Chilaquiles. Huh?

Chilaquiles

Ninety-five percent of the time, weekend breakfasts are up to Lo to handle.  He gets up at least 2 hours before me and I can go for a couple of hours after I get up without eating, so if he doesn’t make it, he’ll starve to death.  Plus, he gotten pretty damn good at it.  He used to usually make breakfast sandwiches that consisted of an english muffin or sandwich thin, a microwaved egg, cheese, and either bacon or turkey lunch meat.  And some spicy mustard – yum.  After helping our friend make breakfasts a few times when we stayed overnight, he started branching out to omelets and over-easy eggs.  He usually just throws together whatever he can find in the fridge or freezer – various veggies/meat/sauces – into an omelet.  He even made me a hot dog omelet once.  I probably wouldn’t have agreed to it, but he told me what it was after I ate some and had already declared it good.  Since I can’t eat regular bread now (and GF bread is expensive and not awesome for breakfast sandwiches), I’m really happy that he’s expanded his breakfast skills.  As a matter of fact, he made gluten-free sausage gravy and gluten-free Bisquick biscuits for me two weeks ago.  The biscuits were more like pancakes because he halved the recipe, but forgot to halve the milk, so they pretty much baked into pancake size.  I thought the batter looked funny before he started baking them, but he said he followed the recipe.  They tasted the same and they were really just a vehicle for getting the sausage gravy into my mouth, so no harm.

This past weekend we decided that we’d he’d make a recipe from a book that my friend sent home with us (she likes us to “try” recipes and then either make them for her sometime when we’re together, or tell her if it was easy enough or good enough for her to try).  The name of the dish is Chilaquiles and we have no idea how to pronounce it correctly.  The recipes said it was 4 servings, but we thought that was a ton and so I added two more eggs to the recipes and said it serves 6 – obviously, don’t cook 6 eggs if you only want 4 – you can always cook the others when you want to eat the leftovers.  The leftovers will soak up the sauce quite a bit – still good, but less like the original.  It would be a good filling for tacos or quesadillas too.  I think it would be tasty with a 1/2 can of black beans too.  Actually, I just looked it up and it’s commonly served with refried beans.  Here’s our his adapted version:

Chilaquiles
serves 6 (or 4 very large servings)

Nonstick spray
1/2 medium onion, thinly sliced
1 tsp canola oil
2 tsp minced garlic
1 can diced tomatoes in juice
2 chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, chopped*
2 cups chicken stock (we only had broth)
2 cups shredded cooked chicken**
8 oz. tortilla chips – we used generic spicy doritos
6 eggs
1/2 cup grated cheddar (cojita is recommended)
Salt and pepper
2 radishes, thinly sliced for garnish
avocado, diced for garnish (forgot it this time)
fresh cilantro, chopped for garnish***

Warm 1 teaspoon of canola oil in saucepan over medium heat.  Add the onion and a pinch of salt and pepper.  Cook, stirring occasionally until onion is tender, 4-6 minutes.  Add the garlic and cook, stirring, until fragrant, about 1 minute.  Add the tomatoes and chipotles and stir to combine.  Bring the mixture to a boil and reduce heat to medium.  Cook for 4-5 minutes more, until onion is soft.  Transfer to blender and puree until smooth.

Pour the tomato mixture back into saucepan over medium heat.  Stir in chicken stock/broth and season to taste with salt and pepper.  Cook sauce until it is slightly reduced and thickened, about 8-10 minutes.  Stir in the shredded chicken to warm, about 2-3 minutes.  Stir in the tortilla chips and remove the pan from the heat.

Spray skillet with nonstick cooking spray.  We use cast-iron, so if you have a skillet in which things stick, you may want to use some butter or oil to cook the eggs.  Bring the pan to medium heat and crack the eggs into the pan.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.  Let the eggs cook until the white begins to turn opaque, 2-3 minutes.  Carefully turn the eggs over and continue cooking until the yolks are just barely set, about 30 seconds.  (or basically, just make the eggs however you usually make them yolky, if you do – otherwise, cook them to your preference).

Divide the chilaquiles (which is apparently the sauce/chicken mixture) between the plates.  Top each with fried egg, shredded cheese, radishes, avocado, and cilantro, if using.  Serve immediately.  It’s tasty with toast to sop up the goodness.  It would also be good along some diced potatoes or hashbrowns

*Chipotle peppers in adobe sauce can be found in the mexican aisle/section of the grocery store.  They are in a small can (similar to green chilies).  When we open a can, we transfer half of the peppers/sauce into a glass container and freeze.  We store the the unused portion in a glass container in the fridge (like a baby food jar).  We use these pretty frequently, but probably couldn’t use a whole can before they went bad in the fridge

**I like to keep cooked chicken in the freezer.  I’ll often crockpot cook chicken breast, let it cool, and either shred it or just throw it in a freezer bag so it’s easy to pull out for things like this (or pizza or quesadillas)

***If you don’t have fresh cilantro but like the taste, I highly recommend the frozen cubes of cilantro that Trader Joes sells (Whole Foods probably has them too).  You can use the little cubes frozen (they melt and blend in pretty quickly when stirring).  Lo just stirred a cube or two into the sauce/chicken mixture to give us the taste of cilantro.

We will be making these again.  It was definitely more steps than making an omelet, but not difficult.