Chicken Enchilada Casserole

This casserole was the win of my weekend.

I had a blog-cooking-extravaganza a couple weekends ago in preparation for my time away. So after a lot of cooking and several recipe test fails, I was at my wit's end and about to call it quits. This was one of my final tests, and I had no clue if it was gonna work out and if it hadn’t, I’m not sure I would of handled it well. Even before that, this was a re-route from an original plan because as mentioned on Monday, cauliflower was no where to be found.

I mean seriously, at one point there was glass and coffeecake all over my kitchen floor.

I am now loaf pan-less and you are now coffeecake-less.

But. YES. YES. YES. This casserole worked. And it completely made up for those few fails that occurred.

That stain is never gonna come out.

I think that removing the eggplant skin is key and having a mandoline definitely makes things easier. I was able to get super thin slices of eggplant that truly resembled tortilla-like layers. The directions of course look excessive, but I promise it took me no longer than the thirty minutes it takes for the eggplants to sweat to get the other two components together, and assembling shouldn’t take more than five.

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Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Ingredients:

Casserole

1 large eggplant, skin removed and sliced thinly lengthwise (my mandoline made quick work of this --- the aim is to make these work like tortillas or lasagna sheets would), total of 12 big slices (you may have a few extra smaller slices, roast those babies up, if you please!)

salt (for sweating the eggplant)

Chicken filling (ingredient list below)

Enchilada Sauce (ingredient list below)

2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese

Chicken filling

splash of olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 small tomato, roughly chopped

1 sweet pepper, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

2 chicken breasts, cooked and shredded

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon cayenne

1 teaspoon cumin

1 teaspoon paprika

salt and pepper to taste

Enchilada Sauce

splash of olive oil

1 small onion, diced

1 garlic clove, minced

4 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped, approximately 2 cups

2 tablespoons chili powder

1 teaspoon paprika

¼ teaspoon oregano

¼ teaspoon cumin

¼ cup shredded cheddar cheese

salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

First things first, get your eggplant slices sweating by laying them on a flat surface and sprinkling them with a bit of salt and letting them rest for approximately 30 minutes.

While the eggplants sweat, get the olive oil heating in medium pan over medium heat. Add the onions, tomato, pepper, and jalapeno to the pan. Cook until onions and peppers are soft and tomato is wrinkly. Add the chicken to the pan and stir to combine the ingredients. Add in the spices and stir in to incorporate. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove from heat.

For the enchilada sauce, get a splash of olive oil heating in a small sauce pan over a medium heat. Add in the onion, garlic, and tomatoes and cook until the onion is soft and translucent and the tomatoes are starting to break down. Add the chili powder, paprika, oregano, and cumin. Stir in spices well. Continue to cook until the tomatoes have broken down completely and it’s starting to resemble a sauce, approximately another 10 minutes. Stir in the cheddar cheese. Once the cheese has completely melted into the sauce, taste for seasoning and then remove from heat. Optional move: once it's cooled a little, blitz the sauce with a hand blender or regular blender for a super smooth sauce.

If you’re a real awesome pro, you can attempt to do the filling and sauce at the same time.

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Using an 8x8 inch square baking dish, prepare to assemble the casserole.

With a paper towel, dab off the “sweat” from the eggplant slices.

Spread about a tablespoon or so of the enchilada sauce on the bottom of the baking dish. Next add the first layer of 3 eggplant slices, they can overlap slightly. Take about ⅓ of the chicken filling and spread it on top of the eggplant, then spoon on about ¼ of the enchilada sauce and lastly sprinkle on some of the cheese. Layer on 3 more eggplant, then start again with the chicken, the sauce and the cheese. You’ll do this for a third time, and then top with the last layer of eggplant, use the last of the sauce on top of the eggplant and sprinkle on the remaining cheese and then place in oven for about 40 minutes until the cheese is golden and bubbly and the eggplant is tender.

Serves 4 to 6

Pickled Carrots

Remember how I said everything should be pickled? Well, everything should be pickled.

And thanks to Food52 ---- who teach me the right way to do lots of things, I pickled some carrots. Some very purdy purple carrots from my CSA.

I have this strong urge a lot of the time to resist in consuming certain things because of how beautiful or shortlasting they are. Which I realize, is downright crazy and counterproductive. But sometimes, I still figure out ways to prolong their demise. Like pickling them or baking them into something.

Now pickling carrots isn’t so much of a novel idea, although it’s relatively new to me. Before this summer, I didn’t really realize you could pickle more than...pickles. (What a wretched life I led before coming into the good graces of vinegar.)

Obvs, I discovered things like Pickled Red Onions. But then on an outing to a fancy restaurant in SoHo, in lieu of the usual bread basket, the waiter passed around complimentary red grapes and pickled carrots. Everyone was thoroughly pleased with the combination and it was interesting and different to boot, even among the foodiest of foodies.

((To briefly veer off course a bit, can I tell you about the complimentary bacon grease popcorn I ate this weekend? Um, what? Yes. Exactly. It’s everything you’re thinking right now. This was at the same restaurant of Pickled Peach fame. Pickled peaches, yet another revelation.))

Okay so getting back to business. These carrots were so gorgeous, at first I wasn’t sure what to do with them. Eating them raw seemed just too boring but roasting or cooking them seemed too harsh an out.

However, preserving them in a fabulous magenta pickling liquid to last at least another couple weeks seemed perfectly appropriate.

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Pickled Carrots

as guided by this Food52 article

1 pound carrots, trimmed of their tops, scrubbed, and halved

2 cups white wine vinegar

⅔ cup water

⅓ cup honey

2 ½ tablespoons salt

1 tablespoon peppercorns

Place the halved carrots in a large glass mixing bowl.

In a small saucepan bring the vinegar, water, honey, salt and peppercorns to a boil. Once boiling remove from heat and pour the hot pickling liquid over the carrots. To keep carrots submerged in the brine, place a plate on top of them.

Let carrots and brine sit and cool completely.

Once cool, place carrots and brine in a sealed container. 

Will last 3 weeks to a month in the refrigerator.

Makes about 1 quart

Zesty Zucchini Soup

It’s safe to assume we all still have squash in our crispers, yes?

And was it yesterday morning, that I sorta, kinda, a little bit, wished I had grabbed a cardigan before leaving the apartment?

OH NO IT’S STARTING!!! Don’t.freak.out.

The drastic change between Saturday’s sweat show and Monday morning’s “where’s my sweater?” weather begs to have a summery twist on a comforting, warm bowl of soup.

I’ve actually been waiting and waiting to share this. I had made this during that time when squash was threatening to overtake my refrigerator. But every week seemed just too early to be like “eat boiling hot liquid for lunch or dinner, whydontcha!”

But it’s time has come. I keep telling myself to be excited for soup and stews and chili.

Here’s how I’ll start.

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Zesty Zucchini Soup

Ingredients:

1 tablespoon of grass fed butter, or other fat

1 small onion, diced

1 jalapeno, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

2 small-medium green zucchini, sliced into thin rounds

1 small yellow zucchini or yellow squash, sliced into thin rounds

32 oz. (4 cups) chicken broth

½ teaspoon of cumin

1 teaspoon of paprika

cayenne to taste

salt and pepper to taste

¼ cup grass fed heavy cream

Directions:

Get the butter melting in a large pot over a medium heat. Once melted saute onions, jalapeno, and garlic in pan until onions are soft, translucent, and a bit caramelized. About 5 minutes.

Add the squash to the pot and cook until just starting to get tender, another 5 to 10 minutes. (They’ll continue to cook in the broth and get soft.)

Add broth to the pot as well as cumin, paprika, cayenne, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer.

Simmer soup until the squash is soft and tender, approximately another 10 to 15 minutes.

Turn off heat and slowly stir in the heavy cream.

Yield: approximately 2 quarts

Stuffed Tomatoes & some facts of life

I mean I feel like I should be tired of tomatoes by now.

But I’m not.

So I made these stuffed tomatoes, as inspired by smitten kitchen.

I had big plans to make these using cauliflower as rice.

What I didn’t plan on was the fact that we have not yet entered cauliflower season. I’m new at this whole seasonal eating thing. I’m still crossing my fingers that cauliflower and tomatoes might overlap? I don’t know if they do…..So I did these as written with rice, because I don’t have so many strong feelings towards white rice being evil. Once in a blue, seems cool to me.

And then not only did I do them using rice, I didn’t change a thing about the recipe. At all. It’s perfection. (Lies, I did use grated parmesan instead of breadcrumbs on top, but that's all I did differently! Oh and I knocked the serving size down to 4 and adjusted accordingly.)

You can find the recipe here, if you’re inclined to make these. I hope my pictures are tempting enough for you to click over there and get on them immediately! 

I leave you with these facts from my weekend away:

1.) Burrata is a way of life.

2.) I almost always go for the burger. Two out of three meals this weekend were burgers. One was for breakfast. #sorrynotsorry

3.) Everything can and should be pickled, especially peaches. Must figure out how to do this STAT.

4.) Balsamic Reductions go a long way to make all things delicious.

5.) Three out of the four things listed above had to do with ONE starter I ate this weekend. Obvs, it rocked my world. 

Recreation is on my to-do.

Pulled Pork with Chipotle Barbecue Sauce

First things first, I need to get this off my chest ---- it’s really hard to make a pile of meat look photogenic.

There. I said it.

Moving on.

A big beautiful brioche bun, toasted, might have made this a little more fantastic looking, but we don’t do buns too often here in the sizzle & sass kitchen. A side of slaw though, I believe is, requisite. Spicy Slaw would have been great here, but I was unfortunately jalapeno-less. (It went into something awesome destined for the internets sometime next week.)

But let’s talk about the here and now. Pulled Pork and Chipotle Barbecue Sauce.

Normally I would have done this with a pork shoulder. But my mother had given me half of a 9 pound pork loin she’d bought. I needed to use it ASAP, since I’d been keeping it in the freezer at work, but then it got kicked out. And because, as previously mentioned, I’ve been desperately filling my freezer with summery goodies getting ready for my winter hibernation, I had ZERO space left for 5 pounds of pig.

So pulled pork it was! Even at the end of August when summer definitely decided to make a comeback and pulled pork meant that my oven had to be on for like five straight hours. Despite the heat it produced, it was worth it. Pulled pork is always worth it.

The barbecue sauce was one of those things where I surprised even myself. I went completely off track with it, and didn’t bank on it turning out necessarily well. Probably well enough for me and the partner in crime to eat, but not necessarily good enough to post about.

Well, if that wasn’t further from the truth. So, there are a lack of pictures of the sauce undertaking but who cares, make this sauce. I adapted it like crazy from my lovely, amazing, and best chef friend who’s blog you can read here and recipe you can find here.

I wanted to get it as clean and paleo-esque as possible. So I switched out the ketchup and the brown sugar, and ditched a few other things and adapted to what I had available, hence the chicken stock substitution. But Sean’s original recipe was a great starting point, including the fact that it has coffee in it which ties into the pulled pork recipe as well as ties into my life as a complete and total coffee addict.

For that super simple slaw pictured, I just slivered up some red and green cabbage, red onion and some bell pepper and tossed it in the dressing that I used for my Slightly Spicy Slaw.

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Pulled Pork

Ingredients:

5 pound pork loin or shoulder or butt

2 tablespoons salt

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

1 tablespoon cumin

1 tablespoon paprika

1 tablespoon garlic powder

1 tablespoon cayenne

1 teaspoon oregano

1 tablespoon olive oil

3 tablespoons maple syrup

1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar

3 to 4 smashed garlic cloves

1 cup freshly brewed black coffee (or other liquid -- I’ve done this with beer, water, orange juice -- sugary stuff burns off though and quickly, if using, make sure to keep basting and adding liquid when it cooks off)

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Prep your meat as needed, remove the skin if there is any on it and then place it fat side down in your baking dish. I used my 5.5 quart dutch oven and it worked beautifully in keeping the meat covered when needed and moist. Set aside meat and prepare the spice rub.

In a small bowl, mix salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, garlic powder, cayenne, oregano, olive oil, maple syrup, and vinegar well until fully incorporated. Rub this all over the pork, getting into all the nooks and crannies.

Throw the smashed garlic into the bottom of the pan and then pour in the coffee.

Put into the oven covered, basting occasionally for at least four hours or until a fork easily pierces the meat and looks shreddable. About 2 and half hours in you can remove the cover so that the pork will develop a nice crust. Allow the pork to rest approximately 20 minutes before shredding. I also recommend straining out the braising liquid and reserving to pour over the shredded meat.

You can toss with Chipotle Barbecue Sauce (recipe follows) or any barbecue sauce, but it has more than enough flavor to be eaten on its own..

Yield: approximately 2 quarts of meat

Chipotle Barbecue Sauce

adapted from this recipe over at Home Grown Meals

Ingredients:

splash of olive oil

1 small onion, minced

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 chipotle peppers (from a can), minced

1 tablespoon of the chipotle sauce that’s in the can with the peppers

1 ½ cups chicken stock

½ can of tomato paste

1 cup freshly brewed black coffee

1 cup apple cider vinegar

1 cup maple syrup

2 tablespoons mustard

1 tablespoon oregano

1 tablespoon paprika

Directions:

The barbecue sauce takes about one hour to be ready so you can do ahead of time or to have ready with pork start about halfway through it’s total cooking time.

Get the olive oil heating in a medium sized saute pan over a medium heat and then throw in the minced onion. Cook until soft, translucent, and a touch caramelized. I like using a saute pan for this because it has more surface area and it takes less time to reduce down to a thick sauce.

While the onion cooks down, in a bowl whisk together the coffee, vinegar, syrup, mustard, oregano and paprika. Set aside.

Add the garlic and chipotles to the pan with the onions. Stir in until fragrant and then add the chicken stock, tomato paste and stir to incorporate. Let this mixture cook until it’s thickened slightly, 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the coffee-vinegar mix to the pan and stir to combine. Let the sauce come to a boil then turn down heat to a simmer, stirring occasionally. Sauce will take about 30 to 45 minutes to reduce down and come to desired consistency.

Optional move here at the end: I blitzed mine with a hand blender so it would be super smooth. You can do this, or let it cool a bit and do it with a regular blender. It's also not that chunky at all depending on how small you cut your onions and garlic. Choice is yours, my friends.

Yield: approximately 2 cups

Baked Peaches

I've been posting desserts that just take a buncha time. Like this has to chill for like 8 years in the fridge and don't worry, straining all the seeds out of this will take no time at all. No big deal. It's worth ittttt, I say. Blah blah blah. ((Wait listen….totally worth it --- both of them))

I’m just trying to make a point for today’s post. These peaches are the easiest to throw together and you need to make them right now before peaches are gone FOREVER.

You'll soon learn I don't lack for any exaggeration or excitement.

At first I wasn’t totally sold on them, I’m gonna assume because it was like 10 in the morning and it was already sweltering hot out and eating hot fruit first thing in the AM was just not my cup of tea at that moment. It was so hot in my kitchen that my cream wouldn’t even whip. Hence the barely whipped cream in the photos, but I assure you that was not the problem. I’ve been known to just pour cream onto berries just straight from the bottle.

What?

You don’t do that? You ain’t even lived.

Anyways. The point here is. Later on, after dinner, I ate one cold from the fridge (with just straight cream drizzled on top.) And if that wasn’t the most tasty, refreshing, lovely bit of dessert.

So really, these work warm from the oven or cold from the crisper. Will last in a fridge a day or two before topping starts to get soggy, but they probably won’t be there that long, if you know what I’m sayin’.

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Baked Peaches

adapted slightly from this recipe over at smitten kitchen

Ingredients:

4 ripe peaches, halved and pitted

½ cup almond flour

⅓ cup coconut palm sugar

a pinch of salt

a dash of cinnamon

3 tablespoons butter

Whipped cream for garnish, optional

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees

Mix almond flour, coconut palm sugar, salt, and cinnamon together in a small bowl. Incorporate butter into the mixture with hands until it’s evenly distributed.

Divide mixture equally among peaches, filling each of the peach’s centers and lightly pressing the mixture down to cover the peaches’ surface..

Bake for about an hour or until topping is golden brown and crisped, and peach is soft and tender.

Vegan or strict Paleo option -- I bet you could switch out that butter for coconut oil without issue.

Can serve warm or cold.

Serves 8

Eggplant Parmesan

Man, this recipe seems like a to-do all typed out. I guess anything with multiple cooking steps is going to look a little crazy. Re-inventing the wheel with this one? No, not really. But when you have eggplants, what’s better to do with them than make eggplant parm? Probably many things, but flow with me here.

Truth be told, I am not the biggest eggplant fan. I think it might be it’s skin? At times I find it plasticky. I do best when it’s sliced super thin or cubed into the tiniest of squares that will melt into a sauce. And I am sure I am not alone in the belief that the act of frying makes all things edible.

One change I made here was just to sub out the usual bread crumbs for a mix of almond meal and grated parmesan. Works like a charm. I also find my latest presentation to be just the prettiest. I realize though, that most people probably don’t have a giant circular pan like that. In the instructions I give a few suggestions as to how else you can bake the eggplant.

I’ve done this several times and I’ve almost always had the perfect amount of egg and breading to eggplant slices. But if for some reason you end up with extra eggplant slices, I would just roast them up with a little olive oil and salt and pepper when you throw the parm in the oven.

If you end up with extra breading, since it’s not like it’s getting contaminated by meat or something, just freeze it up to use at a later time. Er, well I guess some egg might get all up in there, but I would probably still freeze it. It works great for chicken parm. Although I did find it a bit heavy for squash blossoms when I was experimenting with them. But usually this is my go-to breading for everything.

Last time I had a bit extra, I had a green tomato hanging out on the counter.

I’m sure you can put together what happened next.

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Eggplant Parmesan

Ingredients:

2 medium to large eggplants

salt (for sweating)

2 large eggs

1 cup almond flour

1 cup grated parmesan

1 tablespoon fresh parsley, finely chopped (or a good pinch of dried)

salt and pepper to taste

approximately ¼ cup olive oil for frying

2 cups of tomato sauce, either Fresh Sauce or a good homemade or jarred red sauce.

8 oz. fresh mozzarella, sliced thin or 1 cup shredded mozzarella

Directions:

Using a mandoline or a knife, slice the eggplant into thin ¼ inch disks.

Lay out disks on a flat surface like a cutting board or sheet pan and lightly salt the eggplant. Let sit and sweat for approximately 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, prepare your “breading” station. In a large bowl beat two large eggs together. In a large plate or baking dish combine the almond flour, parmesan, parsley, and salt and pepper.

After 30 minutes, using a paper towel, dry the “sweat” off the eggplant slices and place slices in the bowl with the beaten eggs. Swish around eggplant to cover all slices with egg.

I find it easiest to “bread” all the slices before frying instead of trying to multitask breading and frying at the same time. Something always gets backed up.

One by one take each egg soaked slice and dip each side into the almond flour-parmesan “breading” and lay them down on a flat surface to wait to be fried up.

Once all the slices are breaded, heat about half of the olive oil in a medium to large saute pan over a medium heat. While this is heating, prepare a plate with paper towels to place finished fried slices onto.

When the oil is hot enough (you can dip the end of a wooden spoon into the oil and see if it sizzles) place as many eggplant slices that will fit, into the pan. Fry until golden on the first side and do the same with the second side. Take off heat and place on paper toweled plate to drain. Do this with all the slices. About halfway through frying I like to start with some fresh oil since the almond flour has a tendency to fall off a little more and burn up pretty quick. So I pour off the hot oil into a heat safe container to cool a bit before throwing out and then I carefully wipe out the pan with a paper towel. Then I pour in the remaining olive oil and bring it up to heat and keep on frying.

Once all your eggplant is fried turn on the oven to 350 degrees.

Grab the eggplant, two cups of sauce, and mozzarella cheese.

Depending on the type of baking pan you have available begin layering the eggplant in a way that makes the most sense to you.

As you can see in the pictures, I have a 1-inch deep circular roasting pan, so I overlapped mine in circles, starting with a splash of sauce on the bottom of the pan and then layering the slices one by one around, adding the rest of the sauce and then covering in cheese. If you only have a flat pan, or baking dish you could do all the slices in one layer, with spoonful of sauce on top of each slice and then a piece of cheese on top of that. Or you could layer them up in a baking dish like a lasagna! Whatever works. Just get that sauce and cheese on there!

Bake the eggplant parm for about 40 minutes or until cheese is golden and bubbly.

Serves 8

Leek Frittata

When I have no idea what to do with something or have too much of something I always turn to a frittata.

I had three huge leeks from my CSA that I had a.) no idea what to do with and b.) had too many eggs because I get a dozen a week from the CSA as well.

Boom. Done. Frittata.

Frittatas freeze really well so I’ll cut it up and throw it into plastic bags and chuck it into the freezer. Makes for a quick and easy meal when you don’t feel like cooking or have no time to pack a lunch for work. My issue is usually the latter. Love my everyday morning scramble, keeps me on my toes.

I’ve learned my lesson with the broiler one too many a time, as evidenced here. So unless I am literally sitting next to my oven (well, er, laying down, because my broiler is at the bottom, which only makes things more ridiculous) and watching the food broil, it’s always too late. So while this method I use here for the frittata takes longer, it’s completely fool proof. Me being the fool.

P.s. Easy trick for cleaning your leeks, that I think I learned from like Rachel Ray or something, prep up your leeks and then place them in a bowl full of water and sorta swish ‘em around. Let them sit for a few minutes. All the sand and grit will sink down to the bottom of the bowl. See above. Scoop out your leeks and dry.

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Leek Frittata

Ingredients:

3 pieces uncured/nitrite-nitrate free canadian bacon (approximately 1 cup of cooked meat -- diced bacon or ham could work here flawlessly)

1 tablespoon of grassfed butter (plus a bit extra if needed)

3 leeks, white and pale green parts only, washed thoroughly, halved and sliced

7 eggs

¼ cup grassfed heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

⅓ cup shredded white cheddar cheese + extra for sprinkling on top if desired

Directions:

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

In a 10-inch cast iron skillet, fry up the three pieces of canadian bacon until golden and crisp. Take cooked meat and dice. Set aside.

Using rendered fat from the bacon, saute the leeks over a medium heat. If it doesn’t seem like there’s enough fat, use an extra bit of butter or other cooking fat. Cook leeks until they are soft and start to develop some caramelization.

While the leeks are cooking, beat together the eggs, heavy cream, and the salt and pepper. Add in the diced bacon and shredded cheddar and stir.

When the leeks are ready, remove them from the skillet and place in a separate bowl from the eggs to allow to cool just slightly. Meanwhile, turn the heat off of the skillet but add 1 tablespoon of butter right away to the hot pan so it begins to melt. Swirl the melted butter around to coat the entire pan.

Add the leeks to the egg mixture and stir to incorporate.

Add the mix to the butter coated skillet, sprinkle extra cheddar on top if desired, and throw into the oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until frittata is puffed and starting to turn golden brown.

Serves 6