Cassie's AWESOMESAUCE Feista Chicken Enchiladas

This one is the FIRST!!! recipe that has come to me through our Simple Cooking Group . One of my best friends, Cassie posted this. Now growing up I never liked the way my parents made enchiladas, but when I read Cassie's recipe I just had to give it a try since it was so different from what I am used to. It was so amazing! Its just... all I can say is you can't understand till you try it for yourself! So with a large THANK YOU to Cassie, we dive right in!

Ingredients:

1 small onion, chopped ( or how ever fine you wants it )

1 clove garlic, minced

1 lb chicken breast chopped ( i use 2 breasts from a bag of frozen breasts. we have done strips, corsely and finely chopped. it all depends on the size ou want to bite into )

1 cup salsa, divided  ( THIS  is your real deciding factor of how spicy and the base of the flavor. I probably use about 2 or 3 cups in total. )

4 oz cream cheese ( if you cut it up it melt quicker and spreads nicely )

1 Tablespoon chopped cilantro

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 cup shredded cheese  (what ever you like. i usually use coby jack cheese and probably use about 2 cups.... )

8 tortillas

Alright so this is the list as Cassie posted it. I highlighted the first two in red as I did not use them, since I had plenty of onion and garlic in my salsa. FOR the salsa, I used the fresh from scratch stuff I made in my previous entry. 

Alright so lets start cooking!

1. Preheat the over to 350 degrees
2. In a larger sauce pan heat it up on low with either oil or butter, however you prefer it. Chop up your chicken and toss it in.
3. As the meat starts to slowly cook, add in your onion and garlic. (Like I said I didn't do this due to my salsa.) saute it a bit.
4. Add in a cup of the salsa.
5. If you ought your cream cheese in bar form, it's only half a bar that you need. I cut that up into 8ths so it would melt faster and spread it around the entire pan. 
6. When its about half melted, add in the cilantro, (see previous entry on how to cut up easily) and the cumin. I actually added a ton of the cumin, as I just really really love the flavor. It wasn't too strong just right, mmm yummie!
7. As it all melts down and starts to come together, you'll find it becoming very sauce like all on it's own accord. this is good, we want that. just be sure you're checking your chicken to know it's cooking through all the way. Once the chicken is done, add in your shredded cheese to goo-a-fy!

Alright so now that we're all cooked up, its time for the baking pan. A larger casserole dish is best but I didn't have one so I had to make due.

If you have more salsa, lay it out on the bottom of the dish.

Next, lay out a tortilla. and scoop some of the dish onto it. You can do this one of two ways. You can double the tortilla shells and put the sauce in there with the rest of it. Or you can use one shell and strain the sauce back into the pan. If you use only one tortilla and the sauce it will rip through and it really isn't fun to deal with that. I learned it the hard way. That's when I started to strain out the chicken and sauce.

Wrap it up burrito style or however you like, and lay it seam down in the baking dish. Rinse and repeat, you know how it is, till you baking dish is all filled up.

Alright, so now you should have a lot of leftover sauce with some chicken. Get a spoon or measuring cup or something and drizzle it all over the top of the shells, covering them completely. There may or may not be chicken int he sauce, that's just fine. The more chicken the merrier! After that, if you have any more cheese, just lay it out on top. You can never....NEVER have too much cheese!

Now we bake! Put it in the now hot oven for about 15-20 min. Any longer and the edges of our tortillas will may burn. Mine were only in for 15 and it smelled like they'd burned. Luckily they didn't. Once it's all melty and hot you can take it out of the oven.

Now I actually had to use two spatulas to get these out, they were THAT full, and they still broke up on me! HAHAH! Once you have the enchilada onto the plate, use what's left of the salsa to top it off.

There is SO much food there it's insane! But OH! So mouth watering delicious! I water just thinking about it, this is my new favorite meal, I kid you not.

That's all there is for this super easy!

Who will like this: Adults, especially if you like Mexican food. Children might if you make a smaller one for them, and also if they aren't picky about "foreign objects" I.E.: the weird red or green things. Also depending on the spice level of the salsa that you use, people may not enjoy it if they aren't big on spicy foods. My version in pretty mild, as I didn't make a very spicy salsa for it at all.

LEFTOVERS!!!! We had tons of left overs. They were really good fresh and cold form the fridge the next morning for breakfast. May sound odd but everything you should have for your first meal is right there wrapped up in a nice shell. It's hard from cold and since you wrap the end up, nothing falls out and you can eat on the go if you need to!

That's all for Simple Cooking tonight, you got two entries for the price of one! Enjoy the Enchiladas and let me and Cassie know exactly what you think of them over at the Simple Cooking Group or right here in the comments for Simple Cooking.

Until next time. I love you all, and remember to love yourselves too!

~Alex~

Home Made Salsa!!!

ALRIGHT!!! I have a super quick super easy recipe for salsa, only takes a few minuets to make too!!!

Ingredients:

• Two large, firm tomatoes
• Peppers..green pepper, jalapeno pepper it doesn't matter here just whatever you prefer. PLEASE READ THE NOTE AT THE END OF THE RECIPE BEFORE YOU MAKE THIS!
• White onion
• Cilantro
• Lime juice
• Minced Garlic (for salsa I like to use the pre-minced stuff in the jar, it's comes in a liquid so the pieces are nice and soft and you're not biting into hard garlic)

Note: If you need pictures for this one..there is no hope for you.

Alright so this so freaking easy anyone can make it. you CANNOT SCREW THIS UP! I promise you that! So lets roll up our sleeves and get started!

1. Chop up your tomatoes. I use really first ones because I have such a hard time dicing them up what they're soft. Put ALL of it into a good sized bowl. The juice, seeds, everything.
2. Dice up your onion. The amount you use is dependable on how you like it. I'm not a big fan of it, but Jay is. I can't bite into hard onion it makes me gag so I used the cheese grater to made it mushy and put a lot in that way. This way I can bite into it without worry and Jay gets lots of onion!
3. Cut up your cilantro. This you need VERY little of. Also scissors is the easiest way to get nice small bits, just hold it all together in one hand, making it as dense as possible. Then use the scissors and snip snip snip snip and it'll just mince itself!
4. Now for the pepper. I do this last because I know how bad it is to get pepper in your eyes or on your face. Depending on how spicy you want it, you can add in the core, or at least the seeds. If you don't want to use them just cut them out and set them aside. Dice up your pepper and add it into the bowl with everything else.
5. Using a long spoon or spatula, fold the ingredients together. Switch between a gentle fold and a slow mixing stirring. The juice from the tomatoes will be more than enough for the liquid aspect, the rest is nice and solid and crunchy and spicy for you!
6. Add in one teaspoon of the minced garlic and mix.
7. Add in the lime juice to taste. Start with a little and go from there. I don't like Lime at all, but I found the salsa didn't taste right to me until I'd used like half of the little green lime thingy haha!

From there adjust the amount of lime juice and garlic to your liking..the lime can do A LOT for the salsa and is great for balancing out a flavor you don't want as strong. Also black pepper helps to balance out come flavor too!

IMPORTANT NOTE!: If you have never word with peppers of any kind before PLEASE BE CAREFUL! The core with the seed are ALWAYS the hottest parts. Once you make the first cut into your pepper do not, DO NOT touch any part of your face! If you cut up the pepper before you dice up other ingredients, PLEASE wash the knife and the cutting board before moving on. Also PLEASE wash your hands right away. I am speaking form experience when I say you do NOT want any part of a pepper even if its only a green pepper, on or near your face. Please be careful!

That's really all there is to this. It's really good. I kept a bag of tortilla chips next to me for proper taste testing!

I don't really have any special tips on who'll like this or anything like that. It's salsa, if you don't normally like salsa this may be a good way to to try different things to see if you just have a particular taste to it, or something like that, yanno? Give it a try, it can't hurt. I just used a green pepper, not super spicy but enough and it was SO good...and that's coming from someone who's very picky about salsa. 

That's about it for now. I'll have another recipe up VERY shortly. Keep this one in mind, when you read the next one. Until then, have a good one!