Nancy's Best Nachos With Mexican Pulled Chicken and Gaucamole

Well I don't know about your part of the world, but in mine it is feeling thoroughly Autumnul. It's dark now when I get up and dusky when I'm leaving work, and there's a sharp chill in the wind, not to mention the onflux of rain we have been hit with.

All these combined mean that now is comfort food season. I want big hot bowls of soup for lunch and carb-tastic tummy warming meals for dinner, and I want them to include some of my favourite fall flavours - pumpkin and squash, ginger, cranberries, apples, carrots and parsnips and nuts of all kinds just to mention a few.

Another of my favourite things to eat when the weather has turned brisk and grey is chilli, it warms you up from the inside out and has even been shown to promote a feeling of wellbeing, which is especially useful in a season where less sun = less vitmain d to keep your spirits up.

Now I can't stand anything too hot, I am a bit of a chilli whuss in all truth - I like the flavour of chilli more than the heat, and I think South American cooking does this the best. Mexican recipes often use dried chillies which are then soaked in hot water and usually blended into sauces or moles (no not the snuffly grey animal) which can have many many ingredients - as is often in foody cultures families have there own recipes which are handed down and are often a closely guarded secret.

Trying to decide what to make from the wide range of Mexican dishes was a tough one, so I tried to think of what I like to do when the weather turns that involve food and then it came to me - I love to cosy up on the sofa with Pete and Cleo eating something delicious and watching movies.

So what do you eat while watching movies, other than popcorn and naughty big bags of chocolates? Nachos! I know the ones at the cinema are foul, drippy plastic cheese and 'salsa' that looks like runny jam (bleugh!) but these babies will knock your socks off and are really not difficult or that time consuming to make. Of course they are pretty calorific (cheese, sour cream, tortilla chips...) but they are the perfect occasional treat for a movie night in with your friends.

Nancy's Best Nachos With Mexican Pulled Chicken and Gaucamole
Serves 4

Mexican Pulled Chicken Ingredients
1 tbsp olive oil
2 small or 1 large red onion, sliced into thin rings
1 clove garlic, crushed
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed and diced very small
2 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dried oregano
pinch of salt and ground black pepper
2 large chicken breasts, skin removed
1 x 142g can of tomato puree
the juice of half a lime

Guacamole Ingredients
2 ripe avocados, diced
1/2 red chilli, seeds removed and diced very small
2 tbsp finely chopped coriander
the juice of half a lime

Nacho Ingredients
1 1/2 bags of slightly salted tortilla chips
100g grated mozzarella
100g grated cheddar
1 x 150ml tub sour cream
2 spring onions, finely chopped
1 tbsp finely chopped coriander

Mexican Pulled Chicken Method
Fry the onions, garlic and diced chilli in the olive oil in a deep pan over a medium heat for two minutes, then add the paprika, cumin, oregano and s&p and cook for a further few minutes until softened and starting to crisp up slightly.

Add the two chicken breasts and cook until they are coloured all over, then add the tomato puree and pour on enough water to just cover the chicken. Put a lid on the pot and cook on medium high heat for 35-45 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and tender.

Remove the chicken from the pot and set aside for a moment. Turn the heat down to medium and continue to cook the sauce while you pull the chicken. This is done by taking two forks and literally pulling apart the meat so it looks shredded.

When the sauce has reduced by half add the chicken back to the pan and stir until everything is covered. Set aside and start to build your nachos.

Nacho Construction
Preheat the oven to 200 C / 400 F.

Spread the tortilla chips on a deep sided baking tray and then cover with the pulled chicken. Now take the two cheese and sprinkle them over the top so everything is evenly covered.

Bake the nachos for ten minutes until they are warmed through and the cheese is melted.

Gaucamole Method
Do this while the nachos are baking - just mix all the ingredients together and leave to one side for the flavours to develop for a few minutes.

Final Nacho Construction
Spread the soured cream over the hot nachos and then pour over the guacamole before sprinkling over the spring onions and coriander.

Serve with a cold Mexican beer and a good movie!

Notes
This pulled chicken can be used for many more recipes and is a great weeknight standby. Serve it in buns a la pulled pork sandwiches, roll into flour tortillas like a fajita, stir through some pasta or use in place of mince in a Mexican style lasagna.

The chicken can also be made in advance which would mean making these when guests are coming over would be a doddle - you'd just need the ten minutes of cheese melting and sauce daubing and you're there! Just keep the chicken refirgerated in an air-tight container, but use within a day of cooking - you can't be too careful with poultry.

Feel free to use different cheeses in this recipe too, I just used what I had on hand - the mozzarella is always good as you get the 'stringy' factor and it's nice and creamy against the tomatoey chicken.

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork with Spicey Honey Rum Barbecue Sauce

I love Southern American cooking and music and barbecue is one of the quintessential southern tastes, they take it to almost fanatical lengths with many hugely popular barbecue competitions and restaurants across the country. Over here in the UK we seem to be lacking them - I have heard of one London based place but that's about it, so to get my fix I have to do it home made. Having no garden makes this a little difficult but lately I've seen several recipes floating around for indoor cooked bbq style food.

One recipe I have seen a lot of but never actually tried is pulled pork - slow cooked pork butt/shoulder that becomes so tender you can literally ease it into shreds with two forks. This is usually made in a smoker on the barbecue but can be done in a slow cooker to great effect - I confess I don't actually own one, I've never seen a slow cooker recipe I've ever wanted to make before, so I borrowed one from Pete's mum.

The pork came out beautifully, I had a 1.5kg piece of pork shoulder which I but into three and cooked for 5 hours on high. When the timer went I grabbed two forks and tried to pull out a piece but it literally fell apart as I tried - perfectly succulent and tender! I probably could have squeezed another 1.5kg in the slow cooker I had, but then I recon the cooking time would have been 8 or 9 hours at least. My piece made enough pork to fill 8 bread rolls generously - I could only manage to eat one roll it was so filling!

This would be really great to have as part of a bbq buffet, and as you do it in the slow cooker it doesn't take up any more room on the grill. It is sure to impress, especially with homemade honey rum barbecue sauce - I think I'm going to have to bottle up a supply so we never have to buy any again!

Served up in some tasty seeded buns with a good dollop of creamy coleslaw this is a perfect meal - remember to put out a bowl of extra sauce, people are sure to want some! (It's great on chips!)

Slow Cooker Pulled Pork with Spicey Honey Rum Barbecue Sauce
Makes 8 generously filled rolls

Pulled Pork Ingredients
1.5kg pork shoulder/butt

25g dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp maldon salt
3/4 tbsp garlic granules
1/2 tbsp ground black pepper
1 heaped tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp coarse grain mustard
1/2 tsp worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp maggi liquid seasoning / liquid smoke
1/4 cup red wine vinegar
1/4 cup cider vinegar

2 medium onions, sliced into think rings
2 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped

Spicey Honey Rum Barbecue Sauce Ingredients
250ml honey rum
250ml tomato ketchup (low sugar if possible)
60g dark muscovado sugar
60ml cider vinegar
1 tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp light soy sauce
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
1 tbsp maggi liquid seasoning
1 tbsp worcestershire sauce
60ml full fat coca cola
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp english mustard
1 tsp smoked paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

3 cloves of garlic, minced
20g butter
salt and pepper

Pulled Pork Method

THE NIGHT BEFORE
Cut the pork shoulder into three roughly equal sized pieces and place into a strong ziplock food bag. Mix all the ingredients except the onion and garlic cloves in a bowl and then pour into the bag with the meat. Seal the bag and squish it around a bit so everything gets nicely coated, then place in the fridge to marinate overnight.

ON THE DAY OF SERVING
Remove the marinating pork from the fridge and set to one side. Chop the onions and garlic cloves and place in the bottom of the slow cooker followed by the pieces of pork. Next pour over the marinade from the ziplock bag and place on the slow cookers lid.

Cook on high power for 5 hours, then remove the pieces of meat to a plate or tray and shred with two forks - if the meat does not shred easily it will need more cooking so place it back into the slow cooker for another hour and try shredding again.

Discard the liquid and onions (you do not need these) and place the pork back into the turned off slow cooker until serving time.

Barbecue Sauce Method
Place all ingredients into a saucepan (preferably non-stick) and mix well. Simmer over a medium to low heat for 20-25 minutes until the sauce has thickened, remove and throw away the pieces of onion, and place in a bowl or bottle until needed.

Once simmered down and thickened I had around 400ml of sauce.

To Serve
Pour two thirds of the barbecue sauce over the shredded pork and mix until it is all coated. If needed, cook on medium for a further 15 minutes until heated through.

Place a generous mound of meat into a seeded roll and serve with some good quality creamy coleslaw and a pickle on the side.

Notes
This recipe is great value as it will feed about 8 people with a piece of meat that costs around £5.00.

We were given our honey rum as a gift last time Pete's parents went on holiday but I have seen it in several off licenses and a few supermarkets. Any nice sweet spirit will do - bourbons are always good in barbecue and I think a dark rum would work well too.

Maggi liquid seasoning is available in many supermarkets in the world foods section, it is a little bottle with a bright yellow lable so you shouldn't miss it.

If you want to save time, you can use a store bought barbecue sauce - we like the Jack Daniels range that you can buy in most supermarkets.

And this is just a photo of some cupcakes I made for Pete to take in to his colleagues at work. The ones with the red chocolate hearts are triple chocolate and the others are double chocolate mocha.