secret recipe club: green chicken enchiladas

i was so so so happy this month when i opened up my secret recipe club assignment and found la cocina de leslie and six years (!!!) of homemade mexican food. why oh why has it taken me this long to find you?!

while the recipe i chose goes back more than five years, it was a pretty easy choice. we have a few good mexican restaurants near us and while i usually get tacos when we go out, whenever we get to salena's, jason and i always get the mexican flag - three enchiladas, one red, one white, one green. i stopped dead in my tracks when i spied leslie's red and green chicken enchiladas and decided that since i had made red enchiladas a couple years ago, that it was time to try green.

we were not disappointed even a tiny bit. these are so good, my almost one year old son stuffed a whole enchilada down before i could even serve myself. and then repeated it with leftovers two days later.

not only are they delicious, they were easy to make. i had never cooked with tomatillos or poblanos before and learned a great trick to make the tomatillos easy to peel (thanks google!): put the husked tomatillos in a bowl of warm water and submerge for about 5 minutes. once the husk is soaked, it peels right off in a few big pieces. this saved me a ton of time.

these enchiladas were so good, next time, i'm making a double batch so i can freeze a pan for later. and i can't wait to try leslie's red version soon!

for more information on the secret recipe club, including the list of participating bloggers, featured recipes from members, and instructions on how to join, visit the secret recipe club website!

check out my previous secret recipe club posts: breakfast pizza two ways, old fashioned sour cream donuts, italian sloppy joes, hard cider baked chicken & mushrooms, mini cinnamon roll cakes, double chocolate zucchini muffins with chocolate butter, butterscotch M&M oatmeal cookies, 30 minute baked tortellini, snickerdoodle bars & slow cooker chicken fajitas, meyer lemon iced raspberry yogurt cake & slow cooker chicken cacciatore, almond strawberry jam thumbprints, almond butter cookies, enfrijoladas, chocolate snack cake, bacon topped maple french toast cupcakes, cherry sorbet, slow cooker beans & mushrooms, mojito chicken tacos, maple glazed whole wheat spiced apple pizza, pig out cookies, pasta with blistered tomatoes & arugula and iced grapefruit cookies, mushroom barley soup, scalloped ham and potato bake & andes mint cake, chicken souvlaki with tzatziki, asian pork chops, lemon lime meltaways, blueberry peach crisp, minted lemon ice, white chocolate macadamia nut blondies, raspberry cream filled eclairs, jam swirled cheesecake, whole wheat grapefruit cake, chewy no bake granola bars & carrot cinnamon waffles, cannoli, gingerbread muffins, double chocolate peanut butter chip oatmeal cookies, butterscotch peach cake, whole wheat honey pancakes, minted pineapple lime agua fresca, breakfast tacos, simple almond sandwich cookies, & roasted banana rum cake.

green chicken enchiladas
adapted from la cocina de leslie
makes about 12 enchiladas, serving 4-6 people

for the chicken filling:
1 pound cooked chicken, shredded
1/2 medium onion, finely diced
1 cup sour cream

for the sauce:
1 pound tomatillos
2 poblano peppers
1/2 medium onion, cut in half
1 clove garlic
1-3 cups chicken stock

to assemble:
about 12 small flour tortillas
about 8 ounces (or 1/2 pound) queso fresco cheese, crumbled
about 1 cup shredded oaxaca cheese - if you can't find it, sub monterrey jack

1. preheat your oven to 350F.
2. to make the filling, mix the chicken, onion, sour cream and season with salt and pepper. set aside.
3. to make the sauce, roast the vegetables in a large skillet over medium heat until the tomatillos are soft and the poblanos have a few charred, black spots. if your tomatillos have any burned spots, rub them lightly with the tines of a fork and they will come right off. add all of the vegetables to a food processor and pulse until smooth. add 1 cup chicken stock and pulse until smooth. add chicken stock, a small amount at a time, blending after each addition, until the sauce is the consistency of pea soup. pour the sauce into a bowl large enough to submerge a tortilla.
4. to assemble, coat the bottom of a 9x13" pan with sauce. submerge a tortilla in the bowl of sauce and add about 2 tablespoons of chicken filling and about 1 tablespoon of queso fresco. roll up the tortilla and place it in the pan. repeat with the remaining tortillas until all of the filling is used up. spread any remaining sauce over the rolled up enchiladas. cover with shredded cheese. 
5. bake 40-45 minutes, until the sauce is bubbly and the cheese is starting to brown. let sit 5-10 minutes to cool slightly and set before serving.

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