Introduction: Nachos Frutales
Nachos frutales is a fun, healthy, and customizable spin on nachos. It works equally well as a snack for an individual fruit fan or a whole party of fruitophiles.
Step 1: Acquire Nacho Chips
You have two options for getting chips. Yay, options!
The first is just to buy the chips. Normal tortilla chips will work OK, but I think a slightly sweetened chip is a better fit. The good folks from "Food Should Taste Good" have some particularly nice options: sweet potato and chocolate are both yummy.
The second approach is to make your chips. Since I've tagged this snack as healthy, I'm avoiding the deep fryer, and recommend you bake tortilla chips. (If you live for deep frying, well, you can go that route too.)
Ingredients
Tortillas (corn, wheat, or flour... whatever floats your boat)
Cooking spray OR vegetable oil (e.g. peanut or corn; if you're feeling crazy, try coconut oil.)
White OR brown sugar
Directions
Preheat oven to 400F. If you're using oil, brush the tortillas lightly on both sides with some oil to help the chips crisp up and avoid sticking to the pan. Cut tortillas into strips or triangles or whatever shape you want your final chips to turn out. Unicorns? Why not! If you didn't use oil, spray a flat pan with cooking spray and lay out your tortilla pieces, and then spray the tortillas again with cooking spray. Otherwise, just spread out the tortillas. Sprinkle sugar lightly over the chips, and bake in the oven until crispy and a pretty shade of brown (~10 minutes).
The first is just to buy the chips. Normal tortilla chips will work OK, but I think a slightly sweetened chip is a better fit. The good folks from "Food Should Taste Good" have some particularly nice options: sweet potato and chocolate are both yummy.
The second approach is to make your chips. Since I've tagged this snack as healthy, I'm avoiding the deep fryer, and recommend you bake tortilla chips. (If you live for deep frying, well, you can go that route too.)
Ingredients
Tortillas (corn, wheat, or flour... whatever floats your boat)
Cooking spray OR vegetable oil (e.g. peanut or corn; if you're feeling crazy, try coconut oil.)
White OR brown sugar
Directions
Preheat oven to 400F. If you're using oil, brush the tortillas lightly on both sides with some oil to help the chips crisp up and avoid sticking to the pan. Cut tortillas into strips or triangles or whatever shape you want your final chips to turn out. Unicorns? Why not! If you didn't use oil, spray a flat pan with cooking spray and lay out your tortilla pieces, and then spray the tortillas again with cooking spray. Otherwise, just spread out the tortillas. Sprinkle sugar lightly over the chips, and bake in the oven until crispy and a pretty shade of brown (~10 minutes).
Step 2: Make Strawberry Salsa
Next step is to make your salsa. There is a lot of room for customization here, but here is something to start with:
Ingredients
Note: These quantities are rough... don't stress, you can't go wrong.
1 pint of strawberries
1 small jicama
2 Tablespoons lime juice
2 kiwis
Optional: fresh ginger
Instructions
Chop up the strawberries, kiwis, and jicama into chunks. Martha has some instructions on how to chop jicama if that's a foreign food to you. Pour in the lime juice, and if you're a ginger fan, add some (1 teaspoon) fresh grated ginger. Pop it in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.
Feel free to add other or additional fruit. Apple would make a fine jicama replacement, cherries are great, green grapes might be nice. Go wild.
Ingredients
Note: These quantities are rough... don't stress, you can't go wrong.
1 pint of strawberries
1 small jicama
2 Tablespoons lime juice
2 kiwis
Optional: fresh ginger
Instructions
Chop up the strawberries, kiwis, and jicama into chunks. Martha has some instructions on how to chop jicama if that's a foreign food to you. Pour in the lime juice, and if you're a ginger fan, add some (1 teaspoon) fresh grated ginger. Pop it in the refrigerator until you're ready to serve.
Feel free to add other or additional fruit. Apple would make a fine jicama replacement, cherries are great, green grapes might be nice. Go wild.
Step 3: Make Nacho Peach Dip
Next, we make our peach dip, which is supposed to look like nacho cheese... but you already knew that.
Ingredients
Greek yogurt (plain or vanilla)
2 peaches
Optional: honey
Directions
Remove the skin from the peaches. Sound like a pain? I did it by blanching, which means adding a small slit in the skin, boiling for a few minutes, and than shocking in ice water. The skin comes right off. (Here's a video demonstration of blanching.) Then cut up the peach into chunks and toss it into a blender until it's properly pureed. Add greek yogurt to your blender in small batches until you get a nice nacho cheese color and texture. If your peaches are sweet and you like the tangy taste of yogurt, you can stop here. Otherwise, add and blend in some honey to taste.
If peaches ain't your thing, try this with a different orange-colored fruit puree. Mangoes would definitely work, and apricots might be good too.
Ingredients
Greek yogurt (plain or vanilla)
2 peaches
Optional: honey
Directions
Remove the skin from the peaches. Sound like a pain? I did it by blanching, which means adding a small slit in the skin, boiling for a few minutes, and than shocking in ice water. The skin comes right off. (Here's a video demonstration of blanching.) Then cut up the peach into chunks and toss it into a blender until it's properly pureed. Add greek yogurt to your blender in small batches until you get a nice nacho cheese color and texture. If your peaches are sweet and you like the tangy taste of yogurt, you can stop here. Otherwise, add and blend in some honey to taste.
If peaches ain't your thing, try this with a different orange-colored fruit puree. Mangoes would definitely work, and apricots might be good too.
Step 4: Make Sweet Guacamole
I never considered using avocado in a sweet dish until I went to Indonesia, where avocados are commonly used in fruit smoothies and milkshakes. Making a sweet version of guacamole was the motivation behind these nachos, and in my opinion, it's the best of the dips. (P.S. You should also try to make an avocado milkshake. Here is a good recipe.)
Ingredients
2 Avocados
2-3 teaspoons condensed milk
Cherries. I used bing cherries because they've got some yellow and red in them, but whatevs.
Optional: jicama
Directions
Clean and cube the avocados. De-pit* the cherries and cut into small pieces. Pour condensed milk and mix. (If you have some extra jicama, feel free to chop that up and throw it in too.)
* If you don't have one of those fancy cherry de-pitter gizmos, a poor man's version is to put a cherry on a beer bottle and poke the pit out with a chop stick.
Ingredients
2 Avocados
2-3 teaspoons condensed milk
Cherries. I used bing cherries because they've got some yellow and red in them, but whatevs.
Optional: jicama
Directions
Clean and cube the avocados. De-pit* the cherries and cut into small pieces. Pour condensed milk and mix. (If you have some extra jicama, feel free to chop that up and throw it in too.)
* If you don't have one of those fancy cherry de-pitter gizmos, a poor man's version is to put a cherry on a beer bottle and poke the pit out with a chop stick.
Step 5: Serve and Eat!
You know what to do...