Why'd you have to go and make things so complicated? Enchiladas Revisited

One fun thing about my life that makes me happy is that I work at a very unique agency that is literally in the middle of a neighborhood in a Latino community. When I go to work I say "buenos dias" not good morning. And I love it. Some things not to love, it is still work you know...but I'm seeing the glass half full right now. So, in this neighborhood (called South Park) there was a restaurant this Salvadorean lady opened. It recently closed but she still caters ($6/person!-hope that deal is still going on in a million years when I get married) and her food is so delicious, with real ingredients, it's authentic. Anyhow, so I had enchiladas there and they are delicious, and I realized, I think enchiladas are much simpler to make than us US-ers try to make them (there's no convenient way in English to say someone from the US, well yankee I guess, but in Spanish there are plenty of ways-estadounidense, gringo, guero, gabacho, yankee - I would have used estadounidense here but there's no equivalent in English, so I'll just make it up and start using it and hope that within 10 years there will be wide-spread use of my new term across the entire country: US-ers, help spread it, our society needs this term). So, I think that really no oven needs to be involved, hardly any cheese (and if possible it should be real Mexican cheese), and no crazy filling.

Last night I needed a meal and couldn't figure out what to make. When this happens, those times when it seems that although there is food, but there is just absolutely nothing that you could put together to make into a meal, and one that you feel like eating at that, I try to continuous look through the food and hope for some magic to happen in my brain. So I opened the fridge, the freezer, the food cabinet, shove a girl scout cookie down my throat, looked at the caned food, back to the fridge, the food cabinet, then the freezer, the cans...etc. After about 5-10 minutes of this, the wheels started turning. And then I thought-it's the perfect night for enchiladas: frozen corn tortillas in the freezer, a left-over rotisserie chicken in the fridge, some tomatoes and garlic and onion for sauce, and a microwave on hand.

My friend taught me how her family (Mexican) makes sauce for chips, enchiladas, anything. I think I discussed this in my first enchilada post. Anyhow, basically I made a sauce using her method (boil-microwave or stove-about 1-2 cups of water, 4 or 5 tomatoes, 3 cloves of garlic, half an onion, fresh jalapeNo or other pepper or dried peppers, and salt; once ingredients are soft, drain off the water, put them in the blender, and add water bit by bit until desired consistency is reached...and voila you have your sauce; of course as you may have imagined, you can switch the ingredients-more or less of any of them, any variation of hot pepper (dried or fresh)-or none, some tomatillos in the place of tomatoes (the strange little green tomato-y things by the jalapeNos-which you'd use for a green sauce). Anyhow, I made red with about 4 tomatoes. The sauce turned out very tasty, in my opinion. I then shredded the chicken, added a little of the sauce to it (stirred it together), added a tiny bit of cheese (yes, cheddar), heated the tortillas until they were soft and pliable, dipped them in the sauce (I don't think this is necessary though), filled one side with chicken, rolled it, put it in a dish, poured more sauce over all of them, and put it in the microwave for a few minutes. I then ate it with a little light sour cream on the side. One could cover them with cheese if desired.

I give you, the simplified, and perhaps more authentic, enchilada.

Que viva Mexico! OLE!