Whole enchilada

An enchilada is a Mexican corn tortilla, rolled up, filled with a variety of spicy ingredients, and served with a chilli sauce. Enchilada is the past participle of the Spanish verb enchilar meaning to flavour with chilli. Figuratively, ‘the whole enchilada’ is an American expression that means the whole thing, the complete package and dates from the 1970s and apparently is used in this sense on the infamous Nixon White House tapes. It sometimes takes the form of ‘the big enchilada’ with a slightly different meaning of the top boss or top person in an organisation.