"Healthy" Chiles Poblanos Rellenos

Alot of my friends lately are on a healthy lifestyle kick, and I just wanted to share a good recipe for a mexican dish I sort of creatively made up, well tweaked. Its a new take on Chilles rellenos, you know the heavenly roasted green chile stuffed with tons of oooey gooey buttery melted cheese, and coated in a meringue of perfectly whipped egg mixture, and then fried to a golden brown. My is baked, and packed with veggies, a good and healthy source of protein, and topped with some cheese, but not enough to make your diet take a dive. I promise you will feel really good about this, and maybe even allow yourself dessert. Here's what you'll need.


4-5 Roasted Chiles Polblanos
1 pound of lean ground turkey meat
1 Large yellow Summer squash
2 regular sized zuchinnis
1 medium onion diced
2 fresh minced garlic cloves
2 Jalapenos diced and de-veined (leave this out if you like)
2 cups Shredded Cheese (I used Colby Jack, cheddar is better)
Salt, pepper ground cumin


First off you will want to get started on roasting the chiles. If you are lucky enough to have a gas stove, justcrank the flame up on high and put your chilis righ on the range. You might want to open a window, and have tongs handy, you will hear snaps, crackles, and pops, and there will be a bit of smoking. You will want to char these until they are literally black and look burned. If you still see green, just keep rotating the chiles until you get the burnt effect. If you don't have a gas range just turn use your gas grill, and do the same thing.
THanks to my baby, he went out and grilled these for me, so i could do my THANG in the kitchen when I got home.
Once the chiles are charred you will want to take a plastic bag and immediatly put them in and seal the bag tight for about 20 minutes or until they cool about 95 percent. The steam inside the bag allows the skins to easily separate from the chiles without any tearing, and it practically does the work for you. You should now have something that looks like this.

While the chiles cool lets start on the filling. In a hot pat sautee your onions with a bit of olive oil, and your minced garlic, and then jalapenos. In the mean time, take a cheese shredded and shred your zuchinnis and squash just like you were to shred cheese. Add the veggies to the pan and sautee that mixture as well. Add some salt so that the excess moisture from the veggies is drawn out. Add in your turkey, and incorporate the mixture.
It should look like this.

You will start to notice your mixture take on a liquidy texture, this is good, this means the salt and heat drew out all the water, thus reduring a cooking liquid. Now season your mixture, add in your salt pepper and cumin, and incorporate it well. Now the meat, and veggies will all marry with their wonderful flavors. You will want to cook your mixture all the way down to a brown color by cooking it on medium high hea, as the liquid evaporates lower the heat and make sure you mix it so all sides of the meat are browned.

While your mixture is browning, its time to peel your chilis. Under some warm water gently rub off the charred skins, this should be really easy to do, it shouldnt require and hard peeling.

Be extra careful not to make any holes in the chiles, but occasionaly you will notice it might split, but this is ok, as wel will need to eventually cut a slit to stuff the chilies with our mixture. Next find a place to split the chili and remove all the seeds as best as you can. Once you have them all peeled,and seeds removed put them in a baking dish, and now its time to stuff, and top with cheese.

oh man these look SO GOOD already!

In the oven for about 15 minutes on 375. This is what you get!
A healthy Chile relleno that has layers and layers of sweet flavor from the zuchinni, and squash and carmelized onions, an dthe savory flavor from the turkey meat and cumin. And of course the ooey gooey part of the cheese from the relleno without ALL the guilt.

Poblanos are not spicy so its ok for kids to eat minus the jalepenos, unless your kids are breave litle ones.
Serve this with any kind of rice, or just a side salad, and enjoy.

~April :)