Chicken Enchiladas with Tomatillo Salsa

My oldest son starts school on Monday and I thought that everything was going well. That is until he started crying last night because there apparently was a boy last year that was mean to him. It broke my heart. I wish that he had felt comfortable enough to tell me last year instead of dealing with it on his own. Today he told me that he is nervous about his new teacher, classmates and that he won't have any friends in his new class. I wish that I could make him feel better, but I know that after his first day of first grade on Monday everything will be fine. He is very smart and everyone loves him once they meet him. I just need to make him feel better until then. So yesterday I decided to make enchiladas. Both of my sons love enchiladas and I found a great recipe in the August issue of Southern Living for Chicken Enchiladas with Tomatillo Salsa which looked like perfect comfort food for a nervous soon to be first grader.

This recipe has 11 ingredients in the enchiladas and 7 in the salsa. It takes a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes, 25 minutes of which is active and makes 6 to 8 servings. I made a few major modifications to this recipe. When I went to the grocery store I believed that I had bought reduced fat cream cheese. When I started to make this recipe I realized that I had accidentally purchased full fat cream cheese. So I decided to make a substitution. Instead of cream cheese I used a combination of smashed canned reduced sodium black beans and goat cheese. In total I used approximately 2/3 of a can of black beans and 2 ounces of cheese. I mashed the beans and cheese together with a fork and added them instead of the cream cheese in the recipe instructions. For the shredded cooked chicken I grilled chicken thighs with a paprika rub, cooled them and then shredded. Instead of using all mild or hot green chilies I used a can of each. Finally, I forgot to spray the tops of the tortillas with cooking spray, but they came out fine. I followed the remainder of the recipe as written.

If you like your enchiladas mild I would suggest using two cans of mild green chilies. With one can of hot and one can of mild this recipe had a slight kick. However, these were delicious. The modifications worked perfectly and I love the added nutrition from the black beans instead of cream cheese. My two boys ate more than half of the enchiladas and even though they drank milk since they were spicy, they loved them. I would definitely make this recipe again and the salsa was great as a steak topping the next day.

For the recipe go to Chicken Enchiladas.