Burritos: The Making Of(ish)

Once upon a time there were two friends and colleagues, Dr Frost- Rathbone and Dr Marcus Chimpington. Together this crime busting duo fought to bring an end to evil. Well an end to evil burritos at any rate. We’ll leave the actual crime busting to our boys in blue. I mean the police by the way – rather than lovely* Coventry FC or stupid Chelsea FC.

For her birthday, Dr Rathbone received a burrito making kit from her friends
Dan and Pamela . They also gave her a massive bottle of gin, some malteaster bunnies and some frazzles – you can see why she’s friends with them. Anyway, this is her story – The Day She Made Burritos.

Burrito in a box

Inside the box were tortillas, salsa and a sachet of beany stuff to make a chilli with. You supply ground (yes I do mean mince but I’m trying to be poncey and cheffy) beef, tomatoes, cheese and lettuce. As you will find out later YOU WILL NEED TO ADD MORE THAN THIS.

out of the box

I didn’t get lettuce, because I forgot and, frankly you try finding things on Easter Sunday. But I did get avacados and coriander because that’s how I roll.
Dr Chimpington deftly chopped tomatoes and some coriander and also made a stonking guacamole – or rather he decided to take over when I started to make a stonking guacamole [/control freak]. He also chopped some green pepper to add to the beef to give it a bit more ooomph. I had the easy job – I grated the cheese and stirred the beef.

the stuff we did

There’s not much to say about the cooking – you fry up beef, chuck in some sauce and, erm, that’s it. I really would add some onions and peppers and some extra chilli if I were you and fling on some coriander leaves afterwards. The beany sauce is a combination of refried beans with extra kidney beans thrown in for good measure. It was ok, in an artificial kinda way, but it needed more kick.

The assemblage involved laying/chucking stuff on the tortilla. The tortillas were smaller than the ones you get in burrito places and that’s the excuse I am giving for not making a beautiful fat self contained burrito.

Blurry assemblage part II


burrito on plate

So here you go, very blurry. A Blurrito if you will. I would tell you the name of the featured nail varnish but this is a serious scientific article and NOT Cosmo. Oh go on then, it’s Nails Inc in Paris and I got it free with a bottle of diet coke some time last year.

blurrry burrito in hand

burrito in a hand

It was fun, it reminded me of being in my teens/early twenties making tacos or burgers for self assembly by large groups of inebriated friends. It was nice to ‘cook’ (I use the term loosely) with Dr Chimpington because he never lets anybody else into his lab (er, kitchen). But the fantastic thing about places like Picante, Benito’s Hat, Chilango , Adobo and Wahaca ** is the flavours It’s because you can taste so many things going on in each and every bite. The meat is usually slow cooked or char grilled with heaps of infused flavour, the salsa has been blended to perfection and, let’s not forget that the rice (a surprise to me on my first experience) makes a huge difference. Next time I’d just get the wraps and make the rest from scratch. I would certainly not use their bland salsa again – it was too fake and too sweet and too claggy. I made two burritos (in the name of science rather than sheer greed) and the salsa free one was by far superior.

They were fine and we had fun, they were never going to win a burrito oscar, but they certainly weren’t the accepted definition of a burrito. They were Tex-Mex wraps.

*Happy now Matt? Honestly, the things I do for family harmony!

** Disclaimer: There are other Burrito Temples available. They might not be that nice but they are out there.

Picante Mexican Grill

This week I took Dr Chimpington to Piccante on Monday and then went back with my friend Pamela who was celebrating her birthday on Friday 18th.  I love this place.  Most of my colleagues now go there, so the burrito word is spreading fast and wide.

They have a wider choice of meat than most places – 2 chickens and 2 beef (one of each grilled and one of each slow cooked) not to mention the lovely slow cooked tender pork.  So far my favourite is (probably) the char grilled steak.  But I will need to try a bit more from their menu (eg tacos) before I can decide

Burritos Near Work – All I need now is for Huey Morgan and/or Nathan Fillion to ask me to marry him & my life is complete!

OK, so last week I ate something masquerading as a burrito at my desk.  I have wiped this from my memory as the trauma was just stressing me out.  Therefore, the burrito I have just eaten is the first burrito I’ve had at my desk at work.  First things first, Dr Chimpington and myself really need to offer a ‘how to eat burritos in public’ master class.  I am not convinced that there is a sophisticated way of doing this and I apologise to all my colleagues for the spectacle of watching me wrestle with a burrito. Dainty I aint.

Recent research has revealed that there are burritos to be found near my place of work.  Picante Mexican Grill.  This shop is teeny, tucked away in that bit of London that is neither Victoria nor Pimlico near Strutton Ground & Channel 4 it’s probably not one you’d walk past on your way to somewhere.  It’s blue and it has a Mexican skull on the sign – a Mexican skull with chillis for a ‘tache no less.  I love Mexican art, it always cheers me up and reminds me of the day of the dead celebrations.

When I got inside the first thing I saw was shelves filled with lovely tins of La Costena jalapenos.  These are the ones I ate when I was in Mexico and (until now) I have had to rely on my gorgeous friend Stevo  to bring them back for me when he comes over to Blighty to visit.    I won’t tell him I can get them now as I still want him to visit me. Selfish? Moi?

The choice of meat was too extensive for my teeny brain so I went for the grilled chicken one – on the off-chance that this place was bad I thought it’d be harder to fuck up grilled chicken.  They also include sliced jalapenos. Most of the ones you get over here are a bit flacid and sadly the only place I normally see these beauties is Subway so I was chuffed to see them here as I could live on them.

They do the Chilango/Chipotle/ Subway  tried & tested style of assemblage here, one person starts you off and then the  next person adds the extras and does the rolling.  The woman rolling them was lovely but when I saw the burrito ahead of me falling apart mid fold* I was a bit worried about what was in store.

I needn’t have worried.  Whilst her folding was a bit shambolic (and possibly one of the reasons that there was a large queue forming behind me, although it is more likely the queue was because there were burritos to be had!) the resulting burrito was far from shambolic.

And so, on to the burrito itself. I had the limey grilled chicken, black beans, salsa verde, cheese and jalapenos. Whereas the rice at Adobo was possibly too hard, the rice here was possibly a bit too soft but that’s a minor point because as a whole this was a thing of lovelieness.

I am not sure it’s a good idea having burritos so close to work. Ah well, as long as I can still fit through the door all is fine
!

*they ‘rescued’ it by tipping it all onto a fresh tortilla.  I guess that the flavours are all the same but I’d have been, perhaps a bit unreasonably,  a bit less than impressed if it had been mine.