My go-to meals

Quesadillas and fajitas are two of my go-to meals if ever I need something quick, warm and tasty for dinner.  You can make as much or as little as you like and the fillings are so versatile.  Here is my typical shopping list for these meals:

Wraps (I usually go for the large wraps but small work well if you want a quick lunch)

Chicken (if you're vegetarian large flat mushrooms also work well)

Tomatoes

Green and red peppers

Lettuce (baby gem or romane)

Cheese (cheddar)

If I'm making a Fajita I tend to use the spices I already have in my kitchen and my homemade mix usually includes cumin, ground coriander, chilli powder and paprika (plus a pinch of salt).  If you don't have spices lying around then you can always buy a pot of ready-mixed spice.

I start off by chopping up the chicken into chunks and, if I'm making fajitas, I then coat them in the spice mix.  If you have time to leave the chicken to let the spices infuse for a bit that's great, if not don't worry it will still taste good!  Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and fry your chicken until golden/cooked, you can always check by cutting a piece in half to see if it's cooked all the way through.  If you want you can also fry some onions with the chicken.

While my chicken is cooking I usually quickly chop up my salad.  If you're making a quesadilla, once the chicken is done and your salad is prepared get out a clean, non-stick frying pan (or if like me you only have the one wash it up).  Heat the pan but don't put any oil in, once it's hot turn the heat down to medium and place a wrap into it, sprinkle over some grated cheese and allow it to melt before adding the chicken and salad.  Remove the wrap from the pan by sliding it onto a plate and put another wrap in to brown, use this as the top of your quesadilla.

For fajitas I usually just use an unheated wrap and put my chicken and salad into the centre before folding it in half to make it easier to eat.

You can always add some sour cream/guacamole/salsa if you want to make these dishes a little more exciting, however I much prefer to make these from scratch and there often just isn't time.  If you do fancy making your own check out this blog post.  If you want a slightly fancier variation on this recipe then you can have a look at my other post on fajitas here.

Fajitas

Although cooking for yourself is good if you want to experiment or try a recipe you're not so sure about, it is definitely more fun cooking with friends.  The other day I got together with a couple of people to cook dinner and as one of them is a vegetarian I decided to try a recipe I've had my eye on for a couple of weeks now in my GoodFood Magazine; mushroom fajitas with avocado houmous.  Although not a vegetarian myself this doesn't stop me from enjoying a good veggie meal from time to time and I love houmous so this recipe seemed perfect.

Mushroom fajitas with houmous

As there were 5 of us we had to scale up the recipe but I think the quantities were about right in the end, although we did have some of the houmous left over (no worries, I had it for lunch the following day!)

For the houmous:

3 avocados

1kg chickpeas (weight of chickpeas before draining - drain and rinse)

1 large garlic clove (use 2 if the cloves are small - crushed)

the zest and juice of two lemons (if you're not as keen on lemon just use 1)

5 tomatoes (deseeded and diced)

It has to be said that making houmous without a food processor is tricky and probably not worth the effort.  I tried it last year in Germany and with only a garlic press to crush the chickpeas it took me a while!  Fortunately, at the beginning of the year I invested in a mini 250ml food processor (the Kenwood mini chopper).  As it is quite small I had to add the ingredients in stages and mix them together in a large bowl afterwards.  I did the chickpeas first, then the avocado and once I had processed them I mixed them together with the crushed garlic, lemon zest and juice and the diced tomatoes.

While I was busy doing that one of my friends was making the fajita spice mix.  You can buy this pre-made but as I had all the necessary spices I decided to make my own.  We used:

2tsp chilli powder

1tsp paprika

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1tsp cumin

2tsp ground coriander

1tsp salt

1tsp white caster sugar

1tbsp corn starch (if you don't want to buy/use this then use more of the other spices but be aware that you won't need as much spice mix as what you have will be spicier)

(you could also add 1/2 tsp onion powder but as we were using fresh onions anyway we decided not to)

To make the fajita spice just mix all these things together in a bowl.

The rest of the ingredients

2 onions

5 large flat mushrooms

olive oil (for coating and frying)

tortillas (at least 1 each)

lettuce (little gem works well - shredded)

Tabasco sauce (optional)

My lovely friends sliced the onions and mushrooms for me nice and thickly.  I then drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled over the spice mix and used my hands to toss them to make sure they were nicely coated in the mix.  Heat some olive oil in a pan, make sure it is really hot, then fry the onions and mushrooms for about 5 mins until they are nicely browned.  For an even better effect you can use a griddle pan but a frying pan works just as well.

Toss the mushrooms and onion in the spices

Once cooked you're ready to make and serve your fajitas, we just put everything in bowls on the table and helped ourselves but if you want to present them nicely then spread some of the houmous down the middle of each wrap and top with the mushrooms and onions.  Then sprinkle over some shredded lettuce (little gem lettuce works well for fajitas) and if you fancy you can add a dash of tabasco sauce.

The fajitas were really tasty and went well with a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.