Cooking with friends on a weeknight: Special feature--Mexican Food with Dr. Ortiz--Enchiladas Montadas

This time around in DC, I have spent much more time cooking in other people's kitchens.  Don't get me wrong, I love my closet sized kitchen, with its dinky burners and oven that reminds me of the easy bake oven I never had. However, in an effort cultivate friendships, I invite myself over to people's homes on a regular basis. That's how my psychiatrist recommended I make friends...just kidding. Sort of.


This year of blogging has been centered on surviving intern year. Amazingly, May 2016 is here--the first year of residency is almost over. In my co-interns, I've made great friends who love to cook just like me. Patricia is another wonderful GWU psychiatry co-intern and also a fellow Texan. By day, Patricia and I work side by side in a psychiatric unit in Virginia. The good news: I like my job most of the time. I enjoy the experience of becoming an "expert of the mind." At this point of the year, through my patients,  I've witnessed a large amount of the human experience.  I see  every thing: from a psychotic patient who is literally out of touch with reality and believes he is the Messiah to depressed folks who have decided that death is the only option. Yet, if that depressed person has the pleasure of seeing my smiling face, it means the suicide attempt either failed or was thwarted by fear of death, last minute self-preservation or thoughts of loved ones. It's quite an experience--some days more than others, I still feel like an amateur, like an adolescent pretending to be a doctor with my white coat and my developing demeanor of authority.

I visit the Ortiz kitchen on a regular basis and they are always game to cook and spend a week day evening hanging out. They just moved into a lovely home in Petworth with a great kitchen and a porch made for lounging.

By day Patricia and I are psychiatry interns, doing our best to learn and help our patients. In the evenings, we just need a glass of wine, delicious food and company to put the day behind us. Last Wednesday we spent our commute home reminiscing about the Mexican food we so dearly miss. Admittedly, being from central and south Texas, I am more informed about Tex-mex food; hence my love of nachos. Being from El Paso, Patricia and her husband, are well versed and well practiced in making authentic Mexican food. They have kindly allowed me to feature some of their recipes on the blog.  I see a new KitchenPulse feature in the works: Mexican Food with Dr. Ortiz.

On Wednesday, I skipped the gym for family dinner at the Ortiz household. When we arrived to the house, Stephen was already boiling the dried chiles, for homemade red chile sauce for enchiladas montadas.  Patricia doesn't have her recipes written down, so I photographed and will document the recipe as best as I can. Technically (according to internet searches) this recipe is for flat or stacked enchiladas aka Sonoran or New Mexican enchiladas. I like this concept because it takes out the extra step of rolling and baking the enchiladas as you would need for the more common Tex-Mex enchiladas.

The first part of the recipe is the basic steps of making any sauce from dried chiles--boil the chiles, grind them in a food processor, strain out the sauce and season. It's a good process to know and can be used with any type of dried chile.

Enchilidas Montadas aka Enchiladas with red sauce and an egg on top
This recipe requires a food processor or a blender

Ingredients for chile sauce:
One 8 ounce bag of New Mexico red chiles--though per Patricia, the type of dried chile doesn't matter so much. You can also use a mix of dried chiles

New Mexico dried chiles

1 can of plain tomato sauce
1 onion cut in quarters
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and left whole
salt, pepper and chicken bullion or Knorr granulated chicken bullion
chicken broth

Ingredients for the enchiladas:
corn tortillas, 3 per person
grated cheddar cheese
half an onion, diced
2 eggs per set of enchiladas
3 small (roma) tomatoes diced into small cubes

For the sauce:
1) In a large sauce pan or pot add the bag of chiles and the quarted onion, cover with water.  At a soft boil, cook the bag of chiles with the onion until they are soft. This was about 30 minutes. The color starts to lighten from the darker hue of the dried chile
The next few steps are done in batches:

2) Using a blender or food processor: Into the food processor, Add about half or a third of the chiles and include the onion. Also  add about half a cup of chicken broth to the food processor. You want to add just enough liquid to process the chiles into a paste
3) Once the chiles are ground to a paste, empty the food processor into a sieve that is placed over the pot where the sauce will be cooked.
4) Use a metal spoon and start stirring and pressing the chiles into the sieve. The goal is to get the liquid part through the sieve and what drips into the pot is the liquefied part of the mixture which is the sauce. Basically the skins and seeds of the chiles will remain. Patricia pressed each batch for about 5 minutes--it is hard work, her arm got tired

chile paste

pressing out the sauce

5) Repeat the above steps of processing the chiles with chicken broth and then pressing out the juices through the sieve until you've used up all the chiles.
6) To the pot of sauce, add in the can of tomato sauce, the 3 whole garlic cloves and season with salt, pepper and either 1 cube of chicken bullion or a few shakes of Knorr to taste.Over low-medium heat, simmer the sauce for about 20 minutes.  The sauce never gets to a boil

The result after all this processing and pressing is a thick chile sauce. According the Patricia if it is too thick it can be thinned out afterwards with chicken broth. Think of the consistency this way: the tortillas will be dipped into the sauce and you want the sauce thick enough to stick onto the front and back of the tortillas.

Assembling  the enchiladas:
1) In a small frying pan, over medium heat, warm up about 1/2 cup or enough to make a 1 inch layer of neutral oil, like vegetable oil

2) Once the oil is hot, fry each corn tortilla--they get fried enough to be light gold and still soft, but NOT browned and crispy. Lay the fried tortillas out on paper-towels
3) Using the oil from the tortillas, fry the eggs in the warm oil. This step was done masterfully by Patricia's husband. The goal is a soft fried egg with runny yolk.

During assembly and frying the eggs, keep the tortillas and cooked eggs warm in an oven at the lowest setting. Once all the tortillas and eggs are fried, it's time to start assembling.
4) Prepare the assembly line of tortillas, then sauce, then cheddar cheese, then diced onions, then diced tomatoes and the eggs last.

5) Using 3 tortillas per serving: Dip one of the tortillas into the pot of chile sauce, then use a spoon to cover the non-sauced part of the tortilla

6) Sprinkle the tortilla generously with cheddar cheese, diced onions to taste, then repeat this step for 3 enchiladas. Over all three enchiladas, sprinkle the diced tomatoes, and finally "mount" the enchiladas with 2 of the poached eggs. The enchiladas can be fanned out on a plate or stacked.

stacked vs fanned 

7) Serve with refried beans and/or Mexican rice.