Hola Mi Gente,
I’ve been fighting the plague of 2017 over here the last week. If your vision of my life is perfect squares of food in every direction, let me a adjust it for you a little bit: I have been living in an endless stream of workout clothes that have not been worked out in, sleeping ~14 hours a day, and eating lukewarm meals because we haven’t owned a microwave in nearly three years and the only way to heat food is on the stovetop or oven (neither of which I am patient enough for).
This has been the worst cold I’ve had in a good long while, and I feel like I understand why the Middle Ages were chocked full of casualties from the common cold. It’s just miserable, y’all. I didn’t have an ounce of energy (and when I did I would get so excited that I would waste it on something unimportant like going to get the mail), I had zero creative fuel, and the most productive thing I did was write a few emails and power through an embarrassing amount of episodes of Grey’s Anatomy. I’m SO happy that I took the surge of energy last week to revamp the blog, that way I feel a little less guilty about the crickets on my feeds during this sick week.
Now that I’m better: I was SO ready to get back to cooking, and I knew EXACTLY what I wanted to cook. If you’ve been following along on instagram I’ve been letting folks vote on what I should cook each week before I go grocery shopping. Somedays it’s my very best friend, because I get to delegate decisions to the crowd, and that’s easier for me. But if you know my stomach at all, you also know that I have some really intense cravings sometimes, so it’s difficult to let folks vote when I clearly have a meal I would prefer (cough cough, lamb chops) from the two my insta friends vote on.
At the end of the day, it is a really cool way to hear from you all, and know what kind of content/food you want us to be cooking together. I usually go grocery shopping on Mondays, so if you hop over to instagram on Sunday/Monday you can get in on the voting. I say all of that, because this was one of the most unanimous meals folks voted on last week: Fancy Nachos.
Before we get ahead of ourselves, let me assure you that by fancy I don’t mean complicated.
Sometimes I lose folks when I throw that word out there, because it’s easily associated with lololol-I-Can’t-Do-That-I-Still-Dig-Through-The-Trash-For-The-Macaroni-And-Cheese-Box-Instructions. But I’m here to tell you that fancy in this case just means that we’re throwing some extra greens in there, to upgrade your chips and cheese nachos from your college days.
Instead of talking you down from your ledge, let me just show you: These are all the ingredients in my fancy nachos. Note that the only things you have to cook are the carne asada, bacon, sautéed cabbage mix, and heat up some (canned) refried beans. Everything else is just assembly style.
Do I still have you??? Okay, good. Because there’s more good news: All the cooked things are cooked in the same pan!
You’ll want to start with the carne asada, and then work your way down. Once my asada was done cooking, I added the cabbage mix and sautéed it until it was soft. Next I heated up a can of refried beans–I didn’t even season them because of the residual flavor from the carne asada. Finally, I crisped up some bacon. And the rest, as you’ll see, is simply an assembly line.
Now, a quick note on asada meat: you can use thinly sliced skirt steak from a grocery store, but I STRONGLY encourage you to hit up your local Latinx Carniceria. They are packed full of affordable meats, and sometimes they’ll even preseason your asada meat for you (Holla at your one less step to do!)!
And now, for the assembly: You can follow my steps here, or you can do you, boo. Your food is not going to taste less good if you don’t take the time to style it. And you know what? Sometimes messy food is freaking beautiful. This is a great meal to throw together when your friends come over and you have little of this, and a little of that, and EVERYONE decided to bring chips to your party. Throw it together in a few minutes, put it in the oven, add any additional toppings you might like (cue: fried jalapeños for your fire-seekers), and settle in for a movie night/football fiasco/boardgame extravaganza.
Like I said, this is SO easy to customize! See something on these nachos you could live without??? Skip it and add your own flair. I’d love to see how you make this your own! Tell me in the comments what you would add/take away–I’m always looking for new variations to surprise my tastebuds with.
Love, love, love,
Fancy Nachos
Ingredients
- 1 Bag Blue Corn Tortilla Chips
- 1 Can Refried Beans
- 1 LB Skirt Steak OR Carne Asada Meat
- 1 TSP Salt
- 1 TSP Cumin
- 1 TSP Chili Powder
- 1/2 TSP Lime Juice
- 1 TBSP Oil of Choice I like grapeseed or avocado
- 2 C Cabbage Mix I usually find good mixes in the coleslaw section
- 3 Sliced of Thick Cut Bacon I use beef bacon, and like to cut it into cubes
- 2 C Arugula
- 2 Tomatoes Diced
- 1/4 C Cilantro Chopped
- 4 Green Onions Chopped
- 3 Radishes Sliced
- 1 C Colby Jack Cheese Shredded
- 1/3 C Queso Fresco OR Cotija Cheese
- Sour Cream For Dollups
- 1 Large Avocado Sliced
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 F. In a large pan, heat oil over medium-high. In a bowl, combine asada meat with cumin, chili powder, salt, and lime juice. Once it is fully coated and the oil is hot, add to your pan. Cook until the juices are reduced by half, and the meat is cooked completely through. Remove from the pan and put aside.
- Keeping the heat at medium, add your cabbage to the pan and cook for 1-3 minutes, until cabbage is softened. Sprinkle a little salt over it and remove from the pan. Add the can of refried beans to the pan and cook until heated through. Remove beans from the pan and cook your bacon until it is crisp.
- Assemble your nachos by layering the chips, then beans, meat, arugula and cooked cabbage, tomatoes, and colby jack cheese. Cook in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove, and finish topping with queso fresco/cotija, avocado, sour cream, radish, cilantro, green onions and bacon. Dish up, and enjoy!
Mary-Beth Johnson
Mary-Beth is a creative, food-obsessed, Georgia transplant living Chicago. She is proudly and fiercely Latina, and more specifically Chapina. In her day to day she is a food educator to students around Chicagoland aged 3 to 80+, both virtually and in-person. She is passionate about cultivating the truth that every person has an understanding of food that deserves being brought to the table, and that time in the kitchen can be sacred, passionate, and an act of love for self and others. Outside the kitchen you can find her at the intersections of infertility, chronic illness, and a deep love for the dignity of all humans. She hopes to create a space that is holistic about the role of food in the social, political, relational, and physiological dynamics of our world.
