Girl in the World: Cooking Without A Kitchen

A sink and fridge, a kitchen make?

The birth of personal pan Green Chili Enchilada's.

This is the adapted recipe of the authentic enchiladas of my Hispanic grandmother. Or my mom learned it on the streets of South Central Ave., Albuquerque. Either way, it's pretty darn "authentic." Here's how you know. It's way simple! I mean WAY simple.

However, calls for the extravagance of a stove and an oven. Four hundred and fifty dollars a month will get you an apartment downtown with your own bathroom, but not a stove.

Stove Top Substitute

No worries, cooking still is going to happen!

Personal Pan Green Chili Enchilada's

If anyone has ever taught you the traditional way to make fry bread (that Native American stable) you know the recipe: "about this much flour to about this much lard." Use about that much chicken. You figure, it's going to go in about two cans of mixture, so, you know, one pound is too little, and two pounds is too much. Unless you're a big chicken fan...

Cook, then shred to your hearts content.

Make your chicken feel small, insecure. Belittle your chicken.

I like to cook the hell out of my chicken because I'm convinced it's otherwise a pink killer. Oh, I have so many superstitions about chicken... I'm not a rational person. Once the hell is cooked out of your chicken, add to it one can of Hatch Green Chili Enchilada Sauce, one can of Cream of Mushroom. Pepper to taste

Reassure with one can of Cream of Mushroom and one can Hatch Green Chili

Take that Mixture from "...um" to "Yum!" with Green Chilies

This is where the fun starts! Use the smallest baking tin sold at grocery stores, 6'' I belive. Cover the bottom in corn tortillas. I use one and one half small torts, I gotta cover those corners.

Divide into Excessively Exact Fourths

Tortilla Nest

Take one of those fourths and get it comfortable on those torts

Introduce it to a nice layer of Mexican Style Cheese

'Nother Layer of Torts, That'd be Two

Another Fourth under cheese

So Pretty

REALLY IMPORTANT!! Cover your beautiful baby enchilada with tinfoil before you break the laws of physics getting it into the toaster oven. If you don't you'll broil that top layer of cheese. Which is how I came to learn the difference between baking and broiling.

broil¹/broil/

verb

cook (meat or fish) by exposure to direct, intense radiant heat

TIN FOIL!

As for how long you cook it and at what temperature... eh... Well, looks like this time I choose 400 degrees for thirty minutes, give or take fifteen. Just get that cheese melted.

Here's the catch of that tin foil, though. You've been baking.

bake/bāk/

verb

cook (food) by dry heat without direct exposure to a flame or heat source, typically in an oven or on a hot surface.

Because we sheltered our cheese from direct exposure to heat with the foil (that never even gets hot to the touch, I think it's alien technology), there is no browning of the cheese and it will take it longer to melt. What I like to do is remove the tinfoil after thirty minutes of cooking and let the cheese become exposed to the heat, broil it.