Kylie Minogue Burritos

In a previous blog I mused how some dishes from countries outside the English-speaking world (ie largely the very best food on the planet) sound so much more exotic and exciting in their native language. One fantastic example, spaghetti puttanesca, the wonderful, rich Italian pasta dish of tomatoes, olives, anchovies and capers, literally means "prostitutes' spaghetti". It's so called because it's made with tinned ingredients from the pantry rather than fresh produce which a wholesome and dutiful housewife would supposedly use. Not having to work into the night, she couldn't go the market of a morning and get all the ingredients needed for more fancy recipes. Personally, I find this all very misogynistic and judgemental. If you can turn out a fantastic pasta sauce like puttanesca from what you find in your pantry, no matter what you do for a living,  you're not a whore, you're a goddess.

Another great example of a dish in its native language that sounds better than it would do in English is that wonderful, oven-baked tortilla packed with rice and other stuff, the burrito. The name is Spanish for "small donkey" (apparently because it looks like the packs worn by donkeys) or, as I prefer, "little ass" and since I've always been a fan of Kylie Minogue, well, sometimes these things just write themselves.

It would be rude not to.
The picture is from the Mail online but I'll link directly to the website of that shitty rag over my dead body or perhaps the threat of legal action

See? You wouldn't get this on the Great British Menu. On there they serve up fish, chips and mushy peas in a fucking chamber pot accompanied by croutons skewered on the bristles of a toilet brush and it's described as "playful". Playful my hairy, ginger balls. I'll tell you what would be playful. If you coated your collective Michelin stars with Tabasco sauce and stuck them up your arses lengthwise, you bunch of pretentious bellends.

I wouldn't mind, but the programme is all about producing a menu for some function attended by the Queen. She's 90, for fuck's sake. Most 90 year-olds are just happy to be alive  and actually physically eating without having food given through a tube. She's probably not bothered if the dinner you made is supposed to be ironic as long as it's not got any bones in (or isn't getting delivered by speeding Mercedes through a French road tunnel). More to the point, for the purposes of this blog, nobody on that show has actually done anything in honour of Kylie Minogue's bum.

Anyway (as most of the final paragraphs of my preambles tend to begin), this is yet another Tex-Mex creation (see also chilli con carne and fajitas), and as such, essentially a bastardised version of peasant food, emasculated for the palettes of people of white European heritage. While it is a bit of a pain in the arse to make, with several different components to prepare, as well as producing shitloads of washing up, it is actually worth the effort.

TIMING
Preparation:
Rice - 15 minutes
Refried beans - 10 minutes
Salsa - 10 minutes
Chicken - 5 minutes plus at least one hour marination

Cooking:
Rice - 20 minutes
Refried beans - 10 minutes
Chicken - 20 minutes
Burrito - 30 minutes

INGREDIENTS
Rice
100g fresh tomatoes (about 5 cherry tomatoes), peeled and chopped
½ an onion, finely chopped
1 clove of garlic, crushed
Zest and juice of 1 lime
1 red chilli, finely chopped
½ vegetable stock cube
1 small mug rice
½ tsp cumin seeds
Handful of sliced pickled jalapeños, chopped
1 mug water

Salsa roja (see this post for recipe)

Refritos frijoles (refried beans)
50g borlotti beans, mashed
½ a medium-sized onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
Salt and pepper
Dash Tabasco sauce
2 tbsp oil

Chicken
4-6 boneless chicken thighs or breast fillet, cut into 2cm strips
½ a medium onion, sliced
100g mushrooms, sliced
½ sweet pepper (red, orange or yellow), cut into strips
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp Cholula pepper sauce
1 tsp chipotle paste
Dash Tabasco sauce
100 ml dry white wine

Grated cheese
2 large flour tortillas

RECIPE
For the chicken, add the wine and chipotle paste to a bowl.

Drop in the chicken pieces, stir well and leave to marinate for an hour or so, enough time to prepare the other components of the burrito.

Prepare the rice by frying up the onion and garlic until soft.

Add the lime zest, chilli, jalapeños and cumin and carry on frying for another couple of minutes.

Add the tomatoes and crumble in the stock cube before stirring well.

Add the rice and stir well to coat the grains.

Pour in the water, stir gently and heat to boiling.

Turn the heat right down, cover, and leave for 10 minutes before turning the heat completely off.

Leave to stand on the hob until needed in making up the burrito.

Prepare the salsa roja according to the recipe here. (It's basically chopped tomatoes, onions, chillies, cumin seeds, oregano, salt, pepper and balsamic vinegar)

La Salsa

Prepare the beans by adding the oil to a pan and frying the onion and garlic for 10 minutes until soft.

Add salt, pepper and the dash of tabasco.

Stir in the mashed beans and allow to warm through.

For the chicken, add 1tbsp oil to the pan and fry the onion and garlic for 10 minutes.

Add the mushrooms and pepper for 5 more minutes.

Add the dry spices (cumin and coriander) for another couple of minutes.

Finally throw in the chicken and the marinade to allow the chicken to braise for 10-15 minutes until cooked.

Make sure any liquid from the marinade is reduced down to a syrupy consistency.

Chicken

Lay out a tortilla on a good sized sheet of foil on a flat surface.

Add a layer of rice, a handful of cheese, a few spoons of salsa roja and of beans and finally the chicken on top.

Pre-oven loading

Place the second tortilla on top of the first and tuck it round the package.

Wrap the foil around the burrito to cover, place in am oven-proof dish and put in a pre-heated oven at 180º for 20 minutes, then open the foil and bake for a further 10 minutes.

Makes one huge burrito which is enough for two or one greedy bastard

Get your laughing gear round that, Pedro

NOTES
This recipe is actually a bit of a pain in the arse to put together as it has so many things to make. It's worth it, though. as it tastes great when complete. Besides, each batch of salsa, refried beans and rice  make a great part of dinner the next day (eg with something like fajitas) or to make a reasonable lunch in their own right. The rice will probably freeze quite nicely if you are so inclined but don't bother trying to freeze the salsa or it would turn into some reddish-coloured slurry

I've made this with a variety of chilli sauces because they all add their own bit to the dish or perhaps it's just because I'm THAT kind of foodie wanker (and if you're read many of these entries you know that this is true), but you could get away with just one on its own. Given a choice, the one I'd opt for would be Tabasco because, when it comes to simple chilli sauces, it is the dog's bollocks with its fruity habanero kick as well as being easier to come by in the UK.

I realise that in using Kylie Minogue's bum to justify a pun on the word  "ass" I'm objectifying her and putting my feminist credentials on the line, but a gag's a gag.

Mince Wonder 1: Chilli con Motherfucking Carne

You've never had chilli like this.

The name literally means "chilli with meat" which sounds about as appealing as sex with William Hague while your Mum watches. On the other hand, put an exotic spin on the most mundane dish and it will sound so much more vibrant. Carne y dos verduras sounds a lot more interesting than meat and two veg, alternative name for male genitalia not withstanding. You could say, maintaining the same comparison and in keeping with the Latino theme, "chilli con carne" sounds as appealing as sex with Jennifer Lopez. Anyway, literal meaning aside, my version of chilli con carne has grown and evolved over years to become the masterpiece it is now and would be my signature dish if I were running a restaurant.

It's a little known fact that chilli con carne isn't actually a true Mexican dish, but Tex-Mex, which is a bastardised version or, as some twatty restuarants bill themselves, a "fusion" (to-MAY-to/to-MAR-to) of Mexican food with that from north of the Rio Grande. This is because it contains meat and a significant tendency to increase your BMI to morbid obesity levels. Your average Mexican peasant couldn't afford meat and carrying an additional few stone of adipose tissue doesn't help with tilling the fields. It also generally contains fewer pulses so is also less likely to have the effect of making your friends avoid standing downwind or sharing a lift with you after a meal of this cuisine, though not so much in this instance. Since this is a bastardised cuisine I don't see any need to stick to authentically New World ingredients so this recipe includes Bisto, British beer, balsamic vinegar and soy sauce.


This is enough to make 4 or 5 adult-sized portions

INGREDIENTS
500g beef mince (low fat if you're a ponce like me)
1 tin of tomatoes
250 ml beer (good, dark British ale. Not pissy lager, not even Mexican)
1 tbsp Bisto powder or similar (see notes)
1 large onion, roughly chopped
1tbsp tomato puree
2 big tsp whole cumin seeds
2 big tsp oregano
2 big tsp ground coriander
1 tsp smoked paprika
1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 beef stock cube
1 tbsp Worcester sauce
½ tbsp tomato ketchup
4 cloves of garlic, crushed
1 tbsp olive oil
One large red and one large green pepper, or combination of colours if they're smaller chopped chunkily (yeah, I just made that word up, but you know what it means so get over it or fuck off)
2 or more fresh chillies (see later), finely chopped including seeds
Tin of kidney beans (See notes below)
Balsamic vinegar
Dark soy sauce
1 tsp ground cumin
A small piece of your immortal soul (optional, but don't expect your chilli to be truly great without it)

TIMING
Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking time: Upwards of 2 hours


RECIPE
Brown your meat. No, that's not a euphemism, I mean stick the mince in a pan on the hob and heat it until it's cooked. Drain off the fat in a sieve. Tip it back in the pan and add the tomatoes plus half the beer and bring to a gentle boil.

Mix up the Bisto in a cup with a little remaining beer to make a slurry and pour it in and stir well. Add the onion (uncooked) and stir in the tomato puree. Add the spices and the stock cube and mix in well, adding the rest of the beer.

 The spices
From 11 o'clock: cumin seeds, coriander, smoked paprika and oregano

In a separate pan, fry the garlic in the olive oil for a minute or so and stir into the mixture. Add the peppers, chillies, beans and two teaspoons of balsamic vinegar, then let it stew on a low heat for at least an hour and a half, enough time for the onion to become transparent and peppers to become tender.

Taste it (the chilli, not the vinegar, you fuckwit). It should have a good balance of sweetness and tang so you can add a drop more balsamic or Worcester if necessary. Also, if it seems a bit wishy-washy (similar, I would imagine, to the aforementioned sex with William Hague, though far less unarousing) add a splash of soy sauce to give the whole stew more umami, the meaty flavour that is the recently discovered companion to salt, sweet, sour and bitter sensing tastebuds on the tongue.

You may need to boil off some of the liquid as it starts closer to soup than a stew, but also this helps concentrate the flavour. It should still be quite runny. Before serving add the spoonful of ground cumin.

In da pan

This makes easily enough for four people with some left over for lunch the next day. It serves well with  plain boiled rice or baked potatoes.


NOTES
Chillies
The clue's in the name: chilli with meat. This recipe needs to be hot, as hot as you can stand it. If you have a bowl of this and aren't sweating like an art dealer trying to shift the last few Rolf Harris pieces in his inventory on the day of the verdict, you've made it wrong. You may experience what feels like actual hellfire spewing from your arse the next day, this means you've done it right. The depth and complexity of the chilli heat and flavour increases if you use different types of chilli: fresh ones of different types (jalapeno, bullets, fingers, birds eye), dried (chilli powder, cayenne, chilli flakes, dried chipotle), chilli sauces (for example Tabasco, Cholula, Encona Hot Pepper sauce) or pickled chillies like jalapenos. Obviously, you need to make it as hot as the person with the lowest chilli tolerance you're feeding. For example, I need to tone down my preparation to accommodate my wife and toddler son and add more chilli to my own portion. On the other hand, if I was making it for myself it would have enough chilli to register the next day on the Beaufort, the Richter and the Bristol Stool scales as well as having a shit-load of zeros on the Scoville scale when you're actually eating it. Science fact: heat of chillies is due to a compound called capsaicin which is actually neurotoxic.

Oh, and also, remember not to touch your genitals for any reason after you've been chopping chillies unless you think thrush just isn't painful enough

Beer
It has got to be a dark, British ale because it needs the richness this comes with. If you use lager in it, you might as well piss in the pan. Cheap supermarket own brand bitter in cans does the trick but if I want to make it that bit more special I add Shepherd Neame Bishop's Finger.

Kidney beans
You can use fresh beans, though I've never bothered. The reason is because if you don't prepare them properly you will be ill, and not in the good "Oooh, that chilli last night was bloody hot!" way. They've got a poison in them that is related to ricin, as favoured by eastern bloc spies, would-be terrorists and Walter White Sr. It's kind of ricin-lite

Bisto
A British staple of many a kitchen, the original Bisto gravy powder makes great gravy with meat juices if you do a roast, but adds some well needed richness and helps thicken up the sauce in this chilli. This is what I'm talking about:

Supermarkets will also do their own version. If all else fails, improvise with some cornflour, more soy and even some Marmite or similar yeast extract.

DO NOT PUT CHOCOLATE IN THIS RECIPE!
Is it called chilli con carne y chocolate? No it's not. Neither is it mole and it's definitely not a fucking dessert. Leave the cocoa for the nighttime drink of nursing home residents. If you do put chocolate in this dish, I will find you and I will kill you.

Chicken fajitas with salsa roja ¡Ay Caramba!

The fun thing about fajitas is that the name sounds vaguely rude if you don't pronounce it right. Of course, you could buy a sachet of pre-prepared powdered rubbish to make fajitas but they fall into the category of over-priced shite. I know it takes longer, but this is so much better. It's the difference between kissing a cat's arse and rimming an angel. 
I'll add some pictures next time I do this recipe
 
INGREDIENTS
For the chicken
 400g chicken (I used thigh fillets, but it could be breast fillet) cut into bite-sized strips
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1tsp smoked paprika
2 garlic cloves, crushed
1 or more green chillies, finely chopped* (with seeds unless you're a fucking lightweight)
Good grind of black pepper
Pinch of salt
Olive oil
25ml tequila (or rum at a pinch. Definitely not vodka, Sambuca or Dubonnet fucking Red)
Juice of one lime
1 green pepper and 1 red pepper sliced into strips
1 medium sized onion, sliced
Bottle of lager

For the salsa
70g cherry tomatoes, finely chopped (you can use bigger tomatoes but cherry ones have more flavour and are sweeter) 
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1/2 tsp whole cumin
1 red chilli, finely chopped, including seeds*
Black pepper
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar (no, you can't use Sarson's malt, you fucking pleb!)

*Avoid touching your genitals by hand until you've washed them thoroughly, unless you're in training for a sponsored urinary tract infection marathon and want to get accustomed to the feeling

RECIPE
Combine the spices, oregano and garlic together with the oil and add the tequila and half of the lime juice.

Mix well to make a paste in a bowl then add the chicken.

Stir to coat the chicken thoroughly, cover and let it marinate like a fat bloke wallowing in Radox. A couple of hours does a reasonable job, but overnight is better.

Prepare the salsa by combining all the ingredients in a dish and mixing well before covering and putting in the fridge. This can be done any time but the longer it's left the better as it helps take the sharpness from the onion.

About half an hour before dinner time, heat up a frying pan or (if you're a pretentious foodie prick like me) a griddle pan, nice and hot.

Add a splash of olive oil and chuck in the chicken plus any remaining marinade.

Fry it up until it's cooked through, about 10 minutes or so.

Throw in the peppers and onions and fry them for a few minutes until the are tender.

Keep the mixture moist by adding the limejuice plus the odd splash of lager.This washes the marinade from the pan, helping to coat the vegetables with it with the added bonus that it tastes of beer.

Drink the rest of the lager, obviously.

The tortilla wraps take about 10s each in the microwave to warm, one at a time, or you can warm all of them in about 30 seconds, covering them with a couple of sheets of kitchen roll.

Roll a fat one in a wrap with the cooked chicken and some salsa.

Add sour cream, guacamole if you're a fussy twat.

Drink more lager with it, or margaritas.

NOTES

I know people into wine have a tendency to twat on about terroir and shit like that when talking about wine, and it's mostly bollocks. However, in terms of a drink to go with a meal, there is something to be said of choosing something that originates from the same part of the world. In the case of these fajitas, it really needs to be Mexican. Corona is best, in my sweary fucking opinion, but Sol (which is way more bland) still works. Carling, Fosters or Stella don't work so don't bother

If you do the Mexican lager thing with lime slice in the neck of the bottle, don't be a cock and leave it sicking out. Squeeze the juice into the bottle and push the wedge right in so you can actually taste the fucker.