The Whole, Sophisticated Enchilada

Admit to being from Texas, and people -- particularly Bostonians -- tend to react with stereotypes and cliches, misconceptions and exaggerations. So the first few years after my move to New England in the early 1990s, I tried to debunk as many of the myths as I could, even if nobody asked.

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[Recipe: Smoked Turkey Enchiladas With Mole Verde]

No, I'm not an oilman.

Nope, don't hunt.

Uh-uh, not a Republican.

And then there was the problem of Tex-Mex food, a cuisine that in its best iterations is delectable but at its worst is little better than a frozen TV dinner. Because Boston had few examples of good Tex-Mex restaurants, my work was cut out for me. If I was going to do anything about the cuisine's reputation, at least among my circle of friends, I'd have to start by cooking.

The job got easier after one trip back to my college town of Austin, when my dear friend Tanya and I tasted some addictively interesting enchiladas at Z'Tejas Grill. Within weeks of my return, as coincidence would have it, a reader who had also fallen for them asked the Austin American-Statesman for help in getting that very recipe, and the paper printed it. Tanya rushed me a copy.

I adapted the recipe to my taste (no raw green bell pepper and onion, please), and I've made the enchiladas ever since. They feature the most unusual of fillings, at least in my experience: big chunks of smoked turkey breast. With a sweet-sour-spicy sauce made of pumpkin seeds, tomatillos, cilantro and honey, they also help teach the uninitiated that Tex-Mex food can sometimes approach sophistication.

Best of all, once I started doubling or quadrupling the batch to serve eight or 16 instead of four, they made the perfect potluck offering: Take one enchilada or two, but unless everybody else has had their share, it would be more than impolite to take any more. It would be downright un-Texan.

An occasional series in which staff members share a recipe we turn to time and time again.