Mexican Tostada Salad

I was worried about the machismo of making a girly salad for my mates. Well bless the Mexicans for solving this age old crisis of man-confidence. This butch salad is the perfect way to use up all the little bits of meat, veg and salad material in the fridge and is a doddle to make.   The essentials to this salad are a stale-ish tortilla (flour or corn), refried beans, rough salsa (explained later) and sour cream with which to dress the dish. Onto this you may throw anything from avocado, peppers, salad leaves, chicken, steak or sausage. Basically use your imagination, this dish is a rare case where more is actually more. You are unlikely to have refried beans kicking about so canned is fine. I used some pre-cooked black beans that I had in the freezer (you can also get cooked black beans in a tin) and then reheated with some fried onion, garlic, cumin and corriander and then blitzed to a smoothish paste. 

  

As with many things in life, no-one is going to be impressed with a small erection (can I say that?), so stack your salad as high as you can make it. For two:

Ingredients

Old tortilla, flour or corn - 2

Veg oil - enough to shallow fry the tortillas

Refried beans - 100g

Sour Cream - 150ml

Baby Gem - 1, washed and shredded

Red Onion - 1 small, peeled and cut into thin rings

Chicken - 100g, picked and shredded/chopped

Avocado - 1, peeled, stoned and sliced

Chorizo sausage - 1 or 2, peeled and sliced

Fat ripe tomato - 2 large, deseeded

Corriander - 1 bunch, chopped

Lime juice - 1 or 2 limes

Red chilli - 1 or 2, seeds in or out (your choice), finely sliced

Garlic - 1 clove finely minced

Method:

Fry your tortillas in the oil until golden and crispy, drain and keep warm. Discard the oil and in the same pan gently fry the chicken (if raw) and chorizo until cooked. While the meat is cooking, make a rough salsa by mixing together the tomato, garlic, coriander, lime juice, chilli and seasoning.

The assembly is easy, glue your crisp tortilla to the plate with a little refried bean mix to stop it sliding about on the way to the table and toppling your mighty salad. Spread more beans on top of the tortilla then just layer all the ingredients, liberally dressing with sour-cream and salsa between the layers. I finished mine by drizzling with the remainder of the chorizo oil from the frying pan.