Life-Changing Burritos

I know.  We just had a burrito post recently.  But when we were in Portland, and I was busy doing wedding related things with Doodle and the other bridesmaids, the Pie was often left to his own devices.  Luckily, Portland is a very walkable city, and there was a good Street Fighter tournament on the web for him to watch when he got bored with walking about.  One afternoon, he happened upon a place called the Burrito Bar.  The burrito he had there, according to him, changed his life forever.  So last week, he recreated what he had eaten there and I got to enjoy it as well. Plus, we had to do something about our raging onion population.

First, he started by making up a batch of his famous Mexican rice.

While he was doing that he gently poached 2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts.

Then he put me to work as his sous-chef.  I had to make the “salad” component.  First, I opened up an avocado.

Then I cubed it.

Then I found a tomato.

And cubed that as well.

Chopped up a handful of cilantro and added that in, as well as some salt and pepper and lime juice.

Toss that and set it aside.

Open up a can of black beans and drain and rinse them well.

Then he had me finely chop a jalapeno pepper, to go in his cheese sauce.

The cheese sauce is made by melting a tablespoon butter with a tablespoon flour to form a paste, then adding a half cup of milk.  When that is well-mixed you can add your grated cheese, about 1 1/2 cups.  The Pie used a mixture of old cheddar and spicy Monterey jack.

Once the cheese was melted he dropped in the jalapenos and let that sit for a bit.

At this point the chicken was ready to be shredded. Just pull it apart with some forks. It’s pretty fun.

We added a few tablespoons salsa to the chicken.

So now we are ready to make these burritos, baby.  We have Mexican rice, salad, salsa-y chicken, black beans, cheese sauce, and some sour cream as well.

You’re going to need the biggest flour tortillas you can find.  These ones are ten inches, though the Pie says the one he had in Portland was THIRTEEN inches.  Set your tortillas on a sheet of aluminum foil.

Start piling on your ingredients in the centre of your tortilla.  Be generous.

To properly fold a burrito, we looked to the internet.  If you’re not sure, try YouTube.

Take the opposite side of your tortilla and bring it towards you, so the ingredients get all jumbled together and pushed to one side. This also leaves a bit of food sauce on the empty side of the tortilla, which provides a bit of friction to keep things stuck together.

Unfold the tortilla and lift up the sides, to sort of hold everything in. Take the side of the tortilla closest to you, with all the ingredients, and flip it up and over on itself.

Then, tucking in the top of the tortilla, start rolling towards the end.  Try to get it as tight as possible.

Make sure your ends are tucked in and slide the rolled tortilla to one side of your aluminum foil.

Tightly roll the burrito up in the foil, and twist off the ends when you are finished, to hold everything together.  That is your burrito, all wrapped up.  We had enough ingredients to make seven of these puppies, and we tossed a few in the fridge for a later meal, and a few in the oven for about ten minutes to heat up a bit.

To eat, just peel off some of the foil and you are all set. Take a bite.

This is one of the burritos the next day, cut in half.  Look at that lovely combination of ingredients!

Nip It in the Bud!

I’m growing a wee herb farm in my kitchen.  I am tired of the wilted overpriced garbage I get in the grocery store, so I’m growing my own mint, rosemary, oregano, basil, and cilantro.  And it’s coming along just fine.

If you know anything about gardening, then you will know all about this little tip.  If you don’t know anything about gardening (like me) then this little tip will be super cool.

To make your plants branch out more (i.e. produce more leaves and therefore more things for you to eat), just pinch out the tiny leaf buds at the tops of the stems.  Those little wee leaves there.  Just pinch them off.

Then your plant is forced to rely on its secondary growth and you get a nice branching effect, which in this case will give me more basil.

And more rosemary.

And more mint!

And when those grow out a bit you can do it all over again, more pinching, more branching …

Red Curry Coconut Noodles

Oh god this is good.

This is a recipe from Pioneer Woman.  It’s pretty much the best combination of everything that’s awesome in the world.

The amounts in this are all approximate.  Feel free to experiment with the proportions until you come up with a flavour combination that suits you.

Okay, so take a couple heads of broccoli and cut all the florets off.  Save them for a nice broccofu/broccomeat later.  Cut off the tough bottoms and use a vegetable peeler to get off the thick skin.  Then cut it up into tiny little matchsticks.

Julienne up two red peppers and also an onion.

Slice up, as well, about three green onions.  You can use fresh cilantro instead of green onions if you like.Take yourself four boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and cut them into small bite-sized cubes.

Get ready as well a dobble or two of minced ginger and red curry paste.  You can adjust these accordingly to your own personal preferences.

Now, take the cream off two cans of coconut milk and dump it into a large saucepan.

Turn on the stove to medium-high heat and let that simmer up.

Look how it melts all lovely.

Plop in the curry and the ginger and let that simmer for another minute.

Now drop in your chicken and let it cook all the way through. 

Add in four cups or so of chicken broth and the rest of the coconut milk. 

Let it start to bubble again and drop in half the green onion.

Heave in the vegetables.

Now comes the tricky part.  You want to jam in a package of wide, flat rice noodles.  Do some manipulation and get that stuffed in as well as you can.  It might take some time to get them softened enough to cram them in all the way.

The noodles should take about five minutes to cook through, but you want to get the sauce boiling until it starts to thicken.  Remove it from the heat and let it thicken for another five minutes or so.

We served ours in tiny bowls out of a communal dish, and sopped up the juices with na’an.  So filling and so excellent.This serves a whole bunch of people, probably about six, so we chucked the leftovers in some Tupperware and it was great the next day.

Roasted Spaghetti Squash with Herbs

me: have you ever made anything with spaghetti squash before?

Cait: since i don’t know what you’re talking about, no

me: http://images.google.ca/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=spaghetti+squash&gbv=2&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

Cait: i think it looks so much like spaghetti that i’d be disappointed when it didn’t taste like spaghetti

me: it tastes like squash

Cait: of course it tastes like squash it’s a freaking squash

The card from my magic book.

The mysterious and elusive spaghetti squash.

I have always been intrigued about the physical properties of spaghetti squash, although until the other day I had never tried it.  We found a squash sale at Sobeys and decided to give it a whirl.  I wrangled up a recipe I had been keeping for yonks out of my magic book of recipes, and I went at it.

The recipe called for 4lbs of spaghetti squash.  My scale only goes up to 500g so I had to give it my best estimate.  It was supposed to serve 4, so I did some mental math and came up with two squash about the size of my feet (while this may not be a standard measurement for you, it works pretty well for me).

I may need a bigger scale.

Cut the squash in half lengthwise.  The recipe said nothing to me about removing the seeds and stringy bits so I left them in and I regretted it later.  I would recommend digging those suckers out with a grapefruit spoon or serrated knife.

Cut side up.

Brush the open squash halves with olive oil, then sprinkle with brown sugar, coarse salt, and ground pepper.

Cut side down. Don't worry about spraying the pan - the oil on the squash is enough.

Flip the squash halves face down on a rimmed baking sheet and chuck them in the oven at 400°F for 45 minutes.  Cool them, in the pan and on a rack, for 10 minutes after that.

Using a table fork, dig out the contents of the squash in stringy little bits – it really is amazing how much this resembles spaghetti – and put the contents in a large bowl.  Drizzle with olive oil, then add 1/4 to 1/2 cup of roasted chopped hazelnuts (fun fact: also known as filberts), 1/4 to 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, and 1/4 to 1/2 cup of chopped herbs (the recipe called for fresh cilantro, but I only had a tiny bit of frozen stuff, so I mixed it with some frozen pesto I had made and that was that).  I can assume that you would use any herb you had on hand, really.

Hazelnuts, Pesto, and Parmesan Cheese - my three favourite things.

The leftover squash shells.

Fork the crap out of that thing.

Toss and serve immediately.

I actually wasn’t too happy with this recipe.  The first negative was, of course, the left-in seeds, which, had they been properly roasted like pumpkin seeds, would have been awesome, but because they were still pretty raw, were actually kind of nasty.  I also didn’t feel that the hazelnuts added anything special to this recipe.  Next time, I would go with slivered almonds or pecan bits, for a milder, sweeter taste.  The pesto was excellent of course, but that’s because I have mad skills.  The leftovers were better the next day, but I think I will just chuck the remainder in some sort of minestrone and be done with it.  Recipe to follow, I guess.

Toss and serve.