Experiments with Gousto #7: Crispy Baked Tacos, Refried Beans & Pineapple Salsa

Apologies for the delay in following up the continuing experiments with Gousto - it's been a good couple of weeks since I cooked the last of this latest batch (and ate all of it myself, as my girlfriend was away for the weekend). There's no particular reason for the delay, I just haven't felt like writing about my cooking efforts lately.

Not that they went badly (until the last one - but more on that when I get to it), just that I've been trying and failing to get all kinds of things done, and I wanted to give this the attention it deserved, rather than bashing out three perfunctory posts. This was, I think, the first recipe for the relevant week that my girlfriend and I flagged as a definite choice. Everything on offer looked great, but we're both big taco fans, and we'll often make the fillings from scratch anyway, so this wasn't a massive departure from the sort of thing we've made in the past, just a specific recipe we hadn't tried yet.

The first thing I need to say about this recipe is that it really needs some way of ensuring the tortillas keep their shape during the baking. I spent quite some time trying to even up the distribution of the tortillas in the dish, and ensure they were as close to U-shaped as possible, only for them to curl up, flop over and basically do their own thing in the oven. This led to several of the tortilla/tacos being very difficult to fill when the time came, and at least one had to be cracked to get it open far enough to drop in the refried beans. The salsa, being quite chunky, proved even more tricky.

On the whole, preparing this one went smoothly and was fairly easy - the 30 minute estimate is probably quite accurate though, as usual, I did a lot of prep work ahead of time. The salsa was the first thing I made up, since it required only chopping, mixing and then keeping aside until it was time to dish up. The cherry tomatoes and pineapple rings only needed to be chopped roughly, which is always a good thing in my books, as chopping finely is something I have still yet to master. Next time I do this, I'll probably quarter them as halves are a little too chunky... and, to be honest, I'm not sure cherry tomatoes were necessary, as normal tomatoes could be more easily chopped into smaller pieces while remaining suitably chunky. I'd also query the necessity of adding a teaspoon of juice from the tin of pineapple because, unless the chunks are fully drained, they come soaked with quite enough juice for a reasonable salsa, and deliberately adding more just seemed to leave me with way too much fluid in my salsa - it includes a tablespoon of olive oil as well, after all.

The only really substantial task in this recipe is making up the refried beans, which is surprisingly simple... So much so, in fact, that I may take to doing it more often, since my girlfriend and I both like refried beans. The specifics of the process, as dictated by Gousto, seem a little strange to me - adding the dry stuff (smoked paprika, ground cumin and chilli flakes) before the chipotle paste, tomato frito and the hundred millilitres of water was more than a little counterintuitive as the powders tended to clump rather than properly mixing in with the beans. I think I ended up cooking the beans for longer than the 5-8 minutes suggested, but I'm still not entirely sure what constitutes "a medium heat" on my hob, and probably spent too long adjusting it up and down, according to how it seemed to be going. The final stage - adding in the lime juice, seasoning and following the instruction to "gently crush a few of the beans" - is very much a personal taste thing. When ordering refried beans in a restaurant, you can expect anything from a full-on bean mash to something where the individual beans are still easily discernible... The photos on the recipe card seemed to suggest a middle ground, slightly beyond the "gentle" crushing of "a few of the beans" the text described, so I just aimed to mash them up to the exteny that I, personally, prefer.

I do feel obliged to quibble the quantities, as a single tin of beans (plus the other stuff) ended up equating to approximately half the quanity of refried beans I would want to divide between six tortilla/taco shells... perhaps that just proves what a porker I can be but, like I said, I really like refried beans. Put it like this: The first three tacos each received a heaped tablespoon of beans... after that, I had to start getting stingy and, by the last taco, I was literally scraping the bottom of the pan for a decent portion.

As mentioned, actually transferring the beans into the part-cooked tortillas was troublesome, and I think what's really needed is a sort of toasting rack, where the tortillas can be wrapped around a framework to ensure they keep the optimal U-shaped-ness for the 5-minute initial bake. Once done, these can be transferred to the oven-proof dish to be (ahem) filled with the refried beans, and returned to the oven for the final 5-minute bake.

Given that - as mentioned at the start - the salsa was rather more fluid than it needed to be, the finished and garnished tacos were somewhat flooded, and really didn't need any additional lime juice to be drizzled over. Portion-size aside, though, the tacos were very tasty, and I'll definitely be giving this recipe another try at some point.

One huge advantage to this sort of thing is that the recipe for refried beans is so easy to embellish - more or less of the herbs or the chilli flakes, dark chocolate could be added, pinto and/or kidney beans could be used along with the black beans, etc - so the possibilities in that alone are virtually endless. I'll certainly double the quantity of beans next time, even if I don't add another variety. I'll likely chop the pineapple a little more, use normal tomatoes rather than cherry, and absolutely not add any additional juice. A standard onion - brown or red - could be used in place of, or as well as the shallot, too... so, really, this whole recipe encourages experimentation.

Aside from the frustrations caused by the uncooperative tacos, this was great fun to prepare and, being very simple, could easily become a go-to, either in and of itself for a quick veggie meal, or as a component of a more diverse, Mexican-themed dinner, since both the refried beans and the salsa could be served on the side.

One sidenote is that, where a recipe card states, for example, "this is your pineapple salsa", I've previously been inclined to read an emphasis on "your", because it's often come straight after the bit about seasoning... Looking at this particular recipe card, I suspect I have done so in error, as this seems to be more matter-of-factly stating "this is your x" by way of saying "this portion of the recipe is concluded".

Puzzling...

Experiments with Gousto #4: Roasted Portobellos, Garlic Bean Mash & Chimichurri

In an attempt to get back into cooking while I'm not working, I ordered a box of four Gousto recipes but, due to a bunch of 'real life' issues leaving me a little frazzled the week they arrived, my girlfriend ended up having to cook the first two. For the third, since she was headed out around the time we'd normally be eating dinner, necessity dictated that I get my act together and do some proper cooking.

Now, the distinct lack of new posts on this blog over the last couple of years has been partly as a result of a distinct lack of cooking on my part. Lack of practice has left me feeling a little uncertain of myself in the kitchen - perhaps moreso than when I started this blog because, back then, I had the benefit of ignorance. Having done a fair bit of cooking back then, I learned a lot... and a lot of what I learned was how complicated some recipies are, even when they purport to be 'quick and simple'. Hell, when I left my job, one of my leaving gifts was Jamie Oliver's book '5 Ingredients'. Reading through this, it becomes quickly apparent that the five ingredients are normally supplemented by some sort of seasoning or oil that, in any other cookbook, would count as another ingredient. Sure, some can be considered kitchen staples, but I wouldn't think that red wine vinegar, for example, is quite as common as salt or pepper.

But I digress.

Interestingly, while both Gousto and Hello Fresh seemed to be operating a subscription model when I first used them, Gousto now has an additional 'dipping in' option, whereby you can simply pick a number of recipes - four being considered optimal - which will be delivered, along with all the required ingredients (bar kitchen staples like salt, pepper, olive oil, etc.), precisely measured and securely boxed.

Courtney and I picked four recipes more on the basis of how delicious they looked than anything else, but we did also keep an eye on the preparation times, aiming to keep to about 30 minutes, since that often equated to more like 50 minutes when I was doing the cooking.

By sheer coincidence, the first of the four recipes I cooked - since Courtney was working her usual hours today, with an appointment in the evening when we'd normally be having dinner - was centred on mushrooms, just like the first Gousto recipe I ever attempted. It didn't require any particularly fussy chopping, though it did require potatoes to be peeled, and it did require a couple of things to be on the go at the same time, with some fairly precise timing to get everything onto the plate while still warm.

The design of Gousto's recipe cards has changed quite a bit since 2015, with clearer and more detailed nutritional information on the front, along with the inclusion of allergen information, with the trade-off being even smaller images of the individual ingredients. The steps in the recipe, on the back, are now vertically sequential, rather than horizontally, but they're just as clearly numbered as before. I've yet to encounter a recipe that goes beyond eight steps, but I think that's largely down to the creative way they define a 'step' in each process. It's perfectly acceptable to group tasks that need to be done around the same time, and using a specific group of ingredients, but some of these recipes do resort to starting a new step "Meanwhile..." so it's imperative that one read through the full guide and assess the tasks logically, rather than attempting to follow the steps on the fly, which is my usual, carefree method. For example, with this one, I prepared the chimichurri several hours ahead of everything else, and stashed it in the fridge till it was needed. I also peeled and chopped the spuds and garlic well ahead of starting the oven so, technically, I followed the recipe by starting at step 4-5, then skipping back to the middle of step 1, and only really started at the beginning of step 1 when it was time to heat up the oven.

Considering how frazzled I've been of late, and how nervous I was of taking the reigns on an evening meal after relying on my girlfriend to prepare dinner for so long, this actually went really smoothly. It's certainly not the most complex recipe, but it does feature two "Meanwhile..." steps, and it's a little imprecise in some directions - "drizzle with olive oil", for example, is used for preparing the mushrooms on a baking tray and for preparing the potato/cannelli beans to be mashed. I suspect I should have 'drizzled' a little more olive oil into my mash but, to be honest, I'm more used to using butter and milk in mashed potato (when I'm not copping out and using instant mash, to the eternal horror of my girlfriend's family)... It ended up OK... not dry, but not properly creamy either. It's also tricky to judge seasoning, particularly when there's something like this chimichurri involved. I didn't want to add too much salt or pepper to the mash, even, but I could probably have added more than I did without any ill effects.

Another thing I kind of take issue with on these new recipe cards is their wishy-washy guidance on the seasoning, mashing and dressing. The phrase "this is your x" comes up alarmingly often. I get what they're trying to say - that one should make it according to one's own preferences - but I tend to think it's better to follow a recipe precisely the first time, and make alterations the next time based on how it turned out. For example, I've never even heard of a 'chimichurri' before, let alone made one, so telling me to "Season generously with salt and pepper - this is your chimichurri" doesn't seem very helpful. I don't know what it's supposed to taste like, nor do I know what effect salt/pepper will actually have on the end result.

Still, this was fairly simple - easing me back into the kitchen reasonably comfortably - and the end results were delicious. I'm not entirely certain of the merits of the tomato as a component of the meal (hell, it doesn't even rate a mention in the title!), and I think I'll aim to cut the coriander a little more finely next time (perhaps grinding it, and the shallots, a little longer with the mortar and pestle), but I'm broadly happy with what ended up on our plates...

Hopefully I'll be cooking the last of this batch over the weekend, and we have another box of four recipes arriving next week... Round two of my attempts at Gousto recipes is definitely off to a good start.

Greggs Iceland Exclusive Bakes

The collaboration between Greggs and Iceland is leading to quite a range of products, both savoury and sweet. With between two to four pieces per box, and almost all products costing a mere £1.50 (Cornish Pasties cost £2 for two), they present excellent value for money as either part of a large dinner or small lunchtime snacks. Most of them are fairly standard fare - ham and cheese, chicken or beef in a puff pastry casing - but these two in particular caught my eye... and the reasons couldn't be more different...

Spicy Chicken & Pepperoni Bakes
I'm sure I've mentioned how dubious I am when foodstuffs - particularly of the frozen variety - claim to be 'spicy' or 'fiery'. Almost without fail, they are disappointing in that they lack basic flavour and any spiciness is mild at best. I mean, pepperoni is supposed to be spicy, but it very rarely is. I picked these up fully expecting to be completely disappointed, but I was surprised to find it was actually pretty spicy. Not just 'pepperoni spicy', either... it was more like chorizo.

The pastry is more or less the usual frozen Greggs stuff, coming out light, fluffy and crumbly. The filling isn't exactly overflowing, but nor is it as meagre as some of the others in the range. The chicken pieces are of a reasonable size, and the pepperoni pieces are certainly identifiable, but neither are as plentiful as the photo on the packaging suggests - it's the usual trick of pushing all the filling to one side to make it look full.

A suggestion on the box is that these can be served with potato wedges (and some kind of salsa, if the photo is anything to go by) to turn it into a 'proper meal'. I might be tempted to add something else, were I to go that route... Some sort of veg, perhaps, so it's not quite such a stodge-fest..?

Sausage & Bean Melts
Iceland has a very dubious product in its 'own brand' line called 'Cheesy Beans & Sausage', and this is essentially the Greggs version. There's no potato filler, it just gets wrapped up in puff pastry. What you have is a jumble of sausage pieces, probably about a dozen baked beans and a few shavings of cheese, all mixed up in the usual kind of tomato sauce you'd get from the average tin of beans. Of all the Greggs bakes I've tried, this filling was probably the most miserly and, again, the photo clearly involves some kind of artistic license with the quantity of filling.

The filling tastes pretty much as you'd expect - if you dislike any of the components (it's the beans, right?), you're likely to find them revolting, but I'm no stranger to these kinds of things - and it goes fairly well with the pastry. Thing is, it's only an egg and two slices of bacon away from an All-Day Breakfast Melt, so it's puzzling that the serving suggestion is to slap it on a plate with some mashed potato. The photo is rather ambiguous, too - it could be showing mash or scrambled egg with the generous dollop of ketchup.

My usual strategy for these things is to have an entire 2-pack for lunch (unless I'm not especially hungry) so as to avoid the large cardboard boxes occupying all that space in my freezer for too long, and to avoid the necessity to figure out some kind of accompaniment. Since my expectation for these bakes was that they'd be quite bland, all they needed to do was fill the lunchtime hole in my stomach. The Chicken & Pepperoni ones were a pleasant surprise, but the Sausage & Bean bakes met my expectations precisely which, in this case, isn't necessarily a good thing. Neither is a product I'd rush out to buy again - at least, I haven't bought any more since - but the former is one to remember for those times when I have virtually nothing in my freezer that isn't made of potato, while the latter probably counts as a form of comfort food.

New York Soup Co. Fully Loaded Chunky Lentil & Bean Soup

It's only been in this last year or so that I've occasionally bought soups for myself. I'm not a huge fan of soups - be they thick or thin - though I will gladly consume them if they're offered. It's certainly unlikely that this blog will ever feature a home-made soup (that said, knowing me, my very next post will be a recipe for a home-made soup!), but now my local supermarkets are stocking more than their own-brand cartons, there may well be more posts like this...

The main problem with lentil and bean soups, I've found, is that they tend to be very soggy. Lentils have to be soaked thoroughly before they can be used or it's like eating lead shot. Cook them just right, and everything's dandy... cook them wrong, however, and they're just mush. Beans, meanwhile, when fresh, are already soft, yet each kind has its unique texture. When making something like a bean and lentil soup at home, it's all too easy to create mush... and, by and large, most of the ready-made kind I've tried have been at the mush end of the spectrum. Better that than crunchy pellets, I guess, but surely there's a balance to be had?

My local shops seem to carry only two varieties of New York Soup Co. 'Fully Loaded' soups, while they have a range of four, along with two other ranges of three each, and the occasional Limited Edition. Given the choice between Tomato & Meatball and Chunky Lentil & Bean, then, I picked the latter due to my inherent distrust of meaty chunks drowned and disguised in sauce. The packaging claims that their products are "inspired by the fresh delis of New York", but this soup seems to be New York via Texas, labelled with the following: This hotpot is inspired by the cowboys of the Midwest who would stop for a feast of beans during vast cattle drives. This soup is packed full of protein and antioxidants... "ta keep ya full o'life boy!"

Seems to be a confusing case of multiple identities or just one of those situations where a company doesn't let their corporate identity get in the way of a good recipe.

But all this is just the packaging... what about the contents?

First impressions weren't good. Despite the packaging's insistence that "no artificial ingredients are used in our soup", the colour looked that little bit too vibrant... and the moment I dumped it into the saucepan (you didn't think I'd use the microwave for this, did you? I mean, sure, it's an option... but it's always better to heat a soup on the hob), I noticed the kind of oily sheen that I've learned to dread, since that's precisely the kind of thing that sets off my stomach acid.

A mere five to six minutes of warming on the hob later, I decanted the soup into a bowl, grabbed myself a couple of slices of bread, tucked in... And was very surprised.

It's difficult to say which surprised me first or most, but the main surprises were the sheer spiciness of the soup - bearing in mind that spiciness is not mentioned at all on the packaging - and the texture of it. It's called "Fully Loaded" and "Chunky and Hearty" and it really lives up to those epithets. The lentils are just firm enough that you know they're in there, and the skin on the beans is just tough enough that they feel substantial... and the innards are soft without being squishy, moist without being sludge.

The aforementioned oily sheen remains when the soup is heated, but it comes from what the ingredients list calls "Extra Virgin Olive Oil (1.5%)" and, even coupled with the spicy kick, my stomach had no complaints afterwards.

The spiciness isn't overpowering, then, but it adds a welcome kick to the hot soup, and keeps it from being the kind of flat, bland, almost woody soup that puts me off anything involving beans. In some cases, a substantial tomato component in this kind of soup would be enough to prevent it from becoming a flavourless mess, but that's only if you're especially fond of tomato... Since I'm not, the addition of garlic, black pepper and red chilli turns it into exactly the kind of soup I'm likely to pick up again in future.