Super Bowl: Chicken and Green Chile Tostadas

I have been a lifelong Washington Redskins fan and remember trips to RFK Stadium and later to FedEx Field vividly, especially when playing the big NFC East rivals, the Cowboys, the Giants, and especially the Eagles with their riotous fans. Then came the restaurant with its 80- to 90-hour workweeks and football all but disappeared from my radar. Post restaurant, we became cord cutters with no access to cable TV. And so, for the last 20-plus years, football has not played a significant role in our lives, especially because Ann has no desire to watch.

But year in and year out, we seem to find a way to watch the Super Bowl, if for no other reason than to keep at least some grip on cultural literacy. This year, we happened to have access to CBS for the broadcast and that got us thinking that we should do something a little special, a little bad food-wise to eat during the game.

We kicked around a bunch of ideas when Ann struck on chicken enchiladas. I suggested that perhaps instead we do tostadas because I could bake the tortillas without any oil for tostadas versus frying the tortillas in oil to seal them against the enchilada sauce.

Chicken and Green Chile Tostadas

When I think about chicken in Mexican cuisine, my mind immediately leaps to the juxtaposition of mild white chicken with mild green chiles. It is a food combination that really works for my palate and I just love the way that each ingredient plays off of and dances with the other. So when I was at the store buying the chicken for the tostadas, I also bought a small sack of mild Anaheim chiles to roast. Yes, you can buy them roasted and canned, but the flavor is not there and they are wicked expensive compared to roasting your own.

Torching the Chiles

Char Each Chile and Place it in a Plastic Bag to Steam

Peeled and Diced Green Chiles

I took the chiles outside and fired up my propane torch to char the skin on each. As I finished with each chile, I placed it into a plastic bag so that it could steam. After sitting for a half an hour or so, the chiles were ready to peel. The easiest way to peel them is to rub the skins off under running water.

Charring the chiles with a torch does not cook them in the way that charring them over a gas burner or under the broiler in the oven does. As you can see in the photo above, they are nearly raw and bright green. To cook them further, I steamed them in the microwave, covered in film, for about four minutes on high.

Enchilada Sauce

I decided to keep with Ann's enchilada theme by making enchilada sauce to drizzle on the tostadas. This sauce is nothing more than a little roux with a lot of mild New Mexican ground chile and a bit of garlic powder, ground cumin, and rubbed Mexican oregano, all thinned with a ladle of chicken stock from the chicken that I poached for this meal.

Chicken, Green Chiles, and Chipotle Adobo

I picked the chicken that I had poached the day before and put and ounce and a half of shredded chicken per tostada in a bowl, then mixed in enough of the diced Anaheim chiles to make me happy, about two parts chicken to one part chile, or maybe three to one. Really, who cares?

I seasoned the chicken with salt and gave Ann a taste. She requested some heat to the mix, so I added about three tablespoons of chipotle adobo to the mix, turning it slightly reddish. The tostada mix ended up with just the slightest kick in the back of the throat.

Baked Tortillas

I baked eight tortillas, one sheet tray full, and left them on the counter to cool and finish drying out. (Click here for tostada procedure.) Then when we got hungry, around the end of the first quarter or so, I put some chicken-chile mix on each tostada, drizzled on some enchilada sauce, and topped each with a sprinkle of cotija and a few cilantro leaves. They were really good, giving us the sensation of eating something bad, while really being quite waistline friendly.

The tostadas were the highlight of our day, being much better than the game in which the Chiefs rolled over and played dead, the lousy half-time show, and the lame commercials. This sparsely attended COVID Super Bowl will probably be memorable for being unmemorable, except that Tom Brady, no matter what you think of him, continues to demonstrate why he is the best quarterback that I have ever seen. Unreal that he can continue to perform at his age, just unreal to defy time the way he has.