Purslane chilaquiles cooking into yumminess.
Chilaquiles are “casserole dishes of varying ingredients” made of leftover tortillas or chips. According to Sunset Mexican Cookbook, a 1969 publication I picked up for 50 cents at the Fairplay Library book sale last summer, they are sometimes called “Poor Man’s Dish” for this reason.
The same cookbook explains that Mexican cuisine occasionally utilizes the “strange” vegetable, “verdolagas,” which is Spanish for purslane! If you don’t know purslane (Portulaca oleracea) already, you should. This garden weed is extremely nutritious raw, supposedly containing more omega 3 fatty acids than some fish oils. It is so ubiquitous that people weed it out of their gardens and toss it into the compost heap without a second thought. Purslane’s fleshy leaves are also common alongside sidewalks, where the plant can often be found growing in abundance.
Since purslane is about to be the wild ingredient of the month at Hunger & Thirst’s July recipe round up, and since my life is about to take a very busy twist, I figured I’d better throw some purslane into my chilaquiles right quick and bang out a recipe before I start going completely insane. Read the rest of this entry
