Chicken Flautas

This post includes another of my favorite recipes, tweaked just enough to fit my taste and apparently everyone else's too--I think this is my most popular sharing dish.

Ingredients:
vegetable oil (either enough to fill your deep fryer or to submerge a few at a time in a deep pan)
1 tablespoon butter 1 tablespoon fake butter
1/2 red onion diced
1 jalapeño peppers 2 jalapeño peppers seeds removed, diced
1 garlic clove 3 large garlic cloves diced
1 teaspoon ground cumin 2 teaspoons ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 cup salsa*
1/4 cup fresh cilantro (*if you used my cilantro salsa you can skip the cilantro)
1 cup shredded cheddar 1 handful reduced fat shredded cheddar

juice of 1 lime
16 (5-6") flour tortillas 8 (6") flour tortillas
11lb rotisserie chicken skin removed, meat stripped from bone
salt

I use my favorite appliance, my deep fryer, to do this recipe but I understand not everyone gets cooking things for Christmas and birthdays :) If you have a fryer and have been responsible and saved your oil, use your poultry stock and turn up to 375°. If not, use a deep pan with vegetable oil and heat to 375°

Heat a medium skillet on Medium heat and melt your (fake) butter.  Add your peppers and onion and cook until onion has become translucent.  Add your cumin, cayenne and garlic and mix it while cooking with a wooden spoon for a minute.  Add your chicken and your salsa (and cilantro if using another salsa than listed above) and mix with the other ingredients for a minute.  Take off your range and add cheese and lime juice and mix. Let cool a bit.

Lay out all of your tortillas on a work space--it's better to do all of them at the same time to ensure they all get equal filling (you don't want a runt of the litter).  Spread your chicken mixture onto your tortillas, a little toward one side.  Roll your tortillas up tight and toothpick 'em so they don't unroll in the oil.

Fry those suckers (3 at a time) until they are golden brown--toward a burnt sienna color but not charred.


Notes:

Be careful with frying anything.  Use tongs. 
I'm pretty much burn-proof from years of using the wing fryers at Pontillo's so, unless you're a relative, you most likely are not....be mindful.

Tweaks:

Read above for a list of changes I made to ingredients and amounts. 
*I dropped the cilantro as I had enough cilantro in my salsa that I used here.

Cheats:
Does the cilantro tweak count as a cheat? 

Verdict: Success

Probably the most Neighbor-worthy thing I can make.

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