We're going to make italian nachos... and for that we need some grilled chicken, alfredo sauce and nacho toppings. You will want to make these...
My hero-of-a-hubby and I first enjoyed these in Dallas at a Johnny Carino's restaurant... and we fell in love, with the nachos that is (as we were already in love with each other - obviously). We were in Dallas for my brother's wedding... and jealous they had a Carino's and we didn't.
Lucky us, they eventually opened a Carino's restaurant near us in Southern California and we got to go back and enjoy it again and again... to the point that I finally started making them at home. Sadly they recently closed their location near us... but we don't mind, I'm making my twist on our favorite Carino dishes in my own kitchen now...
Here's how we do the italian nachos. Start with wonton wrappers, cut in half to form triangles. (I used about half a package, or 30-40 wonton wrappers for two large dinner plates of nachos.)
Once the canola oil is heated up to frying temperatures then you can start frying the wonton wrappers, several at a time. Fry until lightly browned and then flip them over. With a spider remove them to a dish lined with paper towels (to soak up any extra oil). Continue with all of the wonton wrappers until they are all fried.
While you're working on the wonton wrappers grill up some chicken breasts. You'll see that I cut the chicken breasts in half. They cook a bit faster this way... and that suits me just fine.
Once they were on the grill I sprinkled them with garlic salt and black pepper. They cooked for about 3 minutes on each side... once they got flipped over they cooked for about 2 minutes. Nice and fast, eh?!
In the meantime, most of the wonton wrappers are ready... every now and then I sprinkled them with some kosher salt. And then they just sat over here and waited for their nacho destiny.
In the meantime I started the quick and easy alfredo sauce. This uses a block of cream cheese, half a stick of butter, parmesan cheese, milk, nutmeg, and kosher salt/pepper.
It's as easy as this... cube the butter and cream cheese. Place the cubes in a medium sized saucepan (over medium low heat), add milk and parmesan cheese and stir until everything is melted and smooth.
Add the kosher salt, black pepper and freshly grated nutmeg to taste. Allow the sauce to sit over low heat, stirring every few minutes, until you're ready to use it.
Tonight my hero-of-a-hubby was helping with the prep work... see?! There are his manly hands slicing up some cute lil' pepperoncinis... yum!!!
And to give him a bit more credit... he also did 2 loads of dishes tonight (lucky me!), prepped most of the misc ingredients (also known as "mise en place"), manned the frying wonton wrappers, and looked over my shoulder each step of the way! We had fun doing this together tonight! (I'm one lucky girl!!!)
Lastly we begin the assembly... let's work on the first layer of "chips", sliced chicken, alfredo sauce and toppings of choice...
And we finish it off with just one more layer of all of these good things...
He likes only a few pepperoncinis and black olives, and no tomatoes...
But me? Load 'em up! I love the pepperoncinis, black olives, diced tomatoes... and I typically like cripier chips. So we made our own plates...
Johnny Carino's also offered them with crumbled italian sausage, which we did not use tonight... but it only makes these nachos better. There's always next time...
In the meantime... here's the recipe for the alfredo... enjoy!!!
Favorite Alfredo Sauce
Recipe courtesy Lori Tisdale
Ingredients
8 ounces cream cheese, cut into small squares
3/4 cup parmesan cheese, grated
¼ cup butter, cut into small squares
½ cup milk
Pinch of salt, black pepper and nutmeg
Instructions
Place medium saucepan over medium-low heat. Combine cream cheese, Parmesan, butter and milk, stirring constantly until smooth. Add salt, pepper and nutmeg to taste.
Leftovers freeze well.
enjoy your time in the kitchen...
1 comment:
Yum! Thanks for sharing! I think I will have try that now!
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