Baked Chicken and Spinach Flautas or Taquitos

I'm not quite sure if there is a difference between a flauta and a taquito.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it may have something to do with the tortilla.  Anyone know? 

I suppose it doesn't really matter.  What I made last night was amazing for a few reasons.  1.  It was SO GOOD.  2.  It was baked and not deep fried!  3.  As always it was made completely from scratch and organic!!!  4.  It was relatively healthy!

Flautas are my "go to" dish at Mexican restaurants.  It's my default dish to compare Mexican Restaurants.  Just like "Pad See Ew" is my default dish at Thai Restaurants.  I know, I'm weird.  Whatever.  I never really imagined that I would ever make flautas at home because they're deep fried.  I don't really like doing the deep frying thing at home because I don't have a deep fryer, for some reason I hate filling pots with oil, and I really don't like getting spattered with oil which inevitably happens to me the 1 or 2 times a year I decide to roll up my sleeves and deep fry something (usually lumpia). 



Sorry I didn't get a fantastic plating picture, but trust me.  They were delicious!!!



When I saw this recipe that my friend Erin posted on Pinterest I thought it was too good to be true!  What's more, it looked really simple!  So I tried it out last night.  I thought it might actually have a chance to come out crispy because my homemade tortillas actually use a considerable amount of coconut oil.  By the way, coconut oil makes for fantastic tortillas!!  I've tried making them with butter, but the coconut oil seems to help them hold together better.  I'm not really the lard using type even though I know if you can get your hands on grass fed organic lard it probably won't kill you as quickly as everyone else thinks. :)

Anyways, I think I baked mine for slightly too long as the ends of a few of the flautas got a bit singed.  Just be sure to check yours periodically.  I also didn't flip mine over, because when I did I found that the flipped ones started looking less secure and might have opened up.  They got nice and crispy without flippage anyways.

I didn't really change this recipe, so I don't feel comfortable posting it in it's entirety, but feel free to click over to Healthy Delicious for these amazing Baked Chicken and Spinach Flautas.

What I did differently:
- I used cheddar cheese because I didn't have any Mexican cheese on hand
- I used baby kale because I didn't have baby spinach on hand.
- use my own tortillas (homemade tortilla recipe can be found here) with coconut oil. 
- I didn't simmer the chicken in beer.  I just boiled the chicken and then shredded it.
- I mixed together the cheese, chicken, spinach (kale), and jalapenos after they had all been cooked, for ease of flauta stuffing

Make sure:

- to grease your cookie sheet/sheet pan with some coconut oil before you lay the flautas on there seam side down

- cut your tortillas in half!  I think the fact that there was only 1 layer of tortilla surrounding the filling helped make the crispy tortilla mission successful.

Serve with some fresh guacamole and enjoy!!  Jon poured some store bought tomatillo salsa on his and seemed to like that too. 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Dear God,

   please help my baby come soon.  If it's your will.  Please.  Thank you!  Amen.

Yucatan Lime Soup

Today is Jon's birthday!!  I am relatively sure that this is his favorite dish in my repertoire.  The first time we had this soup (well sort of) was on our honeymoon in Mexico almost 4 years ago.  It was our second to last day there and we went on a snorkeling excursion on the island of Cozumel.  After snorkeling, our excursion included lunch.  We headed over to a quaint traditional looking Mexican restaurant (I wish I remembered the name of it) and this soup was the starter.  Well it was something like this soup.  They served it with garlic bread and it paired so well.  The flavor of the garlic bread being flooded with lime soup was fantastic.  Mmmmm.

  When we got home, I was determined to try to replicate the soup because we liked it so much.  I spent a lot of time searching on the internet for the right recipe, and this seemed like it would come the closest and taste the best.  We were also honeymooning on the Yucatan Peninsula, so with the name I thought it would be a safe bet.  At least the region was right! 

Unfortunately I really can't remember what the original tasted like anymore, but this is so good.  I think it comes pretty close.  I was a little hesitant because I didn't think a food network recipe would be authentic, but it seems like it could be.  Maybe my Mexican friends can tell me if they try it.

I'm just going to post the recipe from the website.

Yucatan Lime Soup

I didn't make any real changes to it.  Well, okay I made a few changes.  Okay, well I made 7 changes.  But they're really small changes! 

1.  I used chicken thighs, not breasts because organic chicken breasts are ridiculously expensive and I didn't want to cut up a whole chicken today.  I also let the bones simmer with everything because bones in broth are supposed to be good for you.

2.  I let everything simmer for an hour before adding the lime right before serving.  That way the lime taste is still bright and fresh.  I used the juice of 1 1/2 limes.

3.  I didn't want to buy an avocado because organic avocados are really expensive.

4.  I fried the tortilla separately while the soup was simmering.

5.  I don't ever use vegetable (soybean) oil.  I used organic canola oil to fry the tortillas.

6.  I used 4 cloves of garlic, I think I have a garlic problem. 

7.  I added another dash of cumin when the chicken was sauteeing.

Don't substitue the fresh fried tortilla for bagged tortilla chips.  The freshly fried tortilla chips make such a huge difference!



Saute the onions and cajun seasoning (Emeril's essence).



Add chicken, garlic, chiles, and tomatoes.

Saute everything for a few minutes.



Add the chicken broth!

Oh and tonight I found that if you use homemade chicken broth it tastes SOOOOO much better.  I had previously store bought boxed chicken broth and it just doesn't compare.



Add the lime juice, garnish with tortilla strips, cilantro and a slice of lime!  Yum!



Tonight's attempt was the best I've ever done so far.  I think it was the broth!  Jon said, "Wow that's really good" three times during dinner!!  Woohoo!  That spells birthday dinner success in my books.

Try it out and let me know what you think!  I love reading comments!!

Birthday man also got a mini cherry pie for dessert, but I'm not sure if I'm allowed to post that recipe.  It's his mom's.  I'll have to ask!

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Dear Heavenly Father, 
  thank you so much for my amazing husband!  Please continue to bless him with health and holiness and help him to continue to be a wonderful husband to me and father to Clare and Mikey.  Amen.

Red Sauced Chicken Enchiladas

On thursday night when I made the Pad Thai I used up the rest of my roasted chicken from a few days earlier and made chicken stock.  I also threw in another carcass from separating some chicken pieces for the chicken breasts I used in the Pad Thai.  After the stock was ready I was left with quite a large amount of chicken meat.  So I thought tonight I'd make enchiladas.

I usually make white sauced enchiladas with green chiles, sour cream, and monterrey jack cheese, but recently Jon has been talking about how much fun it'd be to learn how to make red enchiladas.  Hint hint....  That means, "Hey wife would you mind looking up a recipe for red enchilada sauce and learning how to make it so I can eat red enchiladas without paying $11 for it?"  Ha ha!  At least I think that's what he means when he says this. 

I had looked through a few recipes before and I thought I had tried making some sort of red Mexican sauce a while ago with dried chiles (which were hiding in a ziplock bag in the back of our pantry/cupboard), so I figured I could just pick up a few ingredients that were pretty common to Mexican food while we were at the grocery after Mass this morning and whip them up for dinner.

After looking through my mexican cookbook, another sheet full of enchilada recipes my mom gave me, and allrecipes.com I found a recipe called, "The Best Red Enchilada Sauce".  I also happened to have most of the ingredients needed and it got great reviews.  So I thought I'd try using the enchilada sauce in the link with the method for making the other type of white cream based enchiladas...sort of.  I didn't dip the tortillas in the red sauce like I do with the creamy casserole type enchiladas.

I honestly didn't know if this was going to work out so well.  I taste tested the sauce before I simmered it and it didn't taste like much besides tomato paste, so I got a little worried.  Usually when I get really worried about trying something new I don't take a lot of pictures because I don't really want to blog about a kitchen fail.  However....after the sauce simmered, the enchiladas were baked, and Jon took his first bite he said, "Wow that's really good."  He took a few more bites and said again (without prompting by me!), "Wow, that's really good."  I usually have to prod my husband with my fork before he says anything about the food, so this was pretty exciting.  I thought they were decent too, so I prodded, "What would you rate this out of 5?"

He replied, "4.9-5 but only because I think it could still be really perfected."  4.9!!!  4.9!!!??!  That's like a gold medal for an ice skater...wait do they go off a scale of 10?  Whatever!  I was pretty darned excited he liked this that much.  But I agree, it could be even better.  I might even try this with shredded beef sometime, I bet that would be fantastic.

One thing I didn't have was beef broth (yeah, yeah, as usual) for the sauce.  I'm sure that would have made the sauce 10 times better.  I used the chicken broth I made when I cooked all that chicken.  I also scaled down the recipe a bit, so the measurements were probably a tad off.  The original recipe said it made 17 servings.  Since I'm not feeding my extended family I decided to scale it down to 4.  (I know, there are only 2 adults in our household, but Clare eats pretty well, I had a lot of shredded chicken, and we like leftovers here!)

So just be warned.  Try to be very careful with your measurements and use beef broth!

Here's what I did.

Red Sauced Chicken Enchiladas

Ingredients
1lb cooked shredded chicken
6 flour tortillas (I made mine again the recipe is here and I used coconut oil)
1/2 an onion chopped
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp oregano
salt and pepper to taste
1/2c shredded cheese (tonight I used white and regular cheddar, you could probably also use monterrey jack or cotija)

4 servings of Best Enchilada Red Sauce


Method
1.  Saute onions in a medium pot on low heat until soft. 

2.  Add shredded chicken, cumin, oregano, salt and pepper and 1/3 of the enchilada red sauce and continue to saute on medium until everything is well combined and heated through.  Take off the heat.

3.  Preheat oven to 350.

4.  In each tortilla put some chicken and a sprinkling of your shredded cheese and roll up (don't use up all the cheese).  Put all your rolled up enchiladas in a casserole dish and cover with the rest of the red sauce.  Sprinkle with the remainder of the cheese. 

5.  Bake in the 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes until the sauce is nice and bubbly and the cheese is melted.

Yum!  Serve with a side of homemade (I'll have to post that recipe another time) guacamole!

Again, I have no idea if this is an authentic Mexican recipe, because I am not Mexican, so if my Mexican friends (or those married to Mexicans and living in Mexico) want to correct some inauthenticity here, please feel free to leave a comment! 

In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Dear God,

  thank you for successful and surprising discoveries.  Help us to never be bored with life so that we always have a child like sense of awe and excitement, especially for your wonders.  Help us cultivate a virtuous Fear of the Lord, which helps us to understand our own place, your love and mercy, and your majesty all at the same time.  Amen.