Layering up the ingredients to make melted cheesy, spiced beef and bean nachos below. 

Hot out of the oven and ready to eat as a casual Sunday night dinner.


My children have been nagging me to make nachos. According to them, I am “…the only mother who has never made this meal for us! ” True. However I do make an incredible variety of tasty, cross cultural dishes that satisfy their appetite from breakfasts to dinners and everything in between. My children are far from deprived. To settle the nacho nagging once and for all I made a large baking pan’s worth this evening. Now I should stress that this is my version of Nachos, it’s not exactly authentic but it does have the required layers of stone ground corn-chips, melted cheese, spiced beef and beans. 

As I was assembling this dish, my daughter Jana enthusiastically described how much she enjoyed the nachos prepared by the mother of one of her school friends. “The best nachos, ever!” she added. Nothing like working under the watchful eye and overhanging pressure of family members. 

I am happy to say my nachos were a hit! The baking dish was cleared quickly with only a couple of corn chip crumbs remaining. 

I did make the point of explaining to my children that this is a once-in-a-blue-moon meal because I am not in the habit of regularly preparing food that features corn-chips as a key ingredient. 

I used thin, plain corn chips that I found at the Norton Street Grocer in Leichhardt. Instead of using sour cream, I added dollops of thick, Greek yoghurt to add a little zingy flavour and to balance out the fat content in the corn-chips. 

My Sunday Night Nachos to serve 6 – 7 people

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves garlic crushed
1 medium carrot grated
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika
dried chilli flakes – 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon depending on how much heat you are after. 
sea salt to taste
500 grams beef mince
420 gram can of baked beans
100 ml water
500 ml bottle of tomato passata
300 grams stone ground corn-chips
350 grams grated cheese (I used packaged, shredded cheese which was a mixture of mozzarella, parmesan and cheddar)
300 grams plain Greek style yoghurt (or if you prefer, the same amount of sour light cream)
1 bunch coriander leaves, washed, dried and chopped coarsely

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan-forced. 

Line  a large baking tray (the kind you would use for a family roast) with baking paper. Make sure the baking paper is a little bit longer than the pan so that it folds up the inside edges of the pan. This will prevent the cheese sticking to the metal and makes washing up a lot easier. 

Heat up the olive oil and add the garlic, carrot and spices. Stir for a minute, then add the mince. Break this up into very small pieces with a cooking spoon. Season to taste. Cook this mixture over a medium heat until all the mince has turned brown and the moisture has almost disappeared. This should take about 5 – 7 minutes. 

Add the baked beans, passata and water, bring briefly to the boil and then reduce the heat so that the mixture is simmering. This needs to cook for 15 minutes with the lid ON. 

In the meantime, arrange the first layer of corn-chips over the bottom of your baking pan. Each corn-chip should overlap slightly. 

When the meat mixture is ready, spoon this evenly over the corn-chips. Then, dollop over the yoghurt, sprinkle the coriander and then the cheese as pictured above. Repeat this process two more times. 

Place in the oven for 15 minutes until the cheese has completed melted and the top is golden brown. 

Best served warm with a crispy iceberg or cos lettuce salad.