I was craving enchiladas, and when Jane said she wanted them, too, it was a done deal. I looked forward to Sunday's Peapod delivery and getting to work on chicken enchiladas with spicy black bean cakes – 20 corn tortillas and 10 black bean cakes would make 10 meals. With our pal Dan joining us for dinner on Sunday night, that would leave us with seven leftover meals for the freezer.Because the enchiladas are fairly complicated, I wanted a simple one-pot dish for our second entree. I fell back on my steamed sausage, cabbage and string beans dish (what tastes better than a piece of bratwurst and some steamed cabbage with a little mustard?). I made the cabbage dish first and – using one and a half heads of cabbage, eight brats and a pound and a half of string beans – got nine meals out of the pot.
I've written about both recipes before, and they can be found in the right-hand sidebar.
For the chicken enchiladas, I had a four-pound organic chicken that I planned to roast and pick clean. Later I would mix the meat with onions and peppers, which would all be rolled into corn tortillas.
I washed and dried the bird, rubbed it inside and out with butter (making sure I got under the breast skin and buttered the breast all the way back to the thigh) and a spice mix (cumin, oregano, salt and pepper). I then draped three slices of thick-cut bacon over the breasts, stuffed a cut-up lime and some assorted fresh herbs into the bird's cavity, and placed the chicken on a bed of chopped onions.
I set the oven to 400 degrees, but I made sure to let the chill of the fridge leave the bird. When both were ready, I put the bird in the center of the oven, turned the temperature down to 375 and left it alone for an hour.
I then removed the bacon (very good eats!) and wiggled the drumstick. If it's loose it's done, but mine wasn't, so I closed the oven door for another 30 minutes. This produced a very juicy and flavorful bird – and a carcass that yielded two quarts of a rich chicken stock.