More culinary abominations
May. 17th, 2014 08:30 pmSo, there I was, contemplating some left-over half-chicken-breasts and a collection of memories of Mexico. Retried beans. Tomato sauce. Hey, can't I skip a step here using one of the more canonically readily available items of commerce? It had worked poorly in the haggis stir-fry last weekend, but in a generally gloopier context, maybe???
Chop a big onion; chop a deseeded red pepper and the raw chicken into thin strips. Put a bit of oil in a non-stick pan. Fry the onion and some garlic. Add (I know this sounds weird) some chopped black olives. Add the chicken if you want it with chicken, fry a bit more. Add a 400g tin of Heinz baked beans. Start stirring quite devotedly from this point: the Heinz sauce is a perfect substrate for the Maillard reaction, but if it sticks and crisps and burns the burned flavour will overwhelm the crispy brownness. Add a fair slug of tomato purée - half a tube, I guess - to play off against the sweetness of the sauce; the olives are also helping out there. Add the pepper, turn the heat down, start warming the tortillas, remember to keep stirring. Put a dollop in a tortilla with a piece of cheese on top, wrap, eat, repeat. Scrape the brown crispy bits off the side of the pan and eat them before washing it up.
OK, it's an abomination in some senses, I will be haunted by the ghosts of a dozen Maya and of the chicken that I committed to the recipe. But it's a pretty tasty abomination for all that: amazingly filling. And it'll be even nicer for lunch during the week when the mysterious pepper-improving qualities of time have had their play.