Chilaquiles

The tortilla taken apart — cut up, fried, then dropped into simmering sauce and served the moment it has just begun to give.

Egg. Not vegetarian — contains cheese whose rennet the source does not name.

Ingredients

• 12 corn tortillas, as on their own page, a day old
• oil, for frying, about 2 cm depth
• 600 ml salsa verde, as on its own page
• 4 eggs
• 150 g crumbly white cheese
• ½ small red onion, sliced thin
• soured cream, to serve
• a handful of coriander, chopped

Method

1. THE PIECES GO INTO SIMMERING SAUCE AND COME OUT THE MOMENT THEY HAVE JUST BEGUN TO GIVE, which is somewhere between one and two minutes and is the only difficult thing here. This is the one dish in the family that takes the tortilla APART rather than keeping it whole, and the whole point is a contradiction held for about ninety seconds: pieces that have taken up sauce and gone chewy at the edge while the middle is still crisp. Thirty seconds and they are crisp chips with sauce on them. Four minutes and they are a uniform soft mass, which is edible and is not chilaquiles.
2. THEY ARE SERVED STRAIGHT FROM THE PAN AND NEVER HELD. There is no stage at which this dish improves by waiting, and the window does not survive a trip to the table in a serving dish. Plates warmed first, everything else ready, and the pieces go into the sauce last.
3. THE TORTILLAS MUST BE A DAY OLD BEFORE THEY ARE FRIED. Fresh ones are full of water, soak oil while they boil it off, and come out heavy -- and a heavy piece collapses in the sauce almost at once. Dried overnight, they fry crisp in under a minute and have the structure to stand up to the sauce for the time they need to.
4. THE SAUCE IS AT A BARE SIMMER AND THERE IS NOT MUCH OF IT. Six hundred millilitres for twelve tortillas is enough to coat and no more. A deep pan of sauce drowns them and the timing becomes impossible; a shallow film in a wide pan lets every piece meet it at once and come out together. And at a rolling boil the outsides disintegrate before the insides are touched.
5. THE EGGS ARE COOKED SEPARATELY AND PUT ON TOP. Cracked into the pan they would scramble through the sauce and bind the whole thing into something closer to a migas. Fried in a second pan and slid on at the end, the yolk breaks over the top and does its work there.
6. The tortillas spread out uncovered and left OVERNIGHT to dry, or 10 minutes in a 150°C oven and cooled.
7. Cut into 6 wedges each, through the stack.
8. The oil heated to 2 cm in a deep pan and the wedges fried in batches 30 to 40 seconds, until crisp and pale gold. Drained on paper.
9. The salsa verde brought to a BARE SIMMER in a wide, shallow pan. Not a boil.
10. The eggs fried in a separate pan, kept soft, and set aside on a warm plate.
11. Plates warmed and the cheese, onion, cream and coriander all within reach.
12. The fried wedges tipped into the simmering sauce ALL AT ONCE and turned over twice with a spatula.
13. Given 60 to 90 SECONDS and TASTED: a piece should be chewy at the edge and still CRISP in the middle. Off the heat at that instant.
14. Divided between the warm plates, an egg slid onto each, then cheese, onion, cream and coriander.
15. Eaten immediately. There is no holding this dish.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Mexico · All recipes