Exactly!
ā¦ and donāt forget chimichangas, an American 
concoction and deliciously greasy!
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Invented, it is claimed by the proprietors of El Charro Cafe in Tucson, at El Charro Cafe in Tucson, where my family & I went often when we lived in Tucson. Iāve never seen chimichangas in Mexico, either, except at tourist restaurants like SeƱor Frogās & Cabo Wabo.
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My time in Arizona was very enlightening as far as differences in regional Mexican and Mexican:American delicacies.
Seafood and citrus 
were whole new worlds to me.
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For sure. Where were you? We were in Tucson for 6 years.
Scottsdale/ the Valley.
Our Mexican growing up in KC was mostly an extension of TexMex with a smattering of New Mexico, cuisine following the trade routes.
I loved all the Varied Az food, just burned out on the stressful and crazy part of life in the desert.
The Oregon mountains and ocean are much more soothing and the Mexi food is a continuation of California thinking.
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My best friend (met in Panama 40+ years ago) lives in Portland & has a timeshare at Rockaway Beach. Love spending time with her. So I know what you mean.
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Rockaway Beach! Good times.
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What do you mean? Seafood and citrus where new to you when you moved to Arizona? From where?
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Just to add - for informational purposes -
It isnāt so much that flour tortillas shriek and fall apart at the first sign of sauce, itās that the texture does not hold up at all well with the traditional enchilada procedure.
First, you dip your tortilla quickly into hot oil - you can use most any kind of flavorless cooking oil but, since weāre talking tradition here, letās just say that you dip your corn tortilla into hot lard. That makes it nice & hot & pliable, so it doesnāt split or crack during the folding (or the rolling if youāre a gringo/a). Then you immediately dip it from that hot lard into the hot chile sauce. Now, immediately onto a hot plate, fold over once or twice, top with chopped raw white onions & a crumble of queso fresco or ranchero or Cotija, serve at once while itās still piping hot from the lard & sauce, and Robertoās your tio.
Flour tortillas simply do not hold up well at all with this method - the preferred method in Mexico.
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Thank you @Jaymes for sharing your experience and knowledge of this. You may have answered my inner questions about how to make good enchiladas from corn tortillas; I typically soften them in veg oil, but perhaps lard is preferable here. As well, I should bother to get some decent corn tortillas from the tortilla shops - a ways from me, but not too far.
The ones Iāve had using flour tortillas, have of course been American-Mex common in non SW parts of the states. As people do, but canāt say Iāve had them in restaurants.
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From KC with a stop in Sausalito/Bay Area. The Mexi food I grew up eating was meat oriented, as befits a meat packing center.
Folks following the RR, silver smelting, and the packing plants/stockyards.
Sonoran food mixed with Native American cuisine in Arizona was just something different and wonderful.
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Many MANY people use vegetable oil instead of lard. I donāt think that in itself is going to cause any problems. Some will prefer the taste or the feel of one or the other, but I donāt believe that using vegetable oil is going to ruin the process at all. How the tortillas were made in the first place is going to make a much bigger difference - isnāt it?
I mean, Iāve provided ample proof in my own home, that making good tortillas is not as easy as skilled people make it look.
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Since you live somewhere that you can get good tortillas, you must also have access to a Mexican mercado and carniceria. They all sell beautiful pure freshly-rendered lard. And you can buy as little as you need.
Do yourself & your tortillas a favor & buy that, instead of that āshelf-stableā box thatās been sitting on the grocery store shelf for months.
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Definitely. Since lard has become such a āno no,ā many folks do use oil. To me, there is something about that porky goodness that ups it a slight notch, I think, but youāre absolutely correct that the main thing is the quality of the tortillas (preferably made with nixtamal) and the sauce. Really the crux right there.
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Yes, Iām well acquainted with great tortillas, but have only seen the larger buckets of processed lard at those shops. Iāll change that soon, and make a run to the specialty markets. I saw a fabulous wooden tortilla press at a catered event at UCLA, that Iād like to get. The caterers told me where I could find one way out in East LA. ,but I wasnāt able to make it out there on that trip.
No way am I going anywhere near LA at the momentā¦that said, it will be easier to buy good ones, both corn and flour. Iām all about easy right now a good bit of the time @Jaymes.
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There are so many āno nosā that itās hard to remember them all. Some of them are silly, and then there are others that are very important but not well enough known. In a Mexican context, thereās probably much less harm in pure lard than people think, and probably too many people unaware that uncooked dry beans are poisonous until boiled properly (some varieties less poisonous than others).
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While I realize corn tortillas are the gold standard for authentic Mexican enchiladas using the traditional method (oil dip then sauce dip), I do make a Tex-Mex version with flour tortillas. Corn tortillas are all wrong for this version. You donāt do the oil dip or sauce dip steps at all. Instead, you make a āchile gravyā of ground beef, chile powder, cumin and stock, lightly thickened with flour. Then you use a slotted spoon to remove most of the meat and fill flour tortillas with a mixture of the meat, cheese and onion, nestle them together in a baking dish and pour the strained sauce over before topping with more cheese and baking. They do get somewhat soft, but since you donāt saturate them with the sauce before baking, they keep their shape well enough. I love both styles!
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There are no bad enchiladas.
Fact of life.
Every day is better with Mexican food in it.
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I posted this previously; this is representative of the tacos 
of my youth, except our favorite place used a finely grated cheddar instead.
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Itās interesting how the topic of food authenticity shifts in meaning depending on the situation. Sometimes itās used as a geographic divider, saying that the food they make in āthe wrong placeā is a worse version of the food from āthe right placeā; sometimes as a time divider, saying the food they make at āthe wrong timeā (usually the present) is a worse version of the food from āthe right timeā; sometimes itās a human divider, saying that āthe wrong peopleā cook a worse version of what āthe right peopleā cook.
But I think a lot of what people say in everyday food-authenticity conversations (spoken ones - people are more careful when they write), while it may sound general like my examples tried to sound, is actually extremely specific: I think people very often end up basically saying āThe only right place is where I grew up, the only right time is when I was growing up, and my people are the only right peopleā. (With a couple of notes: āmy peopleā will mean whatever someone wants it to mean, and very often instead of themselves they will refer to whoever their own ācooking idolā is, whether itās their aunt or whether itās a TV host or author or whatever, or they may āadoptā a new category of food instead of what they grew up with.) I donāt think anybody necessarily intends to be ānarrowā like that, but it does seem to happen a lot.
I remember a school teacher friend saying āEveryone who has ever been to school considers themselves an expert on the education systemā. I think a lot of people end up considering themselves experts on food authenticity just because they remember having lunch.
So I was glad to see the cheddar cheese, that orangey-yellow proof that food authenticity suddenly stops being clear-cut as soon as you think about it a bit. 
I think āYeah, but I like itā is usually the ultimate scholarly response if food authenticity gets questioned.
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