Mmm... nachos

It was cold last night in Adelaide. It was so cold that when I got home from work I couldn't face the prospect of braving the elements again to secure some dinner. So I did the unthinkable: I tried to prepare a meal.

Unfortunately, it's been a while since I've been shopping and I was forced to work with only the ingredients I could pry from the darkest recesses of the pantry and the fridge. Having seen a fantastic episode of Iron Chef on the weekend, I dubbed my struggle to prepare an edible meal the 'share house empty fridge battle'. I knew I'd be racing against the clock. Soon enough my own laziness would get the better of me and I'd give up, settle down on the couch in front of the Simpsons and consume a packet of uncooked two-minute noodles.

Given the conditions, I'm reasonably proud of the result. I name this dish 'Nachos Improvisar'. You too can cook it if, one night alone, you find yourself missing a range of ingredients.

You need:
- 3/4 packet Doritos Nacho Cheese (open packet several weeks in advance for appropriate level of staleness)
- Chunk of gourmet red wine & garlic metwurst, expiry date unknown
- A sizeable portion of your flatmate's expensive fetta cheese
- 1/3 Jar of salsa. (whose is it? when was it opened? will it give me a horrible disease if I eat it?)
- American mustard to taste

Method:
Get a fairly large bowl. A clean one if available. Sprinkle a layer of corn chips into the bowl. Cut metwurst and fetta into cubes. Sprinkle some metwurst, fetta, salsa and mustard over the corn chips. Add more layers and repeat. I've always felt the secret to a good nachos is multiple layers. You don't want to enjoy the top half of your meal only to discover a bleak desert of chips waiting for you at the bottom with no accompanying topping. You should have left some topping to go with the chips at the bottom. But you didn't, did you? And now your whole evening is ruined.

Anyway, once layering is done, place bowl into microwave and heat until hot. Serve with that one bottle of Toohey's Old that's still in your fridge after your last party.

Needless to say, any variation on the above ingredients will improve the result. Plain corn chips would be better than cheese flavoured ones. Normal grated cheese beats the pants off fetta in this context. Metwurst- ...well, you get the idea.

The result:




The tasting:
It's certainly not the worst thing I've ever eaten, or even the worst thing I've ever cooked. True, the fetta clashes with the sweetness of the salsa. There's something just a little bit wrong about having metwurst in a dish like this. And in retrospect, adding mustard was just a mistake. But I ended my meal feeling happy, both because I was full and because I felt as though, in spite of the odds, I had used my own resourcefulness to triumph over nature.