Cooking in

Queensland

Mexican

Enchiladas de Mascota

A striking regional enchilada from Mascota, Jalisco, where a sauce built on ancho chile, dried prunes, Mexican drinking chocolate, cinnamon, and a splash of vinegar produces something sweet-sour and deeply savory all at once. Tortillas are dipped raw into the sauce before a flash in hot oil sets the coating, then filled with crumbled queso fresco, chopped white onion, and dried oregano. The result reads nothing like the blanketed enchilada of restaurant familiarity — it is lighter, more aromatic, and frankly unusual in the best sense. Diana Kennedy documented this recipe from Mascota, a mountain town in the Sierra de Jalisco, where the sauce's sweet-sour profile reflects older cooking traditions that blend fruit, chile, and chocolate without apology.

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Serves4 (3 enchiladas each)

Sourced0 of 10 in LD

Cook

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The Market List

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1 large

ancho chile, veins and seeds removed

dried prunes, pitted

to 1¼ cups water (250–313 ml)

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4 oz (115 g)

tomatoes, simmered until soft

1½ oz (45 g)

Mexican drinking chocolate

¼-inch (scant 1 cm)

cinnamon stick, crushed

1 slice

white onion, roughly chopped

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2 tablespoons

mild vinegar (or half rice, half white wine vinegar)

Salt to taste

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1 tablespoon

sesame seeds, lightly toasted

Approx. ½ cup (125 ml) vegetable oil

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five-inch corn tortillas

¾ cup (188 ml)

finely chopped white onion

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1½ cups (375 ml)

finely crumbled queso fresco, plus extra for garnish

½ teaspoon

dried oregano, finely crumbled

The Method

Simmer ancho chile and prunes in the water over medium-low heat until both are soft, 12–15 minutes. Do not drain.

Transfer to a blender with simmered tomatoes, chocolate, cinnamon, onion, vinegar, salt, and sesame seeds. Blend to a smooth, medium-bodied sauce.

Pour sauce into a wide, shallow bowl. Reserve roughly half in a small saucepan and set aside.

Heat oil in a skillet over medium-high heat to approximately 175°C / 350°F.

Dip one tortilla in the raw sauce to coat both sides, then lay it into the hot oil and fry for about 30 seconds per side — just enough to set the coating and soften the tortilla. Remove and place flat.

From the canon — The corn tortilla is the foundational food of Mexican cuisine — a thin, round disc of nixtamalized masa cooked on an ungreased comal (flat griddle) until it … Tortilla — hand press, comal, and the puff →

Working quickly, fill the center with a spoonful of chopped onion, crumbled queso fresco, and a pinch of oregano. Roll and place seam-side down on a serving dish. Repeat for all 12 tortillas.

From the canon — Queso fresco is a young, unaged white cheese made from whole or partially skimmed cow's milk, sometimes blended with a proportion of goat's milk where the lo… Queso Fresco →

Bring the reserved sauce to a boil in the saucepan, thin if needed, and pour over the plated enchiladas.

Garnish with additional crumbled queso fresco. Serve immediately.

III

Sensory Tests

◇Hold a dried ancho against light: the skin should glow a translucent brick-red and bend without cracking or crumbling to powder — a brittle, black, or grey-skinned chile will produce a bitter, thin sauce.

◇After the sauce is blended and reduced, drag a wooden spoon through the pot; the sauce should coat the back and hold a clean line for a count of three before the edges begin to creep — too thin and it slides off the tortilla, too thick and it seizes to a paste in the oil.

◇Bite into a finished enchilada within two minutes of plating: the tortilla exterior should offer a faint, papery resistance before giving way, not limp through entirely — if it collapses immediately on the fork, the oil was too cool or the tortillas spent too long in the sauce before frying.

◇Where it lives or dies. The dish lives or dies in the ten seconds the sauced tortilla spends in the hot oil: the oil must be at 180–190 °C (355–375 °F) so the coating sets and the tortilla holds its structure rather than absorbing fat and turning to a wet sheet — too cool and you get a greasy, slack wrapper; too fierce and the sauce scorches before the tortilla warms through.

IV · Cross-Cuisine Parallels

enmoladas-oaxacanas — Oaxacan — Both dishes use the same structural logic — tortillas passed through a complex chile-based sauce before a brief encounter with heat — and both rely on the interplay of bitter chile, warm spice, and a fresh dairy filling to balance a sauce that could otherwise read as heavy. mole-negro-de-guajolote — Pueblan — The Mascota sauce shares the sweet-savory-acidic architecture of mole negro: dried fruit (prunes echoing the plantain and raisins of Pueblan mole), Mexican drinking chocolate, cinnamon, and dried chile together produce the same dark, layered depth, though here scaled down to an enchilada sauce rather than a braising liquid. romesco — Spanish (Catalan) — The Mascota sauce's use of vinegar to cut dried-chile richness parallels the role of sherry vinegar in romesco — both traditions understand that a fat-carrying, chile-based sauce needs measured acidity to stay lively on the palate rather than sinking into sweetness.

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