Hi I'm Shay, founding chef from Death by Burrito
with a passion for Mexican street food.
The whole idea was that I wanted to make food that was so good it would kill you
or you would die, essentially.
This is my dish, my super-healthy pukka Ancho, Lentil and Plantain Burrito
Burritos can be fattening, but this is a healthy and affordable alternative.
This recipe serves four, which is perfect for friends and family.
Great street food starts with great produce.
The fresher the better
Here are some tips on what to look out for when buying some ingredients for this dish.
"Have you got any, like, ripe plantains?"
So for our dish today, we're gonna be using, like, plantain
It's kind of like a banana that you, you can't eat it raw
It's very common in the Caribbean and Africa.
You have unripe plantain, and you have ripe plantain which is what we're going to use for our dish today.
Basically you want the ones that are really soft to the touch.
Erm, they're yellow or quite black on the outside.
But this is perfect for what we need!
"Can I get some pomegranates please?"
I mean, I use pomegranates a lot, in a lot of my recipes.
When you're shopping for pomegranates, it's really nice to try and find ones that have a good vibrant colour with them.
One of the key components of the dish we're making today
are dried Ancho chillies.
Which essentially are chillies that have been dried.
They're quite mild in flavour.
And once you've used them they kind of give a slight fruity, chocolately flavour to the dish.
So I'm going to show you a special way to prepare these chillies for this dish
Let's get back to the kitchen
So first we're going to toast two Ancho chillies
This just helps release some of the aromatics and oils
Just by toasting
You start to get a bit of aroma as they start to cook off
and the skin will charr a little bit
And just flip it over
Just need a few minutes on each side
So after you've toasted your chillies, you just want to soak them in some hot water
This will soften them and allow us to use them in the dish
So while these are soaking, we're going to prep some of the other ingredients
So begin with, we're just going to slice one onion
And then we're just going to mince a few garlic cloves
Cool, so now we're going to saute the onions and the garlic
With a little bit of sunflower oil
Allow these to kind of, sweat down
And soften up, we need to keep it moving
So medium to low heat, just nice and gentle
So these are just starting to caramalise, they're nice and soft now
To the onion we're going to add the lentils, and then
and then 500ml of cold water
Also a little pinch of salt as well
So the lentils are going to take about twenty minutes to cook
You don't want to overdo them, so they should still remain firm
And whilst they cook they're going to absorb all the flavour of the garlic and the onions
So we're just going to let these simmer away
Whilst they're cooking, we're going to move onto preparing the chilli paste
So we have our Ancho chillis that have been soaking for about half an hour
Take them out and seed them
And as they soak they become really soft, you can literally just pull it apart
It doesn't matter if you get a few seeds in there, it's no big deal
In Mexican food like, chillies are like a staple
and some of the moles that we make we have like, twenty different chillis that we use
Some of them the heat comes in quite gently
and builds to a crescendo, some of it
punches you in the face
I love chillies, I think they're great
We're gonna add 100g of tomato puree
And then we blitz into a smooth paste
And I would add like, a little splash of the chilli water just to help mix it all together
So there we have a really nice
rich, kind of chilli paste
Nice blend
So we take our chilli paste and we add it to our lentils
Just give it a stir
Basically you want a soft bite, but you don't want to turn into mush
If we need to, we can just add some more water as well
So we just season to taste, and then we add a few bay leaves as well
just to kind of give it a bit more flavour and some aromatics.
So while these are simmering away I'm just going to give a quick wipe down
and then I'll show you how to fry some plantain
Basically, if it's looking black and manky
then it's actually the best, it's usually quite sweet
Slice down the middle lengthways
Use your fingers and just like, peel the skin back
Don't worry if it looks a bit bruised, that's perfectly fine
Nice diagonal slices
5mm, 1/2 centimetre thick
So for this dish we'll be using two plantains
So again, make the slices about 1/2cm thick
I'm just going to heat a couple of tablespoons of sunflower oil
We don't need too much, ripe plantain cooks really quickly
Another healthy alternative to cooking plantain is actually to just roast them in the oven
in the skin, you can cook them for about 30 minutes
in the skin in a high oven around 200 degrees.
So they just need a few minutes each side
You just want to get them nice and golden
So the plantain's cooked
So I'm just going to take them out of the pan
Almost ready to build our burrito!
There's just one more thing to do
We're just going to wilt some baby gem lettuce
We're just going to cut the baby gem into eighths
A nice bit of crunch to your burrito
We can use the same pan that you fry the plantain in
And just like, add the lettuce
Few minutes each side, you just want to get a little bit
golden but you don't want to overcook it
And now we can move onto building our burrito!
So we're just going to take these out of here
So I've just put a fresh pan on the heat
This is basically just to warm the tortilla through, it just makes it easier for us to wrap the burrito
And we take our tortilla
So just give it a couple of seconds on each side
The first thing to go in, we take
some of the baby gem
Then we add our lentils, and lentils are a great alternative
to rice, again, high in fibre
And then we place some of our plantains in there
As a final touch
I've picked some pomegranates, so we'll just
throw that in there as well for good measure
This is the fun part!
Roooolling your burritoooo
Get in there!
Put it in the pan, give it a few minutes
just to seal the edge and seal it all up
There you go!
A nice little Ancho, lentil and plantain burrito!
Mmm.
And the first thing you get
is the sweetness of the plantain
which balances really nicely
with the lentils, and you get
a really mild, warm heat
but nothing offensive
It's pretty tasty!
And with the pomegranate you're getting little explosions
of flavour that just like, pop in your mouth
And you get beautiful crunch from the lettuce
So here you go
My Ancho, lentil and plantain burrito
Give it a go!
If you want to see some more fantastic streetfood recipes
Click the link here and check out Food Busker's amazing Oyster Po Boy sandwich.
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This recipe is from my Death by Burrito cookbook
Click on the link in the description box below to find out more.