The Daring Kitchen: Stacked Green Chile Enchiladas

Well, it's time for The Daring Kitchen monthly challenge. The challenge this month was Stacked Green Chile Enchiladas. Well, the challenge was actually for chicken enchiladas, but given my new pescatarian status, that was out of the question. So I did veggie Stacked Green Chile Enchiladas.

I've never knowingly eaten tomatillos before, so I was interested in giving them a try. I was pressed for time, as I worked all day and had to throw this together beginning around 8 PM at night. I decided to keep the filling simple: black beans, onions and red pepper.

For the green chile sauce, I decided to stick pretty closely to the challenge's recipe, but I substituted a poblano pepper for one of the anaheim. And I pureed some of the roasted peppers instead of chopping all of them. Here's how it went:

Ingredients for green chile sauce:

5-6 Fresh Anaheim chiles (about 6 to 8 inch chiles) - roast, peel, remove seeds, chop coarsely
7-8 ounces Tomatillos (about 4-5 medium) - peel, remove stems
4 cups Chicken or Vegetable broth (2 cans)
1 clove Garlic, minced
2 teaspoons yellow onion, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
½ tsp Kosher salt (add more to taste)
¼ tsp Black Pepper (add more to taste)
2 tablespoons Cornstarch (dissolve in 2 tablespoons water, for thickening)

Filling Ingredients:

3 tablespoons Olive oil or other neutral vegetable oil (use more as needed)
Kosher salt and pepper
2 cans black beans - rinsed and drained
1 yellow onion - chopped
1 red pepper - chopped


Other Ingredients:

12 Small Corn tortillas (5-6 inch/13-15 cm). (you can also use wheat tortillas or other wraps)
6 ounces grated mexican cheese(other cheeses like cheddar, pepper jack, or Monterey Jack cheeses can be used. Just be sure they melt well and complement the filling)

Directions:

• Heat broiler on "high". Line a broiler pan with foil for easy clean up. Brush peppers with oil and place on broiler pan.
  
  
• Broil peppers until well-charred. Turn them to even blacken. They may finish at different times. So remove peppers as they are finished, and place them in a bowl covered with plastic wrap to cool.
  

• Peel papery husks off tomatillos and remove stems.
  

• Boil tomatillos until tender (about 5-7 minutes). Drain and set aside.

• Once peppers are cool, remove the skins and stems and seeds. Coarsely chop.
  

• While preparing peppers, saute up the red pepper and onion in a pan. Once tender, mix in drained black beans.
  

• Season the bean mixture. I mixed in about 1 tsp of cumin and 1 tsp of salt, a dash of black pepper, and a dash of chipotle pepper.

• Put cooked tomatillos in food processor. Add minced onion and garlic (I used Roasted Garlic from a jar).
  

• Then I put a couple of the roasted anaheims in the food processor, and pureed the mixture.
  

• On the stove, I put the vegetable broth, oregano, sea salt and black pepper.
  

• Then I mixed in the pepper and tomatillo puree, and the chopped peppers.
  

• Bring this to a boil, and then simmer about 10 minutes. Then I slowly mixed in the cornstarch/water mixture, and let the sauce simmer another 10 minutes.
• When the sauce is ready, spoon a ladle or two of it into the bottom of a casserole pan. Lay down tortillas (I could only fit 2 into my pan). I then spooned a ladle of sauce over those tortillas and laid another tortilla on top of each. Then I spooned half of the bean mixture on top of the tortilla and top with 1/3 of the cheese.
  

• Pour a ladle of sauce over each tortilla. Cover with another tortilla. Repeat with the other half of the bean mixture and 1/3 cheese and sauce. Then top with final tortilla and rest of cheese and ladle rest of sauce over the top.
• Bake enchiladas until cheese melts, for about 20 minutes.
  

So what's the verdict? Delicious! We loved it! There are a few changes I might make. For one, I might not puree the peppers with the tomatillo. I think it created too much sauce, and didn't thicken enough. I also might replace the red bell pepper in the bean mixture with roasted poblano peppers and maybe a diced jalapeno. I had also planned on sauteing up fresh corn with the bean mixture, but forgot to pick up corn at the store. And it might be better to let the sauce cook even longer, to thicken a little more.


This was definitely a keeper! I also wanted a little dessert, but there was no time to make anything. But Target had frozen creme brulee on sale. So I baked up a couple after dinner. Yum!

This was a challenge that I really enjoyed!