The Family Table By Lorie Thompson
M
y daughter Kendall, and her boyfriend, Chef BJ, and I talk a lot about food. Kendall and BJ are in the early stages of opening their own restaurant. Their entire life revolves around cooking and food. One of our recent conversations was about garlic and how people use it. BJ said he and Kendall had decided that there are two types of cooks: The people who peel and chop fresh garlic and the people who use the pre-chopped, bottled garlic in the grocery store. Talk about stereotyping. There are assumptions made about your gourmet cooking capability based on your garlic habits. I am both of those people. The mundane task of peeling and mincing fresh garlic is a pleasure to me, as are many kitchen tasks WHEN I have time to do them. If time is short, as it often is, I am all about that squeeze bottle of garlic from the produce section of the grocery store. Don’t judge me if you see me with one of those bottles, hidden away behind the fresh cloves of organic garlic in my grocery cart. I lead a hectic life. While making true confessions, I will follow it up with this one: I stew at least one chicken almost every weekend. Typically on Sunday afternoon, I will put a whole chicken (or two) in a large
pot with carrots, onions, fresh cloves of garlic, celery, salt, and a couple of dried red pepper pods. I let it stew for a couple of hours on medium-low or until the meat is falling off the bones. If I am not going to be home, I put it in the crockpot and let it simmer all day. I have an old dog, and she gets the skin and the cartilage and a little of the meat throughout the week. She is blind and deaf, but she can still smell, and she will lay on the floor of the kitchen all afternoon waiting to get her share of the stewed chicken. As long as she is alive, I will stew a chicken every weekend. I use the broth in many of the dishes I cook, and the meat provides the base for lots of easy weeknight meals. It is a very economical way to cook. A favorite meal from the weekend batch cooking is Chicken Enchiladas. It is easy to prepare and hard to beat for flavor. This dish was my friend Tina Lee’s choice for her annual birthday celebration with our best friends group for many years. I hope you will try it! There are lots of ways to shortcut the process of making these delicious treats. My recipe for the red enchilada sauce uses dried chili powder and seasonings you have in your pantry. This method only takes 10 minutes, and it makes a delicious sauce that is far superior to canned. You can stew your own chicken or use grocery store rotisserie chicken for a little quicker option. Both will make a great enchilada. The recipes below are for a red enchilada and a white enchilada. Each recipe will make 15 enchiladas. I usually make both the red and the white on the same day, freezing what we don’t need for a meal. Corn tortillas come in packs of 30, and it takes most of a whole chicken to make 30 enchiladas. So, it works out nicely. For the red enchiladas, start by making the sauce. In a medium saucepan, add 3 T of flour (or gluten-free flour) and 3 T of vegetable oil. Bring the roux to medium heat and cook while continually stirring until the flour is browned. To the browned flour, add 2 T of ancho chili powder, 2 tsp of chipotle chili powder, 1 tsp each of onion powder and garlic powder, and 1/2 tsp of cumin, oregano and salt.
42 GML - March 2021
