Enchiladas Suizas

Enchiladas suizas are a documented mid-twentieth-century restaurant creation, widely credited to the Sanborns cafés of Mexico City around 1950, where a cook first married the tart green tomatillo salsa with cream and a heavy cap of melted cheese. The name suiza — "Swiss" — has nothing to do with Switzerland geographically; it is a shorthand for dairy richness, the same instinct that puts a Swiss milkmaid on a tin of condensed milk. The dish caught on as comfortable, all-day café fare and spread from the Sanborns counter into home kitchens and diners across the country, and it remains one of the most ordered enchiladas in Mexico City. It is honestly a modern, urban invention rather than an old village recipe.

It arrives bubbling, the cheese cap blistered and pulling into strings as you cut in. Under it the rolled tortillas have gone soft, almost custardy, soaked in a sauce that is tangy and green from tomatillo but smoothed and mellowed by cream — bright but never sour, with only a low backing warmth from the chile. The shredded chicken inside is plain and tender, a quiet anchor. Each forkful is a layering of melted cheese, cream-loosened green salsa, and soft corn tortilla; rich and soothing rather than spicy.

The sauce is a cooked salsa verde made rich: tomatillos, serrano or jalapeño, onion, garlic and cilantro are simmered or roasted and blended green, then thinned with Mexican crema (or a cream-and-stock mix) so the acid is buffered by fat and the salsa coats rather than stings. Tomatillos carry both tartness and natural pectin, which gives the sauce body as it reduces. The assembled enchiladas are topped with a shreddable melting cheese — Chihuahua, asadero or Oaxaca — and finished under the broiler: the dry top-heat melts and then browns the cheese, driving Maillard color and a faint toasted note across the cap while the cream beneath stays loose and saucy. Filling the tortillas before saucing keeps them from disintegrating in all that liquid.