Weekly Dish

Spring is in the air and the end of the semester is here, which means the less time I spend in front of a hot stove, the happier and less stressed I am. Normally, I am not much of a television person–we don’t even have cable. But there are a few shows David and I love to watch, and the more involved I become in my academic work, the more of a break those shows offer.

Gilmore Girls is one of our weekly favorites, and these nachos evolved out of a need to find a quick, throw-together dinner before 7 pm one Tuesday night (when the show comes on here). If you watch the show, you’ll understand why we felt that these nachos were appropriate Gilmore-watching food; no utensils were used to eat them. Of course, making my own tortilla chips was a very un-Lorelai thing to do, but I had corn tortillas and no chips on hand, so what choice did I have? These nachos, for us, are the perfect TV-dinner food: messy, fun, and a lot like take-out (except I control the amount of oil used to make them!)

Chorizo Nachos

Tortilla chips, enough to cover 2 dinner plates (directions for making your own follow)
1 pound chorizo* sausage, bulk or removed from casings
Half a large yellow onion, sliced into thin rings
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
1 15-ounce can yellow corn, drained
1/2 t. ground cumin
1/2 t. seasoned salt
4 ounces queso fresco or other soft, mild cheese
1 ripe avocado, sliced
1 lime

Brown the chorizo in a large skillet, breaking it up with a wooden spoon as it cooks. When it’s brown (about 10 minutes), remove from skillet. If there’s excess oil standing in the skillet, pour it off; you still want a tiny bit to remain to cook the onions and pepper, but you don’t want the vegetables swimming in grease. (My chorizo was very lean; I had to add a drop of olive oil.) Add the onion and jalapeno to the skillet, and cook over medium-high, until the onions begin to caramelize. Season with the cumin and seasoned salt. Return the chorizo to the skillet; add the corn and reduce the heat to medium-low. Lay a single layer of tortilla chips on each plate; then, spread the chorizo mixture on top of each bed of chips. Crumble (or grate) the cheese on top, and finish with the sliced avocado. Squeeze lime over the whole plate. Serves 2 hungry people.

*Chorizo is Spanish sausage. If you can’t find it at your grocer, ground beef with extra cumin, chile powder, and seasoned salt would probably work.

To make your own tortilla chips: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Cut corn tortillas into triangle-shaped wedges with kitchen scissors. Spray each side with canola or vegetable oil cooking spray. Spread in a single layer on baking sheets. Sprinkle with seasoned salt and chile powder. Bake for about 20 minutes, but watch carefully. They should be crisp, but they will brown quickly at the end.

If you have any of the chorizo mixture left, it also makes a good filling for quesadillas or soft tacos.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 29th, 2006 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Comfort Food, Main Dish, Meat. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.