A little taster of what's cooking...
The holiday photos that Stef is sending back from Mexico are making us yearn for some spicy, smoky Mexican dishes. I decided to have a play with our Mexican Fajita Marinade kit and came up with a lovely dish that you can feed a crowd with.
Faja means ‘belt’ in Mexico and traditionally Fajita were made with skirt steak which is a long thin strip that presumably looks like a belt! Skirt is a cheap cut of meat which is best either flash fried (which is how it’s used as fajita) or cooked long and slow. Nowadays, the meaning is blurred, meaning we use any type of meat or fish which is quickly cooked with spices and served with tortilla and call it fajita.
We’ve also got used to fajitas being made with quick sprinkle out of a packet but traditional, authentic fajita is made with a paste using dried mexican chillies, fresh chillies and spices – exactly what we put into our kits. It takes a little more effort than ripping open a sachet, but as I show you below the effort can be put in when you have more time (at the week end maybe?) and then used as a quick meal during the week. Once you’ve tasted the real thing, you won’t want to turn to a sachet again!
You start with one of these which you’ll find in our on line specials section:
Open up the dried mexican chillies and empty out the seeds and then using scissors, cut them up into pieces before soaking them.
Pierce the fresh red chilli with the point of a knife before putting it with the un-peeled cloves of garlic onto a hot, dry frying pan and toast until scorched.
Peel the scorched skins off the now soft garlic and chilli. Open out the red chilli and scoop out the seeds with a spoon if you want less heat.
Chop up the soft chilli and garlic, along with the soaked dried chillies and add them with the rest of the ingredients on the instructions to a stick blender cup.
Whizz to a smooth paste. When you’ve made the paste, you can use it straight away or put it in a jar in the fridge to use another day. It will keep for a week, or longer if you freeze it.
Pack the paste into a clean jar and store in the fridge.
Slow Cooked Mexican Chicken and/or Pulled Pork
I used a shoulder of pork (around 1.5kg). Any fat melts away to give soft, delicious meat. Cut the meat into 4 and then smother with paste before adding to the slow cooker. If using a whole chicken, spatchcock it and cover back and front with marinade before placing on a bed of onions.
In a slow cooker, cook on high for 4-6 hours or low for 5-7 hours before pulling apart with two forks. I cooked the chicken in a low oven 140C for 4 hours. I wrapped it in greaseproof paper and 2 layers of foil.
Soft, spicy Mexican pulled pork
Soft, spicy Mexican pulled pork
Spicy Mexican slow cooked chicken
Serve with tortillas (learn how to make them yourself, here) and your favourite Fajita toppings – cheese, soured cream, pickled chillies, fried onions and peppers, avocado etc! Get your friends to bring the Mexican beer and sombreros and you can pretend…