Friday, November 06, 2009

Foody Friday: Tandoori and Enchiladas!

Chicken!!! :) Here are two dishes I produced over the past two weeks:

1. Chicken Tandoori
For some reason I wanted to play with yogurt last week, so using this recipe as a guide, I embarked on my first ever tandoori chicken experiment.



Not having all the ingredients, I made do with what I had: click the above picture you might to see the variety of spices I mixed in with the yogurt and lemon juice, and compare that to the "guide" :D

The chicken was then refrigerated for a day and a half, marinating.

Next came a big lesson: when the recipe calls for grilling/roasting, it might be a good idea to do the same... For some reason, I decided to just use a skillet instead. Hmmm... there's A LOT of water that emerges, the chicken looked to be pathetically drowning! In the end I kinda scooped out as much of the water as I could, and then let the "gravy" thicken. Of course, because it had been so wet, I let it thicken for too long, and burned the bottoms of the sauce & chicken! And I had to reuse the pan to heat up the accompanying roti pratha (no, not naan) too! Aaarrgghh!! (No photos at this stage because I was very upset at how things seemed to be turning out)

In the end, this was what was served:


Despite the burnt parts, it was actually quite decent: it had the correct taste, perhaps a little dry, which would have been addressed by an overlooked cool white sauce (recipe didn't call for it, so I totally forgot!), but some ranch dressing did the trick, phew!

I don't think I'll repeat this in the near future... but hey if you're inspired to try it out, please tell me how you fared, k?

2. Enchiladas
Okay, not just any enchiladas, but creamy chicken with chile enchiladas!

I've been craving "Mexican" for a while now... so when cans of Old El Paso Enchilada Sauce called out to me on one of my shopping trips, I totally succumbed, grabbing two different cans -- a mild with chile and a hot red. After looking at online recipes which seems unnecessarily complicated, I decided to just go with the recipe on one of the cans' label: creamy chicken enchilada.

    Oven should start heating to 400F, and the baking dish (13x9, preferably glass) sprayed with cooking spray.

    One pound of sliced/cubed chicken thigh was cooked in a skillet until no longer pink. One can of chopped Green Chile and one brick of cream cheese were then stirred in until melted & well mixed. I then added half of the red hot sauce, again stirring well to ensure a good mix.

    The really creamy chicken was then spooned into 6 tortillas, one at a time, each rolled up carefully and placed seam down into the baking dish.

    I then sprinkled who knows how much shredded cheese all over (recipe calls for 1 cup of the stuff, I think), followed by the sauce(s). This was in the oven for about 20mins - taken out when it was bubbling nicely along the edges.


End product:

Kosh and I had 1.5 each, with a side of shredded lettuce and some sour cream.

Verdict:
ZOMG
It was sooooooooooooooooooo good!

Seriously, like restaurant quality good.
This is something I could serve guests (once I get us a proper glass baking+serving dish!), without hesitation!

Changes I would make: try ground/minced chicken instead of having spend all that time cutting up those thighs, although I wonder if it would "go" with the creaminess. Oh, and maybe try a low-fat brick of cream cheese instead?

So, are you tempted to try this recipe out? If you do, please tell me how it went: I do hope you enjoyed it as much as Kosh and I did :)

Have a great weekend, y'all!

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1 comment:

  1. That looks really yummy. I have not been making very good dinners lately. Sometimes all it takes is someone to remind me of something good and then I will actually cook again. My family will thank you!

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