Nachos Grandes

For my birthday this year, Laurel gave me a copy of Moosewood Restaurant's Simple Suppers : fresh ideas for the weeknight table. This morning, I made the Nachos Grandes.

... yes, OK, for breakfast. What? It's Saturday. Let he who never ate cold pizza for breakfast cast the first stone.

It's definitely a simple recipe. The most time-consuming part of it was chopping the tomatoes and the olives. I suppose if I were a real chef that would go faster, chopchopchopchopchop! But I am not a real chef, and I like my fingers in one piece.

The first thing to do was pour the chips out into the pan. The recipe calls for 4 cups, but I am lazy and I tend not to measure things unless it's really critical. The number of chips in the pan? Come on. Totally not critical. I poured out most of the chips from the bag: enough to cover the bottom but still leave room in the pan to pile the other stuff on top.


Then a can of refried beans. The recipe also claimed you could thin the beans with water if they were too stiff. I'm not really sure what "too stiff" means, and I'm skeptical of my ability to evenly spread a layer of refried beans over every precious chip anyway, so I just sort of spooned it out in dollops, and then gave it a sort of smear with the back of the spoon to spread it a little. Good enough.


Choppity chop, tomatoes and olives next. I didn't measure them either; I just chucked them in as I chopped them, and stopped chopping when it looked right. It's supposed to be 1 1/2 cups of tomatoes and 1/4 cup of olives.

Then you're supposed to add half a cup of your favorite salsa, and half a cup of sour cream. I did measure those. It seemed like it might be too soggy, or overwhelmingly salsa-and-sour-cream flavored, if I didn't. I smeared these on in the same manner as the beans. At this point I forgot to keep taking pictures, but it's not like I have an awesome camera anyway. Plus, it was ugly.

Then you pour on the shredded cheese. The recipe says 6 oz., but my bag was 8 oz. and my husband loves cheese. I emptied it, and then popped the whole shebang into the 400 degree oven for 15 minutes. Voila:

The best part of this was offering it to our 20-month old son, who has just recently begun picking up random words off the street and sticking them in his mouth. "Want some nachos?" I asked, introducing the word for the first time ever. "Na-CHOs," he said. And then he said it again, over and over.

He actually preferred to grab some Wheat Thins and stick them in the nacho topping. He wasn't a big fan of the chips. To be honest, I think next time I might make it without the chips on the bottom, and serve the chips on the side - the chips directly under any beans or sour cream got all soggy and gross as time passed. This happens in restaurants, too, so I think it's just a failing of Nachos Grandes in general, not this particular recipe.

The recipe also called for fresh chiles (1 tbsp, optional) and minced scallions (2 tbsp.), but we don't really do spicy, and my scallions didn't last the week in the fridge. Oops. Still, it was very good.