Mexican magic

Down foodpath

I can’t explain my passion for cooking in words. It’s one of those therapeutic activities which helps me recharge when I’m feeling low.

It was only after marriage that I developed an interest for cooking. Before that, my mother used to prepare everything, hence I never felt the need or desire to cook.

I quit my job after my marriage and decided that I would pursue cooking seriously. I have loved every moment of it ever since I set my pots and pans to work. The cutlery in my kitchen sounds like a lullaby to me.

The best part about our country is its culinary diversity ranging from North Indian cuisines to coastal cuisines. I love cooking North Indian dishes and I find them challenging.

I also love preparing ‘chicken pasta’ and ‘chicken pizza’ and have tried different versions of it. I haven’t taken any classes to learn the craft but used to read a lot of magazines and cook books, watch YouTube videos and follow TV shows.

One of the biggest ingredients in this journey is hard work. There have been times when I have failed in my experiments and the kitchen would be in a topsy-turvy state. I would get demotivated in the process.

I find baking very hard and especially the bread was quite difficult when I first started out. However, I can’t think of a life away from cooking at all and used to push myself
harder.

I also have a blog called  ‘Spice Your Senses’ and was overwhelmed by the number of responses I received for the blog.

A lot of people kept mailing me about recipes and ingredients. That motivated me to pursue cooking further.

I used to find that some ingredients were very difficult to find. As my husband used to travel a lot, I would ask him to get me these ingredients from abroad.

Now, with many grocery stores in town, I am able to get the rare ingredients. Since my husband and I travel, it has helped me unravel the mysteries of global flavours and understand my skill better.

During my trips to the UK, I found the street food there great and when I came back to India, I tried making them all. I learnt all varieties of street food like hot dogs and baked potatoes. Simultaneously, I would also learnt preparing such food as ‘momos’ and ‘pani puri’.

Coming to this recipe, ‘Chicken Fajita Wrap’ came to me during my learning process. I found it on various blogs and TV shows and hence decided to try it out.

I have stuck to the authentic Mexican style of the wrap, rather than using the Indian roti and it turned out great!

(For details, visit spiceursense.com)

Recipe
Chicken Fajita Wrap
Fajita is a Mexican-style wrap. You can play with ingredients of your choice and it can be made with left over vegetables or chicken. All you have do is just toss all the ingredients together and wrap it with some tortillas and grill it on a hot grilled pan or skillet. It makes for a great lunch or weekend dinner, in no time!! This was made with left over chicken and I just added some veggies and fajitas seasoning and it was delicious. But I'm giving you the recipe of non cooked chicken, which I have tried several times!

Ingredients
*4 flour tortillas
*1 cup of boneless chicken, diced
*1 packet fajita seasoning
*1 cup of chopped, green and red bell peppers
*1/2 cup button mushroom, chopped
*1 small onion, chopped
*Pinch of pepper powder
*Salt and oil as per requirement.

Method
Heat the oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add chicken and cook for eight to 10 minutes. Then add mushroom, fajita seasoning and stir-fry for two minutes.

Now stir the green bell peppers, red bell peppers, onion and pepper powder. Cook until the vegetables have softened, which will take about four to five minutes, and set it aside. In the mean time heat a grilled pan or skillet on medium heat with little oil.

Then layer half of each tortilla with the chicken and vegetable mixture, then wrap the tortillas tightly and place on a hot skillet and cook till it becomes a brown.

Serve with sour cream and salsa.

We invite our readers to share their favourite recipe which has an interesting story behind it. You can write to [e-mail] or [e-mail]