A taste of a Mexican fiesta with my hot sizzling
chicken fajitas. The soft little tortillas, the salsa, the
sizzling, peppers and chicken, the refried beans and rice... it's a real eating experience. These lovely fajitas are bursting with fun
flavours. Smoky, juicy chicken, and beautifully charred
veg. Served with a wicked ancho chilli salsa for
a seriously delicious Mexican kick. Plus my rice and crispy spicy refried beans. All wrapped up in a lovely soft tortilla,
a great dish for family and friend to get stuck in to. Just 15 minutes is all you need to get this
Mexican party started. So I'm gonna kind of start at the end, but
at the start on this one, I'm gonna do the salsa first and there's a reason for that
because at the basis of that beautiful salsa is my friend here. This ugly friend is called an ancho chilli,
okay, maybe disregarded by the Brits at the moment but this is highly regarded by the
Mexicans. It's been slowly sundried, right, but these
have got incredible robust flavour. Sort of like... I don't know sort of cherry, coke-y type flavours
going on in here. I can't really put me head around it but it
makes salsa really really good. So we're gonna start on our liquidiser, I
just wanna slice up this ancho and make it a little smaller. So just cut it into little chunks like this,
just to sort of get it finer and smaller, and then we put this ancho into the liquidiser. I wanna put a little swig of boiling water
in here and immediately you'll see the colour change around that chilli. If you can't find ancho chilli then you could
use smoked chipotle chilli, which you should be able to find in most big supermarkets. So that's going to rehydrate in the bottom
of this liquidiser. I'm gonna go straight in with two spring onions,
ok? A couple of tomatoes, just quarter them or
put them in whole, doesn't really matter, they'll get going. One fresh chilli here, just crack that in
as well. A little bunch of coriander - leaves, stalks,
all of that goes in. We're gonna go a tablespoon of soya sauce,
not classic but still regarded in many many countries as a brilliant way to season, it's
not just salt it's much much more, so I'm using that little trick there as well. And then a clove of garlic I'm just gonna
take the skin off, and that little hum of garlic is gonna be beautiful. Acid in a salsa's really really important. First part is balsamic vinegar - of course
completely unclassic - but it works, bear with me. About a tablespoon or two. And then, citrus. You want one or two limes just roll it, halve
it, and we go straight in with that lime, really fresh. So I'm just gonna put the lid on... and do
nothing, I'm gonna let those ancho chillies just re-hydrate and plump up in the next couple
of minutes. So, next, peppers. Dead simple, just tear this up, erratic, fast,
just get it going get it in there. And my third little friend in that griddle
pan is a red onion. Take the ends off, like that, and then we
halve it, and we quarter it. Then what will happen is as you get that red
onion you can take it apart like little petals. We do want to season with salt and pepper
from a height. Really important to get the salt into the
inner workings of that pepper, so it's not just bland old veggies. You wanna get that griddle pan screaming hot,
never any oil. That veg should be perfectly charred in about
10 minutes, just give them a little shake every now and then. Next job, the chicken. I want tender juicy strips with some seriously
sizzling smoky flavours. What I'm gonna do is season this up with salt
and pepper. And then, smoked paprika, about a heaped teaspoon
- look at the colour! You got smoky sweetness in here so we're really
going for the chillies, the smoked chillies, the dried chillies, really really good. Don't think I'm going mental on chilli I'm
really not - the ancho, not hot, this paprika, not hot. So once you've seasoned it all up here, got
all that seasoning on the top and bottom, I want you to just fold that other bit of
greaseproof over and just give it a light tap. So you're tenderising it and absolutely bashing
that wonderful smoked paprika into the chicken, no mucking about. And look how gorgeous that looks. Ok, one tablespoon of olive oil goes in. Then we're gonna go in with our lovely chicken,
look at the colour of that chicken you know it's gonna taste good before you've even cooked
it. So swill that olive oil around and we go straight
in like that, ok. That'll start frying pretty quick. Ok, the chicken's looking good the colour's
coming out of that paprika already. The veggies are good just keep giving them
a little shake, don't be afraid to go back to them, and take care of them love them d'you
know what I mean? And if it's looking too charred we just take
'em off, it's all good. Leave your chicken to sizzle for about three
to four minutes before you turn it. Now I wanna create some seriously tasty crispy-skin
beans to serve with the rice. Let's talk about beans, beans in Britain aren't
particularly - and baked beans yeah, fine, park that we love all that - but beans other
uses of beans, multiple recipes for beans y'know, Europe goes mad about them they got
a billion recipes, South America the same as. So I'm tryna create something a bit different
here like a texture with beans to make us Brits just love 'em even more, almost like
popcorn. So what I want is a tin of mixed beans ok,
in here is borlotti beans, we've got cannellini beans, I'm just gonna peel it and I'm gonna
drain it. I'm actually even gonna run a little cold
water over it as well, just to get rid of all the starchy sauce. And we bring it over here. So, in our pan here - bearing in mind this
is quite hot now this has been on, it's on a medium heat - we're gonna go in with one
tablespoon of oil into the pain, right? Then these have got a bit of water on so it's
gonna spit and stuff. Straight in. Now you got... notice that in the pan they're
not all on top of each other it's almost like one layer. So we have a little shakey-shakey woo-woo. They're gonna start popping, they're gonna
burst, the outer skin is gonna go KCH and go really crispy, and it's gonna be delicious. So we got the beans going let's just look
what's going on here let's turn the chicken - look at that, that's what I'm talking about,
nice and charred golden, beautiful. Turn over that chicken. These veggies, these are pretty good, so keep
an eye on those. Now these beans if we look at this, if you
just shake 'em, they're almost popping like popcorn. It's like pork scratchings on the skin, if
you can get in there and have a little look... they're actually moving, they're like jumping
beans d'you know what I mean? And it's the skin and the POOF and it's the
fluffy insides coming out and the crispy outside, really really nice. Something I like to do just to accent the
beans 'cos at the moment they're just straight fried tinned beans and that's not really what
we wanna go into, right? A little pinch of cumin, ok? Just a pinch, is gonna start mixing with the
oils, and I can smell it already. That little pinch just makes that little difference. I can leave those beans crisping up while
I get back to the salsa, as that dried ancho chilli will have re-hydrated and we're good
to go. So this beautiful salsa here just needs turning
on. I want it quite fine, you could have it chunky,
but notice the balsamic and the ancho chilli is making it quite a sort of chocolate-y colour. But look at everything around us right now,
we got salsa going on, we got popping beans, we got the chicken looking gorgeous, veggies. Now we need tortillas and some rice for those
beans. So, I'm gonna get myself some rice and some
tortillas, let's stop this horrible noise, oh what a relief. But let's have a taste first, come on... delish. Salsa is done. So in these beans I wanna get some rice, now
I wanna use wholegrain rice, that would normally take 20 minutes. So a brilliant cheat for 15 minute meals is
getting some of these rice, like it's all pre-cooked. Now at this point this rice y'know needs bringing
back to life. The way I do that is by getting some lemon,
the juice of a whole lemon, and squeezing that into my hand like that. The lemon juice goes in, just stir it up and
I'm gonna turn that pan right down now. So we just shake those, really good. The chicken is done, just put that on a board. Look how dark and lovely that is. And any goodness just pour on top like that,
look at that... Can you hear that? That's what we want. So that's your cue to serve. Lift out that lovely charred veg onto a board. Now grab four wholemeal tortillas and put
them into the pan. And in about 20 seconds they'll just be warm
and hot and malleable and soft and squidgy, right? So in that time what I wanna do is slice up
this chicken, and I wanna go about centimetre-slices. You can see the attitude that we've created
on the outside, but also on the inside it's white, juicy, it's actually shining it's so
gorgeous. And then of course last but not least my salsa,
it's dark, a little bit mysterious, but my god whatever you put that on is phenomenal
it almost looks like chocolate, look at it! Place your warmed up tortillas onto the side,
sprinkle over some coriander, and crumble over 20 grams of gorgeous feta cheese. And a little goes such a long way and it's
like a beautiful bit of colour but also seasoning. And for a burst of freshness, finish with
some zero-fat yoghurt. If you load up a tortilla, salsa, yoghurt,
feta, the rice, you know get that in there... the chicken, roll it up... that is gonna be fantastic. This one's a real crowd-pleaser, just 15 minutes
and you're ready to roll. A little roll-up. Mm! Oh man, that salsa is off the chart. And it's ugly, it's ugly salsa, you're ugly,
but my god it tastes good. It all works, what a joy... Fajitas man, you're gonna love 'em.
