Flat food pt 2

Spring is here. Time to start thinking about lighter, sharper, busier flavours. Thank you comfort foods, your job is done. Time for the party plate!

All over Sydney Mexican restaurants are opening like cactus flowers. As a home cook cuisine, Mex is really good fun, and a good combo of plate food and portable food. Diana Kennedy’s “The cuisines of Mexico” is the very best place to start.

In the meantime - here’s my main meal flat food.

Corn enchildas, cumin lime pork, refried beans and white cheese.

I like soft corn tortillas, but they are much harder to find in supermarkets and delis than the wheat variety. Try Senor Nila on the northern beaches, Mexico City in the south, or Fireworks in the west. Otherwise, Woolies stocks the “A taste of Mexico” brand which has white corn tortillas, which I used for this recipe.

The mild white cheese in Tex Mex is Monterey Jack. There are some very funny posts on blogs about how difficult it is to import American cheese into Europe, mostly ending in - what would we need this awful cheese for anyway?

‘Monterey Jack’, or the more Mexi ‘Questo Blanco’, are pretty bland cheeses that can be substituted with bocconcini, or other mild white cheese. OR you could make your own! Easy and so tasty! See our next exciting recipode for home made Queso blanco. I am eating it spread on crackers right now, and it’s yum!

Recipe: Lime pork enchiladas

Ingredients

Yields 8 enchiladas

• .5 kilo pork mince
• 1 can red kidney beans
• 8 soft corn tortillas
• 2 tomatoes
• 1 brown onion
• 1 red onion
• 4 tablespoons canola or other vegetable oil
• .5 cup chicken or vegetable stock
• fresh coriander
• ground cumin
• pepper
• juice 1 lime
• 1 cup grated or crumbled mild white cheese
• .5 cup grated cheddar cheese

Method

Preheat oven at 160 degrees Celsius.

Finely chop tomato, coriander and red onion. Set aside

Pan fry the pork mince in the vegetable oil with pepper, and coarsely ground cumin. Add juice of lime, stir until evaporated and pork is browned. Set aside.

In the same pan, using the oil left over from the pork, sauté diced brown onion.

Add the red beans, including the broth, stir and mash. After a while, they mixture will start to gather into a kind of pancake. Once you can roll it off the pan, it’s ready.

Set aside.

In the same pan, bring stock to a simmer.

Rest each corn tortilla in the stock until they soften (about 30 seconds).

Place on each tortilla a tablespoon of the pork, beans, tomato, and white cheese. Roll each tortilla and place on an oven tray. Sprinkle with yellow cheese. Place in oven until the yellow cheese starts to brown and the inside juices start to bubble from within - about 30 mins.