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.

Origin of the Gluten-free Chicano, Quiche for Real Gente

2026 Hatch Chile Season: The Gluten-free Chicano’s 2018 Debut

Michael Sedano

My Barbara had been diagnosed with Dementia of the Alzheimer’s type earlier that year, 2018, and the full impact of the disease had not struck me. I was all “la – dee – dah” about the future, or lack thereof. At least in writing. I remember the meeting with the neurologist. As he described the progression I doubled up in my chair and cried, “I don’t want to lose her!” Barbara, the doc, and our daughter looked at me unable to offer the slightest consolation.

Time

All we had was Time. I always capitalize “time” in context of the dementia. Alzheimer’s people have only Time; no hope, no cure, no treatment. Time to change the medications. Time to deal with progressive changes. Time to remember. Time to rue what inevitably happens. Time happens then after-Alzheimer’s time begins.

I write because it’s hard to cry when you don’t want to pay big bucks to repair a keyboard. I write because writing is therapy, an escape and a confrontation. I write because writing is preferred to shaking one’s fist at the unfeeling universe who would answer that unasked question, “why not you?” “why not her?”

So I wrote about other matters and invited my alter ego, The Gluten-free Chicano, to take over from my reality-avoiding self. Following the reprise, with updates, of that 2018 dismal day, I share a 2026 gluten-free chile relleno quiche recipe.  

 

One peeled chile, freeze the rest.

Gluten and Edible Comestibles 2018

Gluten is another word for fearful dining. I’ve read some people go to restaurants with cards explaining everything and hand these to waitstaff. My way relies on a canned answer to what’s it gonna be? “I cannot eat anything that has flour or wheat. Can you please alert me if I order anything with flour or wheat?”

 

People with gluten allergy get sick when they consume wheat, barley, rye, and US-grown oats. Rice, corn, and potatoes are fine food for most people with the gluten bug. Certain gente who eat food contaminated with wheat, their bodies start itching incredibly, maybe they throw up and get horrid stomachs. One time a restaurant served me champurrado—that’s supposed to be safe--and my throat swelled up just enough to distract my attention from the maddening itch.

 

Gluten intolerance—the worst is celiac disease--appears to be a growing condition in America. The gluten-free foods industry, inclusive of magazines, runs strong from Canada to Argentina. I was delighted when an Italian restaurant in Montréal on a visit in 2010 served gluten-free pasta. The newsstand on Soto sells at least one Argentine celiaco magazine. 

 

 

Foodstuffs & Mexican Cooking

Dad's Redlands, Ca Horno

Everything a chicano cooks is chicano food. When I make a baloney sandwich, for example, I slather Best Foods mayonnaise on a leaf of lettuce, lay down two slices of Oscar Mayer and a sliced tomato, slather Morehouse mustard on a second leaf of lettuce, and that’s a Gluten-free chicano baloney sandwich. 

 

La Bloga won’t practice culinary nationalism. Note, however, among the many beauties of chicanexican cooking is its naturally gluten-free ingredients. The Gluten-Free Chicano cooks traditional preparations as well as gluten-free adaptations of fare such as chiles rellenos, soufflé, pankekis.

 

gluten-free individual cheese soufflées

 

 

Restaurants & Eateries

 

Restaurants & Eateries fall into four groups of gluten awareness: 

Never Mind, just a salad.

Bad Dog!

Right Attitude…

Please, May I Have Some More?

 

Time brings change. In the best way, for celiacs and the gluten-intolerant populace. Nowadays restaurants carry a “gf” bug on the menu, and good places will alter a dish, like chicken piccata, to serve a welcome gluten-free version. That said, the four restaurant categories accurately describe the gluten-free eating taxonomy. in 2026

 

Never Mind, just a salad. 

These are noodle houses, pizza parlors, bakeries, places featuring deep fried breaded entrées. A green salad or such is likely to be uncontaminated. Eat elsewhere is usually the better choice.

 

Bad dog!

A significant majority of restaurants and food workers handle food questions with professionalism. Establishments who employ eye-rollers or exasperated tipas tipos are bad dog! places, as are those who ought to do better but fail.

The price of dining at Disney Hall shouldn't include allergic reactions, but this was the possibility at St. Valentine's dinner at Patina. One ingredient looks like black pearl barley to me, so I ask the order taker, who informs me most snottily, "Sir, that is a 'legume.'" That's not information, so I request he ask the chef what kind of 'legume' this might be. The waiter instead repeats his know-nothing response, this time more forcefully. "Sir, as I said, it is a 'legume.'" Please ask, I insist. The fellow disappears for a moment, returns exasperatedly and repeats the legume tale again. I doubt the fellow asks the chef. Diners should not be paying a hundred bolas to be poisoned by ignorant staff. Bad dog!, Patina. (Patina is a now-defunct eatery, Michelin star notwithstanding.)

 

Egregious surprise was in store the final time I visited the trop chèr Ruth’s Cris Steak House in Pasadena. I’d enjoyed Ruth’s Cris meals in Vegas, Houston, and Phoenix and welcomed the chain to the neighborhood. I was especially encouraged that the newspaper advertisement touted Ruth Cris' gluten-aware menu and staff. 

 

I compliment the waitstaff on the restaurant’s gluten-adverse advertising, advised the person of my need for gluten-free ingredients, and order. The salad arrives with croutons. When the steak arrives it has a pat of butter on top. I ask if that is just butter and the chastened waitstaff checks. He returns to whisk away the steak—the butter has flour. Bad dog!, Ruth's Cris Steak House.

 

One theme restaurant menu touts a gluten-free version of its double chocolate brownie hot fudge volcano delight dessert. Dang, that sounds pretty tasty until the waitstaff clarifies the gluten-free version is ice cream and a different chocolate sauce. Bad dog!, Claim Jumper. (Claim Jumper in Arcadia is now closed).

Maybe these places have improved. I doubt I'll ever return to find out.

 

Right attitude.

An attitude is a predisposition to act one way rather than another. But attitude is not action.

A restaurant in trendy Eagle Rock emails invitations to come dine on its imaginative Mexican food. The majority of delectables include a wheat ingredient. I complain. The advertiser replies almost immediately with a “you're not the only one so we’ll look into it”. A ver, if CaCao Mexicatessen follows through on its right attitude. (I never got answered, and after a single visit, didn't return to CaCao, the attitude stunk. I saw you the first time, sabes?)

 

 

Please, may I have some more?

P.F. Chang’s is a celiac’s dream restaurant. A separate gluten-free page in the menu, trained staff, gluten-free tamari sauce. For all I know P.F. Chang's kitchen has a space reserved for gluten-free food prep. (This restaurant closed its Pasadena location around 2024.)

Food4More, aka Whole Foods, sells gluten-free pizza in the comida corrida section and Bard's beer in grocery. Von's and Ralph's now have a gluten-free freezer section for fake breads and cookies. (Bard’s beer is no longer marketed on the west coast but finished high in La Bloga’s gluten-free beer tasting, https://labloga.blogspot.com/2011/10/gluten-free-chicano-diga-me-on-line.html.)

Domenico's in north Pasadena sells a chewy gluten-free take-out. The restaurant charges up-a-size for a medium gluten-free garbage pizza. So it goes. (Domenico’s sells the region’s best antipasto salad. Settebello sells the world’s best gluten-free pizza.

DISH in La Cañada deserves special mention for a single experience. After years of waitstaff impatient with questions, or blank stares from dumbfounded food workers unaware of gluten allergies, DISH employed a woman who exclaimed, “My Dad Is gluten-free!” Nonetheless I ask her to alert me if I order anything with wheat and she practically hugs me in reassurance. A hug for the Old Guy. (I recently dined at DISH and it’s improved 1000% and it was already top-notch!)

 

2026: El Gluten-free Chicas Patas Bakes Chile Relleno Quiche

Photos by Bull Cook Thelma T. Reyna

Peel and de-seed.

Don't be too particular about seeds.

Peeling chiles can be a personal experience, but the best method is a big pachanga, like Alfredo Lascano's popular La Pelada (link)

Peel and de-seed roasted chiles. I eschew the gloves when the chiles are sweet/mild variety. I also taste first to ensure the chiles are the less-picoso variety.

2. Prepare the crustless quiche mix. Quantities depend on volume. 3 or 4 eggs to a cup and a half or two of milks.

a.        Milk, half and half, sour cream, or crema Mexicana  (table cream or agria).

b.        Blanquillos beaten to a frothy joyousness.

c.        Chopped chiles.

d.        Quesos – cheddar and jack or mozzarella.

e.        Salt, pepper, cayenne.

f.           Fresh jitomate.

g.         Onion option. Mix chopped with the milk and/or add rings to the bottom and top.

An electric beater serves well.

 In advance, preheat oven to 350º and grease up a baking dish. Buy gluten-free beer (link). Mejor, Korbel Natural Champagne.

Choose a pie dish for your quiche. Fill it to within an inch of the rim with measured water to define your volume.

Chiles and cheese as a base for the custard.

4.        Lay chiles rajas (or chopped or both), topped with cheese, grated or sliced, in the prepared dish.

5.        Pour over the quiche mix.

6.        Place jitomate slices and sliced onion atop.

7.        Decorate with rajas and cheeses.

Measured liqid fills just below the rim.

8.        Bake on a cookie tin for 40+ minutes. A quiche is done when it doesn’t jiggle a lot when shaken, or when a butter knife blade emerges clean from the middle (not the edge).

Careful not to spill and slide into the heat.

The entire dish loads you with less than 30g carbohydrates. It's gluten-free and diabetic friendly. Provecho.

Gluten-free Caldo de Cocono and Cranberry Sauce You Deserve, Underdog Poets

In Memoriam Bonnie Lambert and José Lozano, QEPD

Michael Sedano

Bonnie Lambert, landscape  painted in workshop

José Lozano

As November 2024 drew to a close, Chicanarte lost two giants of the culture within a few days of one another's transition, José Lozano and Bonnie Lambert.(two links to artist websites)

Jose Lozano's engaging line drawings augmented with color and infused with humor and insight into social events and human foibles caught the attention of architects who selected Lozano's tribute to musician La Marisol to adorn the side of a building at the perimeter of el pueblo de Los Angeles and leading into and out of the city's administrative center. 

Bonnie Lambert's colorist impressionist canvases never fail to gratify viewers and attract collectors. La Bloga-Tuesday happily shared numerous events that included Lambert. A good friend of fellow painter, Margaret Garcia, Lambert helped Garcia lay tiles in a massive craneo now in the garden at Plaza de la Raza (link).  Bonnie sat with others in Garcia's studio the afternoon I sat as the subject (link). 

Here are fotos from an exhibition and workshop Bonnie Lambert conducted in Fontana, California in 2022.

Bonnie Lambert after the workshop, finished work on wall.

Lambert's Palette

Bonnie Lambert portrait of a woman painted in workshop

 

What's in a Name? Cocono, Pavo, Guajolote, Turkey

Michael Sedano

My grandmother was the best poultry dresser in the Inland Empire. People drove great distances to reach De Young's Poultry in Redlands, California, for a turkey dressed by "Emily", gramma's English name. My elementary school teachers loved the bags of feathers I regularly brought.

My grandmother was from Michoacan, purépecha gente, and she brought the word from her tierra. Cocono was gramma's name for the bird, which she raised at home, as well as processed at the poultry purveyor in Redlands. If you've ever heard a live turkey sing you have not heard "gobble" but a throaty cluck that sounds like the name, co-OH-cono, CO-coh-cono. 

Thankstaking creates more dismay than a celiac ordinarily endures at mealtime. Traditional holiday feasts come to table laden with gluten: bread rolls, bread stuffing, canned soup-based sauces, crispy onions atop the casserole, pie crust. 

There’s cross-contamination in the kitchen with utensils stirring and cutting bread and flour concoctions. There’s cross-contamination on the table with serving spoons and scoops.

Ay de mi, what’s a celiac and other gluten-intolerant tipa tipo to do, when she or he sits at an invited table and cannot be fully in control of the meal prep? Not eat.

The Gluten-free Chicano is grateful that turkey cooks don’t dust a turkey with flour when it’s baked. This means there’s going to be a carcass and soup.

El Gluten-free Chicas Patas happily shares a recipe for the tasty after-thankstaking soup of his dreams. Holiday and any meal featuring cocono means a wondrous caldo in the following days, and lots to freeze for non-turkey eating months.

The basic vegetable mix includes leftovers from the meal preparation, i.e., onion, garlic, carrot, celery, bell pepper, tomato, parsley, papa.

Step 1: remove most of the bird meat and store it to make mole, tacos, curry, à la king dishes. If you’re lucky, you’ll have the neck, wings, and drumsticks. Break the breast away from the back to fit into the pot. If you enjoyed a large bird, save half the carcass, wings, etc. in the freezer for a deep winter soup.

Step 2: rough chop the vegetables. The Gluten-free Chicano saves the tops of carrots and root end of celery for soup.

Step 3: half-fill the soup pot with water.

Step 4: place the carcass and veggies into the water and turn the heat to medium. Cook one hour or until the meat falls off the carcass, legs, and wings. Add water to ¾ fill the pot.

Step 5: Remove the root end chunk of celery and other relatively inedible ingredients.

Step 5 ½: Remove the bones from the water, strip off the meat to return to the pot. Add water.

Step 6: chop and slice onion, celery, carrots, bell pepper, tomato. Add to the pot.

Step 7 (options): add gluten-free rice noodles and cook until al dente; add papas and cook to soft; add rice and boil until the grains blossom; add no starch and enjoy a rich (cloudy) consommé.

Step 8: 

dinner bell! Serve with limon and a side of homemade cranberry sauce.

Rough chop veggies for a rustic hearty treat

There's a lot of meat on a turkey carcass. Boiling lets the meat fall right off into the broth.

Break bird to fit, cover with water. This turkey was roasted with citrus.

The kitchen, the whole house, grows redolent with delicious aroma
surpassed only by several bowls.

Here’s The Cranberry Sauce You’ve Waited For

Controversy has attached itself to canned whole-berry or jellied purée; opinions vary on either cranberry sauce, often negative. There’s no reason to strike up a dinnertime whine, just make your own from fresh cranberries.

La nieta has been The Gluten-free Chicano’s cranberry sauce kitchen partner since she was five years old. This sauce is perfect for children to lend a hand during the oft-frantic days before the feast.

Ingredients: fresh cranberries. Sugar. Toronja. Orange. Lemon. Lime.

Step 1: put the cranberries into a cooking vessel. Cover with sugar—not too much, wait to taste and add sweetness as needed. Turn the heat on low.

Step 2: zest the citrus, add to the pot.

Step 3: chop some cascara, one or two inches of zested orange and grapefruit peel.

Step 4: chop a few slices of the citrus fruits add to the pot.

Step 5: you’ll hear the cranberries pop in the heat, and notice liquid begins to build up in the pot. Stir and smash the concoction as it cooks. After ten minutes or so, the mélange is a beautiful amalgam of ingredients. Taste. Add sugar to cut the bite of the berries.

Step 6: transfer the finished cranberry sauce to a spectacular crystal serving bowl, or whatever bowl you have. Clear glass is good to allow the diners a visual treat. 

Step 7: refrigerate until an hour before dinner. Let the sauce sit at room temperature.

 

Cover raw berries with sugar and add more later, to taste.
This is three bags of berries.

There's no substitute for a zester to get just the flavor buds out of a citrus.

Lots of zest and a modicum of citrus pulp make a wondrous treat.

When berries start popping, start smashing.

Citrusy Cranberry Sauce ready for the table

Underdog Bookstore, Hidden Gem in Hidden Gem

One of those hidden gems of a city is Monrovia, California. The city's a short detour off the busy freeway heading to Pasadena to the West, the road to the Inland Empire and Las Vegas on the East, and it's worth more than just a momentary look-see.

The city's beautifully restored Victorian structures house businesses and gente. The shopping district--S. Myrtle Street--is a quaint anti-mall of sidewalk storefronts and unique specialty stores. And in the middle of the district, bookbuyers will find a non-profit community-centric bookseller, Underdog Bookstore (link).

La Bloga-Tuesday is happy supporting this independent business, especially with its active programming of poetry readings and book release events like Carla Rachel Sameth's 2024 reading from her Secondary Inspections (link).

Underdog brought an invigorating reading at the end of November featuring Teresa Mei Chuc and Hazel Clayton, along with an Open Mic. It's a pleasure to share fotos of the readers.

Teresa Mei Chuc

Hazel Clayton

Open Mic Readers

Angela Clayton

Jackie Chou

Mary Torregrossa

Joe Dominguez

Name Unknown

Thelma T. Reyna

Michael Sedano