Chilaquiles Recipe from Ensenada, Baja California

[Darryl Musick]

A big part of our traveling is the food. How often do we find a delicious delicacy and wish we could have it at home?

Bouillabaisse in Nice; Schweinhocken in Munich; Leige waffles in Belgium; or even a gumbo from Lousiana. It may be hard to find that perfect ethnic restaurant in your neighborhood that makes it but you can always try to recreate it yourself.

That’s what we did after our recent trip to Ensenada in Baja California. We had the most perfect dish of chilaquiles con huevos at Restaurant Garibaldi (pictured above). We’ve had the dish at some of our local restaurants but they just didn’t match the quality we got down there.

I just had to have it again so I tried to recreate it myself. Luckily, chilaquiles is a pretty simple dish…tortillas and sauce. If you want the “con huevos” part, just plop a couple of fried eggs on top. Here’s how I did it:

INGREDIENTS –

Corn tortillas – 3
4 tablespoons olive or canola oil (or blend them like we did)
Green onions – 1
Chili peppers – 3
El Pato sauce – one can (7 oz.)
Crema Mexicana – 2 tablespoons (one per serving – can substitute sour cream if you can’t get this)
Cotija cheese – 2 oz (one per serving – can substitute jack cheese if unavailable)
4 eggs (2 per serving)

Take three corn tortillas and cut them into wedges, eight wedges per tortilla. In a large frying pan, heat up 3 tablespoons of oil on medium-high heat…we use a blend of canola and olive oil. When the oil is very hot, fry the tortilla wedges for 2-3 minutes on each side. Remove and set aside – they should be nice and crispy. Congratulations, you’ve just made homemade tortilla chips.

Now, chop up one stalk of green onion nice and fine. Get three or four fairly hot chiles and chop them up too. I use 3 serrano and one Thai chile from our garden. Put one tablespoon of oil in a small sauce pan on medium heat. Saute the onions and chiles for around 8 minutes. Pour in one can of El Pato tomato salsa. Turn heat to medium-low and simmer for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Cook up four eggs (two for each serving) in your preferred style. For chilaquiles, I like over easy. Put half of the tortilla chips on one plate, the other half on another. Pour the sauce over the chips, then some Mexican crema on top of that. Put two eggs on top of each pile of chips and sauce, crumble up some cotija cheese, sprinkle on top and serve immediately as the chips will grow soggy if you wait too long.

You should end up with something looking like this and tasting delicious.

For more on our trip to Ensenada, click on this link or visit us at The World on Wheels.

Darryl Musick