Chatty made tacos a few nights ago. Ground beef for The Wiz, and Morninstar crumbles with a ton of taco seasoning thrown in for Chatty.

    The Wiz is picky about his tortillas - and his bread. Both have to be fresh fresh fresh. Chatty thinks tortillas in particular last several days, but she cannot convince The Wiz of this, so she usually buys just a little bag of 12 and ends up throwing a few away.

    However, she was at a store that only had bags of 24. She didn't want to go to another store, and besides - 24 at this store were only 10 cents more than 12 at the other store.

    The tacos were great, but Chatty was left with 16 tortillas.

    What to do? She couldn't bear to waste that many tortillas, but if she made them into chips, which she often does, we wouldn't have time to eat them before leaving for Mexico.

    Then, Chatty remembered the fabulous dish she discovered while in Rocky Point two years ago. It is actually designed to use leftovers - including tortillas - and while it is usually served at breakfast, Chatty thinks it is great any time of day. 

    It is called "chilequiles", and there are as many versions of it as there are recipes for chili. It's the sort of dish where almost any leftover will work - meats and vegetables and beans - all held together with slighlty stale tortillas, enchilada sauce, and cheese. A lot of people add eggs, too.

    Chatty had never made the dish, but she had eaten it for breakfast practically every day while in Rocky Point, so she decided to mix some up.

    One key is having the tortillas slightly "stale" - so that they dry out and are curling up a bit. It is suggested that you leave them out overnight, but Chatty wanted her chilequiles for dinner, so she just let them take the air all afternoon.

    First, however, she cut them into 1-inch pieces, then scattered them on the cutting board to let them dry and curl.

    When it came time to assemble, she diced one half of a large sweet onion and threw it into a mixing bowl.

    She flash-fried the tortilla pieces in three batches, putting each batch to drain on paper towels. The number of batches depends on the size of your pan, obviously. The main thing is that you don't want to crowd them. You don't have to use too much oil - just enough to crisp them up a bit. Each batch took about a minute - you do NOT want these overdone.

    She grated some hard white Mexican cheese - Cotija in this instance - but many cheeses would work - jack, cheddar, or that pre-shredded Mexican blend would all be good.

    Then, she added the (by now) cooled tortilla pieces to the onions in the bowl, poured in half of a LARGE can of green enchilada sauce (you can also use red, but the taste is completely different - both are good) and about half of the grated cheese. She stirred - you want it pretty soupy - so add more enchilada sauce if necessary - and poured it into a casserole. She topped it with the rest of the grated cheese, and put it in the oven, covered, at 350 for 25 minutes. Then, she turned off the oven, uncovered it, and let it sit in the cooling oven for about 5 minutes.

    It tasted EXACTLY like the wonderful stuff she had eaten in Mexico. She ate it with beans and a tomato salad.

    Since a couple of the places where she ate chilequiles were buffets, Chatty is fairly sure that you could make this whole thing on top of the stove and serve it immediately. Chatty just baked it because she wanted to put it in the oven and forget about it. You could also crisp up the tortilla pieces in the oven instead of frying. It wouldn't taste as authentic, but it would be lower in calories.

    If you like Mexican food, you should try this! An internet search turned up tons of variations - feel free to throw in leftover chicken, corn, beans, beef, green beans, zucchini, etc. - and by all means add a few beaten eggs if you want. You could also serve each portion with a poached or fried egg on top.

    Chatty realizes it's a bit silly to be making and eating Mexican food a week before she goes to Mexico and can get the "real thing" - but heck - when you have too many tortillas, you have to get creative.

    Salud!