For many years my family enjoyed something called “Chiquita’s Chicken,” a recipe we’d gotten from a magazine article by the redoubtable Peg Bracken, author of the I Hate To Cook Book. The article had a little booklet of recipes included which we apparently didn’t keep, although we did write down the one by Chiquita.. I remember that there was something called “Hao Nao Brown Kao” made with ground beef and vaguely Hawaiian or Chinese or some such, and another item called “Gloria’s Good Goulash.” I found HNBK on cooks.com but the other two are lost to posterity. (At least under their original names. Chiquita, whoever she may have been, apparently cribbed her recipe from an almost-identical one for “King Ranch Chicken,” which is very well known.) Since Chiquita’s Chicken relies heavily on canned soup, I looked for something a little more upscale to replace it and found the following. The cream of mushroom soup has been replaced by sour cream and cream cheese, so I guess that’s progress. The cream of chicken soup stayed. The original recipe called for the chicken and cream cheese to be rolled up in individual corn tortillas, something I refuse to do. Any time you’re asked for something that fiddly, just do layers instead. (There are quite a few other fiddly things I do, such as the individual mini-tart shells, but at least there’s some point to them.) So here’s my recipe, adapted from Taste of Home magazine.
Chiquita's Creamy Chicken Casserole
This is like a vaguely Mexican lasagna, with corn tortillas instead of noodles. It's just different and exotic enough to be seen as an alternative to tomato-based pasta dishes for a crowd but not scary, so it's good for something like a teen dinner.
Ingredients
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 8 0z. package cream cheese, softened
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 1 tablespoon taco seasoning or more to taste
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/4 teaspoon pepper
- 2 10-3/4 ounce cans ccondensed cream of chicken soup undiluted
- 2 cups, 16 oz. sour cream
- 1 cup chicken broth
- 2 4 oz. cans chopped green chilies
- 5 cups diced cooked chicken
- 18 6-inch corn tortillas
- 2 cups, 8 oz. shredded cheddar cheese or more to taste
Instructions
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Saute the onion in the oil. Mix it with all ingredients through the chicken. Spray a 10x13 pan (or a disposable half-size steam table pan, which is 10x12, but deeper than a regular pan) with cooking spray. Layer the chicken mixture with the cheese and tortillas, starting with the chicken mixture and using 6 tortillas for each of 3 layers. Sprinkle additional cheese on top if desired.
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Bake, covered, at 350° for 30-40 minutes or until heated through. Let stand for 10 minutes before cutting if possible. Just as with lasagna, this delay will make the layers set up better and help prevent puddles on the plate. Be sure, by the way, if you're using the disposable pan, to put it on a cookie sheet before you put it in the oven, and take it out of the oven with the cookie sheet still underneath it. Those disposable pans are great--I have a ton of them that I bought at Costco, and they come in very handy--but they're not what you'd call sturdy. You don't want your lovely pan of casserole to fold in half as you take it to the table!
Recipe Notes
A Mexican-themed salad would go well with this--take a look in the "salads" section for a dressing idea and list of ingredients. You could serve cornmeal muffins, too, but since the casserole itself has corn tortillas it's probably not necessary. A nice dessert is Mexican brownies, also in the recipes.
