Filling one’s basket with Canadian-made and grown products at the grocery store can be pretty challenging. Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, but a majority of products in-store come from the US or Mexico, or even further afield.
Funnily enough, when choosing more and more Canadian goods, a meal idea started to form that would take you across the border, almost twice… A sandwich that’s adjacent to a Mexican pepito or a torta, but veers off once certain non-authentic vegetables are added. But the idea remains—a protein-filled sandwich with some extra vegetables added in to meet the daily quota.
Yield: two people who are quite hungry
Ingredients:
-a can of pinto beans, washed and strained
-one clove of garlic
-one onion
-two teaspoons of cumin powder
-two teaspoons of chili powder (okay, you got me, this wasn't harvested in Canada)
-a package of beef (any kind will do, but make sure to cut it into bite-sized pieces and that you account for enough cooking time to make the meat tender)
-four or so medium sized bell peppers, washed and cut
-a few stalks of kale, washed and cut
-one jalapeño pepper
-olive oil
-bread with a crusty, firm exterior but soft interior (bolillo bread from a Mexican bakery would be best, but a baguette or ciabatta can be used, too)
Method of preparation:
Firstly, chop an onion very finely and scrape it into a pan with olive oil and a crack or two of salt. Cook the onion pieces for about five minutes over medium heat.
Squash a clove of garlic with your knife, take away the outside of the garlic and mince it finely, adding this to the onion pan. Also add the cumin and chili powders.
Wash the pinto beans and strain them of any liquid before adding them to the onion pan. Add water (about a cup) back to the pan and cook it all for ten minutes with a cover. You can take another flat, wide pan and place it on top. Keep an eye on this pan to make sure the water doesn’t completely evaporate.
Turn the heat down (or off if all the water is gone) and mash the beans with the spoon you stirred the onions with. The beans should be super soft, buttery, and smooth at this point and not watery. If so, the bean spread is done now.
Cook the beef on a pan at medium-low heat for however much time it needs to get fully cooked and tender. While you wait, wash the peppers and kale. Chop the bell peppers into long slices, the jalapeño peppers into rings, and the kale leaves into smaller pieces—that way you don’t have long strands of kale to pull out of the sandwich with your teeth.
When the outside of every beef piece is seared and cooked, you can add the vegetables and sauté them at medium heat until the meat is cooked to medium doneness, with an internal temperature of 63°C. You can stir a few slices of butter into the combination for extra flavour.
Cut the bread lengthwise and toast it on a baking sheet with your oven’s broil feature. Once the bread is toasted and warm, use a spoon to spread the refried beans across the inside of the bread. Then add the meat and vegetable mixture and add a bit of extra hot sauce as you wish. Cut each stuffed loaf in half and it’s ready to serve.
Head isu! ¡Buen provecho! Happy eating!
