Gather up the recipes while you can
- Melissa Herrera: Not Waiting for Friday
- April 19, 2025
- 519
I have a daughter-in-law from Texas who craves food from home. Cheese enchiladas and beans to a Texan are like mashed potatoes and gravy to a Holmes Countian. Without it every so often, we shrivel up like a prune. Our tastebuds start protesting, and unless they’re fed, well, bad things will happen.
I also have a husband who, despite being from deep Mexico, lived in Texas from ages 9 to 19. Delectable chile gravy poured over corn tortillas stuffed with cheese? Fresh flour tortillas smeared with butter? His tastebuds crave it the same way hers does, and as of late, the two of them have been talking rather wistfully about it.
Of course, Texas was once Mexico, lest we forget, and deep down the two are combined deeply — roots entangled beyond untangling. Familial lineages going back generations with histories of food crisscrossing the border.
The food remains enmeshed and yearned for.
Our middle daughter came home for a quick visit, and we planned a family dinner. I realized it was time to make cheese enchiladas with chile gravy. I’ve been making a version of it for years, precisely cooked, but I had never made a larger amount for a bigger meal. We were turned on to the best corn tortillas you can buy — sturdy, won’t fall apart. If you work with corn tortillas at all, you know the ones that fall apart. Do not buy those as they are the bottom of the barrel. I get mine at the Mexican bodegas here in Canton in packs of 30. That’s right.
Tex-Mex flavors are not Mexican flavors. Are they similar? Sure, but there’s a huge difference in fat content and seasoning. You won’t find many cooks in Mexico using chili powder, but you will find them using dried chiles. Connected yet different. Both brilliant, both flavor profiles worthy of gold stars.
I stirred up the chile gravy, heating vegetable oil and adding flour, then chili powder, oregano and garlic. Rich broth came next to even out the roux until it became a complex gravy. No lumps allowed as it must be smooth and neat. I put the tortillas in a small amount of oil in the oven until warmed, then stuffed them with Colby-Jack cheese and lined them up on a baking sheet. The gravy was poured over the enchiladas until they were almost swimming. Sprinkle with Monterey Jack to finish and bake for 25 minutes until bubbly.
When my daughter-in-law and husband saw the enchiladas, they said they could already taste them. Rounded out with Mexican rice and beans, it might’ve been the finest meal I’ve cooked in a while.
Flavors, like next-door neighbor countries, are blended together from years of shared history and lived experiences. Abuelita cooked by the fire long ago, so today we can carry on her recipes in Ohio. When the border crossed the Mexicans living in Tejas, the recipes remained, altered slightly over time.
I’ve learned the complicated profiles of cooking dishes important to my family. I also learned them because I needed to, because it means something — and because I, too, love them. If we didn’t have the integration of flavors from other countries (because of immigrants), we wouldn’t have pizza or spaghetti or tacos or kebabs. The sweetness of tacos el pastor wouldn’t make your throat groan with delight, or the fact that most of us immigrated from Europe, carrying recipes in our brains as we fled from leaders who terrorized.
Recipes are an act of resistance, too. So is learning to cook and eat them. My pantry is lined with the cookbooks from my grandma Sundheimer, grandma Stutzman and my mom, Mary. Written down are the recipes of my mother-in-law, Evangelina. I want my grandchildren to know those flavors so they aren’t lost to sweeping change and ignorance.
Melissa Herrera is a reflective writer who captures the beauty and sorrow of change. With a career spanning 14 years as an opinion columnist and the publication of two books, she resides in Stark County with her husband and four cats. She writes to preserve memories. You can reach her at junkbabe68@gmail.com.