#42: Nachos
We’ve all had those sad nachos. The ones you make in the microwave at 2 am as one of your last bad decisions of the night; wheedling the friends you’ve managed to drag back to your apartment with stretched promises of “I have food at my place”. The nachos that emerge all nuked and bedraggled with scraps of unidentified grated cheese, foretelling of how haggard your own appearance will become in a few hours’ time.
These are certainly not those nachos.
These are nachos of pride. The ones that you would be happy, maybe even proud, to label as dinner without fear of what your most sanctimonious friend would say if they knew you qualified nachos as a meal. These nachos manage to maintain the laidback personality required of nachos while somehow elevating themselves to be indistinguishable from the snack you polished off at the bar last week solely as a means of providing a lining of food for your soon-to-be punished system. Adorned with pops of bright colour and crunch from actual vegetables (sorry, those pickled jalapeños that come in the same bags used to hold non-perishable milk cannot be counted as vegetation), these nachos gaze down their nose at their monochrome imitators with an air of pity and derision.
Two entries have emerged for this post: one, a vegetarian (um…sort of) version comprised of glorious amounts of cheese, bursts of colour and heat from two different salsas, plus the show-stopping addition of my mum’s legendary black beans. The other, inspired by one of my favourite flavour combinations, boasts spicy crumbles of homemade Mexican chorizo, salty bites of creamy queso fresco, charred corn, and my tried-and-true roasted salsa. Don’t put yourself through the strain of making difficult choices after the year we’ve all had. Make both, hunker down, and cross your fingers for a 2018 that’s as comforting as these nachos.
