While little is known about The Nachonomicon, the unspeakable book of all nacho knowledge that man was not meant to know, other than of its unseemly reputation, even less is known about its author, “The Mad Monk” Raul Alhazredo.
Alhazredo was said to have been a missionary who came over from Europe during the Spanish conquest of Mexico in the 1500’s with the singular goal of converting the heathens of the New World to Christianity. He immediately set out to spread the word of The Lord to the darkest corners of Mexico, ignoring the warnings of the natives as pagan superstition, only to find himself slowly slipping into insanity as his faith in both religion and humankind was rocked by encounters with the otherworldly things which dwelt there. His final expedition of conversion was to find the fabled city of Aztlán which was rumored to be located somewhere in the vast Chihuahuan Desert, but it was a journey he would return from barely alive, his mind reeling.
No one knew if he managed to find Aztlán, or what happened to him there if he did, as his ramblings as he stumbled back into town were barely intelligible at best, and questioning-man’s-place-in-the-universe terrifying at worst. There were mutterings of him encountering the Tlazolteotl Bruja Cults, consulting with pus and stabbing demons, and all around acting very unmonklike. He retreated from the church in town where he had previously slept and took up in an abandoned shack deep in the Sierra Madres.
Infrequently he would return to town to buy strange herbs and spices and was rumored to be compiling a book of unspeakable cooking methods with hints of a legendary food that would reshape the face of the world. Local chefs would refuse to sell to him and children would avoid the area of his shack after sundown. Townsfolk claimed they could hear strange chanting and noises coming from its direction on nights of the full moon, as well as long, strange, footprints originating from nowhere and heading in its general direction.
The story of his death, torn apart by invisible creatures in the middle of a restaurant in town, is an obvious exaggeration and most likely a cover for his murder at the hands of the fed up and superstitious locals, what is fact is that his remains were deep fried in oil and left out in the desert for the beasts to consume. Afterwards a few brave townsfolk went up to his shack in the mountains only to find pages upon pages of a manuscript labeled as El Libro De Sabrosos Nachos (The Book of Delicious Nachos) and a large hole in the floor of it leading down into an inky black cave system. a few of the most foolish men climbed down into it and found the cavern crawling with gigantic mezcal worms, and a slimy hole dropping down into utter blackness from which no bottom could be determined. After a torch was dropped down and disappeared a maniacal laughter could be heard issuing from it and they quickly fled the scene. They used black powder to destroy the entrance of the cavern and burnt the house to the ground. Finally clear of “The Mad Monk”, the town celebrated with a gigantic fiesta in the town square, which was quickly silenced as a massive sinkhole swallowed it whole.
But the cleansing fire did not destroy all as at least one copy of the blasphemous El Libro De Sabrosos Nachos survived the blaze and made its way to Europe to be translated by numerous practitioners of the Dark Culinary Arts and renamed The Nachonomicon. While it can not be confirmed, Hákral, Balut, and Tacos de Nana are all recipes rumored to have sprung from the madness of the foul tome. Most disturbing though, while not explicitly mentioned, the fingerprints of nachos are all over the pages of the grimoire, detectable not in their presence, but instead in their absence. While most of the recipes seem to be secreted away, foodstuffs such as the Turducken and KFC’s The Double Down are proof that some of its content is still slipping out. Woe to the chef that tries to make some of its most advanced recipes, and god help us if someone like Guy Fieri gets his hands on a copy...
The Jean Paul Baptiste D’Ys de Gevaudan translation of The Nachonomicon on display in the dangerous books section in the Library of Congress.
