Chicken Enchiladas

I love ward cookbooks. It seems like they always have tried and true delicious recipes. My next few posts are going to be favorites from ward cookbooks. These chicken enchiladas were brought to me by my neighbor Gloria when I had just given birth to Kiki. I obsessed about them until I finally got the recipe from her. Gloria is from Honduras, so I was darn excited to have an authentic recipe for chicken enchiladas. It was only recently that she informed me that she had gotten the recipe from a cookbook. Shoot. Still, they are my favorite chicken enchiladas ever, and there's nary a can of cream of chicken soup in sight.

Gloria's Chicken Enchiladas

1 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup green pepper, chopped (I use a whole pepper. I'm always looking to sneak more veggies into our diets.)
5 tablespoons butter
2 cups cooked chicken, chopped (When I'm feeling really lazy, I just pick up a rotisserie chicken from the deli. Also, I probably use more like 3 or 4 cups of chicken. Bruce is a big eater.)
1 (4 0z) can chopped green chiles
1/4 cup flour
1 tsp ground coriander
2 1/2 cups chicken broth
1 cup sour cream
1 1/2 cups Monterey Jack cheese, shredded
12- 6 inch tortillas.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large saucepan, cook onion and green pepper in 2 T of the butter until tender. Combine onion mixture in a bowl with chicken and green chiles. Set aside. For the sauce, in the same sauce pan melt remaining butter. Stir in flour and coriander. Cook for 1-2 minutes, whisking constantly (this will ensure your sauce doesn't have a weird flour-y taste). Whisk in chicken broth and cook until thickened and boiling. Whisk in sour cream and half of the cheese. Stir until melted. Stir 1/2 cup of sauce into chicken mixture. Place about 1 cup of the sauce in the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish. Fill tortillas with chicken, roll up, and place seam side down in dish. Pour remaining sauce over, sprinkle with remaining cheese, bake uncovered for 30 minutes.

First- This is a dish that I have made ahead with good success. I follow the recipe right up to the end, except for sprinkling the cheese on top. I cover the enchiladas with foil and refrigerate until needed (like later that day, folks, not sometime next week). I then preheat the oven, bake them for 30 minutes with the foil on, then remove the foil, add the cheese, and bake another 30 minutes, or until browned and bubbly.

Second- I am really trying to cut most cheese out of my diet. It has a lot of calories. I have left the cheese off of the top of my last 2 batches of these, and no one even noticed. In the same vein, I use reduced fat sour cream almost exclusively, and again, no one notices.

Lastly- if you are not buying raw tortillas to cook at home, you are seriously missing out.