Week 27: 'Arriba' Speedy Gonzales Tortillas

The book: Ainsley Harriott's Meals In Minutes

The recipe: p64, "'Arriba' Speedy Gonzales Tortillas"

Be honest, with a recipe name like that I didn't even need to tell you it was Ainsley, did I? Twee and punny he may be, but Meals In Minutes is a bit of a classic and is among my most well-thumbed cookbooks, with everything from the Mexican tortilla "cheesecake" to an inauthentic but quick take on paella getting reasonably frequent kitchen airtime.

So will this week's random choice transcend its frankly awful name and prove to be another winner from the Ainsley stable?

Who nose?

The prep: There are always kidney beans in the cupboard, because you never know when you might need to make an emergency vat of chilli. Indeed, the shopping list for this one turns out to be a modest one, mainly encompassing tortillas (I go for Tesco's seeded tortilla wraps, largely because they look quite funky) and store-bought guacamole, which I am excited to discover now comes in a squeezy bottle - though I'm a little sceptical about the extent to which the properties of "chunky" and "squeezy" will reconcile.

Meanwhile, the recipe wants me to use Red Leicester (this doesn't feel entirely authentic) but cheddar's what I've already got in, so cheddar it is - I'm not made of money.

The making: An onion, some garlic and cumin are fried up then the kidney beans are stirred through and the mixture is "roughly crushed". We're talking refried beans here, basically - never a bad thing. It's only at this point in proceedings that I properly register the fact that the recipe is a vegetarian one, which tends to make things quicker and easier on the cooking front, I suppose.

Anyway, next the tortillas are briefly heated to make them easier to handle, then the assembly phase begins. The guacamole (perfectly squeezy, as it transpires) is spread over the tortillas, some shredded lettuce and seeded, diced tomatoes are scattered on top, then the bean mix is dolloped on top of that. Last but certainly not least, the grated cheese joins the party, and we're ready to roll! I MEAN LITERALLY.

Once the tortillas are rolled, Ainsley requires me to slice them in half diagonally. This seems like a terrible idea - surely everything will just fall straight out of them? - but I'm keen to stick to the recipe instead of doing something more sensible and intuitive, so what the heck.

There's no particularly elegant way of arranging them on the plate, and the slicing process requires some judicious use of toothpicks to hold the tortillas together, so the overall aesthetic effect could be rather more pleasing. Though it obviously doesn't help that at least one of my diagonal cuts was somewhat rubbish too. Still, there's the finished product in all its glory:

Unevenly done

The eating: As predicted, the things are hard to handle and basically fall apart the moment you look at them, but they're damn tasty. Of course they are, we're talking about refried beans and guacamole and cheese and other good stuff!

It's a simple recipe (heck, it's barely even a recipe really - you could at least have required the guacamole to be home-made, Ainsley), but I don't miss the meat at all; if anything, the fat from it would have made the tortillas even more liable to disintegrate.

And as always seems to be the case with anything (pseudo-)Mexican, what initially looks like a lot of food ends up slipping down very easily.

I am really very full afterwards. But there must be something to be said for it, because the Friday night feast fuels me to a new parkrun PB the next morning. Speedy Gonzales indeed...

One-word verdict: 'Arriba'.