over medium heat until it melts. Then add flour and cook for 1 minute. Slowly stir in the chicken broth and let it cook over medium heat until you get bored with all the fucking STANDING AROUND waiting for this shit to BOIL, and turn it up to high.

I was waiting and waiting for the shit to boil, and what do you suppose happened?

That’s right.

ANOTHER damn inspector kitteh was all “HAI AM HERE TO INSPECT.”

Inspector Magoo was all ::SNIFF::SNIFF::SNIIIIIIIIIFF::

Then he was all “You KNOW I can’t eat Monterey Jack cheese. It gives me gas! Sixty-three demerits and I’m on the verge of shutting this place DOWN.”

Then he got all NOSY and was all “Do you EVER scrub that sink? That is some nasty-ass shit. This place is a DISGRACE. You horrify me, lady.” So I had to distract him with a red straw, and off he ran.

Finally, FINALLY the butter/flour/chicken broth came to a boil, and after about three minutes it was visibly thicker. I was tired of waiting around, so I decided it was ready to come off the heat.

Add sour cream and chopped green chilies.

Dump the sauce over the enchiladas and sprinkle the rest of the cheese on top.

Bake for 22 minutes and then under the high broiler for another 2 minutes to brown the cheese.

The result:

Honest to god, I couldn’t get a decent food pic if you sent me to photography school and then bribed me with $10,000.

Inspector Magoo couldn’t oversee the plating or the eating of the enchiladas, as he was otherwise occupado.

The verdict? We both (Fred and I, not Magoo and I) liked it a lot. The one pan made dinner for the two of us for two nights, and then I got three lunches out of it. It makes plenty, is what I’m saying.

The only things I’ll different next time: instead of cramming all the enchiladas into one pan, I’ll use two pans (that way, they won’t bake together, and it’ll be easier to take just one enchilada.) I may try using half the sauce (there was a LOT of sauce), and just a sprinkle of cheese on top. I may also try adding rice and/ or beans to the enchilada filling just to make things exciting. Also, I’ll start the sauce at the same time I start rolling up the enchiladas, so I won’t have to stand there and be bored for so long. I have a short attention span, yo.

Nance’s take:

When I saw that Robyn picked enchiladas (thank God for spell check!) I just rolled my eyes because she has done this to me before.

Here’s a little secret I’m going to tell you about Robyn (stalker alert).  She lives within two miles of a fabulous place that serves authentic Mexican food.  AUTHENTIC.  And I know for a fact that it’s pretty damn good because Rick and I ate there, at our own risk, since Fred and Robyn were skeeerdy cats about it.  Sure, it’s a converted trailer and not a “real” restaurant (Rick told me they are called roach coaches – or just food trucks, if you actually want to keep your appetite).  But the food is good and you don’t have to force your friends to try and make it at home.  ahem.

No, I did not go into this with a bad attitude.  But I did do something that I don’t ever remember doing before…I prepared two meals because I was afraid I was going to have a fail.  And also, my mother (Grandma Tube-top) hates enchiladas.  Don’t ask me why because she doesn’t even know why. She’s just a hater.  So I made lasagna at the same time because I didn’t want to hear it.  And anybody who has ever had a mother knows what I mean about not wanting to hear it.

I wrapped my seasoned chicken in foil (I used way too much foil this time, yikes) and baked it at 425 degrees for 30 minutes. These breasts were super thick and it came out perfect (translation: not dried out/petrified).

Rick came home from work, saw my chaos, and immediately offered to help. Of all the complaints I have with my husband, I can honestly say that he offers to help me the minute he comes home from work…every single day. I’m well aware that not many men do this and I think it sucks. It really is just a curtesy thing. I am fixing his meal…of course he should offer his help, it’s just the polite thing to do. I usually don’t need his help and send him on his merry way, but the offer is always appreciated.  Unless he’s pushing me to hurry up or some shit.  Then I turn into a she-beast and start slapping pans around while doing my special brand of hate-cooking, but that’s a story for another day.  Moody cow, thy name is Nance.

I told him he could shred the chicken for me while I did something else. I went on my merry way and only went over to supervise when I saw that he had 3 cats and a dog surrounding him and it appeared to be a chicken dance-off. Dammit! I hate the animals in the kitchen when I’m cooking and this type of stuff really pisses me off. You’re tripping over them and when someone gives the cats stuff like chicken it sits on the floor while they take fifteen minutes to decide whether or not they even like it. Our kitchen is very narrow and I am sick to death of worrying about breaking a hip because of one of these fuckers.

But my point about the whole thing (besides the fact that I hate animals in my kitchen when I’m cooking)? My husband has no idea how to shred chicken. No idea! He was over there dicing away and apparently thought that SHRED is the new word for CHUNKS. WTF, Rick!

So then I had to stop everything. Grab two forks and give a lesson on shredding meat. And now? I have a husband who knows how to shred meat with two forks. He’s a keeper.

Shredded Monterey jack cheese mixed up with the chicken. Yum!

Meanwhile, my lasagna noodles are still waiting.

This is the point that I realized that I don’t know how to roll an enchilada. Yikes!

I ended up using my phone to google how to roll them and found this simple video. Tuck and roll, bitches! Tuck and roll! And this, my friends, is why I love the fucking Internet.  Instant information, FTW!

I wasn’t too sure about how thick this white sauce was supposed to be. It seemed thick enough so I took it off of the heat at about this point.

I have issues with sour cream in the house. I only give it one week in the fridge after it’s been opened because I have no idea (unless I see mold) if it’s spoiled or not. No one could identify what date our sour cream was opened so I pitched it and used my precious (OMG, so GOOD, but SO EXPENSIVE) Fage Yogurt instead since the recipe author said you could substitute greek yogurt. I made sure the white sauce was not boiling as to avoid the curdling she also talked about (yuck).

Action shot!

I put the rest of the cheese on the top and threw that bad boy in the oven (because I needed to get my lasagna made, dammit).

It came out of the oven looking like this. I put the broiler on it for a few minutes because I was afraid the family was going to automatically dislike something that was so bland looking.

Boy, plating (hoity toity alert) this thing was a nightmare! It doesn’t make a great presentation, but then again, it could just be that I have no natural skills when it comes to getting things out of a pan and onto a dish.

The verdict: I ate the hell out of the filling before it was stuffed in the tortilla shells, but after it was baked with the sauce I was un-impressed. But everyone else in the family thought it was really good! Even Grandma Tube-top, who hates enchiladas, thought it was good! So, there ya go. 3 against 1. It’s going in the cookbook.

PS:  We had the lasagna for dinner the day after.

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