Chilaquiles – the real Mexican nachos
Last Sunday, we went to our first Newcastle United home game – despite living here for 9 and a half years! Their opponents were Aston Villa and Tom is a Villa fan (so we won’t mention the score…). I don’t support any football team, so spent the whole game clapping everything! 🙂
We wanted something super quick for tea and decided to have this – we poached the chicken the day before and had already made the tomato sauce so all we had to do was construct it. This recipe is taken from ‘Mexican Food Made Simple‘ by Thomasina Miers, which is also where the tomato sauce comes from. We cheated a little bit by buying a bag of lightly salted tortilla chips – the original recipe says to make your own tortillas and cut them into triangles, but that defeated the object of this being a quick meal. If you’ve got friends coming over this would make a great dish for sharing!
Ingredients (serves 4)
For the poached chicken (to make in advance):
3 chicken breasts
2 carrots, chopped into large pieces
3 garlic cloves, peeled but not chopped
3 sprigs of rosemary
Half a lemon, quartered
A teaspoon of whole black peppercorns
1 litre of chicken stock
You will also need:
A quantity of roast tomato sauce
A small handful of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
230ml chicken stock
50ml vegetable oil
A large bag of slightly salted tortilla chips
A few tablespoons of sour cream
Grated cheddar cheese
Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180c/350F/gas mark 4. Shred the chicken breasts using two forks.
2. In a heavy-bottomed pan, mix the shredded chicken, tomato sauce and coriander and heat through on a low heat, adding the chicken stock.
3. To assemble the Chilaquiles, use a large baking dish and cover the bottom with a layer of tortillas, then a layer of the chicken and tomato mixture. Repeat these layers and then finish with the sour cream and enough cheddar cheese to cover the top.
4. Bake in the oven for 30 minutes. Serve with some green salad or some refried beans.
Enjoy! 🙂
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