Recipe: blue corn tortillas with mushrooms and queso fresco from restaurant Celia

Once, light-years ago, I was on vacation in California and discovered something I had never eaten before: blue tortilla chips. Wow! Many times tastier than the regular yellow variety, if you ask me. Often many times more expensive too, but I’m happy to pay that. Not that you see them much in the Netherlands – at least, not the truly delicious brands (tip: try them sometime!). So this is also really delicious: this dish with blue corn tortillas!

The recipe comes from restaurant Celia, where you can enjoy modern Californian cuisine: light, healthy and refined. Alongside these corn tortillas, for example, they serve calamari with padrón peppers, cauliflower with yuzu and feta, broccoli with peanuts and chili, steak with fennel kimchi, and cavatelli (pasta) with crab. Yes, that sounds good, and it tastes that way too (when the hospitality industry was closed but you could still eat in hotels, we visited Celia and had a great experience). We managed to get the recipe for those delicious corn tortillas.

How to make Celia’s blue corn tortillas

• First, make the roasted tomato spread: preheat the oven to 200C. Cut the red onion into quarters and place it in the preheated oven together with the jalapeño and tomatoes until everything is lightly roasted. Blend the ingredients together with the cilantro in a blender until smooth.
• Then make the poblano crema: roast the poblano peppers in the oven until lightly roasted and let them cool to room temperature. Remove the seeds and skin from the peppers and blend the peppers together with the sour cream until smooth and creamy.
• Now for the rest of the dish: cut the red onion into pieces and heat it in a frying pan with a little olive oil. Add the mushrooms and season with pepper and salt until the mushrooms are lightly fried. Then remove the mushrooms from the pan and heat the blue corn tortillas on both sides for 30 seconds in the pan.
• Place the tortillas next to one another on a large plate and spread the tomato paste in a circle in the center of each tortilla. Add the warm mushrooms, dollops of poblano crema, crumbled queso fresco, and garnish with cilantro and lime wedges. Squeeze lime over the tortilla to taste. Enjoy!

Wine tip: Ayala Rosé Majeur

A Californian Chardonnay would be the obvious choice, but a rosé is more exciting. More specifically: a rosé Champagne! Ayala’s Rosé Majeur is a blend of 50% Chardonnay, 40% Pinot Noir (of which, unusually, 6% is ‘still wine’), complemented by 10% Pinot Meunier. With its fruity freshness, this Champagne is not only a delicious bubbly to drink on its own, but also an excellent food wine! Rosé Champagne goes well not only with lamb, tuna steak – and the classic pairing with lobster – but can also handle spicy dishes perfectly. Wash down these blue corn tortillas with Mexican peppers with this delicious Ayala! Available through Wijnkring for €49.95.

Also read:

• 6 Amsterdam cafés where you can still simply get ground beef on your nachos
• Crazy delicious: how to make apple pie nachos
• Quickly make these easy loaded nachos for yourself!

Image: Ashkan Mortezapour