Chilaquiles Verdes

Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The bakery was open — we don't close for most holidays, because bread doesn't take days off and neither does Maria Elena — but the schools were closed and the children were home, and a house with five children and no school is a house that vibrates at a frequency only dogs can hear. Luis Jr. and Diego played video games. Isabella read. Sofia came to the bakery. Camila painted the bathroom wall with watercolors, which I discovered at 4 PM when I came home and the bathroom looked like a very small, very enthusiastic Picasso had moved in. I did not yell. I cleaned it. Some battles are not worth fighting, and a four-year-old's relationship with watercolors is one of them.

I've been thinking about MLK. About the speech. "I have a dream." Rosa had a dream too. Her dream was smaller — not a nation but a family, not justice but survival — but it was a dream, and she gave her life to it the way King gave his life to his, and both dreams were about the same thing in the end: making something better for the people who come after you. Rosa made it better for me. I am making it better for my children. That is the dream. Not a destination but a relay — you carry it as far as you can and then you hand it to the next runner and you pray they carry it farther.

Diego asked me about civil rights. He is learning about it in school and he wanted to know if Mexicans had civil rights too, or if it was just Black people and white people. I said: "Mijo, every person has civil rights. And every person has had to fight for them." He said: "Did you fight?" I said: "I crossed a border. That was my fight." He thought about this for a long time. Then he said: "That's a different kind of march." He is eight and he is making connections between the civil rights movement and immigration and I don't know if his teacher intended that lesson but Diego extracted it anyway because Diego extracts lessons the way miners extract gold — from rock, with effort, because the valuable things are never on the surface.

I made chilaquiles verdes for the family this week — fried tortilla chips simmered in tomatillo salsa until they soften, topped with crema, queso fresco, and fried eggs. Chilaquiles are the Mexican answer to every leftover tortilla and every morning that needs more than cereal. They are loud food — crunchy becoming soft, tangy and creamy and rich — and they wake you up the way coffee wakes you up, not gently but completely. Rosa made chilaquiles on Sundays when we were children, and the smell of tomatillo salsa frying in oil was the sound of Sunday the way church bells are the sound of Sunday in other families.

The bakery had a good week despite January. A local food blogger posted about our conchas on Instagram — a photograph of a pink concha with the caption "the best in El Paso" — and we got a wave of new customers who came in holding their phones, showing us the photo, asking if we were "the concha place." We are the concha place. We have always been the concha place. We just didn't know that the concha place was a thing that people searched for on their phones. Sofia said, "This is what I've been telling you — we need social media." She is eleven. She is right. I am thirty-nine. I am stubborn. We will compromise, which means Sofia will get an Instagram account for the bakery and I will pretend to understand it.

Sofia’s victory lap about the Instagram — she was so graciously, insufferably right — had me thinking about other women in my life who knew things before I was ready to hear them, and that led me straight back to Rosa and her Sunday chilaquiles, the ones that could pull you out of any mood and into something warmer. Some recipes carry people inside them, and this is one of those. I made a big batch that same week, partly because the new customers deserved to see what else we’re capable of, and partly because I needed the smell of tomatillo salsa in hot oil to remind me what kind of place we are.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 20 min | Total Time: 35 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb tomatillos, husked and rinsed
2 serrano peppers (or 1 jalapeño for milder heat), stems removed
3 cloves garlic, unpeeled
1/2 white onion, roughly chopped, plus thin-sliced rings for topping
1/2 cup fresh cilantro, loosely packed, plus more to garnish
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 tsp kosher salt, plus more to taste
2 tbsp neutral oil (vegetable or canola), divided
8 oz thick-cut tortilla chips (about 6 cups), or stale corn tortillas cut and fried
6 large eggs
1/2 cup Mexican crema (or sour cream thinned with 1 tbsp milk)
4 oz queso fresco, crumbled
1 avocado, sliced (optional)

Instructions

Char the salsa base. Place tomatillos, serrano peppers, and unpeeled garlic cloves on a dry comal or cast-iron skillet over high heat. Cook, turning occasionally, until charred and softened on all sides, about 8–10 minutes. Peel the garlic once cool enough to handle.
Blend the salsa verde. Transfer charred tomatillos, peppers, and peeled garlic to a blender. Add the chopped white onion, cilantro, broth, and 1 tsp salt. Blend until smooth but still slightly textured. Taste and adjust salt.
Fry the salsa. Heat 1 tbsp oil in a wide, deep skillet over medium-high heat. Carefully pour in the blended salsa — it will spatter. Cook, stirring, for 3–4 minutes until the salsa deepens in color and the raw smell softens.
Simmer the chips. Reduce heat to medium. Add the tortilla chips to the skillet and fold gently to coat. Simmer 3–5 minutes, folding occasionally, until chips have softened to your liking — some people like them just barely yielding, others like them fully collapsed into the salsa. Do not walk away; they move fast.
Fry the eggs. While the chips simmer, heat the remaining 1 tbsp oil in a separate non-stick pan over medium heat. Fry eggs sunny-side-up or over-easy, depending on preference, seasoning with salt.
Plate and top. Divide the sauced chips among plates. Top each portion with a fried egg, a drizzle of crema, a handful of crumbled queso fresco, sliced onion rings, and fresh cilantro. Add avocado slices alongside if using. Serve immediately — chilaquiles wait for no one.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chilaquiles Verdes — The Sunday Morning That Smells Like Home