Normally I am a major cheese booster. The [Seattle Cheese Festival](http://www.seattlecheesefestival.com/) is coming up, and I’m going to be hanging out in Artisanal Alley, scarfing down as much as they’ll allow.

Cheese is so powerful, however, that when you cook with it, it can snuff out other flavors. This is why Italian cookbooks are always warning against the overuse of Parmesan. There’s a series of water conservation bus ads in Seattle, one of which says: OVERWATERING DROWNS PLANTS. The Parmesan principle is similar. Naturally, I disregard this principle all the time, and so does Iris, who has recently learned how to grate her own Parmesan onto her pasta. I encourage this, because it’s the only nonmelted cheese she likes.

Dinner on Monday really brought home how a carpet of cheese can sweep flavor under the rug. We often make chicken enchiladas with red chile sauce, the classic American kind with lots of chili powder and cheddar. We all love them, but on Monday, inspired by Rick Bayless’s awesome book Mexican Everyday, I made a completely different kind of enchilada. These were *enchiladas verdes*, made with tomatillo sauce and filled with spinach, mushrooms, red onions, and (because I had some left over from the endive adventure) Westphalian ham. Instead of rolling the enchiladas and baking them, these enchiladas are dipped in sauce, rolled, further sauced, and served immediately on heated plates. Bayless calls for some crumbles of *queso seco*, but I didn’t have any, so I just left off the cheese and garnished with some raw red onion.

These are the best enchiladas I’ve ever had. (Maybe tied with the green chile chicken enchiladas at Barbacoa.) Even beyond the fact that anything with tomatillos is good, these were a brilliant synthesis of flavors, and we all gobbled them.

Today I was down at Pike Place Market in search of ramps (I found them), and I stopped at the Mexican grocery and bought some *queso seco*. I’ll never learn.