Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas with Swiss Chard

I realize it’s customary for food cravings to strike when you miss a particular dish, when you haven’t had the chance to taste a favorite thing for a long time, and when you can’t wait for the next opportunity to have whatever that is once again. However, even though I live smack in the middle of Austin where you can’t take too many steps in a row without tripping over another Tex-Mex restaurant, I constantly crave Tex-Mex food. I can order tacos for breakfast, burritos for lunch, and enchiladas for dinner by traveling a few blocks from home in any direction whenever I want, but sometimes, home-cooked Tex-Mex is the way to go. Our favorite spots do get crowded causing long waits for a table at peak times, and besides, by making my own enchiladas, I can do things like add some sauteed CSA Swiss chard and top them with sliced, fresh jalapenos for even more heat. These Sour Cream Chicken Enchiladas are found in The Homesick Texan Cookbook as well as on the website, and this tangy sauce is one I’ll now be making often. The sauce is quick to make, and it starts like a veloute with a serrano chile-spiced roux to which chicken broth is added. Sour cream and roasted tomatillos are blended in to finish. It thickens as it bakes with the chicken- and cheese-filled enchiladas and makes you happy you’ll have some leftovers, which is another advantage of cooking at home. 

The recipe includes instructions for cooking chicken breasts for the enchiladas, but any cooked and shredded chicken will work here. With your chicken ready and some Monterey Jack cheese shredded, it’s time to make sauce. To start, I broiled a pound of cleaned tomatillos until well-browned on all sides, and transferred them to the blender. Then, butter was melted in a saucepan, and diced serrano chiles were added followed by minced garlic. Flour was whisked in to make a roux, and then chicken broth was slowly added while whisking. It was cooked until thickened, and I added sour cream, cumin, cayenne, and chopped, fresh cilantro off the heat. The sour cream mixture was poured into the blender with the tomatillos, but it was a little too much for my blender pitcher. I ended up pureeing in two batches. With the sauce completed, you can begin assembly of the enchiladas. I set up a row of warmed corn tortillas and started topping them with the fillings. A little shredded chicken was placed on each, followed by shredded cheese, and in my case sauteed Swiss chard. I skipped the suggested chopped onion because I tend to skip onions most of the time. With all the fillings in place, you just roll each tortilla into a cylinder. A cup of the sour cream sauce is poured into an oiled baking dish, and the filled tortillas are placed seam side down in the sauce. When all the enchiladas are in the pan, the remaining sauce is poured over top, the remaining cheese is sprinkled over it, and the dish is baked for 25 minutes. I gave it a few minutes under the broiler to brown the cheese at the end of the baking time. 

Not all of my food cravings are this crazy. Of course, I crave fresh, ripe tomatoes when there are none to be had in the winter, and I even start to long for dark, leafy greens when they just don’t grow here in the heat of summer. But, I don’t think a day will ever come when I won't crave a Tex-Mex meal either from a restaurant or home-cooked. 

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Lisa Fain, What Are You Reading?

Lisa Fain, author of the well-loved food blog Homesick Texan started in 2006, has just written her first book The Homesick Texan Cookbook. I have the book in front of me now, open to the Morning Food chapter, and I’m getting distracted. The breakfast relleno, huevos rancheros, Mexican fried potatoes, and pecan coffee cake are making my toast look especially bland this morning. Some of the other chapters are Appetizers, Chilis Soups and Stews, Tex-Mex Classics, Beef Pork and Fowl, Seafood, Sides Hot and Cold, Breads, and Sweets. Just like the blog, the book presents the best of Texan cuisine with beautiful photos. Over the years, the Homesick Texan blog has been lauded repeatedly. It was named as one of the top fifty food blogs by the Times of London, the Best Regional Food Blog by Saveur, and received recognition from the New York Times, Bon Appetit, and Gourmet. Fain is an active member of Foodways Texas and the Southern Foodways Alliance, and is a certified barbecue judge. And, she’ll be visiting Austin soon. This Saturday, at the Texas Book Festival, Fain will be discussing her new book at 12:45 pm in the Capitol Extension Room E2.036. Then, on Monday, October 24, she will be at BookPeople for an Edible Austin book signing event starting at 7:00 pm. I recently asked her, what are you reading?

Lisa:

Larry McMurtry has long been one of my favorite writers, but I’d never read his first novel, Horseman, Pass By. It’s a spare yet poetic look at West Texas ranch life and the conflicts between the traditional and the new. There’s lots of arguing in the novel, but one thing that all the characters can agree upon is good food. Many scenes are spent amidst skillets of warm biscuits, bowls of freshly churned peach ice cream, or platters of sizzling, juicy steaks. It’s Texas home cooking at its best, and I was often hungry while reading.




The First Texas Cook Book, which was published in 1883, is filled with lots of fascinating recipes that you don’t often see anymore, such as snow pudding, pigshead mash, and pickled brains. Of course, there are lots of old favorites such as biscuits, chow chow and macaroni with cheese. I’m not sure I want to make all of these dishes, but it is interesting to see how our Texan ancestors cooked.

Thank you for participating, Lisa. Check back to see who answers the question next time and what other books are recommended.

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