North America · Volume 35, Tex-Mex, the Rio Grande and the Desert Southwest
Blue corn enchiladas
New Mexico
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 45 minutes
- Researched
- 26 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Layered blue corn tortillas, red chile sauce, cheese and onion, built up rather than filled and rolled, topped with a fried egg whose yolk does the work of an extra sauce. Table Magazine
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 45 minutes.
Ingredients
- 60g chile caribe (coarse dried red chile flakes)
- 500ml hot water
- 2 cloves garlic, crushed
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- to taste salt
- about 1cm depth oil, for frying
- 12 blue corn tortillas
- 1 onion, finely diced
- 300g mild cheddar or Jack cheese, grated
- 4 eggs
Method
- Steep the chile caribe in the hot water for 20 minutes, then blend with the garlic, cumin and salt into a smooth, medium-thick sauce.
- Heat about 1cm of oil in a wide pan until rippling. Dip each tortilla in the hot oil for a few seconds only, until just pliable, not crisp, and drain.
- Build each plate in layers: a tortilla, a spoonful of sauce, a scatter of onion and cheese, repeating for a second layer, finishing with sauce and cheese on top.
- Warm the stacks through in a low oven until the cheese melts.
- Fry the eggs and set one on top of each stack just before serving.
What a modern chef changes
The tortilla's brief oil-dip, made even and repeatable.
Rung 2
Method
- Nixtamalise and grind the blue corn from scratch, cooking whole dried blue corn in water with food-grade cal for 30 minutes, then steeping 12 to 18 hours before stone-grinding, giving a genuinely fresher masa flavour than reconstituted flour.
- Cook a single egg sous vide at 63°C for 45 minutes to a soft, custardy set, rather than pan-frying, for a more even yolk to break over the stack at the table.