El Gluten-free Chicano Cooks: Enchiladas Suizas

El Gluten-free Chicano Serves Home-made Enchiladas Suizas
Michael Sedano. Fotos by Thelma T. Reyna.

Back when travel to Tijuana was safe from ICEhole interference, my first stop was Sanborn’s in Rio Tijuana for their enchiladas suiza plate. The food arrives hot and tasty, swimming in rich suiza sauce, so delicious I want to lick the plate but I don’t want to give tourists from el otro lado a bad name.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas decided recently to cure his antojo for enchiladas suizas and mejor, without the hassle of crossing the border. It's been a few years for el Gluten-free Chicas Patas making suizas and he tweaked the ingredients and method un poquito.

Enchiladas suizas are company food, fancy, tasty, inexpensive, and they make an impressive plate.

Among the better features of enchiladas suizas is their simplicity to make, hence when company arrives you can concentrate on being the best amphitrión and accept your guests’ lavish compliments.

How many mouths? This determines how much sauce you’re going to want. You want a goodly amount of sauce and grated cheese. Plan on two enchiladas per diner. As it happens, Thelma and I are light eaters so one was more than enough. 

Buy good tortillas, avoid thin ones because they will tear when you lift them from the oil. Using a torn tort produces an usuitable roll. In today's preparation, the Gluten-free Chicano bought cheap torts and regretted it when the tongs tore the tort as they came out of the sartén. Shoulda used a lower flame and done it by hand; fingers won't tear a hole in the eucharist.

Echiladas Suizas are incredibly rich and delicious so accompaniments can be elegantly simple; frijoles, a salad (fruit salad can double as dessert), fruit juice (fresh, or fermented, i.e. champagne), sandía or ice cream dessert, and the sine qua non beverage of a winning dinner pachanga, good champagne. The Gluten-free Chicano prefers California's best, Korbel Natural. The fotos show just how rare--el GFC had to buy the sweeter version, not Brut, the "Extra Dry". It's a delicious wine notwithstanding not first nor second choice.

The Gluten-free Chicano gets asco from all-white colored food, so he uses yellow cheese and a tomato to add some color to the sour cream/crema based sauce. Serve on a plate with some color contrast to the food.k Maybe garnish with red onion rings.

Carbohydrate volume. I use the USDA's carb counting page. https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/food-search?type=Foundation to estimate the total carbs in the recipe and thus the carbohydrates in a single enchilada.

cheese: 1 cup 2.44 grams (g)

crema: 200 grams 4 g

sour cream: 100 grams 6 g

chicken: 0 g

chile: 100 grams 5 g

onion: 100 grams 2 g

garlic: 4 dientes 4 g

tortilla: 1 each 8 g, 6 torts is 48 g

tomato: 1 each 5 g

cilantro: 9 sprigs < 1 g

bell pepper: ½ cup 6 g

onion: 1 ea 15 g

Total in these quantities is 98 g. The Gluten-free Chicano's dietitian limits a big meal to 60 g carbs. Making six enchiladas gives you a 98/6 or 16 g per enchilada. Diabetic2 like el GFC are safe even if he overeats. This is not artificial intelligence but a human researcher, though, like the robot, I can make arithmetic errors. Use the link and check your own numbers.

 

Ingredients for two people with sobras for breakfast and even lonche

Roasted chicken thigh, back, and leg meat.

Mexican crema (<half the bottle)

Sour cream (1/4 cup)

Hatch chiles (six peeled and de-seeded)

Jack cheese, X-tra Sharp Cheddar (Grate enough cheese to cover all the enchiladas)

Corn tortillas (six)

Garlic (4 dientes)

Onion (1/3 brown or red)

Cilantro (1/3 of a bunch, stems and leaves)

Bell pepper (1/4 of a whole)

Tomato (al gusto, ½ a round or a whole Roma)

Salt

Black Pepper

  

Get Ready to Roll

Preheat oven to 350º

Non-stick spray or grease a casserole dish. Pour a ¼” of suiza sauce into the bottom of the dish.

Pull pollo off the carcass and shred. Please, no bones nor fragments so pull the meat and squeeze it for hard stuff. Mix in some cilantro, chopped onion and garlic, salt, black pepper to taste.

 

Suiza Sauce: espeso or soupy, that is the question.

Blender or food processor, whiz the crema, garlic, sour cream, chiles, tomato, garlic, cilantro, onion, bell pepper into a homogeneous sauce. It will be thick; if you want a soupy sauce, add milk or water. 

This recipe comes out thick and suitably viscous.The thick preparation works deliciously and is easy to work with.  Next time I'll use milk or broth for a soupy-ish sauce, just because every preparation needs to reward you with a different cooking and dining experience. Cooking with an experimental attitude is a secret to grand good times.

 

Assembling enchiladas 

Heat torts in a sartén with a splash of olive oil. Stack them on a plate to cool and supply the bull cook who will take a large pinch of chicken meat and roll a tortilla around the meat. Arrange the enchiladas into the casserole dish.

Pour suiza sauce over the enchiladas. Cover with grated cheese.

Bake the enchiladas for 20 minutes, or more to lightly toast the cheese.

Serve and disfrutar. Ajúa!

Illustrations (foto: Thelma T. Reyna):

Prepping chicken

Whizzing suiza sauce

Rolling enchiladas

Ready for the oven

Finished enchiladas

Plated meal

Shredding chicken by hand to find bones and gristle, remove skin

Using a Ninja tool to blend the suiza sauce. A blender or a  
food processor will do just as well. If you don't incorporate rajas and
other solid vegetables, a mixer will blend the liquids satisfactorily.

Wilting tortilla de maíz. Fearless cooks use fingers alone on low flame.

Tortillas don't stick when piled atop one another.
Wilt both sides of the first, then wilt one side only, placing
the "wet" side up as you build your stack of wilted tortillas.

This is a thick sauce; some prefer a thinner concoction, easily
achieved with water, milk, or broth. El GFC will add water next time.

A four-finger pinch of chicken and onion per roll. Some palates
will appreciate a pinch of comino seeds and cayenne.

Assemble into baking dish. Thin torts tore when lifted from
the oil, hence the ugly roll. The mistakes are covered by sauce but the
enchiladas fall apart when lifted from the baked collection.

Cover them with all the suiza sauce.

Cover with grated cheese.

Into the 350º oven.

20 minutes later, out of the oven ready to plate.

Lunch or Dinner is served. This is Korbel "extra dry", the sweeter label
owing to the rarity of Korbel Natural.