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Valladolid's enchiladas, corn tortillas bathed in a chile ancho and Mexican chocolate sauce, stuffed with smoked longaniza, crowned with a fried egg and a tangle of habanero-pickled red onion.
These enchiladas are from Valladolid, Yucatán. Not Mérida, not Cancún, not the highland enchiladas of central Mexico that get red sauce and crema. Valladolid is a colonial town in the middle of the peninsula, halfway between Mérida and the Caribbean, and it has its own kitchen, its own recado, its own longaniza smoked over hardwood until the achiote in it turns almost black at the edges. This dish belongs to that town.
The sauce is what tells you where you are. Chile ancho for sweetness and body. Chile guajillo for color. Mexican chocolate, canela, pimienta gorda, and a spoonful of recado rojo dissolved in naranja agria. That combination is pure Peninsula. The chocolate is not sweet here. It rounds the chiles and gives the sauce a depth that reads almost like a young mole, but it is not mole. It is what the cocineras of Valladolid have been making for generations to dress the smoked longaniza their carniceros hang in the markets.
The longaniza is non-negotiable. Smoked, achiote-stained, fattier than chorizo and gentler in spice. If you live anywhere near a Yucatecan butcher, buy it. If you do not, a good smoked Mexican chorizo de pueblo will get you close. Do not use breakfast sausage. Do not use Spanish chorizo. The smoke is the point.
My mother never made these. She was from Jalisco and the Peninsula was a foreign country to her kitchen. I learned this dish from a woman named Doña Carmen at a loncheria off the zocalo in Valladolid, in 2011, who let me sit on a stool behind her comal for three afternoons and write down what she did. She told me the egg on top is not decoration. The runny yolk thins the sauce, sweetens the chile, and turns three rolled tortillas into a complete plate. She was right about everything. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
Enchiladas de Valladolid, sometimes called enchiladas yucatecas, evolved in the colonial city of Valladolid after its founding by the Spanish in 1543 on the site of the Maya town of Zaci. The dish reflects the Peninsula's three-culture culinary fusion: pre-Columbian Maya use of achiote and the cacao that became Mexican chocolate, Spanish introduction of pork (and therefore longaniza) and wheat-trade spices like canela and clove, and the Lebanese immigration that reached Yucatán in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, reinforcing the local taste for spiced meats and pickled onion. Valladolid's longaniza, traditionally smoked over jabín hardwood and stained with locally ground recado rojo, received Mexican denomination of regional product recognition in the 2010s and remains tied to specific family-run smokehouses around the city's Mercado Municipal.
Quantity
8
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
4
stemmed and seeded
Quantity
1 ounce
roughly chopped
Quantity
4 medium
Quantity
1/2 medium, plus 1 small finely chopped for the filling
Quantity
4
unpeeled
Quantity
1, about 2 inches
Quantity
4
Quantity
4
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1 tablespoon
dissolved in 2 tablespoons sour orange juice
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon, plus more to taste
Quantity
1 1/2 cups, plus more as needed
Quantity
3 tablespoons, plus more for the tortillas
Quantity
1 pound
casings removed and crumbled
Quantity
12
freshly made if possible
Quantity
4
Quantity
1 medium
very thinly sliced
Quantity
1/2 cup
or a mix of orange and lime
Quantity
1
charred and thinly sliced
Quantity
1 teaspoon
Quantity
1/2 teaspoon
Quantity
1/2 cup
crumbled or grated
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| dried chile anchostemmed and seeded | 8 |
| dried chile guajillostemmed and seeded | 4 |
| Mexican chocolate (Ibarra or Yucatecan tablet)roughly chopped | 1 ounce |
| Roma tomatoes | 4 medium |
| white onion | 1/2 medium, plus 1 small finely chopped for the filling |
| garlic clovesunpeeled | 4 |
| Mexican cinnamon stick (canela) | 1, about 2 inches |
| whole allspice berries (pimienta gorda) | 4 |
| whole cloves | 4 |
| dried Mexican oregano (preferably Yucatecan) | 1 teaspoon |
| recado rojo (achiote paste)dissolved in 2 tablespoons sour orange juice | 1 tablespoon |
| kosher salt | 1/2 teaspoon, plus more to taste |
| chicken broth | 1 1/2 cups, plus more as needed |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 3 tablespoons, plus more for the tortillas |
| smoked longaniza de Valladolidcasings removed and crumbled | 1 pound |
| corn tortillasfreshly made if possible | 12 |
| large eggs | 4 |
| red onionvery thinly sliced | 1 medium |
| sour orange juice (naranja agria)or a mix of orange and lime | 1/2 cup |
| fresh chile habanerocharred and thinly sliced | 1 |
| kosher salt (for pickled onion) | 1 teaspoon |
| dried Mexican oregano (for pickled onion) | 1/2 teaspoon |
| queso fresco or queso de bola rallado (optional)crumbled or grated | 1/2 cup |
| cilantro leaves (optional) | for serving |
Place the thinly sliced red onion in a heatproof bowl. Pour boiling water over it and count to ten. Drain immediately. Return the onion to the bowl with the sour orange juice, the teaspoon of salt, half teaspoon of oregano, and the charred habanero slices. Press the onions down so the juice covers them. Let them sit for at least 30 minutes at room temperature. This is cebolla morada en escabeche and it belongs on every Yucatecan plate. The blanching softens the bite. The naranja agria does the rest.
Heat a dry comal over medium-high. Place the tomatoes, the half white onion, and the unpeeled garlic cloves on the comal. Turn them as the skins blacken in patches. The tomatoes take about ten minutes and should collapse a little. The garlic takes five. The onion takes seven. You are not roasting these in an oven. You are blackening them on a comal the way the cocineras at the Mercado Municipal in Valladolid do it. The char is the flavor.
Lower the comal heat to medium. Toast the ancho and guajillo chiles separately, about 20 to 30 seconds per side. They should puff and turn fragrant. The ancho will smell sweet and raisin-dark. The guajillo will smell sharper, more red. Do not let them blacken. Burned chile turns the sauce bitter and there is no fixing it.
Transfer the toasted chiles to a heatproof bowl and cover with hot tap water, not boiling. Let them soften for 20 minutes. While they soak, return the comal to low heat and toast the canela stick, allspice, and cloves for one minute, until you can smell them. These three spices, with the chocolate, are what make this sauce read as Yucatecan and not as a generic enchilada sauce. The Peninsula's grammar runs through canela and pimienta gorda.
Peel the charred garlic. Drain the chiles, reserving the soaking liquid. To a blender add the soaked chiles, the charred tomatoes, the charred onion, the peeled garlic, the toasted spices, the oregano, the dissolved recado rojo, the chopped Mexican chocolate, the half teaspoon of salt, and one cup of the chicken broth. Blend on high for two full minutes until completely smooth. The sauce should be the color of dark brick with a faint shine from the chocolate. If it is too thick to move in the blender, add more broth a tablespoon at a time.
Heat 2 tablespoons of manteca in a wide heavy skillet or cazuela over medium heat until it shimmers. Pour the blended sauce through a fine-mesh strainer directly into the hot lard. Stand back. It will sputter. Cook for ten to twelve minutes, stirring often, until the sauce darkens by a shade and the fat starts to separate at the edges. Loosen with the remaining 1/2 cup of chicken broth as needed. You want it the consistency of heavy cream. Taste for salt. La manteca es el sabor, and this is the step that gives the sauce its body.
In a separate skillet, melt the remaining tablespoon of manteca over medium heat. Add the finely chopped white onion and cook for three minutes until translucent. Add the crumbled longaniza de Valladolid. Cook for eight to ten minutes, breaking it up with a wooden spoon, until the smoke flavor blooms and the fat renders out a deep orange from the achiote already in the sausage. The longaniza is the soul of this dish. If you cannot find smoked Yucatecan longaniza, do not substitute breakfast sausage. Use a smoked Mexican chorizo de pueblo as a compromise, and know what you are missing.
Heat a thin film of lard, about 2 tablespoons, in a small skillet over medium heat. One at a time, slip a corn tortilla in for five seconds per side, just until it goes soft and pliable. Transfer to a plate stacked under a clean cloth. This pass through the lard is what lets the tortilla absorb the sauce without falling apart. Skip it and your enchiladas will tear. No me vengas con atajos.
Keep the sauce warm over low heat. Dip a tortilla into the sauce, fully submerging it for two seconds. Lift it out, let the excess drip, and lay it on a warm plate. Spoon a generous tablespoon of the longaniza along the center and roll it tightly. Place seam-side down on the serving plate. Repeat with the next two tortillas, plating three rolled enchiladas per person. Work quickly. The tortillas drink the sauce fast.
In the lard left from the tortillas, fry four eggs over medium heat. The whites should set with crisp lacy edges and the yolks should stay liquid. Spoon a final ladle of warm sauce over each plate of enchiladas. Slide a fried egg on top of each portion. Crown with a generous pile of the pickled red onion and habanero. Scatter crumbled queso fresco and cilantro leaves over the top. Eat immediately, breaking the yolk so it runs into the sauce. This is how they serve it at the loncherias around Parque Francisco Cantón in Valladolid. Así se hace y punto.
1 serving (about 500g)
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