Barbecue Spicy Fish Tacos with Mango Salsa

This is something a little bit different to do on the barbecue - it's still fairly easy to do, and tastes absolutely delicious. Not everyone wants a lot of heavy meat at a barbecue and this is a brilliant way to serve fish.

The recipe is from a book called Jamie Oliver's Food Tube presents The BBQ Book - I thought initially it was written by Jamie Oliver but it's actually someone called DJ BBQ, an American DJ and barbecue chef who gives his recipes names like 'kick ass fish tacos'.

I left the guacamole and the red cabbage out of this recipe as I don't like it. You need to make the mango salsa separately and make the Mexican rub for the fish first, though it's very quick - what took longest was finding all the spices in the cupboard!

Here's what to do:
For the Mexican rub:

Mix 1tbsp brown sugar, 1 tbsp. sea salt, 1 tbsp. ground cumin, 1 tbsp. chilli powder, 1 tsp onion granules, 1 tsp garlic granules, 1 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp smoked paprika.

It's a good idea to make the mango salsa before you start barbecuing as well. Mix a diced ripe mango with half a red onion, chopped, half a cucumber (which I left out as I don't like cucumber), a handful of fresh coriander leaves, the juice of 1 lime and a sprinkling of sea salt.

 

I had a long piece of cod in the freezer from when it was reduced in the supermarket; you can use any kind of (ideally chunky) white fish for this recipe. I rubbed the Mexican rub over the fish (any extra will keep) and put the fish on some tin foil. It didn't take long on the barbecue (we have a Weber gas barbecue) and when it was ready, I flaked the fish and used it to fill some soft flour tortillas and added the mango salsa on top. Delicious!

Vegetable Tortillas and Spicy Chicken Tortillas

A few months ago I went to a cookery demonstration from Old El Paso, where I discovered the ‘stand and stuff’ tortilla kits – soft tortillas that stand up by themselves and resemble little boats; they are so easy to fill and eat and make Mexican food really fun.

 

Last Saturday I had two of my bridesmaids over for a dress fitting – we had a really nice day of trying on dresses (theirs and mine) and then discussing everything from shoes to nail varnish back at my house, while my long-suffering fiancé played computer games! They stayed to dinner and I made Mexican fajitas – a meat version and a vegetarian (actually, a vegan) version.

 

The tortillas are vegan and so is the seasoning mix that comes with the kit. To make the veggie one, I chopped half a butternut squash into cubes and decided the best way to soften it enough was to simmer it in a little water in the bottom of my Ozeri wok – so not boil in a pan of water as such, but I didn’t think frying alone would soften it enough.

 

 

When it had been cooking for about ten minutes I sliced a red pepper, green pepper and yellow pepper and added them to the pan with a sachet of the seasoning mix. With the water that was already in the pan it made a nice sauce. I also added some diced courgette.

 

For the meat option, I cooked three butterflied chicken breasts, again with a sachet of the seasoning mix (you can purchase them separately which I did as I wanted two and you get one in the kit) and when the chicken was cooked I shredded it with a knife and fork.

 

 

In the meantime I cooked some potato wedges in the oven and then heated some refried beans from a tin and put the sachet of salsa that came with the meal kit in one of the little bowls I bought in Mexico. I also grated some cheese, put some salad in bowls and quickly heated the tortilla boats in the microwave, and then allowed everyone to fill their own. It made for a really nice meal and was very easy to cater for both meat eaters and vegans or vegetarians.

 

I'm sending these to the Extra Veg food blog challenge as this is a fun way to eat more veg if you're not that keen perhaps - for some reason assembling your own and the little tortilla pockets are much more palatable than a plate full of veg! The challenge is hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours.

 

 

Slimming World Nacho-Style Feast

I’ve cooked a fair bit of Mexican food recently and had been meaning to make this dish for a long time, ever since I saw it in a Primula cheese ad in a Slimming World magazine.

 

For anyone who hasn’t come across Primula before – it was a staple of my childhood in the 80s, but is still around – it’s a soft cheese that comes in a tube like toothpaste. It has a much stronger flavour than cream cheeses like Philadelphia, and they make various versions flavoured with chives, shrimp and so on. It’s made from Gouda and Cheddar apparently – I discovered a fun animation on the company’s website about how it’s made.
 

The thing I like best about Primula though – aside from the fun of squeezing the tube – is that a large part of the company’s profits go to charity. You can read more about that on their website (note – this is not a sponsored post or written at the company’s request).

 

Primula is the suggested ingredient in this particular Slimming World recipe, I think partly because Primula is low in “syns”, though you could actually use any cheese for it. You can view the full recipe here, so I won’t repeat it.

 

I wanted to make my own potato wedges but my fiancé only likes the shop-bought kind for some reason so I used those, and left out the optional jalapenos.

The meal turned out pretty well - there was a tiny bit too much liquid in the bottom, but it's a good way to serve mince if you are looking for something different.

F1 Foods - Mexico Round-Up and the next challenge: Brazil

I've made a few Mexican dishes lately which are appropriate as the most recent Formula 1 Grand Prix took place in Mexico.

I made these Green Chilli Chicken Chilaquiles, but definitely was too cautious with the chilli!

and I went to a blogger event hosted by Old El Paso where I tried out some recipes and their new Stand 'n' Stuff kits -check them out here.

Chilli does of course go very well with chocolate and Suelle from Mainly Baking made these spiced brownies. She said the spices had a warm and earthy flavour which sounds really good.

This weekend the Formula 1 Grand Prix comes from Brazil - I don't have any cachaca but I do have a Brazilian recipe up my sleeve! Please share yours - sweet or savoury - in the linkup below. You have until Sunday 22nd November so that should be plenty of time!

Old El Paso Stand 'n' Stuff Kits

Mexican food is surprisingly easy to make at home, though it’s not something I’ve done very often in the past. Since going to Mexico earlier this year though my eyes were opened to a whole range of dishes that would appeal to even my super-fussy fiancé and most importantly are quick and easy to cook.

  

I thought that might be the thinking behind Old El Paso’s “Taco Tuesday” campaign – you can make midweek meals quick and easy by doing tacos or something similar. But a quick Google has actually revealed that the phrase comes from a happy hour event where bars and restaurants offer cheap tacos and beer on Tuesdays.

  

Even so, I’ll go with the ‘midweek made easy’ idea which Old El Paso is promoting. They invited me to a cookery evening recently at Food at 52, a cookery school in London’s Clerkenwell, which is a great little place. Upstairs, there are comfy sofas where we got to know each other over drinks and nachos, and then you go downstairs to the kitchen area. Each person had a workstation – Foodat52 runs a range of classes and can be hired for private events (from hen nights to corporate team building sessions) and the people running it were great. They demonstrated, we cooked, the wine flowed then we ate.

So what did we cook? We were divided into pairs or groups of three, with each making either a vegetarian or meat-based dish. We were all trying out the Stand ‘n’ Stuff soft taco kit, which apparently is being relaunched rather than a totally new product, but I’ve never come across it before. And it’s genius! In the past I’ve eaten tacos in those crispy shells, which don’t stand up by themselves so you have to lay them down and half the filling falls out, and you take one bite which cracks the shell and then the rest of the filling falls out. Or, I’ve eaten soft tortillas, which I prefer, but am hopeless at wrapping them properly and have to eat them with a knife and fork – if I pick them up, the filling falls out (are you starting to see a pattern here?).

These tacos are like little boats – they are soft, but stand up by themselves and allow you to pile in the filling, and when you hold it in your fingers and bite, you don’t lose any of the filling. I will definitely be using these from now on!

I was using beef mince and my recipe was very straightforward – brown the mince first. I learnt that you shouldn’t actually move the meat around while it’s browning, and you need the pan (and oil) to be very hot first. Once it’s browned, drain the mince and add the Old El Paso seasoning mix, which you either get in the meal kits or can buy separately, and a little water.

While the meat was cooking I chopped some lettuce and grated some cheese, while my partner chopped tomatoes. To serve, pile the mince into the taco shell, top with lettuce, tomato and grated cheese, and enjoy.

The pairs making the vegetarian recipe had a little more to do; they chopped courgette, red pepper, onion and sweet potato and added a jar of Old El Paso cooking sauce and a little water. The veg cooked for about ten minutes until the sauce had reduced, then they added some kidney beans. I don’t like kidney beans so didn’t try this particular dish but it looked very colourful and healthy and this has given me a great idea for the next time my vegan friend comes to dinner.

The Stand ‘N’ Stuff kits come in a variety of flavours – garlic & paprika; extra mild and smoky BBQ and retail at £3.79 (though Tesco has them for £2 at the moment) and you can buy the tortillas separately, for £1.89 for 8, if you want to make up your own flavour combinations. I will definitely be using these again for a quick midweek dinner and maybe trying shredded chicken instead of the mince next time.

Thanks to Old El Paso for inviting me to the event at Foodat52.

Green Chilli Chicken Chilaquiles

This weekend's Formula 1 Grand Prix took place in Mexico but was declared by my fiancé to be "boring" because Louis Hamilton has already won the overall championship. I was hoping our Mexican dinner would be a little more exciting but in fact it also turned out to be rather bland. Though that may have been my overcaution with the chilli!

I've had a Mexican recipe book called, um, Mexican Recipes, for many years (it came from Woolworths so that gives you a clue). I haven't made much from it but am getting bolder now with food, particularly after a trip to Mexico earlier this year. I chose a recipe called Green Chilli Chicken Chilaquiles as something that my fussy fiancé might enjoy. I adapted the recipe a bit so here's what I did.

You can either bake tortilla strips until they are crispy or use ready-made nachos, which is what I did.

To serve 2, you need:
salsa cruda - see below
3 large handfuls nachos
2 chicken breasts
1 tbsp. fresh coriander
1 tsp chopped dried oregano
1 clove garlic, crushed
200ml chicken stock
150g Cheddar, grated plus more to sprinkle over the top (which I forgot to add at the last minute!)
sour cream to serve; I also served this with a few potato wedges and some green veg (broccoli)

Salsa Cruda
3 tomatoes, chopped
1 clove garlic, crushed
handful of fresh coriander, chopped
pinch of sugar
1 green chilli, finely chopped (I only used half, which is perhaps where I went wrong)
2 spring onions, chopped

Place all the ingredients for the salsa in a food processor and blend until you have a smooth texture. Add a little oil if necessary.

To prepare the meal, fry the chicken breasts in a pan with a little oil. Meanwhile preheat the oven to 190C.

When the chicken is cooked, shred it and place half in a greased casserole dish or lined oven proof pan. Spoon over half the salsa cruda, half the coriander, oregano, garlic and cheese.

Repeat with the remaining chicken, salsa and spices then top with the nachos.

Pour over the chicken stock and sprinkle with grated cheese (I forgot to add the cheese at this stage). Bake in the oven for 30 minutes and serve.

This was an unusual and interesting dish - which I don't mean in a bad way - but I didn't make it spicy enough and I don't think leaving the cheese off the top really helped!

I'm sharing this with Formula 1 Foods, the blog challenge I host as the current theme is Mexico.

Old El Paso Restaurante Kit - Chicken Tinga

I don't often buy 'dinner kits', preferring to make things from scratch - or if I'm in a hurry just put on a pan of pasta. But  kits can be almost the same as cooking from scratch, and most importantly they save hunting around for ingredients and realising you don't have the right spices, which happens to me a lot!
I was sent two kits from Old El Paso - chicken tinga and Baja fish - and I tried the chicken one this week. They also make steak and pork kits in this range.

According to the company, "the origin of Chicken Tinga or “Tinga de Pollo” is most often attributed to the Puebla region of Mexico. Today, however, it is a popular street food throughout Mexico, especially during celebrations. The Tinga flavour is made with a mouth-watering blend of tomatoes, onions, garlic and smoked and dried jalapeños peppers known as chipotle chilies that give it a slight smoky taste."

Inside the box you get a packet of small flour tortillas, a sachet of chicken seasoning and another of chipotle sauce. It doesn't include the chicken, which means you can keep this box in the cupboard for when you run out of ideas for how to jazz up a chicken breast!

Following the packet instructions I mixed the chicken seasoning with water and cooked two chicken breasts in the liquid in a pan, until the chicken was soft enough to shred. I removed the chicken from the pan, shredded it and returned it to the pan, where the chicken soaked up a lot of the liquid.

I gently heated the tortillas in the microwave, then used some of the chipotle sauce to spread on each tortilla and filled it with chicken. The packet recommends you add onion and avocado but we don't like avocado and my fiancé doesn't like onion if it's big pieces so I left it out - instead I topped the tortillas with a little sour cream and a tiny bit of cheese for him. Fold and eat - it's as simple as that!


The tacos were delicious -a really good blend of spices. I served them with potato wedges and think this is definitely something I will be doing again!
Thanks to Old El Paso for the meal kits to review.