enmoladas

Enmoladas are corn tortillas dipped in mole sauce, rolled or folded, and served with cheese, cream, and onion. The name is a Spanish compound: 'en' meaning in, 'mole' naming the sauce, and '-adas' the feminine past participle plural indicating the tortillas have been coated. They belong to the family of '-adas' dishes named for their sauce: enchiladas in chili sauce, entomatadas in tomato sauce, enfrijoladas in bean sauce. Each member of the family is defined entirely by what covers it.

Mole comes from the Nahuatl word 'mōlli,' documented in Sahagún's Florentine Codex of the 1570s. Mōlli meant simply 'sauce' in classical Nahuatl, a broad category that covered the complex chili-based preparations for which Mesoamerican cooking was already famous before contact. The Spanish encountered mole at the court of Moctezuma II in Tenochtitlan in 1519; Bernal Díaz del Castillo described elaborate meat and chile preparations served to the emperor. The sauce predates the Spanish by centuries.

The preparation of enmoladas likely took its standard form in Oaxaca and Puebla, the two Mexican states where mole culture is most concentrated. Oaxaca has seven canonical moles; Puebla's mole poblano is the most internationally recognized. The enmolada traditionally used leftover mole after a feast, the sauce re-thinned with broth and poured hot over fresh tortillas. Cookbooks from the Porfiriato era (1876-1910) record enmoladas as a lunch staple in Mexico City.

Enmoladas are less common in the United States than enchiladas but appear in Oaxacan and regional Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. The distinction matters: enchiladas use a red or green chili sauce; enmoladas use mole, which can be black, red, green, yellow, or one of dozens of regional variants. Ordering an enmolada is a choice to work within a more complex flavor system. The sauce takes precedence over everything else on the plate.