Everyday Epicurean

Dave is out tonight on a photoshoot with the Brisbane Flickerites, so its up to me, Lea, to make dinner.
The girl wanted to make something Mexican, so we flicked through the recipe notes and chose Cheat’s Lasagne, partly in the mistaken belief that the toddler would it, mostly because its delicious!

Ingredients

Dice onion and capsicum – the girl and I shared the duty, and worked across the bench from each other, allowing plenty of gossip 🙂

• 400 – 500g of beef mince
• 1 onion
• 1 capsicum (colour doesn’t matter)
• 2 – 4 cloves of garlic
• A couple of mushrooms
• 2 rashers of bacon
• 1 can of tomatoes (Roma is good)
• A splash of soy sauce
• a splash of vinegar, or tabasco, or chilli vinegar
• 1.5 to 2 teaspoons of Mexican Chilli powder (Dave’s personal cache)
• salt an pepper to taste
• optionally, 1/4 teaspoon of cocoa or drinking chocolate
• 1 small tin of red kidney beans
• some oil
• burritos
• a tin of refried beans
• Grated cheese

Method

The results: a great, quick(ish) delicious mexican dish!

• Preheat the oven to 180°C, also put a large pot on the stovetop with a little oil in the bottom to warm.
• Dice the onion, capsicum and garlic fairly finely and add to a large pot with some oil in the bottom
• Saute for a few minutes until the onion turns translucent – stir occasionally. Do not ignore the onion and allow it to burn!
• Remove the rind from the bacon rasher, dice and toss in the pot. Stir.
• Slice the mushrooms and toss in the pot
• Add the mince. Break up the meat with a large spoon, stirring occasionally
• Add soy sauce, vinegar, chilli powder, kidney beans and tomatoes. Break the tomatoes and mushrooms up with the spoon. If you are using chocolate (for that authentic mexican flavour) do it now.
• Allow it to simmer and reduce. When it has thickened, salt and pepper to taste – about 30 – 60 minutes
• Put a little oil in the bottom of a casserole dish
• To construct the lasagne, take the burritos, the refried beans, the grated cheese and the meat mix. ‘Butter’ a burrito with refried beans, and put in the bottom of the casserole dish. Top with a couple of spoonfuls of meat mix. Cover with a layer of cheese. Repeat until you have run out of meat mix.
• Top with cheese
• Cover and put in the oven for around 30 minutes. Server hot.

The results were great and speak for themselves, but the toddler was cantankerous and declared ‘its spicy’ 🙁

Sorry about the quality of the photos – had to use the camera phone as Dave had the good camera with him (Obviously!) and its really hard to hold steady for close shots