A Tale of Too Many Tacos (or not enough, depending on your perspective)

Pulled Chicken Tacos with cooked from scratch tortillas and sides.

I have just had the nicest couple of days.

As I mentioned last week, Adam asked if he could do work experience with me this week and I was not initially sure. He is my son and I love him dearly, but we do tend to bicker in the kitchen (a mixture of my impatience and his love of winding me up) and I can go 0 to 60 very quickly when he doesn’t listen to me. I agreed with some trepidation because when you are 14/15 it is hard to get interesting work experience, mainly because most employers can’t get insurance for under 16s. So I was VERY relieved when his friend Stevie wanted to do it too. Not a case of double trouble, but more of her presence keeping Adam in check. I hoped, anyway.

It has worked brilliantly. They were very engaged with the process, especially when it came to working out flavours. When I explained how pressure cooking worked but admitted to not understanding the science, they reeled off a load of stuff and found it hilarious that I didn’t understand what they were saying, so I’ve let them write about it below. I’m not at all embarrassed about the fact that 2 GCSE students are better at science than I am.

They teased one another gently about their knife skills and kept me entertained too - they’ve both just finished starring in the school production of Hairspray. We have been living and breathing it since February and none of us can get the songs out of our heads. There has been LOTS of singing and dancing. And variable American accents. I’m really impressed with them and the way they have worked, especially as they are understandably so tired! It’s the end of a long year, they’ve been full on rehearsing for months and there is always a big come down when a show finishes.

I had ideas about seasonal food and getting them to cook something I hadn’t written about before. But soon realised it would be much better for them to do something that would be useful and fun for them. Stevie quickly homed in on a pulled chicken recipe for tacos, they also made their own lunch both days (an all in one sausage pasta yesterday, recipes in MPC and EPC, and omelettes today).

one pot sausage pasta. Green beans cooked separately and added to warm through after pressure cooking, but if you like soft beans, add at the start

They also made potstickers and invented a filling of garlicky sausage, Chinese cabbage with ginger, onion and kimchi juice. Then we finished off by tweaking my chocolate lava pudding recipe - freezing a swirl of peanut butter and raspberry jam to push into the centre of the puddings before cooking. Reminded me a bit of something we used to eat at Spuntino. (I still miss Spuntino). And they invited Stevie’s family over on for two nights to eat everything.

Over to them….

Hello! We’re Stevie and Adam, and we have spent the last couple of days with Catherine on work experience, learning how to go about developing recipes (she made us weigh/measure/record everything!) and how to write them up too. We learned some of the conventions - ingredients listed in order of use, then size, which instructions to put in the ingredients list and what into the method, that kind of thing.

We have also learnt how to work with pressure cookers (although Adam is keen to point out he already could). One of the first things we realised that is that even though Catherine is an expert at using pressure cookers - and she did explain the mechanics of them to us - she is completely clueless about the science behind it. She actually admitted that her mind feels like it is exploding when she tries to think about it.

This is what we think happens. As you all know, pressure cookers can cook foods at a faster rate because of the steam that has built up inside the cooker. Energy from hot air dissipates straight into the surrounding atmosphere, but the energy from hot liquid has to turn to steam before it can do the same. The pressure cooker heats the water into steam, and holds onto it. What this basically means is that when energy (heat) is applied to liquid, the particles of liquid start to bounce around faster than they would at room temperature (they bounce around at room temperature, just a lot slower). The hotter the environment the faster the liquid particles agitate. This increase in energy, turns liquid into steam, which then would normally spread out and dissipate. In a pressure cooker it is prevented from dissipating being in a sealed environment. This results in pressure inside the cooker increasing which in turns raises the boiling temperature of the liquid being heated because that heat has nowhere to go. (you can go higher than 100 degrees faster than in an open pan).

Catherine still doesn’t understand this properly. She had to ask Shariq to double check our explanation for her!

Pulled chicken for tacos

We picked this recipe because we were looking for ideas for feeding a large group of people - we’re having a taco party to celebrate the end of school and Hairspray! We cooked enough to theoretically serve 4 (although Adam’s taco record is currently 17, and that only because he ran out, so we’re a bit unsure of how many to make for 10 people!) - but a good thing about all these recipes is that you can easily double/triple/quadruple/whatever depending on how much you think you need. We did multiple different sides, so we could mix and match with each taco. So feel free to mess around with them as much as you like - the same goes for the spice mix. We changed Catherine’s original recipe quite a bit (Adam always wants more cinnamon and oregano and Stevie loves paprika).

We were going to do refried beans too, but ran out of time. But we did serve the tacos with grated cheese, sour cream and pickled jalapenos.

Pulled chicken

2 tbsp olive oil

1 small red onion, sliced

4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

1 tbsp chipotle paste

200g chopped tomatoes

Spice mix, see below

2 chicken thigh fillets, skinned

2 chicken breast fillets, skinned

Spice and herb mix:

1 tbsp ground cumin

2 tsp oregano

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp sweet smoked paprika

1 tsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp onion salt

Heat your pressure cooker and add the olive oil followed by the onion. Sauté on a high heat for 2-3 minutes so they begin to brown. Then stir in the garlic, chipotle paste, spice mix, the chopped tomatoes and 100ml water. Stir, then add the chicken. Turn over to coat with the spices. Season with salt and pepper.

Close the lid and bring up to high pressure. Cook for 3 minutes, then remove from the heat and leave to drop pressure naturally. Remove the chicken from the cooker and leave until it is cool enough to handle. Shred, removing any fat or stray cartilage. You can either use your hands or a pair of forks, it’s up to you, but we found that using your hands is easier. While you are doing this leave the cooker on low heat uncovered so the sauce can reduce down. Once the chicken is shredded add it back to the cooker, stir so it becomes coated in the reduced sauce and then simmer briefly so it is piping hot.

Pineapple salsa

We considered other ingredients for the salsa, but Catherine suggested we taste it with the chicken sauce first before adding anything else. We realised that the flavours worked just as they were - acidity and sweetness were a good contrast to the very savoury and spicy chicken.

1 medium pineapple

2 fresh jalapenos

1 juice of lime

small bunch of coriander

Top and tail the pineapple before peeling the sides and digging out the seeds. Then chop the pineapple into small cubes and put it into a bowl. Finely chop the jalapenos (deseed if you like) and coriander and add it into the bowl. Squeeze the juice of lime over the mixture and add a generous pinch of salt. Mix well.

Guacamole

Funny that neither of us like avocados on their own but we both like guacamole. There are loads more things you can add to it but again, we tasted with the chicken and salsa and decided again to keep it simple.

2 medium avocados

A handful of cherry tomatoes, finely diced

1 juice of lime

pinch of salt

Cut the avocado around the pit to get clean halfs, then remove pit (Catherine showed us and Stevie did it with the second avocado - you stab the pit with the blade of the knife, not the point, and twist. It comes straight out). Peel off the skin or use a spoon to dig out flsh of the avocado. Put the lime juice in a bowl with 1/2 tsp salt. Add the avocado and squash it with a fork. a fork squash the avocado. Add the cherry tomatoes and stir together

Tortillas

This makes around 30 tortillas but was nowhere near enough for 8 of us last night because Adam ate 12 before we invited over Stevie’s family. We reckon if he can control himself, 60 might be enough for our party if we do nachos with cheese too. Catherine’s method for cooking the tortillas is based on the one in Lily Ramirez-Foran’s Tacos. It is really fast to make them when one person is dividing the dough, another is pressing and another is cooking, we took it in turns with everything. The tortillas shouldn’t be so sticky - you should be able to overlap them on a plate while you are waiting to cook them. The pan held three tortillas at a time.

300g masa

500ml freshly boiled water

Generous pinch of salt

Add the boiled water to the masa and mix with a fork to start with so as to not burn your hands. Use your hands to mix after it has started to cool down more until it is a smooth dough. Divide it into 30g balls, then use a tortilla presser (sic, but I like it, reminds me of when Adam used to call me the best cooker - Catherine in ed mode) to flatten them into tortillas. Make sure you put the balls between layers of greaseproof paper to stop them sticking. Repeat this until you have used up all the dough.

Heat a pan - cast or spun iron is best. Add tortillas, maybe one at a time, more if there is space. Cook for 10 seconds, then as soon as they can move smoothly without sticking, flip them over. Cook for 1 minute, then flip again and cook until they puff up. They are ready when they start to depuff. Repeat for all the tortillas. Keep warm in a tea towel lined basket.

Lime pickled onions

1 red onion, finely sliced

1 juice of a lime

1/2 tsp salt

Put the onion in a bowl and add the lime and salt. Mix well, and leave to stand. Wait for the onions to turn a bright pink colour and then serve.

Lay everything out on the table and let everyone help themselves!

Catherine again now - thank you for reading! Term ends in a couple of days and I’m off to Cornwall for a week but expect at least one post from me during that time. As usual, please like, share, restack for visibility, this is a free, open access post. And I’m sure Adam and Stevie would appreciate any comments too, if you are so inclined. Thank you again,

Catherine xxx