When it comes to a plate of enchiladas, the heat level of the first bite usually hinges on one thing: what kind of chile pepper the sauce is made with.
Both red — a favorite for beef enchiladas — and its green counterpart, the traditional topping for chicken, can range from mildly spicy to five-alarm-fire hot, depending on where the pepper falls on the Scoville scale, which measures the concentration of lip-numbing capsaicin.
If your spice tolerance pendulum swings somewhere in the middle, sauce made with poblanos, a reasonably mild and easy-to-find chile pepper with roots in the state of Puebla, Mexico, is a good place to start.
An essential ingredient in Mexican cooking, poblanos are long (3 to 6 inches), dark green chile peppers that usually fall within 1,000-2,500 on the Scoville scale. The much smaller, and hotter, jalapeño, by comparison, ranges from 2,500-8,000 SHUs (Scoville Heat Units). Thanks to a thick and waxy skin, they’re usually not eaten raw but instead stuffed with meat or cheese or fire-roasted for salsa or sauce.
This recipe from the stellar “Enchiladas: Aztec to Tex Mex” hails from the city of Pachuca, the capital of the State of Hidalgo. It features a creamy green sauce made with roasted poblanos, peanuts and cream on top of corn tortillas stuffed with poached chicken and queso fresco, a mild and milky cheese that balances exceptionally well with spicy food.
Admittedly, this is not a particularly quick dish; before being whirled in a blender with all the other ingredients, the poblanos must be roasted either over an open flame or in the oven under the broiler so the skin can be removed. The resulting purée then has to be strained before being gently cooked to remove any seeds or peanut pieces that weren’t pulverized and create a smooth, pourable sauce.
I poached the chicken breast with two cloves of garlic and half a white onion in lightly salted water. If you can’t find queso fresco, feta makes a fine substitute.
Enchiladas Pachuqueñas
Serves 4.
