Enchiladas de Pollo con Pepitas

This is a really fantastic tasting dish and serves a lot of folks.  I adapted it from a recipe in Bon Appetit some years ago.  First, the ingredients:

Some chicken.  Use whatever you have.  I used most of a smoked chicken that I had made the other day, which seemed to add some character and sweetness.  Alternatively, you can use some purchased rotisserie chicken.  Or you can cut up a chicken, put it in a couple of quarts of water with a chunked up onion, some roughly chopped celery and a chopped up carrot, together with a few peppercorns and a good amount of salt.  Bring it to a boil, then reduce it to a simmer.  Skim off the foam.  Remove the chicken and let cool.  Reserve the water (now chicken stock) for use in the dish.  Chop up whatever chicken you use into very small pieces. 

A cup or so of raw pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
4 medium tomatillos
2 onions (divided use)
1 or 2 serrano chilis
2 large garlic cloves
4 cups chicken broth

Corn tortillas
Mexican cheese

Put the pumpkin seeds in a dry skillet over medium heat and heat the seeds until they begin to pop and become fragrant (shake them from time to time so that they don't burn). Grind the toasted seeds in a coffee grinder.

Roughly chop the tomatillos, one onion, the serranos, and garlic.  Throw them in a food processor with about a cup of stock.  Zap until fairly smooth.  Throw the tomatillo mixture into a sauce pan and heat until reduced and thickened a bit.

Heat some oil (2-3 T.) in a sauce pan.  Add the ground seeds and stir until the seeds begin to color.  Add the tomatillo mixture to the seeds.  BE CAREFUL!!!  Basically here you're adding what is mostly water to something that is mostly hot oil.  It is somewhat like adding liquid to a hot roux.  You're going to get some rapid boiling.  Add some more chicken stock.  Heat this sauce until it is reduced and concentrated.  Salt and pepper to taste.

In a small skillet, heat some oil.  Add a corn tortilla for 2-3 seconds; flip; cook for 2-3 seconds; remove to paper towel.  We're just trying to soften these tortillas so that we can roll them up; don't brown them.

Put the chicken in a large bowl.  Dice up the remaining onion and throw it in with the chicken.  Add some sauce to the chicken and onion so that it is nicely moistened, leaving enough sauce to cover the tortillas.  Add some grated or crumbled cheese.  Combine well.

Put a large T. of the chicken mixture in a tortilla and roll up and put in a prepared 9x12 casserole.  Continue with all remaining tortillas until the casserole is full.  Spread remaining sauce over the rolled tortillas.  Add the remaining crumbled or grated cheese.  Cover with foil.

At this point, you can put everything in the fridge (or even the freezer) until you are ready to heat.  Heat it through in the oven at about 350 deg.  After 30 minutes or so, take off the foil and run it under the broiler to grown up the sauce and the cheese.

Serve with refritos, arroz rojo, y cerveza muy frio.