Chilaquiles Verdes con Pollo

This is a Ciudad de Mexico dish. Chilaquiles exist in other states, Sinaloa puts machaca on them, Guanajuato dresses them with mole, but the chilaquiles verdes con pollo eaten in the fondas of CDMX every morning from six to eleven are what people mean when they say chilaquiles in Mexico. This is breakfast. Not a snack. Not nachos. Breakfast.

The dish was invented to use yesterday's tortillas. That is not a footnote, it is the recipe. A fresh tortilla makes bad chilaquiles. You need the dry, day-old tortilla cut into quarters, fried to a real crisp, and then bathed in salsa fast enough that the center still has crunch when it hits the plate. The Mexican word for this is chilaquiles bien tronadores, well-crunchy. The opposite is chilaquiles aguados, soggy chilaquiles, and that is a failure no one in CDMX will forgive.

The salsa is tomatillo, serrano, white onion, garlic, and epazote. Epazote is not optional. Epazote is the herb that anchors the dish in the Valley of Mexico, the herb that grows in the cracks of patios and along roadsides from Xochimilco to Tepoztlan. Without it, you have a green salsa from anywhere. With it, you have chilaquiles verdes from CDMX.

My mother made these every Saturday morning with the leftover tortillas from the week. She would fry them in lard, blend the salsa while the chiles were still warm from the boil, and pile the plates with crema and onion and a fried egg on top. She would say: "This is a poor woman's breakfast that the rich could not improve." She was right. Saber cocinar es saber vivir.