Let's Make Enchiladas to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

Hi everyone, I'm Chef Dennis Littley and welcome to Around the Kitchen Table. And today I'm going back to my roots, a Mexicano, because my mother was Mexican. So I did not learn to cook a lot of Mexican because my mother couldn't cook, which is why I cooked. But today we're going to get ready for Cinco de Mayo.

Yes!

Yeah!

Woo-hoo! Oh, where's my hat? Where's our sombreros?

I don't know. Just when you need it. We should have got some from Maggie and Zwayda.

That's right. That's right. This is great.

How you doing, Susan? How's the weather?

I'm doing good. I'm doing good. It's, you know, we talk about the weather. It's gorgeous weather. It's solid spring here. And, you know, now I'm thinking about, you know, summer foods, and I want to go right from winter to summer. I hear you. So I am ready, and I'm also super excited because we are going to go And I want to tell everyone that you don't know what you're going to see with your plans. I have kitchen plans for you. We're going to see them today and you have not seen them. So, so be nice and be a, you know, pretend that, you know, you're excited. So we'll do that soon. How are you doing?

Okay, that sound all right?

Perfect.

Okay, we're back, we're back, we're back.

Okay, yes. Okay, so let's plunge right in.

All right, let's plunge right in. Well, we're gonna make tamales today— or not tamales, I'm sorry, enchiladas today. I wish we were making tamales, but I don't know how to do them yet. And you're gonna start very simply with a little bit of a roux. Now, red sauce, a traditional enchilada red sauce, is not real difficult to make. It's pretty simple ingredients. It's pretty straightforward. If you don't want to make your own, you can go ahead and buy it. There's times that if I don't have it or if I don't feel like going through the trouble, I'll simply buy a good brand of an enchilada sauce. This is easy to make. You can double the batch, and I'll put the recipe up later. You can freeze it. It freezes. It stores well. You don't have to go to all this trouble when you want to make enchiladas. You can have it done ahead of time. I have some vegetable oil in here. We're not making a butter roux. We're making an oil roux because it's going to be a tomato-based sauce. For the kind of sauce we're making, we don't really want to use butter. I'm just going to let that cook just a little bit.

—And do you want it to get a little brown like a typical roux? —This could.

This would not be a problem with this getting a little darker because it's going to be a tomato sauce. Not necessary, but it certainly wouldn't hurt it. It wouldn't affect it. If you let it cook a little bit, you don't want to burn it, but if you let it cook enough to where you get a little more nuttiness from the flour, you get a little bit more flavor flavor from the flour. The one thing you don't want to do with any roux is just mix it together and use it if you don't have to. Sometimes you have no choice, but if you can let it cook a little while, it's going to add flavor to your sauce. Once you get that together and I've got the flour mixed in, it's pretty simple. I've got some organic tomato sauce. You could use crushed, but you want them to be pretty thin for this sauce. You don't want it to be super chunky. This isn't like a salsa. This is an enchilada sauce. So I've done that. I'm going to add a little water to the cans, of course.

I kind of like to use— sometimes I use the— I don't know how to say it— Muir, M-U-I-R brand. Do you know that brand? M-U-I-R. It's like a California Right here. Is that what it is?

Yep, Muir Glen organic. That's it! Yeah, yep. And you know, when I'm looking for tomatoes, they make a really nice one. And the thing, the reason I did get these was because it's a tomato sauce and it is organic. All right, so this is stored in here, and I'm just going to turn this down just a little bit. And now I'm going to put in my spices, and the spices you can almost set to your own taste. But the basic spices for these I have in here is garlic, onion, chili powder, dried oregano, cumin, and some brown sugar, and of course salt. Oh, nice. I'll season it up with salt and pepper a little bit more as it's done to see if it's needed. I know it's going to need salt, but I didn't put any more pepper in it because Actually, I'm a little bit of a wimp when it comes to heat, so I'm not always looking for something to be that spicy. Now you can see it's starting to bubble already. It's getting hot, and it's actually a little too thick.

Let me ask you, let me ask you, the garlic, is it fresh chopped garlic or is it dried or what it is?

All the spices were dried. Okay. For this sauce, you don't need to use it. Of course, if you want to start with onions and garlic, you can, and either strain it or puree it. Or if you're using, let's say, you just want to use crushed tomatoes, I'm gonna show you how to make a salsa verde in a minute. And if it was just crushed tomatoes, you could of course just throw it in a blender or throw it in a food processor when you were done and make it nice and smooth. Enchilada sauce should be kind of smooth. So that's pretty much it. That's it, enchilada sauce. Okay, that was easy. Wow, tastes good. What I did add was some chicken stock. Oh, good. Because I want to thin it out, and the chicken stock helps add a little flavor. So this is all we're going to do for an enchilada sauce. It's as simple as that. It's going to sit on the stove from this point for about 10 minutes, 15 minutes to thicken, and to thicken a little bit more because of the roux and also to cook some of the flavor. So if you want to jump to your presentation, we can go.

Yeah, well, this is interesting. My doorbell rang. You have to get the door going. Okay, so chat for 2 seconds and I'll be right back.

You got it. All right, so this is your enchilada sauce, like I was saying. I don't know if you can see the color and the nice seasonings in it, and a lot of it's going to add more color to it. You're going to get that darkness, that kind of brown look that enchilada would have.

Do you want to find the meter?

I know it's in the— I'm so sorry about that. I know it's in— it might be in the garage, I'm not sure.

Okay, well, come on in.

This is live TV, folks. Anything can happen.

Okay, well, isn't this interesting how this works? Okay, you ready for me? I'm ready. Let's do it. Okay. So I'm so excited, so excited because today I'm going to do the big reveal of some preliminary plans. Now if you remember 2 weeks ago when we talked about Chef's Kitchen, I talked mostly about shapes and forms, shapes and forms where you just sort of, you know, it's the very beginning and you want to see where things go and how the space will flow and so on and so forth. So I'm going to begin by showing you pictures of Chef's actual kitchen, and then I'll get to the plans that I have done. And they're simple, they're basic, don't expect any tremendous architectural drawings. They're just simple. So I'm going to put the screen share on and we will start. And I'm so excited. I would also love, um, whoever's listening, I would love your thoughts. Whatever you want to say, good, bad, and different, or suggestions, put them out there and let's crowdsource this kitchen, right, Chef?

Absolutely, let's do it.

Here we go, okay, so yeah, so here we go. Here is the island where Chef is right now, and I'm going to go through all of these images and then talk about the plan. Yeah, so this is an overview. Overview again, Chef goes back and forth between the island. You love, you love the island, you love having an island, right?

Absolutely, that's been the best part of this kitchen.

Yep, and you can see the dining table beyond the kitchen there. Now you can see, this is an interesting picture because you can see the entire room, kitchen, and the space beyond, which is a living area, and you can see a little bit of that living area here. Another shot of, you know, the kitchen as it is, and you can see the spatial flow and the traffic. And just kind of going through these images so you can see the storage. And this is a good shot too because this shows really a lot of the space. And again, you can see the dining area there and the sink. And the sink. Okay, so Now, I'm actually going to actually run back to my last one, my last image, which is— let me see. Okay. I'm going to go here. Okay. So, if you look at this floor plan, this now is Chef's existing kitchen. So, you can see there are windows here. There's the island. Now, he has a sink and a dishwasher, but over here on each side, it's an overhang. It's not— there's no cabinetry here. It's an overhang. And then we have the refrigerator, the stove, cabinets, cabinets, cabinets, and the table, sliding door here, and there's a door I didn't put here to a laundry room. Over here is the living area and here's a hallway. So, this is existing. Now I'm going to show you, and Chef, here we go, the big reveal. I have 5 ideas. They're very similar, and you know, sometimes I'm doing this big long disclaimer because sometimes when I first present them, people get all nervous, and you know, but we're just gonna do it. So here's my first idea, which is to eliminate This is not working for me very well, and I'll tell you why. You know, it's about traffic flow and it's about storage space. You can't really store things so effectively in this type of corner. It also— you don't have much room over here. It's just something that I'm not seeing You know, I'm seeing that there are other alternatives for it. You can certainly make this a big island in your kitchen. In the pictures that I just showed, it seems to me that you have so much space on each side that is not being used very effectively. So, in the following plans I'll show you, so this could be a shorter, a taller, a secondary sort of— sometimes And, you know, it's interesting to have another type of section next to an island. So that's, that's what I did here. And then here, this is just a straight shot, very similar. Sink is in the same place. However, you have— it's an island situation. You have a pantry here. So this space, you have a lot of wall space here, Chef. Yes. Oh, I know, I noticed that. I think you're going to be very interested as we— I mean, nothing's happening here. So we can take off some of the upper cabinets and you can have a beautiful, easily accessible pantry. You can have a Long Island. And now here's another one. I don't know if this is my favorite, but it's an alternative. It gives you a much longer— gives you a pantry. It gives you a much longer leg here. I believe this is one maybe— in most cases I did not move the sink. In this one I did a little bit because I'm— usually it's tough to move the sink, you know, so I'm not sure about that. But for what it's worth, tons of counter space, buffet, pantry, you know, you have it all here. Now this one is two islands. Sometimes people like two islands. It could be extra storage, it could be— you could have a whole butcher block. This could have a butcher block top on it, so this could be prep. And no, you would not walk between here, but you can clean between here. So that's very much like this one, except this one is attached, and this one— actually, the sink is moved here, the sink is not moved over here. Okay. And this last one here is something I actually did this in another kitchen where you're kind of featuring and kind of making a sort of formal yet casual yet separate definition between the dining area, and this is the only dining area you have, is that correct? That's correct. Except for outside. Right, okay, so by doing something like this, you can add storage and you can kind of feature this area instead of an eating kitchen. It almost looks like a separate dining area. So, so that's what we have now. Again, let's go back to— this is existing. I, I— this, you have the sink base and the dishwasher and then an overhang. It's so— oh my gosh, you could have such a bigger island even if we went to something like this.

Yeah, I love the idea of a bigger island because there's so much going on here.

Okay, what do you think about eliminating the peninsula, the leg?

I think that's a good idea. I know Lisa will probably like that. That will really open up the flow here. Yeah, I think that's a good one. Mm-hmm.

Any other comments on—

I, you know, well, you really gave me a lot to think about, things that I hadn't even thought about. I also like the idea of the double island, and I'd like to see some pictures of how that works. Because that, that could be really cool too. I mean, that gives you more room. I don't, you know, I love having the centerpiece, and, you know, I've even thought about moving the stove over to here, but that, you know, that might wreak havoc with my venting system and all that.

So yeah, in fact, that is one thing, even keeping the appliances where they were, we still had a lot of options. Yeah, to tweak this kitchen. I didn't think you wanted to, you know, move them, but I certainly could. Next go-round, I could move everything all around if you'd like.

Yeah, you know, I would say yes, but we just had a new roof put on here, and I would be afraid to move the venting and cut into it. Might cause more problems than it's worth. So as long as I have the island, and you know, I have an induction burner that I use, like when I'm cooking for guests, having the stove behind me is not a big deal.

It's fine. Good. And I see— I don't know, I'm leaning towards something like this because what if this were— the top were butcher block? How would you feel about that?

That would be— that might be pretty cool going along with the rest of the countertops because it'd be a nice place to serve at, it'd be a nice place to take pictures at, that's for sure. Well, it's a prep—

it's— I mean, I'm thinking of it— you know, for prep purposes, chopping, actually using it. And then just— go ahead.

As a chef, I don't use wood very much. We kind of got— in the industry, we kind of got away from that just because of how hard it is to clean and to keep sanitary. It's mostly for show these days. I mean, in a commercial or in a real working kitchen, You really don't use wood anymore, so I would probably use it more as a showpiece than a workpiece.

But maybe you should, but see, maybe you should use it as a workpiece because then maybe, you know, the knife marks to me would add character. You wouldn't have to go looking for a chopping block. It's there. Whenever you want it, it's there. Just something to think about. Absolutely. Another way of working. I'll tell you something. There have been some studies with butcher block wood countertops that there's a natural organic sanitizer within the wood that keeps the wood more sanitized than, say, a plastic chopping block. Yeah. Of course, you know, you'll hear both sides, but I had a wood— I actually had a wood chopping block in a drawer. It was a pull-out drawer. Oh my gosh, I used it for everything. So your prepping and chopping, you'll have to give some thought to. Go ahead.

It would be a lot more convenient, that's for sure, you know, and it would look nice. That is— let me think— and again, you know, a lot of times I'm visual. If I can see a picture of something and how it actually goes, that's when I go, oh yeah. You know, so—

Now when we look at this again, I mean, look how inefficient. If you see over here, Chef, you're not even utilizing this space here.

I know. It's just, it's not, it was not well thought out. The thought of the flow is good, but it just wasn't put together well. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, I'll go through these again, and this is just a plain island, you know, big, but big. And I didn't make this longer because I put a pantry here. We'll see where we could, you know, but we could take the pantry away and then make it even longer.

Something like that I got to show to Mama because she's the one that says, yes, you can have something on that wall.

Oh, no, I'll forward these to you separately. And you know what, this is the beginning, and then I'll let you go back to yours. Next week, I'm going to start putting cabinets in. Maybe you'll pick one. In the next week. And then we'll begin to see elevations and we'll see perspectives like I showed you 2 weeks ago, remember? Very cool. So this will come to life next week if you can make a decision by next week. I'm so excited. How excited are you? Yes, it does. I love it.

Thank you so much. My pleasure. Amazing to see something, and you know, it's the first time anyone's ever given me any input on putting something together too. So this is, you know, usually a chef gets a kitchen, they'll ask you what they want, they never do what you want, you know, and then the kitchen's done and like, oh, well, that really doesn't make sense. So thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome.

I love the process. And you know what, it may be how you feel about teaching. I love it. I love the collaboration. I love the give and take. And, you know, as a designer, and maybe as you as a cook, as a chef, you walk that line between I don't want to push, but yet I don't want to yes you. I want to suggest, and then you make it your own. So I love the process. So good. Thank you so much.

Yeah, I'm really excited. I am very excited.

Good, me too.

So it's been a long time coming, and it's going to be a showplace when it's done..

Yep, so take it away.

Where are you at? The red sauce is basically done. It's simmered, it's cooked, it's got some excellent flavor. Mmm, oh my God. Tastes like enchilada sauce. Now, I didn't heat this up a little, but I did throw a little bit extra chili powder in it because I want heat, minimal, but I want flavor. The chili powder, rather than just giving heat, actually gives it a lot of flavor. It gives it that smoky heat that's not overpowering that you're going to eat in Mexican food. For some reason, like I said, I'm half Mexican, and I grew up on Tex-Mex, which is a whole other animal than most people are used to. There's a couple things. The food was never like make you sweat hot. I've been in some local restaurants, and I order Mexican, and it's like, oh my "God, what did you put in here? I'm Mexican. I can't eat this." Granted, they do eat some hot spicy foods, but it's got to have flavor, too. You can always crank this up with some jalapeños on the side, with anything you want. You saw how it's done. 15 minutes, it's done. Wow. That's that. Real quickly, we're going to move over to— I'm going to shut that off and I'm going to move it. And I'm going to set up the food processor really quick, I hope. Maybe we'll put that over here.

And I cut this short because my meetings, a meeting like this, it can be 2 hours. So we did this all in 10 minutes, but we did it. We got the job done.

I can see that. And depending upon if you have a— I don't want to call it a bridezilla, but a kitchenzilla, it could be insane.

I call them my princesses. There you go.

That's one way to do it. All right, so here is the food processor. Now, to make a green enchilada sauce, which is a salsa verde, for lack of a— trying to find a sweet spot for this. There we go. For lack of a better name, is going to use something called a tomatillo. That's a tomatillo if you've never seen one. And if you don't see them in your supermarkets, I'm sure everyone has Mexican markets now where they live, but this is how it comes. It's not wrapped in this. This is how it grows. And then This peels off, and it really kind of looks like a tomato. This is a little sticky. It's got a stem, but it's not a tomato. It's not a green tomato. There's the cut pieces. It has a little bit of a lime-ish kind of taste to it, not strong, but a little bit. We're going to put tomatillos in here, and we're going to put— I have a poblano pepper. I told you the story of me forgetting to wash my hands, but we won't go into that, after I cleaned the poblano pepper. Oh yeah. So I mean, we're going to put all that into the blender, and it's got— let me think for a minute— okay, tomatillo, and oh, and then I sautéed up some onions and some garlic, and that's really the only part you cook in a little oil. Put them in here, and it's pretty much just a blenderized sauce. I've seen some recipes where you cook the tomatillo, which you can do too, but you don't have to. And then we're going to put in some cilantro, and then I have some salt.

I love it, everything is fresh. Love it.

Oh yeah, and we call it cumin. In Mexico, it's cumin, for those of you in the rest of the world. And boom, and we're just going to pulse. Okay, and that's basically a salsa verde. Now that's a little thick, so you may want to just cut it down with, again, a little bit of chicken stock. Or just water if you choose, if you don't want to use chicken stock or vegetable stock. Very nice. And this is the salsa verde. You can use it as a dip. That poblano gave it just enough heat where it's not going to kill me. It's great for chips. It's not really a salsa, so I don't want you to think that, but this is more of a sauce that you're going to use.

That's great for a change, to have it as a dip. It seems like it would be great for the summer.

It's good for the summer, and you could squeeze a little bit of lime in here. It doesn't need it. It's not real bright green. It's kind of a pale green. You can also put some bell peppers in it if you want. It's almost like a seasoning sauce made, you know, it's featuring the pepper, but the tomatillo is the base of it. So again, it's like a salsa, but it's not. And this is a sauce you could also use if you were making, if you wanted to make green enchiladas or just on any other dish.

It's a lovely— Looks great.

Looks really good. And that was pretty quick, so you saw how fast that was. So now all we have to do is put our enchiladas together, and there's one part of that that we did not do, and that is just preparing the tortillas. And so for that, there's a couple trains of thought on that. One, uh, When my grandmother used to make enchiladas for me, she made them very simply. She would send me to the grocery store on the corner for red tortillas. Now, I haven't seen red tortillas in ages.

I don't think I've ever seen them.

They were the same basic tortilla, they just had a reddish color. And whether they were made that way from paprika or chili, they weren't hot, they weren't spicy. They were just red, and but that's what she always made enchiladas with, was a red tortilla. So that's how I knew she was making them. So she'd send me to Alejandro's on the corner, and Harold was like 5 years old or something, with the money to buy red tortillas and usually Longhorn cheese. I remember that from growing up. And Longhorn is kind of like a cheddar, but it's not. It's—

I wonder if it's like Monterey Jack?

It's in between the two, I think. Yeah. Well, you know, I did not buy any Longhorn, but what I did buy for today was I bought a combination of Monterey Jack, some Mexican cheese, and cheddar. So it's a nice flavorful, and I also have some queso fresco, which is some fresh Mexican cheese. Which comes usually like this, and it's in a block. It's almost like, I would say, close to a Mexican feta maybe, but it's not at all that tangy. It's kind of mild compared to—

You could probably only get that in a— that's not widely available, is it?

You know, you'd be surprised. More places are selling Mexican because Mexicans have immigrated to the United States so much. Pretty much if there's restaurants, there's a community of Mexicans working in those restaurants. You'd be surprised. They want to eat what they're used to, how available they were. You might even find small things of it in your Super Fresh or ShopRite or Wegmans. I'm pretty sure Wegmans sold it. The whole key to this is getting this oil hot enough. This oil really wasn't hot enough, so we're going to let that go just a little bit longer. We'll get rid of that. It's kind of like making pancakes, you know, that first one you throw away, right?

Right, right, right.

But now, the corn tortilla, you could use— if you sauced it enough, you could use it uncooked. It's not going to quite be the same, but you want to let the oil get pretty hot. Then you're just going to give it a real quick fry. Now, the enchiladas my grandmother used to make me were simply chopped onion and cheese. She would throw them in this oil, get a little heat on them, cook them a little bit, and then roll them up. As fast as she could make them, I would eat them. As a 5-year-old kid eating raw onion, it was never even a thought. It was just something that I did. Okay, there we go. So that's hot enough. Now I'm not getting them crispy, I'm just cooking them just a little bit, and then I'm going to put them on paper towels and let them just kind of get some of this grease out. This is something you can do Just be careful with them because they will tear pretty easily.

Well, so that is quick.

Yeah, I'm just giving it a brief little cook. I mean, the longer you cook them, you can cook them a little longer if you want, but I'm just really, you know, because the corn is done. It's not like it's raw. I'm just going to do a few of these.

And I would imagine it enhances the flavor, has to be enhanced by doing that.

Yeah, oil, you know, is— you're cooking it just a little, so it's not raw to begin with, but I mean, it just has a little more flavor. It's a little more— it's easier to work with. You just don't want to let them get into like crunchy steak. So that's— we're just going to do a few so I can show you how to make them. So I'm going to move this off the heat, turn this off. That's off. Okay, so we've got the tortillas done. Unplug this so it doesn't keep beeping. There we go. Let me grab some more paper towels. I know when we used to do these, you know, I would layer them in between because of course 6 is just like kind of an appetizer.

So yeah, that's true.

Lisa won't be eating these, and in my thin dieting days now, 6 is probably enough for today.

Oh, Lisa won't be eating those?

She doesn't like Mexican food. Okay, crazy as that seems. Now I did get her to eat— remember we made those buffalo— was it— I forget what kind— buffalo shrimp tacos or whatever I made one time on the show? Oh, she loved those. So that was like unbelievable. I couldn't— that I got her to eat them. But normally if it's a tortilla, she doesn't want to look at it. Now she loves Spanish food.

Oh, I love Spanish food. I love— I love Spanish food.

Yeah, I like it both.

I love it both.

Yep. Okay, so she loves those. So here we go. Let me get something to roll them on. Very simply, if we're going to make enchiladas, there's a couple ways you can go. Now, you can use chicken. Now, what I did was— the perfect thing is if you've got a roast chicken that you picked up somewhere, use that and just pull the meat off of it. I actually had some chicken breasts I cooked, and I cooked them with chili powder, cumin, little garlic, little onion, little salt and pepper.

Yeah, those roasted chickens, that's the easiest thing to do.

Yeah, I mean tacos, anything you want to make with them later. So a basic enchilada would be the queso fresco, the chicken, and the cheese, and that's really all you got. Now I'm gonna put a little fresh onion in here too because I like onion. And these are Vidalia sweet onions, so they're not real biting. So that's it, and then I'm just going to roll these up. These are fat enchiladas. You won't always see them. I mean, restaurants seem to make them really, really thick because I think they want you to feel like you're getting your money's worth out of them. Yeah. But so that would be those.. And then if I wanted to make something different— now, these are yours. You can fill them with whatever you want. I've got some pinto beans here.

Okay, hand them to me.

Hand me one. I wish I could. I'm gonna put a little corn in here and then some fresh cheese, the agua— the queso fresco. Little bit of onion. How about a little bit of cilantro? Just to make these nice and vegetarian. Okay, and then I'm going to roll these up.

That's great to have a kind of like a diverse selection. Love it.

This is something you could do like if you were having a party. You could do the tortillas ahead of time, have them nice and warm. You know, you could even use— to make it easier on you, use flour tortillas. That way you don't have to fry them. Although, you know, an enchilada is traditionally in a corn tortilla. You know, if you're having a party, just have a whole assortment of toppings just like we did with our tacos.

Okay, but would they get— would the tortillas get soggy?

If you use flour tortillas, they would get a little soggy, but I mean, you wouldn't even have to— like, you don't have to bake these. You could just have the sauces on the side. Everything's cooked, so you could have the sauces on the side if you don't want to put these in the oven.

So can you, can you keep them a day ahead of time?

Yeah, yeah, these will hold. These will hold pretty good in the refrigerator. You could make them up ahead of time. So what I'm going to do here then is I have these, and then just to finish them off, I'm going to use my red sauce, enchilada sauce that I just made. Nice. Let me get this in the picture. That would be always helpful. Okay, so there's the red sauce. Just because I can and I have, I'm going to use a little of the green salsa verde right here. Top them with a little bit of cheese. Go in the oven for about 10-15 minutes, really just to let them bake a little bit. Oh, it looks great. You could do them that simple. You could do a tray of ones with— if you like pork, you can use pork. You could use beef. You could use anything else. You could use little shrimp if you want to cook up some little shrimp and make that.

Sometimes I make big batches of pulled pork. I could use that, right? Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah.

Pork makes great enchiladas. And you'll see them now. Usually they give you a choice now of what you want to put in them. You can have— some of them use different sauces, and they even give you choices of sauces. So I mean, it could be all red, it could be green, you can mix them up. You could make, you know, if you wanted to actually do a row, like 3 rows of chicken or something, and do the one in the middle green, then you'd have red, green, and it'll look pretty when you set it out on the buffet table. Yep. So, you know, That simple to make. Like I said, you can do anything you want. I like chicken. Here's some chicken. Let's put some beans in this one. My cheese, of course. Onion. A little corn.

Why not? Oh yeah, there's always so many great sides.

Endless sides. You could actually just eat it like this. You don't need any sauce. It's done, and oh yum! That is wonderful. So I mean, it's that simple. That just took me home. This just took me back, you don't know how many years.

Wow, that's great. Where's the sour cream? You know, no sour cream.

Although I enjoy sour cream, living Tex-Mex, we never had any sour cream. Now you had some, like, Mexican crema that they used to use for some things.

It's probably a Northeast thing. Oh yeah, we decided—

somebody decided sour cream went really well with Mexican food. Now Mexicans won't complain because they like sour cream now too, but you know, in the heat that we've got, you never saw sour cream. Wow, this is wonderful. Oh man, so I'm gonna bake the rest of these, have them for lunch.

Good. That is the first time you, you just grabbed it and ate it. You just couldn't resist. That is— wow.

And I'm telling you, just the cheese and the onion, I may make a few with just them too while I'm waiting for these to bake. But it's that simple. It's that different. You know, you can make anything you want, and it doesn't have to be just for Cinco de Mayo. It can be for to make an evening just a special, other than just tacos, you know, because everybody loves tacos.

I know, we've always had taco night, and we never did enchiladas. I think, you know, I'm gonna do that.

Use the small hand soft flour tortillas. You can just heat them up a little bit and send them out, put all the toppings out on a little buffet, and everything doesn't have to be scalding hot, you know, and just have fun. Have a good night. You can heat the chicken up, heat that. In fact, you could heat the chicken up in a little bit of the sauce if you wanted to, in the enchilada sauce, or buy a can of the sauce and heat it up in that, and that'll be your flavor for everything else.

Well, it looks great. It looks fresh, it looks easy, a little, I mean, 20 minutes in the kitchen, it shouldn't take much more. No.

And again, you could do these up ahead of time if you wanted to.

So. Good. I think it looks great. You just can't say, they're all, they're going to be all gone. 10 minutes, they're gone. They're going to be gone. Well, good show. Good show. Good show. And we'll have to do more of that. Maybe we'll have to do a Spanish theme one time. Do some tapas. But then come back to Mexican. Because I don't think we've done Mexican. Well, maybe once or twice. I'm not sure.

Well, if I can figure out how to make tamales, I'll do them. I have to give those a try one of these days, because I can't find a decent tamale anywhere. Either there's too much dough, or there's not enough dough, or they stuff it with something I have no idea what they're putting in.

Well, great, great dish, great dish, Chef. Thank you.

All right, well, we will see you next week around the kitchen table, and we may have a guest for you next week, so stay tuned, and we'll see you soon. Yeah. Bye-bye.

Bye.