Cinco de Mayo, the Most American of Holidays

This is the post in which Graham and I prove we actually have friends... by hiring a Guatemalan migrant worker and getting Graham's sister, Chrissy, to invite her friends, Megan and Mike.

Chrissy, Megan, and Mike, from left to right.

So how do you celebrate the day when Mexico won a semi-decisive battle against France?

Enchiladas!

 We made two different kinds: half with shredded chicken and half with roasted veggies.  Both batches were filled with cheese and green onions, topped with cheese, sauce, guacamole, and salsa.  Everything was homemade, obviously.  Of course nothing goes better with enchiladas than fresh margaritas.

Allow me a short digression regarding the margaritas.  By the time I got home from work on Sunday, the party was already underway, with mango salsa made by Megan and Mike going around.  (Digression within a digression: the mango salsa was delicious, but I didn't get the recipe, and it was demolished before we could get a good picture.)  Back to the point;  when I walked through the door I was confronted with Graham filling the blender with a mixture of tequila, lime juice, and blue liqueur of a most unnatural color.   Needless to say, we quickly put Chrissy in charge of the margaritas, which proved to be one of the best decisions of the evening.

This batch was strawberry!  Remnants of the Blue Grahamarita visible in foreground.

Alright, back to the food!  First step to enchiladas was cooking the filling.  Graham seasoned some chicken cutlets with a hearty dose of chipotle powder, paprika, cumin, and epazote.  Those went into the skillet while we chopped some vegetables. 

Technically speaking, we had a mix of vegetables, fruits, and fungi.  We sliced some onions, carrots, red and green peppers, and mushrooms and drizzled with olive oil.

David Harlor, our Guatemalan, hard at work.  Was informed that Guatemalans are in fact not from Mexico.

Sliced the veggies thinly for maximum variety per enchilada.  Cooked in a couple large skillets with a dash of beer each, light sprinkling of cumin, paprika, and epazote.  The veggies require less seasoning than the chicken since they develop their own unique, complex flavors, which complement the sauce (mentioned below) nicely.

Beer adds a little flavor and helps to caramelize the veggies a bit.

Meanwhile, Graham got serious with some tortillas:

We don't mess around when there are 70 tortillas at stake.

While we had our slaves party guests shred some chicken.

Preheat some tortillas briefly in a dry skillet to make them more malleable

and have another margarita while you're at it.  We also had a batch of more traditional lime margaritas, but it was hard to get pictures of the drinks as they were going fast. 

Anyways, once the chicken was shredded, tortillas heated, and veggies cooked,

it was time for Enchilada Construction!

Step 1: Veggies and/or chicken in the tortilla, pinch of green onions.

Step 2:  Layer of cheese.

Step 3:  Rollin', rollin', rollin'.

The process in motion.

Finally, no enchilada is complete without a hearty, spicy sauce.  This recipe is actually courtesy of mi madre.  The basic idea: a simple roux (equal parts flour and oil) with no small amount of garlic and chilis.

In your skillet, lightly brown about equal parts garlic and peppers (jalapeno, habanero, bhut jolokia, whatever you can handle) in olive oil or butter:

Then add oil and slowly stir in flour so as to avoid lumps.  Simmer the sauce briefly, and it never hurt to add a bit of chipotle sauce.

once all ~50 enchiladas are rolled, coat liberally with sauce and shredded cheese.

Apparently shredding cheese is just the bees knees.

Top left: the "non-dairy" enchiladas.

Sadly, our two gallons of sauce still wasn't enough for all the enchiladas, but we spread it as far as we could. Anyways, once those suckas are prepared throw them in the oven (round 250-300 for a few minutes) and get back to work on the salsa.  For a smoky chipotle style, throw some halved tomatoes and quartered onions in a skillet with a dash of oil.

Cook until one side is blackened.  In lieu of a smoker/grill, burning one side to a crisp gives the salsa that beautiful smoky flavor.

When the tomatoes look like this, throw the them and  the onions in a food processor with some fresh garlic and chipotle peppers.  Graham and I made a schoolboy error by purchasing chipotle sauce instead of peppers, but the flavor came out alright anyways.

What happens when you don't pay attention to details.

Briefly process that food, then serve while still hot.  Simultaneously, crush some avocados with lime juice, chipotles, garlic and lime juice for some nice guacamole.

Guacamole, pre-crushing.

In the words of Dave Harlor, the Guacamole was "a work of Art."  Also, the leftover mango salsa added some nice undertones.

Pro Chef Tip: Make sure your guests don't eat all the salsa and guac before the enchiladas are done.

Once the toppings are prepared and the cheese melted, the enchiladas can come out of the oven and onto the plates.  Serve with guac, salsa, and hot sauce (Cholula and Tapatio are good standard options).  Interesting observation: Google Blogger tries to correct "Cholula" to "Cholera." Hopefully just a coincidence...

And finally, the moment you've all been waiting for: cue drum roll and brass section: daa-da-da-daa-daa-da-daaaa.....

EAT!

Aerial view of "eating."

 And, finally,  no sibling hangout is complete without a little sibling rivalry:

Hard to say who is winning.

Well, there you have it.  Enchiladas and good times.  Sorry the post was over a week late, but there were a lot of drunken photographs to sort through.  Special thanks to the aforementioned guests who helped us shred cheese, roll enchiladas, and get drunk.  Couldn't have pulled this off without you... well, we could've gotten drunk just fine, but you definitely saved us with the food preparation. 

Keep an eye out for tuna or some other fancy fish in the next post.  As Ryann Hall pointed out to me, fish is not a vegetable, so apologies in advance to our strictly vegetarian readership.  Not sure if any of you are vegans, but if so I would imagine you would have long given up hope on this Drunken Galley.

P.S. Ribs are on the horizon...