Guest Post: Chilaquiles

We've got a guest post from former Royal Oakian and new Torontan Tara Dziurman, who made chilaquiles (or a version of them she came across) last weekend and has morphed it into brunches and other meals she's continued to eat daily since.

Thanks for Tara for sharing! I can't wait to make it.

So I think there are a variety of different kinds of chilaquiles, but the one I made is like a Mexican lasagna. I made some improvisations to the recipe I found (some because I wanted to, some because Canadian grocery stores aren't quite up to par with what's available in Detroit).

This is what I ended up doing:

Half of a large onion (diced)

1 Large zucchini (diced)

1 can diced tomatoes

1 can black beans

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1/2 can sliced jalapenos (then chopped)

2 cans enchilada sauce (regular sized - 10 oz??)

Shredded cheddar cheese (I used a cheddar / mozzarella mix because it was cheaper)

12 Corn tortillas - quartered (Canadian grocery stores don't carry corn tortillas so I used multi-grain tortillas meant for wraps. I figured the texture was closer than flour tortillas. Also the package had 8 so I used 8 and it was fine)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Brown onion in a pan, once browned add zucchini, tomatoes, beans, cumin and jalapenos. (recipe actually called for corn and I substituted it with jalapenos because I like spice, the fresh corn was crap, and I didn't feel like dealing with the frozen stuff). Cook for about 3 minutes.

Take a baking dish (I used 8 x 8, but the recipe called for 13 x 9. My chilaquiles just came out really deep) and line it with some (half?) of the quartered tortillas.

Spoon in half the veggie mixture, pour on half the enchilada sauce and sprinkle as much cheese (cheese substitute?) as you want.

Then layer with the rest of the tortillas, then the veggie mixture, then the rest of the sauce. I made my two tortilla layers rather thin so I added a layer at the top with what was left of the tortillas.

Then sprinkled cheese on top of that. I think this made it sit better, so when you cut squares they were more apt to stay in tact.

Pop into oven covered in foil for 15 min. Then remove the foil and cook for another 10 min so the cheese can get bubbly.

I cutup avocado slices to have on the side, which was yum-o!

Next day scrambled some eggs, and made it into brunch.

It was so easy to make this and I love how you can use whatever veggies you want but provides a Mexican craving fix. There really aren't any Mexican restaurants in Toronto, can you believe that?!

- Tara