The Ironic Chef Challenge

When my wife Cheryl & I began dating we had a small good spirited contest to see who could make the best mix CD. It was one of those challenges where she figured that, even if she should lose, she would gain a great compilation of music to listen to. I think we matched each other in diversity, eclecticism, taste & fun, although she is definitely craftier than I am. She made her own decorative CD covers with bright, colorful Japanese paper & humorous images that she has collected, stitched together by hand with buttons attached to close the case. She had a variety of music that I was already familiar with but hadn't listened to in a long, long time and introduced me to some new artists that I hadn't heard: Cake, Fat Boy Slim, The Innocence Mission & Yann Tierson. It was a delightful gift.

We're married now & we live together, so what's mine is hers and what's hers is mine, and we share and listen to the same music. If I buy her a CD, I pretty much know that I will enjoy listening to it, too, and vice versa. There is little reason to have a contest to see who can make the best mix CD, but maybe there should be.

Instead, we make nachos.

Last month we decided to make - for lack of a better term, so please don't take offense - ghetto nachos. Common, white trash, plebian, blue collar, white bread, plain old everyman fare or whatever you might prefer to call them. The idea was that she would make the ghetto nachos and I would make the gourmet nachos. I don't know if that is possible. I think we sort of equaled one another in ingenuity and practicality.

Cheryl's started with a bag of chips & hamburger seasoned with packaged taco seasoning mix. We put warm refried beans & bottled cheese sauce on it and garnished it with green Spanish olives, canned Jalapeño chilies, Pace Salsa & sour cream. Delicious!


I really couldn't top her. There is something about nachos that is essentially white trash to begin with, & there is little you can do - and even less reason - to class them up. Hers tasted exactly what my mom's nachos might have tasted like if she had ever made them. She most certainly would have used ground beef and packaged taco seasoning.

Many, many years ago I very briefly worked at a Naugles drive through. At the time they were trying to go upscale with their Mexican fare, including real, fresh sliced chicken and beef grilled to order for their Fajitas and authentic refried beans. We had a couple demand their money back on their nachos because it had real, fresh grated cheese rather than the sauce from a can...

Just like home cookin'.

For my nachos I started with boneless pork cutlets that I seasoned with my own home made Sazón seasoning spice. After braising them on high heat in a pan I covered them in water with salt, pepper & bay leaf and let them simmer for several hours until the water was absorbed and the meat was tender and fell apart easily. I cut fresh corn and flour tortillas into equal 1/8 triangles, fried them in corn oil, let them dry on paper towels and then salted them and arranged them on a platter. That's the main work required for it. I layered the chips with pork, warm black beans, green chilies, Jalapeño chilies, black olives (which we would have had on hand at our house for Mexican night when I was growing up) and grated white & yellow (well, orange actually) cheddar cheese. I tried some bottled green tomato and tomatilla taco sauce but it turned out to be less appealing than it promised. I baked them in the oven, under the broiler, then topped it off with chopped cilantro, green onions and sour cream. Voila!


For Cheryl's sake, I had to include a package of Chicherones to accompany the nachos. She'd never had them before and found them pretty tasty as a snack despite their being what they are. I bought the generic ones sold by UTZ, not the kind you would buy fresh from a taqueria or carniceria.

It's impossible to make "upscale" nachos when the season of garden freshness hasn't arrived yet, but trusting in the good old fashioned hearty goodness of your favorite childhood fare is almost as good.