Home Cooking

FOR THE SANTA FE SOUL

Ask Northern Mexicans what foods they turn to fend off cold winter days, and you are likely to hear a wide range of choices: green chile stew, posole, chile rellenos, chicos, carne adovada, tamales and (of course) bizcochitos may all get a vote. For Santa Fe chef Rocky Durham, though, it’s enchiladas that best fill the comfort food bill.

Durham, who was born and bred in Santa Fe, has worked professionally on five continents, opened Southwestern-themed restaurants in the UK, and manned the stoves at such iconic Santa Fe restaurants as Santacafé, El Nido, Zia Diner and the Blue Heron over the years. While he is currently riding out pandemic closures with “culinary mercenary work” — producing private dinners and collaborating with local chefs, farmers, winemakers, mixologists and educators — he is most passionate about his work as a Chef Ambassador for the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. “I’m always willing to help promote New Mexico; its kind of my thing,” he says.

One of the things Durham loves about enchiladas is their versatility and the micro-regionality. “If you just say ‘enchilada’ to a New Mexican,” he says, “everyone has their own idea of what an enchilada is. It’s almost like saying sandwich: you can use whatever kind of bread you want or even two sliced tomatoes and put whatever you want inside, and it’s still a sandwich.”

Do you roll or do stack your enchiladas? Use blue corn or yellow corn tortillas? Fill them with chicken, beef, cheese, leftovers or vegetables? “Anything can be transformed into an enchilada.” Then, he says, we can have the debate about how you (or your grandmother) make your chile sauce. Red, green or Christmas?

Durham’s parents were East Coast transplants, so it wasn’t until he and his sister went to school that they were exposed to New Mexican food. He remembers enchiladas being on the menu for school lunches, “back in the day when the school cooks actually would make the food from scratch — and it was delicious.”

Whether you stack them or roll them, Durham says, it’s fresh, homemade tortillas that make the difference between a ho-hum and stellar enchilada. Although the tortillas you can pick up at the store will do the job, he says, “to have a fresh corn tortilla right off the plancha is absolutely sublime. I make my tortillas concurrently with my sauces.”

Another tip: Make more enchiladas than you need. “If you have eight guests, make 16 portions. Enchiladas are one of those foods that get better until they get bad. Warmed up leftover enchiladas topped with a poached or fried egg is an amazing breakfast.”

Another childhood memory puts enchiladas at the top of Durham’s comfort food list. “When we were kids,” he reminisces, “my mom needed some help and our neighbors knew this woman named Lucy Jenks. I think she was an angel. She just passed away last year at like 98 years old. She used to come over and help around the house and then drop off green-chile chicken enchiladas and a big bag of homemade flour tortillas — and that became our Christmas tradition.

“To this day every Christmas we talk about Lucy (God rest her soul) and just how wonderful her food was. So whenever I make enchiladas I invoke her memory and strive for that quality of New Mexican food.”