Mexican Stack

I have a tendency to forget about the recipe side when posting and making dishes.

For the most part, I don't follow a specific recipe when I cook.

I've very much a "oh about a handful or 3 of rice for this" kinda cook.

My dishes do come out pretty good though!

Mexican Stack

Ingredients:

500g beef mince (lean works best)

1 medium brown onion

1 jalapeno chilli ( I use a jar of jalapenos. They're not really spicey and I don't use alot so it keeps!)

Fountain Hot Chilli Sauce

Trident Sweet Chilli Sauce

1 teaspoon crushed red chilli

3 teaspoons crushed garlic or garlic granules

1 small can or container of tomato paste

1 medium zucchini sliced long and thin

1 large carrot sliced long and thin

1 medium capsicum sliced long and thin (I've tried it with both red and yellow so far!)

English spinach or baby spinach, just a small handful.

2-3 teaspoons ground cumin seeds

4-6 regular tortillas

250g cheese (monzerella work's well. But any type will do)

Regular spring-form pan.

Frypan

Method:

Dice onion and brown off in frypan.

Once onion is ready, add beef mince and cook through.

While mince is cooking, add jalapeno, crushed red chilli, ground cumin and garlic to the pan.

Put a tortilla on the bottom of the spring form pan. You may need to gently fold the edges into each other to sit nicely up the sides.

Spread rougly a teaspoon of tomato paste onto the tortilla kind of like you were spreading it onto a pizza. Then spread a teaspoon of hot chilli sauce and sweet chilli sauce on the base as well.

Spoon enough mince to evenly cover the tortilla in the spring-form pan.

Sprinkle a bit of cheese on top. Not too much though, you don't want it too cheesey between the layers, it will cause the tortilla to be soggy.

Place another tortilla on top. Repeat the sauce process from before.

Cover the surface evenly with the spinach leaves. Use roughly half of the chopped up capsicum, zucchini and carrot and arrange on top of the spinach for a level surface.

Sprinkle a bit of cheese again, then place another tortilla on top.

Repeat sauce process and cover with the mince and sprinkle with cheese.

Cover with a tortilla.

For the final layer, I cover with the sauce.

Then I place the vegies for presentation purposes. Sprinkle more cheese on top.

Place in oven at roughly 190 degrees. Probably 180 for most normal ovens though!

Roughly half an hour to 40mins. This will depend on your oven. If your using a fan-forced oven the timing will vary from my own.

Basically, once the cheese on top is nicely melted, maybe slightly brown it's done.

Keep an eye on the edges of the tortilla sticking out the top, these will burn up if the oven is too high for too long.

Daring Baker's Challenge!

So, today I made a commitment. To participate in the Daring Baker's Challenge every month.

I see it every so often on random food blogs I read. I had a nice long hard though when filling out the account application. I had to decide....would I be able to commit to it? It's only once a month. I should be able to.

So, there's only one way to find out!

Unfortunately I've been a bit slack in the blogging again.

Mostly because I only had my camera phone to take photos, and they looked dodgey.

But for christmas I got a new camera!

It's pretty neat. Gives me inspiration to take photos of the food I made.

I have another cake order coming up. A Caramel Mud cake.

I'm going to have to track down a good recipe for that.

Then next month I've got a White Chocolate Cheesecake with Strawberries for a friend's baby shower. Busy busy!

So just because I like pretty photos. I'm going to chuck a couple on here.

One of the prepared bacon-wrapped-broccolini I made for dinner the other night.

And the other one is a Spicy Mexican Tortilla Stack. They were even better then they looked!