¡Ay, caramba! Tortilla chips!

Mexican food is, I believe, a poorly understood cuisine here in England.  I am certainly no expert on cooking it, but I do love to wolf it down whenever I get the opportunity to try something that at least strives to be authentic.

Last nights culinary delight was by no means authentic, and probably not very Mexican at all, but I sat there, munching on my tortilla chips, revelling in the mental projection of my poncho, my droopy moustache and my sombrero. 

I am neither a polyglot nor proficient with the Spanish language - those which originate from the Latin base seem to evade my memory.  I do dabble, though, when on holiday and usually end up ordering something I didn't actually want.  Tortilla, as most words in Spanish seem, uses the "illa" part to denote a diminutive.  In this case, Tortilla means "small cake".  

 

The kind of "tortilla chips" we get are actually just corn chips, mass-made in some intensively automated factory in Barrow-in-Furness.  Real tortilla chips are made from corn tortilla's, pressed into discs and then deep fried to make them crispy.  After getting soaked at Selhurst Park yesterday I was in no mood to start experimenting, so I happily cracked open my bag of intensively made, non-authentic corn chips to make the following:

Corn chips with tomato salsa, refried beans and sour cream

This is just a matter of reconstruction (assuming you made the salsa earlier).

http://swlsk.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/asparagus-officinalis-end-of-april.html 

The chips are placed onto a plate, spoon some salsa over, some refried beans (I bought mine, you can probably hazard a guess where they are probably made), some finely chopped spring onions, and some some grated cheddar cheese.  Preheat your grill, grill the abomination for 2 minutes, until the cheese has just melted.  Finally, serve it with some ample dollops of soured cream.