The Saddest Nachos

Last week I got a plate of nachos at a nearby pub. This was a risk. I understood the risk. I accepted the risk. I suffered the consequences. 

The nachos were abominable. No cheese, supermarket guac, big splatter of sour cream, some wilted jalapenos, spoonful of pico de gallo from a can. It looked like someone had loaded each individual ingredient into a catapult and lobbed it at a plate across the room.

I mean, I ate 'em anyways. It's not possible for nachos to be actually disgusting, unless very cold, and even then they're probably good.

I posted a picture of the sad nachos to my Twitter account and it hit a nerve, a bait proffered to Americans who want their suspicions confirmed that British food is bad. Some of my friends and acquaintances offered commentary:

Others shared their experiences of foreign attempts at nachos:

It’s not really what I intended, but it did make me reflect that it’s one of the small ways growing up in the US is different – I did not realize the degree to which Mexican and Latino culture has influenced everything until I moved here, when I was confronted with its lack.

Speaking as a guy from the suburbs with zero Latino family members, we had on rotation the typical Tex Mex staples found on many American tables. We had White People Taco Night with the classic hard shells and spiced ground beef. We had oven chimichangas. Chicken and bean enchiladas drowning in cheese and sauce were a favorite. Nachos of course were either a quick snack or, dressed up with more substantial toppings, a lazy dinner. When ditching fourth period in high school, my friends and I would head to Taco King on C Street. (There were also a few more ambitious projects: When I turned 18, my dad, in classic My Dad fashion, dug a hole in the backyard for a subterranean fire to make barbacoa.)

The British have no such ambient knowledge of Mexican cuisine or culture. I think I first noticed here when it came to burritos. I was at a music festival last summer and gambled on a burrito stand. The ingredients were sort of right, the salsa was sort of right, the menu even had Spanish words on it. Yet the elder teen wrapping my creation struggled with basic concepts – portioning the meat, distributing the shredded lettuce, drizzling the salsa, and most importantly, positioning the fillings. Every burrito-eater knows that you lay things out in a line, so theoretically, each bite contains an evenish mixture of ingredients. He instead piled everything in the middle in a small mound or anthill of beans, meat and shredded lettuce. That was odd thing #1. And then #2 was the wrapping process itself: he couldn’t quite figure out how to conceal the anthill within the folds of the burrito. A dire yet familiar problem to more practiced wrappers: of too many ingredients in a too small wrap.

It reached peak absurdity when the Great British Bake Off did their Mexican episode, which featured the sort of racist gaffs common at Cinco de Mayo parties in the 90s, plus some truly bewildering food. They made tortillas from scratch – a noble pursuit – but then, insanely, got canned corn to grind up in the food processor to add to the masa harina. This could have been a move to add an element of difficulty to a TV cooking competition, I suppose, but I couldn’t imagine a similar Italy-themed episode where contestants would be instructed to make spaghetti from scratch but add in their own hand-ground wheat. I similarly cannot forgive how Paul Hollywood kept saying “Täco” and “picko de galo”. 

Anyways. It’s fair enough for me to be homesick, but It’s not Britain’s fault that Mexico isn’t next door. (And even then, there are a number of really excellent mexican places in town now, including a new Oaxacan joint down the road.) British food is really great, actually, and food in London is some of the best in the world. Truly I had no intent to join the chorus of Americans shaming the isles for their attempts. 

On that front, anyways. I do find it inconceivable that for a country famous for its pubs, the drinking food is subpar. A lot of pubs only have crisps (chips) and monkey nuts (peanuts). Gastropubs have nicer dinners, but the fries come triple-cooked in stainless steel cups and cost £7. Where are the good bar snacks??? Every bad dive bar in the states has buffalo wings, a bad pizza menu, a floppy burger, a plate of nachos. In my neighborhood here, you can get incredible wings if you go next door to the chicken shop (Morley’s forever!!!), or great fast food pizza at Pizza Hotline (which will get its own article in the future sometime) but none of it is AT the pub. And it's certainly not at the gastropub. There's an element of class at play: a gastropub needs to appeal to your sensible restraint and good taste, and therefore doesn't have to satisfy the desires of your repitilian id. They all have a hummus plate, but none of them have the grease and salt required to stimulate the beer-drinking apparatus within the body.

So like I said, it’s not like Mexican or even Tex Mex food doesn’t exist in London. No, what I truly miss about the US is the easy access to Tex Mex bar food.

Although, on the flipside, I encountered a bar in Maine last time I was home that offered Greek food. The food was fine, but again, I got a sense that the locals neither trusted nor appreciated this bar menu. It was an attempt at elevation in a drinking den where such things are viewed as unecessary elaboration. Perhaps the British model is the most stripped-down and honest of all – if you want to eat, go somewhere else. You're here for beer.

There's no sense in giving you a nachos recipe – you put stuff on chips and put it in the over or the microwave. So it's not like it even needs a wordless Ikea manual with pictures of the featureless naked dude holding up slat Å to go in slot Ö to assemble the flat-pack Näätshos.

Instead, I'm going to tell you how to make chilaquiles. I was told how to make this by a grocer in Bellevue WA who told me it's the best breakfast when you're crudo – i.e. hungover, literally "raw" – so at least we're still on theme in the post here.

Conceptually, chilaquiles are tortilla chips coated in sauce and topped with eggs. It's dry. It's wet. It's crunchy. It's soggy. It's a whole mix of textures and this is why it's fun.

1. Chips. You can just buy plain tortilla chips, but also it's better to fry your own. Cut or tear your corn tortillas into quarters. (Don't use flour tortillas. That's like making chilaquiles con croutons.) I can offer little advice on how to fry things properly. It's all trial and error. Don't overcrowd the pan, don't have the oil too hot or too cool, please make sure to drain off the excess oil by letting em rest on a paper towel.
2. Sauce. (Either green or red.)
   1. RED. De-stem and de-seed a few dry red chili pods. I like about 2-4 guajillos or anchos. (Brits: you will have to source these from somewhere special. There are no substitutes. Sorry.) Toast them on a hot dry pan for about thirty seconds, and set aside. Then crank the heat and char two tomatos, a garlic clove, half an onion, and maybe a small handful of pumpkin seeds or almonds or something else nutty. I've used pecans before and that works well. Really char them. Don't hold back. Tip everything into a blender, add a tsp of salt and maybe a half cup of hot water, and whiz into a tasty sauce. You can then dump all this back into the pan and cook it for maybe another minute just to lose some of the raw edge, but that's totally optional. Blitz and taste.
   2. GREEN. Boil some water in a saucepan. Add in half an onion, a big green chili like a jalapeno or serrano, a garlic clove, and maybe 5 or 6 tomatillos. (Brits: you will have to source these from somewhere. The only substitute is maybe green tomatoes, which is not even remotely the same plant. Actual tomatillos are related to gooseberries. Sorry.) After about ten minutes, they'll all be nice and soft. Dump the veg into a blender, add a half cup of the water, plus a bunch of cilantro (with the stems!! the stems have all the flavor.) Blitz and taste.
3. EGG. Cook egg.
4. Toss chips in sauce. Finding the ratio is tricky. You want the chips to be halfway between crunchy and sodden. What I've found that works is putting the chips into a mixing bowl and then ladling the sauce one scoop at a time, tossing, and then examining with my practiced chilaquiles eye.
5. Put on plate. Chips on plate. Egg on chips. Cheese and/or crema and/or hot sauce on everything. Maybe avocado or frijoles on the side.
   

The BBC also has a "healthy" recipe for chilaquiles. Please don't make these.