Chili Verde Enchiladas

Making dinner is often a fine balancing act, between the kind of thing I like to eat (greasy, fatty, spicy, messy) and something other people might consider to be actual food. So when I offered to cook the other night, my wife's repsonse was a cautious "OK, as long as it won't end up on your ridiculous blog". The poor woman was probably expecting something unspeakably disgusting, fashioned from frozen burgers and curry sauce.

But I guess I had the last laugh, because we happily ate every last mouthful, and here it is on my blog... chili verde enchiladas.

What's that, I hear you say? Vegetabes? Fresh herbs? Well yes, but bear with me.

Chili verde is a Mexican pork stew, in a spicy green sauce. Not so common here, but you see it all over the place in the US. My version isn't really authentic... the proper version contains tomatillos, but I don't think you can get them here, so I improvised a little. I started making the sauce by frying onions with assorted chillies, garlic, cumin, salt and pepper.

Once the onions were browned, I added some smoked chilli paste, chicken stock, chopped green pepper, coriander, dried oregano, and lime juice (in lieu of the missing sourness from the tomatillos). After everything had softened and cooked down a bit, I blended the sauce until it was nice and smooth.

I then browned some pork shoulder, added it to the sauce (including lots of fatty bits), and put the whole lot in the oven for a couple of hours - until the pork was falling apart.

Now, doesn't that look great? Greasy and meaty, with a fiery heat, and it doesn't taste all all "vegetabley". It's great on it's own or with some rice, but it's even better as an enchilada filling - rolled between tortillas, topped with extra sauce and grated cheese, and cooked in the oven for a few minutes.

Taste

Classification