Chilaquiles (Drowned Nachos)

With French toast, stuffing and bread pudding recipes, stale bread can always find a way to be repurposed. In Mexico, the waste-not, want-not culinary culture is much stronger (you should just see which parts of the chicken they eat - all of them!) As such, many Mexican recipes have been developed to use old corn tortillas. Tortilla rejuvenation usually comes through frying, and those crunchy, once useless tortillas become soup accompaniments, tostada bases and chilaqiles.

I find it useful to describe chilaquiles as drowned nachos - fried tortilla chips submerged into salsa and cooked together until the salsa is absorbed. While not difficult to make, the line between perfect chilaquiles and a soggy mess is very thin. Chilaquiles are then topped with the usual Mexican suspects - raw onion, crema and queso fresco.

Whether it's truly effective or not, chilaquiles are also a popular hangover cure - in case you plan on having a little too much Valentine's Day wine tonight!

Ingredients
1/2 kg. stale corn tortillas
2 cups all-purpose red salsa
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
250g Mexican crema
2 cups queso fresco, crumbled
vegetable oil, for frying

Directions

1 - Cut the tortillas into six (manageable sized chips).

2 - In a large deep pan, heat about two-inches of oil over a medium flame. Fry the chips in small batches until crisp, about five minutes each batch. Remove chips into a colander positioned over a bowl to drain excess oil.

3 - In a large pot over a low flame, heat half of the salsa. Add all of the chips and then the rest of the salsa.

4 - Cook together (do not stir!) until the chips absorb all of the salsa, about 10 minutes.

5 - To serve, scoop chilaquiles onto a plate and top with the raw onion slices, a few squirts of Mexican crema and crumbled queso fresco.