Well, you shouldn’t be surprised about this one, I told you it was coming. No lies, this was a very popular dish of mine, but it was never served in a restaurant or at a party. It was something I created for a very well known hippy grocery chain, while doing a consulting job for them (we’ll leave them nameless for now) and their hot bar/chef’s case. We would feed about 1,000 people a day and we’d have to make at least 60 trays of this just to keep up. (For reference each tray is SUPPOSED to feed 25 people.) It was a great way to use up the leftover rotisserie chickens, and a way to use up onions and peppers that didn’t make it to the displays (nothing wrong with them they just didn’t look pretty). This should make enough for 4-6 people:
18-20 corn tortillas
1 qt Enchilada sauce
3 oz. queso fresco
1/2 lb pablano peppers cut into 1/3 inch strips
2 cups julienne onions
1/2 lb shredded chicken (you know leftover)
1 bunch cilantro, rough chopped
Crema (Not cream, not a typo, this is sour cream’s older badass brother) or sour cream, as needed.
- Yup. Oven, 350. Preheat it now.
- Next up, get a skillet on to medium heat and start up some olive oil. Add the onions and peppers and let them sweat down real slow for about twenty minutes, or until they look like this:
- Add 3/4 of the cilantro and cut the heat. Now add your shredded chicken, season it up, and get those two mixed well. Set this aside for now.
- Now grab your favorite lasagna pan, and lay down a bit of the enchilada sauce. Start layering your tortillas, then you peppers and chicken, then your cheese. Got it? Good now repeat, and repeat again. You want another layer? Sure go again if you have enough ingredients.
- Pop this in the oven for about 10-15 mintues, just enough to get a bit of color and let everything come together.
- Top this with the crema , some very thin sliced onions and the rest of the cilantro and go to town.
Fresh out of oven awesome
So what can you use with this besides chicken? Well obviously pork BBQ, or if you have some leftover ropa vieja, you can use that too. Don’t like queso fresco? Ok. Use some other cheese, PepperJack or Oxacan cheese works nicely. Don’t like the bitter enchilada sauce? Well, use some BBQ sauce (you can make your own here) which goes great with blue cheese by the way. Let me know what you do with this in the comments.
Happy Eating,
-The Doctor