13 May 2012

Chicken Tinga Taco Filling...

This is another dish from my favourite cookery book at the moment Thomasina Miers' Mexican Food Made Simple...where it is called Spicy Bird Taco Filling

...you can also find the recipe on the Channel 5 food section...here... but as always, I have taken piccies to give you my photo step-by-step guide to making the dish...


The recipe calls for leftover chicken, but as I wouldn't have any I decided to poach a few chicken breasts the day before...I simply put the chicken breasts in a pan large enough for them to make a single layer, covered with some chicken stock and a bay leaf, bought it up to the boil, turned it down very low and let it simmer (barely) for 10-15 minutes before turning the heat off completely and allowing the chicken to sit in the hot stock for a further 20 minutes...
 ...of course I checked it was cooked before cooling and putting in the fridge overnight!!
 Fast forward to yesterday afternoon, when I started to prepare the dish itself...my sliced onion, cinnamon, allspice, bay leaves (mexicans love using bay in their cooking!) and brown sugar all went into some hot olive oil and cooked for a good 15 minutes...
 ...until it all looked beautifully caramelised and smelt even better!!
 ...then in went the garlic...and another 5 minutes of cooking time...
 ...this is another super easy dish to prepare...it needs pretty 'normal' everyday ingredients including two tins of tomatoes...
 ...which you add to the onion mix along with the chipotle chilli paste and let simmer slowly for at least quarter of an hour...if not longer to allow flavours to develop...then you pop in the chicken, heat through and serve..
...the resulting dish smells great, tastes even better...and will keep in the fridge for a day before you need it if you want to get ahead of yourself...you can alter the heat by how much chilli you add, so go little by little and taste as you go...and at the end the Tinga can be used in a variety of ways...tacos, burritos, as a fajita filling...or as we had it, part of a Mexican Feast alongside Picadillo, Green Rice, Frijoles, Guacamole, Salsa, some corn bread and tortillas...P.S. we've got the leftovers for lunch today :-)


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