This past weekend, Nix and I bought a rotisserie chicken from WF and were thinking of different dishes we could use the chicken for. On Monday we made chicken pita pockets for lunch, and on Tuesday we really took it up a notch (in my opinion lol). Last week I had come across a recipe (in one of my umpteen food blogs) for homemade flour torillas and decided that chicken fajitas would be super yum. Btw, does anyone else remember when McDonald's used to seel chicken fajitas?? Or was that only in the VI? Either way, they were bomb! lol
Anywho, instead of flour tortillas, I wanted to make corn tortillas. We have a big bag of corn meal in our freezer that I have on-hand to make cornbread so I figure why the heck not? ... Well, that didn't go very well. See, corn tortilla recipes call for corn flour and generally use store-bought mixes. I figured I could just put some corn meal into the VitaMix and get corn flour....but this didn't work at all. The "dough" was a terrible consistency and i didn't end up with a tortilla at all. It was kind of like a corn pastele (fried plantain thing). Not what I was going for :-/
Determined to make my own torillas, I whipped up a quick batch of regular flour tortillas instead. It was super easy to do! You basically just mix flour, water, salt, and baking powder...work into a dough and let it sit for like 15 minutes. Then, form into individual balls, roll out (or flatten with a tortilla press if you have one - or if you're like me and you lack kitchen tools, flatten them by hand lol) as flat as you can get them, and cook them in a skillet or on a griddle over high heat for about 30 seconds on each side...and Voila!
You can't tell from the pic but these tortillas were rather thick - not surprising because I was flattening them by hand - so they weren't very conducive to rolling like a traditional fajita or burrito. Instead, I decided to layer all my ingredients on top like a Mexican pizza ;-) Btw, for the chicken, I just seasoned it with some cumin and red chile pepper flakes...cumin is the seasoning that's most "tasted" in mexican dishes like this.
Ok, so I layered the tortilla with mashed avocado, shredded pepper jack cheese, the chopped and seasoned rotisserie chicken pieces, lettuce, black beans, corn, and grape tomatoes. Here's the final product:
It was GREAT!! Not the cleanest and most practical meal, but the taste was awesome. I like the mexican pizza concept, but if I make tortillas again I'll just buy a rolling pin so I can try to get them flatter. If I do the pizzas again I have to figure out how to get the toppings to stay put so it's not so messy. Since it was my first time I used all purpose flour, but next time I plan to use all or most whole wheat flour instead.
Overall a great meal! Maybe not Ultimate Recipe Showdown worthy, but a nice twist on a traditional dish :-)
Coming up I think Nix is going to make cookies from the recipe on our package of Bob's Red Mill 5-grain hot cereal (right Nix???)...and I'm going to whip up some quinoa-banana-bran-carrot-berry-coconut-walnut muffins...no recipe, just gonna wing it ;-D
Oh, and I made another batch of yogurt last night...it's spending the day chilling in the fridge and will hopefully be a yummy snack when i get home from work tonight!
Today's big chune is somewhat different from the usual style of music I like. Everyone knows Vanessa Carlton from her song a thousand miles (which, btw, i can't ever hear without thinking of the scene from White Chicks LOL)...but this is a great lesser-known song of her's, Ordinary Day.
:-D
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