Chicken Enchilada Pasta Bake

Mid-October. The peak. The Hartford autumn in its full display, the colors so vivid that the drive from my house to the hospital, which I have made approximately eight thousand times in thirty-three years, looks new. This is the gift of fall: it makes the familiar spectacular, turns the commute into a gallery, transforms the ordinary street into a painting that a tourist would photograph and that I photograph in my memory, every year, storing the orange and the red and the gold alongside the recipes and the children's faces and the things I want to keep when the rest falls away.

Lucas has decided he wants to learn to cook. Not the toy-kitchen cooking of last year but real cooking, the kind where there is heat and a stove and the possibility of consequence. He is three. He is too young for the stove. He is not too young for the counter. I gave him a job: tostones smasher. He stands on a step stool at my kitchen counter, the tostonera in both hands — it is a wooden press, the same one I have used for thirty years, the same one Mami used, the handle worn smooth by two generations of Delgado palms — and he smashes the plantain rounds with a force that is approximately three times what is necessary and with a seriousness that is approximately correct. He smashes. I fry. The tostones are imperfect — some too thick, some too thin, some shaped like the state of Connecticut — but they are tostones and they are his and the his-ness is the teaching.

David called to say the restaurant is doing well — not packed, not pre-pandemic capacity, but steady, the kind of steady that allows a small restaurant to pay its staff and its rent and order its produce and keep the doors open. James designed the new menu — the graphic design, the typography, the layout — and David sent a photo of the printed menu and the menu is beautiful, clean, the food described in words that make you taste it through the paper. I read the menu out loud to Eduardo and when I reached 'Sofrito Base — House-made from a family recipe, three generations deep,' I stopped reading and sat with the sentence for a while. Three generations deep. He put it on the menu. My sofrito is on a menu in Brooklyn. The menu is beautiful. I am on the menu. Wepa.

That afternoon in the kitchen with Lucas—the tostonera in his small hands, the flour on his shirt, the absolute conviction with which he smashed every single plantain round—reminded me that the point was never the perfect tostone. The point was the counter, the step stool, the together. This Chicken Enchilada Pasta Bake is another one of those recipes: forgiving enough for a three-year-old to stir, satisfying enough that nobody leaves the table early, and layered with the kind of warm, saucy comfort that makes a weeknight feel like something worth sitting down for. Lucas can’t manage the oven yet, but he can absolutely pour the enchilada sauce. That’s his job now.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

12 oz penne or rotini pasta
2 1/2 cups cooked chicken, shredded (rotisserie works perfectly)
1 can (10 oz) red enchilada sauce
1 can (15 oz) black beans, drained and rinsed
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
1 1/2 cups shredded Mexican cheese blend, divided
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro, for serving
1 jalapeño, thinly sliced, for serving (optional)

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Heat oven to 375°F. Lightly grease a 9x13-inch baking dish and set aside.
Cook the pasta. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook pasta 2 minutes less than package directions (it will finish in the oven). Drain and return to the pot.
Build the sauce. To the drained pasta, add the enchilada sauce, sour cream, cumin, garlic powder, smoked paprika, and salt. Stir until the pasta is evenly coated.
Add the fillings. Fold in the shredded chicken, black beans, corn, and 3/4 cup of the shredded cheese. Stir gently to combine.
Assemble and top. Transfer the mixture to the prepared baking dish, spreading it into an even layer. Sprinkle the remaining 3/4 cup of cheese evenly over the top.
Bake. Bake uncovered for 25–30 minutes, until the cheese is melted and bubbling and the edges are lightly golden. Let rest for 5 minutes before serving.
Serve. Scatter fresh cilantro over the top and add jalapeño slices if you like a little heat. Serve directly from the dish.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chicken Enchilada Pasta Bake — When the Kitchen Belongs to All of Us