Farmer Pete and I love to eat burritos. Its a good way to use up all the beef mince we have, and to add a few salad vegetables. I'm sure that our version isn't very Mexican, I haven't been to Mexico, so I have no idea what burritos are supposed to taste like!
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| these are the spices you need |
For a long time we bought the burrito flavour sachet and a packet of tortillas. Then one day we wanted to make burritos, but we had no flavour sachet in the cupboard!!! After brief panic, this finally gave me the motivation to look up a recipe and discover that is not actually that hard to make. The spices you need are paprika, cumin, ground coriander seeds and chillies, I had all but the coriander seeds in the cupboard, so we made it the first time without that spice and it still tasted good. Now I make it with about a teaspoon of each spice, and a tablespoon of cornflour, with half a cup of water, stirred into the cooked mince (about 1kg at a time, we eat it for several days). It comes out with just the right spice for us, but I'm sure you can play around with the ratios.
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| I like to add onions, tomatoes and mushrooms to the mince, also zuchini if I have any |
Making the tortillas was more of a challenge, until I saw a recipe on Craving Fresh (for some reason Nourishing Traditions has the mince recipe, but tells you to buy tortillas), it looked surprisingly easy, so I decided to try it (Farmer Pete bought back-up tortillas from the supermarket "just in case"). If you follow Emma's recipe, just just flour soaked in yoghurt or whey for 4-12 hours and then mixed with butter and fried in a frying pan. The recipe made 8 tortillas. And Farmer Pete didn't need to open his back-up packet as he thought these ones were quite nice. Now I am confident that I can make our version of Mexican food with ingredients at home, with no additives, and without relying on packets from the supermarket.
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| Tortillas were surprisingly easy to make |
Do you make your own "mexican" food? What other packet flavours have you learnt to do without?
I have been wanting to make Gluten Free tortillas... it's on the list! Yours look great. I've been to Mexico, and the food I ate there is nothing like the 'Mexican' food we have here, and certainly not like the indulgent Tex-Mex people here have come to expect. I am sure you can find food like that there, but the food I ate was simple but delicious. I don't recall big lashings of cheese, sour cream and meat like we'd eat it here! My favourite food there (and in Central America in general) was rice & beans... I've never been able to perfect it here.
ReplyDeleteI looked into the kitchen of the Mexican restaurant and saw huge containers of lard setting around. So you may need that if you want that special taste. I quit looking in kitchens after that.
ReplyDeleteOh yes...Sunnybrook is right about the lard. In fact it's sold in mini barrels in some American supermarkets.
ReplyDeleteI make tortilla's on a regular basis for both Mexican and Indian dishes. Though not authentically Indian they're great for dipping in curries. I'd also recommend you putting in a wee bit of bicarbonate in your recipe if you want a bit fluffier tortillas - it creates both large and small bubbles in the flatbread :)
As a Mexican family living in New Mexico~I say not bad! Mexico is like everywhere else in the world with regional foods(seafood, mainland, etc). Rice and beans are daily in our diets as well as tortillas, serranos, jalapenos, and a salsa. We used to use bacon grease for tortilla making, but have cut out all pork. A must have is cilantro~I use it in daily.
ReplyDeleteI think you would enjoy the food we eat based on this meal. Oh and as we live in the US...we are influenced here too.
thanks everyone, glad my mexican food interpretation is not too far off the mark! Good tip Tanya, will try the bicarb next time :)
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