>> Ready?

Set.

Cook!

You've heard of people having a photographic memory where they can recall a moment and every detail about it.

Sometimes I think I have that with food.

I don't know why, but I can remember exactly where I was, the smells, the tastes, every little delicious detail about certain meals that have left a lasting impression on me.

How wild is that?

Today I thought it would be fun to recreate a few of the recipes from my favorite food memories.

Cheesy Chicken Enchiladas in a Creamy Salsa Verde, one of my childhood favorites.

So ridiculous.

Light, crispy, a little sweet.

Frosted Cereal Cookies, a recipe handed down from my husband's grandmother.

And a fabulous pinto bean and tomato soup, Sopa Tarasca, one of my favorite ever meals from my travels in Mexico.

Wait for the crunch.

(corn chip crunches) ♪ ♪ >> My favorite memories are food memories, and what I like about my favorite food moments is that I can recreate special moments of my life while creating new moments for my own family.

We're starting with one of my favorites, Enchiladas Suizas, or Swiss Enchiladas.

You probably heard about these Swiss Enchiladas, and they were the iconic dish of a place called "Sanborns".

It was a grocery store that was established in 1903 by two American brothers who moved to Mexico from the U.S.

They became such a hit that they ended up having a national company with hundreds of Sanborns throughout the country, and this was one of their iconic dishes, and my dad and I sometimes would sneak away, just him and I, to go to Sanborns.

I would eat these enchiladas while he would eat his favorite dish, every single time.

So I'm starting with 1.5 pounds of tomatillos which I've quartered for easier blending.

The way to make most sauces for enchiladas is to cook the ingredients and then puree them, but here everything will go in the blender raw, which makes it easier and faster and ends up being delicious as well.

I'll add 2 garlic cloves.

2 serrano chiles.

I'll add 1/4 cup of water, and a teaspoon of salt.

I'll slice enough onion to give me 1/4 cup.

1.5 cups of cilantro.

(blender whirs) See this gorgeous color?

It has that really bright green, and the smell is really strong of cilantro and chile.

If we had boiled or roasted the ingredients before, we would have a completely different flavor to begin with.

Here we added everything fresh, everything raw so we get this brightness.

So I have my saucepan set over medium-high heat, and I'll add a couple tablespoons of vegetable oil.

Ready?

Set.

Cook!

I never, ever tire of doing this step to sauces, it's the magic of cooking 'cause you're taking all these raw ingredients and creating one cooked meal which in this case is the swiss enchilada which is to die for, and I already am seeing the process in action in a second, that's why I never tire of this process.

So I'll let these season for about 2 - 3 minutes, and the smell already is so incredible, it's already taking me back!

So the swiss enchiladas are traditionally chicken enchiladas so I made some chicken broth.

Here I had 3 chicken breasts, bone in, skin on 'cause that's gonna give a lot of flavor, and then you cover it with water and add your aromatics, and then just bring that to a simmer and cook for an hour.

Now the great thing is that I have really moist, yummy chicken, and I also have really delicious, freshly made chicken broth, and this is what my sauce needs right now.

The sauce has been simmering for 4 - 5 minutes.

Now I'll add 1 cup of this chicken broth which will give it another layer of subtle flavor.

Many people confuse Mexican cooking with a lot of spices, and a lot of strong spices, but really what defines Mexican cooking in my view is the subtle layering of different flavors.

Now I'll add 1 cup of Mexican crema.

Adding the cream is one of the things that was innovating from those American guys who opened Sanborns because Mexicans didn't add a lot of cream or cheese to dishes, and it is the adding of the cream and the cheese that we'll add in a bit that gave them the moniker "swiss".

Let me taste the sauce to see if it needs anything.

Mmm!

It is creamy, grassy, a little bit spicy.

I tastes so fresh, and now I'll start to build my swiss enchiladas.

So I have my comale here and I'm pre-heating it over medium heat, and you want to make sure that it is pre-heated because if not, the tortillas will stick to the surface.

I'll add a couple ladles of the sauce to the bottom of my baking dish because I want the enchiladas to have flavor all over.

You want to heat your tortillas before you fill or sauce them because you're making them resilient so they can fold without breaking, and also because you're giving them another layer of flavor.

Now because I'm doing a baked enchilada that will have the sauce soak and stay in there for a while, I'm not saucing my tortillas first, I'm filling them first with the chicken, and I always like to add a little salt to my shredded chicken and then I'll fill the tortillas.

I want to make my enchilada taquitos very chubby, and then you just roll them and place them seam side down.

Once you have it like this, you'll cover it entirely with that delicious sauce.

So two Americans came to Mexico, opened up shop and developed one of the most famous Mexican enchiladas, how wild is that?

Just another example of what collaboration between cultures and countries can do.

I'm adding all the sauce, you know why?

because the tortillas are soaking that sauce, so if I stop there, by the time I cover it and put it in the oven they would be dry, and I want my enchiladas always to be super saucy.

And now to make them even creamier I'm adding another cup of cream, a cup of muenster cheese, and a cup of Oaxaca cheese, both shredded, and then my enchiladas can wait until I'm ready to put them in the oven.

>> Pati: A little while ago I asked you to share your favorite food memories, and I loved getting your videos!

>> My favorite food memory is growing up, my mom used to cook for us all the time.

My favorite food she'd make for me was her chicken parmesan.

I can't wait to make that for my daughter one day.

>> Hi Pati!

My name is Dora and I'm originally from North Africa.

One of my best food memories growing up was helping my mom prepare cous cous, and of course eat it!

So this is cous cous.

>> Hola Pati!

I'm Hector, thanks for choosing my story for your show.

I'm making some chilaquiles today for my family.

>> My name is Andrea, hi Pati!

I was born and raised in London, but I am currently living in the U.S. and I love Indian food, I love it so much that every time I eat it, it brings me back to my favorite place and that is London that I hold dear to my heart, and all of my best friends.

>> I'll be making these frosted cereal cookies which I think were Danny's, my husband, and his sisters favorite cookies growing up, and the woman who made them was his grandmother.

This is her original recipe.

So I'll start with 1 and 1/3 cup of unsalted butter that I have at room temperature, and now I'm just gonna start beating at medium speed, and now I'll start adding 1 and 1/ 4 cups of sugar, 1/4 cup at a time.

I'll grab 3 eggs and crack them one at a time to give them the chance to really mix with the dough.

I'll add 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract.

A pinch of salt.

3 cups of flour, I'll do it 1/4 cup at a time so my dough continues to beat and get fluffy so it has a lot air as the flour mixes into the dough.

Reducing the speed so the flour doesn't jump all over me.

(mixer whirs) So this is really, really soft and smooth dough, and what really helps is using the ingredients at room temperature the eggs and the butter, because then the dough can really come together and mix much faster.

What's gonna go over and under these cookies are the frosted cereal flakes and I'm going to, with my hands, just crumble them, and these will cover the cookies over and under and all over.

I remember being very surprised when Danny first took me to his grandmother's house when I realized that the thing everybody was waiting for were these cookies coming out of a tupperware at the end of the meal because she always has them.

She used to make the most delicious and sophisticated meals and everybody was waiting for these, which is like the simplest and most childlike treat.

I need to put some flour on my hands because this dough is so soft and sticky.

So I'll get 1 tablespoon at a time, and because I have flour on my hands I can do this, because this wasn't included in the recipe they gave me, and I remember the first time I tried to make these cookies and there was no way I could roll them, and then it's these little tricks, and now once I get to, like, 1/4 of an inch I'll just stick it right here, and I'll cover it too, trying to make the flakes stick and become part of the dough.

So I'm making the cookie very thin which makes it even more irresistible 'cause you get the crumbs of the frosted cereal flakes, but then you also get the crust of the very thin, brown cookie.

And just like you can't stop eating the frosted cereal flakes because they're irresistible, you won't be able to stop eating these cookies because they're doubly crunchy!

These are gonna go in the oven, which I have at 325 degrees, anywhere from 18 - 20 minutes.

>> Hi Pati!

I'm Peter, I live near Baltimore and my favorite food memory, I went to high school in Germany, a big delicacy is what they call a "dunya kebab" and in terms of food, I can't imagine a better way to end a night on the town than with a dunya kebab.

>> Hola Pati!

I want to talk to you about a very special family recipe, a very old recipe, an enchilada recipe.

Now this recipe was given to me by my mother, who in turn got it from her grandmother.

>> (in unison) Hola Pati!

>> My name's Michael.

>> And I'm Roxanna.

>> And we're huge fans of Pati's Kitchen Table.

We've been watching since we were in law school and discovered your show, and today we'll be cooking a chicken recipe from - >> Season 5.

>> One of the Yucatan episodes.

Thanks for cooking with us today!

>> It was a lot of fun.

>> We'll see you next time.

>> And now I'll start making a Sopa Tarasca which is a pinto bean and tomato soup.

It's so delicious, and I'm gonna get it started with 1 pound of ripe roma tomatoes in this sauce pan.

A garlic clove, and I'll add an ancho chile, and its taste is chocolatey, a little sweet, a bit like raisins, it has very little heat.

Now I'll cover my ingredients with water, bring them over a medium-high simmer, and I'll cook them until the tomatoes are soft, mushy, and the chile has rehydrated and plumped up.

While those ingredients cook I'll make the garnishes for this soup which are tortilla crisps and ancho chile crisps.

Very easy to make, and both of them you can use for the soup and for a thousand other things.

I'll cut my corn tortillas into bite sized pieces.

The first time I tasted this soup was about 15 years ago, and I had gone to Morelia which is the capital city of the state of Michoacan.

It's charming and beautiful and has amazing food, and we were staying at a hotel called the Juaninos which is the most charming hotel.

I think it used to be a convent, and right there is a restaurant that overlooks the town square, and that is where I tried this Tarasca Bean Soup, and I was charmed and I fell in love with it, and since then, it's been one of my favorite soups of all time.

And I know the oil is perfect because the bubbles are very active, and you know you need to stop when the bubbles sort of come down and get lazy, and now we'll repeat this exercise with all my tortilla chips here.

And you see that the color of the chips is like this, it's just starting to brown, because if you wait until they're really browned, then there's no way about it, they're burnt and you've lost them.

The other important thing about tortilla chips is that you have to salt them right when they come out of the oil because that's when the chips will absorb the salt and get really nicely flavored.

Wait for the crunch.

(chip crunches) Mmm, mmm.

Aside from having tortilla crisps as a garnish, it also has chile crisps as a garnish, and it is absolutely delicious!

All I'm doing is cutting this ancho chile into small bite sized pieces.

In the same oil I fried my tortilla crisps, I'll drop in these pieces of ancho chile, but I'll drop them in for 3 seconds.

To control the frying time, I'll keep my chiles in this spider the whole time that I fry them so I don't have to be fishing for them.

(oil sizzles) You count to three with me, they're done!

Have you ever made anything that fast?

No 'cause neither have I!

So fast, 3 seconds, and now I'll salt them.

My mouth is watering so bad right now, I can't wait to bite into one of these.

(chile crunches) Mmm.

Mmm!

So ridiculous.

In a fabulous way.

Okay, so we have my garnishes.

I see my tomatoes are ready.

So what we're doing now is pureeing the base of the soup.

We'll add all these tomatoes in here, and the ancho chile.

A slice of white onion, like a 1 inch slice, and I'll add salt.

Then I'll add 1 cup of that cooking liquid.

It does have a lot of color and flavor.

Then we'll puree this until completely smooth.

(blender whirs) Now the soup will come together in this pot, and I'll pre-heat it over medium heat.

I'm gonna add 2 tablespoons of oil.

(soup sizzles) That is the sound that I live for everyday in my kitchen.

Immediately I'm smelling the ingredients that were in the blender, and they're coming together, they're - mmm!

They're seasoning, and look at all the bubbles, and the color is changing, there's foam in the middle of the pot, and as this continues to do its thing, we're going to puree 1 pound of cooked beans with 2 cups of their cooking liquid, and if you're using canned cooked beans, use two 15-ounce cans of cooked pinto beans and add 2 cups of water.

(blender whirs) So here we have an incredibly rich base, and now it will have this velvety layer of pureed pinto beans which are soft and smooth.

The beans are starting to take over the pot.

So now I'm mixing the beans with the rich ancho tomato base and you can see the color changed, and then I'll add 3 cups of chicken broth that I made.

So this will cook anywhere from 12 - 15 minutes, and I'll partially cover it.

Put my enchiladas in the oven which I have at 400 degrees and they'll go in for just 15 minutes, just until they heat up again and the cheese melts all over the top.

Gonna let my cookies cool, and I think my soup is ready!

Mmm, come see, come see!

It is bubbling, and it looks thicker, and it has this gorgeous color!

Some of the tortilla crisps.

I'll add some of the ancho chile crisps which are just sheer flavor turned to crunch.

I'll cut some avocado.

Some of the queso fresco.

I'll just drizzle some Mexican crema, and this is a Sopa Tarasca, or Pinto and Tomato Bean Soup.

Mmm.

It's just smooth and earthy.

It has all these layers of flavor from the tomato and ancho chile, and then the toppings!

It's just that perfect touch of tangy and salty, and it is one hearty, filling, nurturing soup.

Mmm.

This is one gigantic casserole of the version I used to eat at Sanborns because they used to bring you the individual little casseroles with just 3 enchiladas.

Mmm.

Mhmm!

It's just taking me there and then, and it's exactly that taste, texture and consistency, and the crispy and browned is what I used to leave for the end whenever I went with my dad.

Mmm.

My heart is so satisfied!

This cookie looks like a much larger rendition of Danny's grandmother's cookie, hers used to be a little bit smaller, but I went with my craving.

Mmm!

Mhmm, mhmm.

And they taste just like hers.

It is so much fun to recreate all these food memories in my home kitchen.

I love making them, eating them, and sharing them with you guys.

Mmm.

>> Pati Narrates: For recipes and information from this episode and more, visit PatiJinich.com, and connect!

Find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest @PatiJinich.