Month-of-One-Pan Meals: Chicken "Enchiladas: Florentine

Welcome to my annual Month-of Recipes on this blog. Go rummaging in the attic here and you’ll find past recipe months for appetizers, chicken, soup, mini-desserts, and more. The way it works is, for each day in February I post a recipe that fits the category. This month is one-pan meals, excluding pizza, most casseroles, and slow cooker recipes.

One of my busy-night stand-bys is using leftover chicken in enchiladas with green sauce.

So this dish isn’t technically enchiladas because I didn’t roll up the corn tortillas and nest them. However, all the ingredients are there plus a special nutrition booster. Now, we all know that chicken enchiladas aren’t going to make the best nutrition list, right? Maybe that’s why they taste so good!

When I served this, I commented that doing this month’s recipes, I noticed that we eat chicken frequently and if that bothered him. His response was perfect. “Do we? I guess I didn’t realize that. They’re always so different.”

Since my original recipe isn’t a health food, I decided to up the nutritional value in this dish by adding spinach. Here’s one of his favorite dishes changed up, and DH loved!

Chicken “Enchiladas” Florentine (serve 6)

15 ounce can green chile sauce

10-12 corn tortillas

2 cups fresh baby spinach

2 cups cooked chicken, shredded

2 cups shredded cheese (I used a combo on cheddar and Mexican Blend)

Avocado chunks, shredded lettuce, diced tomato, plain yogurt (or sour cream)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Prepare a pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Pour about ¼ of the can of green chile sauce into a baking dish.

Cover the sauce with corn tortillas broken to fill the spaces.

Put spoonsful of sauce in light layer on each tortilla.

Layer on half of spinach. On top of that put ½ the chicken. Top with ½ cup cheeses.

Repeat another layer. Top with remaining corn tortillas, rest of enchilada sauce and remaining cheese.

Bake for 30 minutes until bubbly and cheese is melted.

 

Top with avocados, lettuce, tomatoes, and yogurt.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up!

“Oh, good! You made this again. I love your chicken enchiladas.”

“Well, this one isn’t quite the same. Instead of making the rolled up enchiladas stuffed with chicken, cheese, and enchilada sauce, I went easier and, um, a little different.”

Him, biting into his first forkful. “Hmm. Good. What’s the green stuff?”

“Spinach. And I layered the tortillas rather than rolling them. A whole bunch faster ‘cause I was running late tonight.”

“Easier is better, right, and the flavor is still there, so good for you!”

Month-of-Few Ingredients: Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love

You know those days, like in the Chopped television kitchen, where you just open up the refrigerator door and say, “What’s for dinner?” Yeah, like that.

Well, I had one of those a little while ago and I scrambled to figure out what in the heck DH was going to be eating that night. I’d had a great day at the computer working on manuscripts and frankly forgot my other role: Feeder-in-Chief. So there it was, 6:00 and it struck me that I didn’t have a dinner plan.

Normally, I’m pretty good. I make menus, shop for the ingredients, and everybody gets fed good stuff on time. But not that night. Okaaaaay. Now what?

Fortunately, I always cook too much of whatever I’m making so that I can speed up dinners with prepared foods ready to repurpose. It was gonna be one of those nights. So I did a quick inventory. I had some noodles in the freezer leftover from when we had creamy mushroom pasta (tastes just like beef stroganoff). In the refrigerator was some roast chicken and some turkey gravy. There were some mushrooms on their way to dehydration. There was about ¾ of a bag of spinach, too. Oh, there was other stuff, but those five seemed more compatible with one another.

The recipe that follows is approximations. I didn’t measure anything because I was using up leftovers. You okay with that? This is a very quick dinner since you are mainly recombining ingredients.

Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love (serves 4-6)

About 4 cups cooked noodles

About ¾ bag of fresh spinach

About 1 cup shrively mushrooms

About 1 ½ cups turkey gravy, peppered and heated in microwave

About 2 cups cooked and shredded chicken

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

Spray casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray.

Toss noodles into heavily salted boiling water to heat noodles (and in my case thaw). Don’t over cook. You just want them hot.

Toss spinach and mushrooms into boiling noodles and immediately drain the noodles. This partially cooks the spinach and mushrooms.

Put noodles mixture into casserole dish and stir in gravy that you reheated in the microwave.

Stir in chicken. Bake for about 15 minutes in oven (or until hot). Serve immediately.

DH’s Rating: 5 Tongues Up  Him: “What do you call this?” Me: “Dinner.”

Him: “No, really.” Me: “Your favorite. Casserole.” Him: “Whatever you call it, it’s really good.” Me: “Whew.”

A reminder:

House rules for what counts as an ingredient:

Salt and pepper are not ingredients.

Oil is not an ingredient when it’s for the cooking pan, not the recipe.

Water is not an ingredient.

If you liked this recipe, I’d really appreciate you spreading the word on your social media outlets. Here are some pre-made Twitter and Facebook posts you can use or modify.

Twitter: Easiest #recipe for for leftovers you’ll ever find. Check out Chicken & Noodles Leftovers to Love by @good2tweat at http://bit.ly/2kYBiCr

Facebook: Need dinner really fast? These five leftovers led to the creation of Chicken and Noodle Leftovers to Love! Posted on Sharon Arthur Moore’s blog, Parsley, Sage, and Rosemary Time at http://bit.ly/2kYBiCr