Tacos is a regular Friday night tea for us. Tacos followed by Gardener's World. Rock n roll. People can be a bit sniffy about Tacos. Maybe its Eminem's fault (he famously used to take a Taco Bell cook on tour with him) or perhaps its because they're not authentically Mexican. Who cares? After spending a couple of weeks in Mexico this summer I think I might actually prefer the American Tex Mex take on Mexican food anyway. That's not to say I didn't like Mexican food - It was pretty good but I did get sick of refried beans with every single meal. And the grasshoppers weren't great. We used the crunchy Tacos you buy in the shop and filled them with vegetarian chilli, salad leaves, grated cheese, Chayne's salsa and sour cream. We also like this chilli on a jacket potato and we often have the leftovers on toast the next day.
Salsa
Ingredients
8 medium tomatoes
1 green chilli
1 red chilli
1 medium red onion, finely chopped
Juice of one lime
Handful of coriander, finely chopped
Recipe
1) Finely chop the red onion, place in a bowl and cover with the juice of one lime. Set aside for 20 minutes.
2) Dry-fry the chilli until the skins are blackened. Take them off the heat, place in a bowl and cover with cling film for 20 mins. Peel the skins, deseed and finely chop.
3) Peel the tomatoes, chop and deseed them.
4) Finally put everything in a bowl and mix around with some finely chopped coriander.
Vegetarian chilli
Ingredients
175g Quorn mince
1 tbsp sunflower oil
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 green chilli, finely chopped
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
8 chestnut mushrooms, sliced
1/2 tsp chilli powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
400g tin chopped tomatoes
6 Tacos
Grated cheddar
Salad leaves
Recipe
1) Preheat the oven to 200c. Heat the oil in a saucepan and fry the onions for five minutes. Next add the peppers and mushrooms and continue cooking for around three minutes. Then add the chilli and garlic and fry for a further minute.
2) Add the chilli powder and ground cumin to the pan and stir for a minute before adding the Quorn mince and chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and pepper and simmer for 20 minutes.
3) When you're ready, put the tacos into the oven and heat through for two minutes. Now you're ready to fill your tacos. It's up to you how you do it but tacos can break if they get soggy so I start with the salad leaves on the bottom followed by a spoonful of chilli and then some grated cheese.
