"New Mexican" Thanksgiving Chilaquiles

OK, so this is what I have been making lately. We are really talking about a process here, more than a specific recipe.  If you have turkey, fine.  If you have beef, pork, lamb, or no meat at all, it does not matter.

I am making mine in a 1 quart casserole dish, so scale up or down according to quantity. I usually see 3 solid meals from that quart dish.

• 2-3 good handfuls of coarse corn tortilla chips or oven dried corn tortillas.
• 1 cup of leftover, or reserved, roasted squash or pumpkin. I have been using the Autumn Frost, but any will work.
• 1 cup or so of cooked leftover turkey, pork, beef, shrimp even, or no meat at all.
• A handful of cut up Tuscan kale or spinach, is a good add. Other vegetables leftover from Thanksgiving dinner will be good too
• Quarter pound, or so, of shredded cheese.  Typical would be a Jack or mozzarella, but any melting cheese, or none at all, will work out fine.

• 2 cups raw, or in my case frozen, tomatoes
• 1-2 hot pepper - fresh or dried. Cayenne are great. Chipotle will be hotter, and is classic
• 2 small onions sliced into strips

Sauté the onions with a little bit of oil over medium heat.  

While the onions cook, cut the stem end off the peppers and shake out and discard the seeds dropping the peppers into a blender cup with the tomatoes. Blend well, and pour over the cooking onions.

Allow the sauce to cook for a little while until reduced and thoroughly cooked, season with salt.

If you want garlic, add it. Have some leftover mushrooms, go ahead. This is your next day dish. If it sounds like a good add, it probably is.  

In my one quart casserole dish, I lay in a handful, maybe 10ish chips, a few spoonfuls of the cooked squash and leftover protein of choice, shredded or diced, both randomly dropped into the dish by the spoonful.

Another layer of chips and spoonfuls of squash, greens and meat, then a few more chips on top.  If you want to layer in the cheese, that is perfectly acceptable.  

Ladle the sauce over the chip mixture in the dish, not worrying if every bit of each chip is submerged in the sauce, but get them wet. They will settle in as the chips soften, leaving a few prized chewy bits over the top.

Sprinkle what cheese you may have left over the top (or not,) and bake until the chips settle down, and most of the sauce has been absorbed.

Assembled with the sauce already hot, which I suggest, cooking time is about 15 to 20 minutes at 350 degrees. I usually turn the broiler on in the last few minutes to brown the top, but totally a choice.  

This is a substantial dish, often eaten for breakfast, in which case, consider frying a few eggs. Sour cream is a lovely optional garnish, and I almost always have a bit of shredded cabbage or lettuce, and raw onion, maybe radishes, tossed with lime juice, to garnish the top and balance the richness.