Fajitas

Welcome to the newest instalment of Silvia and Gabriel offend entire cultures. It’s a somehow more awkward version of Sheldon and Amy’s Fun with Flags, but without the cringe nerd clichés.

We don’t order from Mexican restaurants often because we try not to eat meat, Gabriel doesn’t enjoy food that is too spicy (blah blah “why would I want my insides to feel like they’re on fire” something something) and Silvia is one of those people for whom cilantro tastes like soap (in a bad way). But here’s the problem: we really like Mexican and Tex-Mex food. So we’ve spent the past few years trying different ingredients and spices and converged on this vegetable-packed, tasty, Silvia-and-Gabriel-proof fajita recipe.

By construction, this recipe is not, does not claim to be, and does not want to be anything but very loosely inspired by real Mexican food. If you want to learn Mexican cuisine, there are plenty of talented experts out there.

This recipe is a great opportunity to use almost any leftover vegetables that you have lying around, so do feel free to mix things up, and the spices will do the rest. The only thing to be careful of is the tomato-to-other-vegetables proportion, which shouldn’t venture off too far if you want to avoid too dry or too liquidy filling. We strongly recommend using the crunchier and flavourful corn tortillas (as opposed to wheat ones) due to what we affectionately call the CRONCH factor.

Note that in Spain “tortilla” means “omelette”, so even if we understand this sense of the term now, for us a real tortilla is something entirely different (coming soon).

Ingredients

• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 onion
• 1 small zucchini
• 1 red bell pepper
• 1 tomato
• 200 g frozen vegan ground “meat”
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• Half a teaspoon of paprika
• Half a teaspoon of garlic powder
• One quarter teaspoon of oregano
• (Optional) One quarter teaspoon of pepper
• 8 corn tortillas
• 3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
• (Optional) Grated cheese, for serving (Monterrey Jack is recommended)

Directions

1. Mince the garlic and onion. Heat two tablespoons of oil over medium in a perfectly normal-sized pot (or a big frying pan) and fry the garlic until it’s golden. Add the onion, and fry until translucent.

2. Cut the zucchini and red bell pepper in small pieces and add it to the pot. Season with salt. Let the vegetables cook for around 5 minutes or until the zucchini becomes somewhat translucent, stirring occasionally.

3. Cut the tomato in small pieces (no need to peel it), add it to the pot, and stir. Add cumin, paprika, oregano, pepper and half of the garlic powder and stir again. Salt to taste and let the ingredients cook together for about 30 minutes over medium heat.

4. When the veggies are nearly done, fry the vegan ground “meat” in a pan with one tablespoon of oil and the rest of the garlic powder. Once it’s fried and crunchy, add it to the pot with the rest of the ingredients and stir to let all the filling’s flavours blend for one or two minutes.

5. In a small pan, heat the corn “tortillas” one by one until they are crunchy on both sides but not burnt. When you turn them over, you can add the shredded cheese on top so that it melts if you so choose. Remove the “tortillas” from the pan and add the filling. Now, stand and observe a minute of silence for the 130 million Mexican people whom we have just insulted… and enjoy!