Saturday, September 7, 2013

Dinner on the fire!

Last night was a beautiful night for a fire here.  The temperature was a round 15 degrees Celsius at first it was clear skies so you could see the stars (well the ones you can see in the city, which in London is actually quite a few).  We decided we would have a fire and make grill-a-snacks.  We went to the store and bought all the stuff we needed to make pizza ones like we normally do.  As GMF was preparing the fire outside I was rummaging through the fridge getting out some veg that we could add to them.  Then I saw a lovely looking chicken breast that I had cooked earlier and I suddenly had a craving for Fajitas.  So I decided to try something different - Fajita filling in the pie iron.  I have never tried to make anything in the pie iron without a crust before.  I've used different things for the crust including puff pastry but never without any crust.  
I cut up the chicken breast, bell peppers, cherry bomb peppers, a cayenne pepper and some onion.  Added in some seasoning - cracked salt and pepper, paprika, garlic and tossed this in some oil.  Then I prepared my toppings.  I made a simple pico de gallo salsa with grape tomatoes (which I picked in the dark so there are a couple in there that weren't as red as I'd like but oh well), onion, cilantro and lime juice.  The other toppings were sour cream, and a smokey chipotle salsa.  Arranged everything on a large cutting for carrying outside and we were off to the fire!
 I pilled the topping into the pie iron and started cooking.  The sizzle of the frying was great sound as the peppers and onions let out their juices.  Below is the cooked filling still in the pie iron.  (side question - which picture do you like better, without flash-left or with flash-right?)


 I also warmed my tortilla shell simply by using half the pie iron as a holding place and held it over the fire.  It warmed up pretty fast!


Here is my fajita all put together.  The final touch was a couple baby lettuce leaves that I picked right out the garden bed beside the fire place.


This is it half eaten, I couldn't seem to get a good focus on this pic, tried several times, then gave up and kept eating!!!

 This was such a success and I think we will bring this recipe camping with us next time!  The one thing we wish we did was put our cast iron fajita pan on the stones around the fire and then put the cooked filling on it to keep warm.  We put it in a bowl that was sitting on a table beside the fire and so it lost some of its heat.

On to dessert!  I once again created by dessert grill-a-snack but with a couple minor changes.  First the bread, instead of buying a loaf of the bagged bread we bought a fresh bakery loaf that had been sliced from the grocery store (it was actually cheaper as well).  I didn't think it would make a difference, but it did.  It was easier to spread the butter on the outside without tearing, it fit better in the pie iron and when we burned a little bit while cooking we could scrape it off very easily (the bagged bread would always fall apart).  I know you're thinking, how could you burn them!,  but it happens sometimes, and I deal with it!  The second change was that I didn't put peanut butter on this one but instead I put score bits.  OH MY GOODNESS, soooooo good.  I had bought them to make score bit brownies today (I'll post about that later), so I decided why not add some to this.  I also lightly salted the outside of the bread.  Salt and caramel go together so well!  This was delicious!!

Here is the assembled filling.  Marshmallow slices, Caramilk squares and Score bits.

Here it is  right out of the fire!
And the finished product, oozing with tasty goodness.  I am amazed at the difference the little bit of salt made.  I was D-E-Licious!

Thanks for reading.





2 comments:

  1. Looks so yummy! The photos are marvellous, I like them without the flash as you got the sense of darkness and the the feel of being around the fire. That dessert looks amazing.

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