I love Mexican food.

Fajita Friday!

So I had everything I needed for a Mexican feast, and thought I’d give it a go to try some slow cooking in the oven.

 

To start with I had three pork steaks, so I marinated them for a few hours in some olive oil, garlic, paprika, chilli and a wee bit of rock salt. After two hours I popped it in the oven at 80 degrees, covered with tin foil to keep it moist. After that I more or less didn’t need to think about it, with the exception on checking on it every so often.

In the cupboard I had a tin of mixed Mexican beans, so I chopped up half an onion, added half a tin of tomatoes to keep it juicy, a clove of garlic and a sprinkle of smoked paprika and threw it all together in a Pyrex dish, ready for the oven. This was much the same as the pork- once in the oven it only required a check every so often. I eat an awful lot of Mexican food at home (because it’s one of the tastiest things to eat and it’s really, really easy), so I was quite excited to so how it turned out. I considered cooking it on the hob in a pan, but thought that oven cooking would give the best results.

Whilst I wasn’t needing to pay any attention to the pork and beans, I sliced up half an onion and six large peppers, covered in some olive oil, and again in to the oven with no need to worry about it!

Next up: salsa! For this I chopped up half a large onion, let it start to brown and added in some garlic and a chopped up green chilli. After a minute or so I added in a tin and a half of tomatoes, and left it to slowly simmer on the hob.

 

For me, one of the very best things about Mexican food is big fat dollops of guacamole! I hate going to Mexican places and getting food where they don’t put it on food. It’s just not right! Guacamole is ridiculously easy to make:

Chop a quarter of an onion, a clove of garlic, and half a chilli. Put them in a bowl together and add the zest of a lime. Chop some avocado (I used two) and blitz it with a food processer, when soft add in the bowl of mixed onions, lime, garlic and chilli. That is pretty much it… holy moly guacamole!

After all of this it was time to start taking everything out of the oven (which we did turn the temp up to about 180 for the final 30 mins). After taking out the pork we left it to rest, giving us time to chop and fry the mushrooms to mix everything in together. After resting the pork, chop the chops and throw it in with the peppers, once the mushrooms have cooked throw them in there as well! Somewhere in the last few minutes would have been the time to wrap the wraps in tinfoil and let them warm in the oven, and brilliant cheese-grating time!

What I think:

I don’t want to blow my own trumpet too loudly, but it was bloody lovely!  I really enjoyed the addition of the beans; the only problem was they weren’t so tasty when they were cooling down. Next time I will put them on something to keep them warm. The pork would be a whole lot better if it was originally a bigger joint (i.e. not steaks!), but I can’t complain. Allowing it to cook for the length of time I did made it full of flavour.  Probably an 8/10.