Chicken Enchiladas

Hm. As you can see, I forgot to take a picture of this until someone reminded me near the end. This deliciousness was gobbled up pretty quickly by one of my small groups a few weeks back.

So. Let's get down to business. As you can see, because I stuffed as many enchiladas as I could into this picture, it turned more into a casserole than individual enchiladas, but it was still quite good tasting. I doubled the recipe for us and used two cans of cream of mushroom and simplified things for myself by buying one of those lovely lemon pepper rotisserie chickens from the grocery store. The chicken tasted great...almost like I cooked it myself. LoL. Oh man, yea right. Maybe after a few years, meat is a whole new level of cooking I'm not ready for. Oddly enough, I also misread the recipe and bought corn tortillas too, instead of flour. They worked just fine so long as you heat up a frying pan with no oil or butter or anything, and just heated up the tortillas prior to filling and folding them over so they didn't crack. I also used nonfat milk and everything turned out great so there's some wiggle room for that part. Happy enchilada-ing!

4.5 out of 5 stars!
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Recipe from here.

Prep Time: 15 Min / Cook Time: 30 Min /Ready In: 45 Min

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon butter
• 1/2 cup chopped green onions
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chiles
• 1 (10.75 ounce) can condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1 1/2 cups cubed cooked chicken breast meat
• 1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese, divided
• 6 (12 inch) flour tortillas
• 1/4 cup milk

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Lightly grease a large baking dish.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt the butter and saute the green onion until tender (about 3 to 4 minutes). Add the garlic powder, then stir in the green chiles, cream of mushroom soup and sour cream. Mix well. Reserve 3/4 of this sauce and set aside. To the remaining 1/4 of the sauce in the saucepan, add the chicken and 1/2 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese. Stir together.
3. Fill each flour tortilla with the chicken mixture and roll up. Place seam side down in the prepared baking dish.
4. In a small bowl combine the reserved 3/4 of the sauce with the milk. Spoon this mixture over the rolled tortillas and top with the remaining 1/2 cup of shredded Cheddar cheese. Bake in the preheated oven for 30 to 35 minutes, or until cheese is bubbly.

Better Beef Lasagna

I am a sucker for great Italian food. If it were up to me, I would eat Italian food every single day. Not necessarily every single meal, but certainly every day. Just imagine---okay, I need to stop because the drooling is affecting the effectiveness of the keyboard keys. Anyway, when we decided to go with an Italian theme, I immediately thought of lasagna because its delicious, wonderful, yummy, scrumptious---oh, crap, drool problem again.

One bad aspect of lasagna, however, is that it's usually loaded with fat and calories because of the beef and sheer excess of cheese used. Another drawback being time. Lasagna is so time consuming to make because there are just so many steps. I felt like this recipe by Elie Krieger, whom I love by the way, appropriately met my biggest concerns.

I made this recipe for a potluck for my small group and was really quite anxious. There's just a tad bit of pressure when you don't normally "cook" (yay baking!), and you're the one in charge of the entree (READ: if you screw up, everyone's screwed). Good times! But everything turned out decently.

Don't be alarmed by the intermediate level difficulty of this recipe, it isn't too bad actually. Or maybe I was just expecting a war and it turned out just fine. It really did take around the time described below to prep and cook. One of the things I don't like the recipe calls for 4 cups of marinara, but when you're in the store...well, I didn't know how much that was and hoped it was around a jar size. In actuality, I ended up running short on sauce and I wonder if that contributed to my lasagna being a little dry. It definitely isn't the dripping, saucy mess that you're used to from lasagna, but this is supposed to be healthier. I bought a nice, organic marinara from Trader Joe's and it tasted beautifully. I was surprised the meat and lasagna tasted pretty well spiced when the recipe doesn't call for extra spices. I did however end up adding a few pinches of dried oregano to the top of the lasagna when I added the last layer of sauce and cheese. It smelled so good when it baked--the drooling started all over again.

All in all, I think this turned out well. I ended up using 95% lean beef because I couldn't find 90% lean and it worked, in fact the beef taste was better for it. I also mixed up portobello and crimini mushrooms because all portobellos was out of my budget range. I think what messed up my version was that I baked it and then stopped to refrigerate it because it was too early. Then I had to rebake it and I think this reheating/double baking dried it out a little bit. It really could have used that extra sauce. I also added more mozzarella and used regular Parmesan instead of Fresh. Yummy! Great recipe, happy eating!


A peek at the lasagna---so ghetto with the foil covering it, ha!

4 stars out of 5 (would have been 4.5 if it wasn't dry)
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Recipe from here.

Recipe courtesy Ellie Krieger

Prep Time:35 min, Cook Time:1 hr 15 min

Level:Intermediate

Serves:6 servings

Ingredients

• 12 ounces whole-wheat lasagna noodles (15 noodles)
• 8 ounces lean ground beef (90 percent lean or higher)
• 2 teaspoons olive oil
• 8 ounces portobello mushrooms, diced (about 3 large mushroom caps)
• 4 cups good quality store-bought marinara sauce
• 1 (15 ounce) container part-skim ricotta cheese
• 1 (10 ounce) package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and well drained
• 1 egg, lightly beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• Pinch ground nutmeg
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan
• 3 ounces grated part-skim mozzarella cheese (about 2/3 cup)

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Cook the noodles al dente according to the directions on the package. Drain them well then lay out on waxed paper to prevent them from sticking to each other.

Heat a large nonstick skillet over a medium-high heat. Add the beef and cook until no longer pink, breaking it up into small pieces as it cooks, about 3 minutes. Transfer the meat to a plate, discarding any fat remaining in the pan.

Add the oil to the same pan and heat over a medium-high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook, stirring occasionally until all the liquid has evaporated and they begin to brown, about 5 minutes. Return the meat to the pan. Stir in 2 cups of the tomato sauce and simmer for 2 minutes.

In a medium bowl combine the ricotta cheese, spinach, egg, the salt, the pepper and nutmeg.

Spread 1 cup of tomato sauce on the bottom of a 9 by 13 inch baking dish. Place a layer of lasagna noodles on top, touching but not overlapping. Spread half of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles. Add another layer of noodles. Top with half the beef-mushroom mixture. Repeat with another layer of noodles, then remaining cheese mixture, more noodles, then remaining beef mixture and finally 1 more layer of noodles. Top the final layer of noodles with the remaining sauce, then sprinkle with the grated cheeses. Cover loosely with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake for 15 minutes more.