The whole meal was a rather long and involved process, which began with him making salsa and marinating the chicken in the morning, and with me starting to cook some black beans.
Around 4 we began cooking in earnest. I started making the tortillas:
6 c. flour
1 Tbsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 c. oil
about 2 c. hot water
Mix everything together, adding more flour or water as needed to make a fairly stiff dough.
Divide the dough into 20 small balls. Roll each ball out, flat, about 1-2mm in thickness. Put a large frying pan on a burner on high (or medium) and cook the tortillas for about 10 seconds on each side. Ideally, some brown dots should appear on each side.
This may seem like a rather long and involved process, but there are at least two good reasons to make your own tortillas:
1. They taste far better than the store-bought variety
2. They are terribly difficult to find in Israel, and quiet expensive when found.
As I worked on the tortillas, Cameron started cooking and then shredding the chicken. I'm not exactly sure of his marinade, but I think he had:
8 chicken breast, sliced up a little
1 onion, chopped into large pieces
Taco seasoning (which is also impossible to find here, but we happen to have some from the states in the house)
Olive oil
Maybe some lemon or lime juice?
Water?
Let sit for a few hours. Cook until chicken is tender, and then shred it using a fork.
Once I finished the tortillas, I began working on the sauce. Green chillis are also unknown here, as far as I can tell, so we simply substituted fresh peppers, which Cameron chopped up. We sauted the peppers in some olive oil, along with another onion and a couple cloves of garlic. Once everything was tender, I put some aside to use in the rice. With the rest I started making the sauce.
Peppers, onions, garlic, olive oil - saute together.
1/2 block of butter
1 tsp chili powder (or hot paprika, since chili powder is also unknown here)
1/4 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp powdered coriander
1 tsp salt
black pepper
Saute everything together for a while and then add
1/2 c. flour (mix in thoroughly before adding next ingredient)
2 c. milk (or so)
1/2 c. cream
1.5 containers of sour cream (they're pretty small containers here - about 6 oz each)
The remainder of the liquid the chicken had been cooked in (about 2 cups)
Cheese
Cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sauce begins to thicken.
At that point I set some of the sauce aside to pour over top of the enchiladas.
To the remaining sauce I added about 2.5 cups of cooked black beans.
Some of this sauce I also set aside for our almost vegetarian flat-mate (and added a few more beans)
To the now remaining sauce I added the shredded chicken.
With the sauces done, Cameron started assembling the enchiladas, taking a tortialla, filling it with chicken sauce (or bean sauce), sprinkling various types of cheese on top (emek, parmesan, and something like feta, I think), and then rolling them up and placing them in a pan. We had enough for 3 pans of enchiladas, and then we poured the remaining sauce on top and sprinkled them with the remaining cheese. We put 2 in the oven at about 190C to cook for about 45 minutes.
While Cameron assembled the enchiladas, I worked in a sort of spanish rice dish.
I took some of the sauted peppers, olives, and garlic from the start of the sauce and added quite a bit of the salsa to them. I added a few spices (garlic, I think, salt, pepper, and some sort of hot pepper spice) and cooked it a while on the stove top. I then added about 2 cups of rice and sauted that with the veggies for a couple minutes before adding 4 cups of water and cooking the rice. Once the rice was cooked I chopped up some cilantro and stirred that in.
Our guests arrived at 7 and we ate shortly thereafter. I think the food was greatly enjoyed by all, probably especially so because of the rarity of Mexican style food in this country. :)
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