Our hosts this month, Barbara of Barbara Bakes and Bunnee of Anna+Food have chosen a delicious Stacked Green Chile & Grilled Chicken Enchilada recipe in celebration of Cinco de Mayo! The recipe, featuring a homemade enchilada sauce was found on www.finecooking.com and written by Robb Walsh.

The sad truth is I almost never cook any other type of cuisine besides Italian. The biggest obstacle to trying different ethnic recipes is that I inevitably find myself with a long shopping list of ingredients that I know I’ll only use once or twice. With cupboards that are already full of bottles, jars and various other packages that I rarely dip into, I’m reluctant to add to the clutter.

Deep down, though, I have a huge thing for Mexican food. I love it and it’s certainly not easy to find great Mexican food in Toronto (although it’s getting better).

I was so happy when I saw what the May 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was because I have always wanted to make enchiladas. I should also confess that I just love saying that word.

It makes me feel happy and hungry all at the same time.

The best part of this recipe was hunting down the ingredients for the Green Chile Sauce. Having never tried tomatillos, or purchased them for that matter, I thought I’d give it a try and locate them. My search took me to Toronto’s Kensington Market, which is home to several food stores that sell ingredients used in Mexican and South American cuisine. While I was successful in procuring tomatillos, I could not find Anaheim chiles so instead, I bought poblanos.

I had no idea that poblanos were as spicy as the ones that I bought were. It definitely gave the sauce a special “kick”. Luckily, we love our spicy food in the Cream Puff household so it worked out. I made a fresh salsa, however, and mixed in some of the chile sauce to take a bit of the edge off.

Otherwise, I followed the recipe exactly and ended up with a most delicious enchilada dish. Everyone loved it and there were no leftovers. I’m looking forward to using the rest of the chile sauce and corn tortillas and making this dish again.

I’d like to thank Barbara and Bunnee for doing such a great job of hosting!

For a copy of the challenge recipe, visit The Daring Kitchen recipe section.

Ciao!