Enchiladas the best in these parts

I’m pretty sure the first time I ever ate out anywhere that wasn’t a drive-in or a truck stop it was enchiladas at El Monterrey in Clovis.

We didn’t have too many fancy restaurants in Portales when I was growing up but we had a lot of drive-ins and two truck stops.

I like all kinds of Mexican food but I especially love enchiladas. The cheesy, warm goodness is comfort food for those of us in this part of the world. There are lots of ways to make them and I like eating them all.

It might sound strange that a connoisseur of the enchilada would admit that the last enchilada plate he consumed was at a convenience store but I’ll fess up that I was in a hurry, I was hungry and I wasn’t sure when my next meal might be. They were green chile chicken enchiladas and they were pretty good despite having lived under that heat lamp a little too long. I almost wished I could stick around until they brought a fresh batch out.

Early on I got used to my mother’s enchiladas, which were normally stacked beef enchiladas made with the El Monterrey sauce that came out of the little seasoning can. Good locally raised beef (sometimes our own) with corn tortillas softened in the grease in a cast iron skillet then assembled near the stove on a plate with grated longhorn cheese and raw onion then topped with that creamy sauce.

She sometimes rolled the enchiladas and baked them if she was feeding a big crowd but that can almost get into the realm of enchilada casserole, which these days at a church social can be almost anything.

Most restaurants around here serve the rolled enchiladas made with corn tortillas. The farther you venture into Gringoland the more likely it is that someone will serve up something built with flour tortillas. They might or might not taste good but they don’t taste like a real enchilada.

Living in Colorado this used to frustrate me often when the menu said enchilada and the item on the plate said smothered burrito.

Occasionally you run across a place that has stacked or sometimes they call them flat enchiladas, usually its in eastern New Mexico or West Texas. One exception is the Sundance Restaurant in Red River, but then they cater to Texans and eastern New Mexicans.

When we lived in Tucumcari I always looked forward to attending the Methodist Women’s Enchilada dinners. Like my mother, most of these ladies were gringa but they could turn out really good stacked enchiladas, complete with a fried egg on top and they always had the best pinto beans ever.

A few years ago I ran onto another place turning out a worthy stacked enchilada plate — Martin’s Capitol Café in downtown Roswell. Hard to eat anywhere else when I’m going through there now.

These days my go-to place for enchiladas is El Rancho. Rueben and his family know what we all want when it comes to comfort food.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at: [email protected]