What I'm Consuming, May: Mark Made the Enchiladas

And somehow lived to tell the tale.

Last month, I put out a call to one brave individual to make the recipe for enchiladas I couldn’t bring myself to make. I figured it would be unlikely anyone would take me up on it, but one brave soul did. This is his story. You’ll get my usual, non-enchiladas update, next month.

Hi! This is Mark. To avoid striking the kind of contrived conversational tone that might lead you to confuse this guest post with a Jackson guest post (“hey guys what’s up didn’t see you there haha” etc.), I’ll end the introduction and get right down to the reason I’m here: fucked up enchiladas. 

I’m a staunch defender of the cream of, so I felt somewhat disrespected when Kate mentioned in her last newsletter that the cream of mushroom in this recipe was the bridge too far for her and her dining companions. New Yorkers are so toxic! So may be that can of cream of mushroom, but I love it no less for that. Sodium-rich, tasteless against all odds, and processed to within an inch of its life, the condensed soup exists for one divine purpose: to add that perfect slop-like texture to your meal (truthfully one of my favorite meal textures). And not to get too far ahead of myself, but this recipe absolutely delivered on that sloppy promise. And how!

Part of why I wanted to make these fucked up enchiladas was because they sounded so much like something my mom would make when I was a kid. Though competent in the kitchen and not an unadventurous eater, my mom regularly fed us with a variation of that famed, out-of-fashion morsel of Americana: the chicken casserole. And to this day I will raise my hands and praise those casseroles with perfect faithfulness amen. One of them was sprinkled with butter-soaked Ritz crackers! One of them included an entire bag of crushed Doritos mixed into the creams of! One of them was called “Spectacular Chicken” and called for no more than four ingredients! Those were truly halcyon days. Unfortunately I must admit that these fucked up enchiladas did NOT live up to my sweet mother’s Spectacular Chicken (My Sweet Mother’s Spectacular Chicken also the name of my forthcoming memoir).