Why hello there! And welcome back to Kitchen Catastrophe, where one man blunders his way from food group to food group looking for where he left his keys. I’m your host with the most (time to kill) Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe comes from a potentially surprising source, and is delayed for a very valid reason. Of course, if you’re just here for the food, click this link to go to the recipe (hopefully, the anchor links have been acting up again). Everyone else, let’s dig in.

 

Rapidamente

So, what’s been going on? Last week I bailed somewhat suddenly, and this week I’m limping in a little late. Well, the answer is I’ve been spinning a LOT of plates, in part because this last weekend was my brother’s bachelor party, which he, in classically him fashion, pushed for a 3.5-day weekend in Bend, Oregon where we, among other things, went whitewater rafting.

I went down this! And I only bled a little!

The trip meant I was away from my computer from 10 AM on Thursday to 6 PM Monday, which is why this is coming out now. (Editor’s note: “Now” was supposed to be Tuesday Night/Wednesday Morning, but Jon forgot after rehearsal to upload the photos, and then right after he finished his Wednesday errands, his work chair snapped a leg, and fixing that messed up everything.) It ALSO served as the frantic backdrop for finding and creating this recipe, which, for fun’s sake, I’ll walk you through.

As I’ve mentioned, I had a messy last couple weeks: a lot of sudden requests leading to schedule shuffling and emails/bureaucracy to work through. Like, I’m going to be working out in Leavenworth for a while at the end of the month, which meant I needed to re-new my MAST card, which I had STARTED before Memorial Day, but didn’t have time to finish, leading to me having to fit 90 minutes of “LET ME EXPLAIN FOR THE FOURTH TIME THAT IF YOU SERVE DRUNK PEOPLE, YOU CAN BE SUED.” Into my schedule on my last day in town…which meant I didn’t have time to buy groceries ahead of the trip, as I had intended.

The drive to Bend, and initial evening meet-up of all the groomsmen, some of whom had never met before, ate up Thursday’s time where Nate and I could have run to the store. Friday, we got up early, went rafting,

We passed by the mystical last Blockbuster in America.

For those in the know, we were in category 2 rapids, with a brief span of category 3. For those NOT in the know: rapids are classed by categories, with higher numbers meaning more skill is required to navigate them safely. The scale goes to 5, with a special “6” rating for “a newly discovered  category 4 or 5” since obviously not knowing the patterns of the river makes it riskier. For a more precise context, the 2 rating meant we had to row to avoid a couple rocks every now and again, and had some moments of slamming into waves, while the 3 section was the kind of place where the guide had to actively direct the group to avoid the rocks on either side of us as the water splashed onto us.

That rather obviously ate up a fair bit of energy, so Nate and I didn’t want to hit the store on Friday either.

Saturday, however, I had to get working on a plan. See, my initial plan was to do a very basic “breakfast burrito” recipe. Some eggs, cheese, bacon/sausage, salsa and maybe some hashbrowns. I knew we had some vegetarians, so I was thinking on like, something we could put in the burrito instead of meat. Grilled Halloumi, maybe? Maybe some seasoned lentils? But, on arriving at the AirBnB, it was revealed that we didn’t have 2 vegetarians, as I had previously gathered: we had one vegetarian, and one vegan. 

The Lentils would have still worked for the vegan, but would have required that I buy the lentils and cook them the day before, which felt just a touch too fiddly given the size of the group, and the amount of alcohol being consumed: The odds that a cooked pot of lentils sits untouched on the stove overnight in a group of 12 drunk guys aren’t super high. So instead, I went into town, and I grabbed some cookbooks in hopes of finding something that would help me out, and I found THIS.

A man with a knife!

Trejo’s Tacos is, as the face implies, recipes recorded by film star Danny Trejo, who is just a delight. Originally a construction worker and resident of LA, he had a tumultuous youth, spending a lot of his late teens and twenties in and out of prison and struggling with drug addiction. In his last prison stay, he joined a 12 Step program, which helped him get clean, and would later drive him into film: while serving as a Youth Drug counselor, he came onto the set of Runaway Train to help one of his patients who was struggling with cocaine problems/temptations (this was, after, a movie set in 1985), where he was hired as an extra so that he could pay the bills while helping the kid out. He was recognized by the screenwriter as being the Welterweight champion during his time at San Quentin, and offered 10x the pay to train the lead actor, which in turn led to the director liking their chemistry enough to give Trejo a full scene where he fought the lead, starting his career.

Trejo has since been well known for being a delight to work with, a good guy, and someone always trying to help. At the age of 74, he ran into a car accident to free a child trapped in the car. He REQUIRES that if he play a villain, that the villain die before the end, to help teach kids and teens watching his movies that crime doesn’t pay. In one of the recipes in the book, he prefaces introducing a vegan taco recipe by saying “I’m going to sound like a jerk here, but I used to feel sorry for vegans.” Because he assumed their food had to be boring and same-y. That’s a guy apologizing for FEELING BAD for others. What I’m saying is that Danny Trejo may not be the new Mr Rogers, but the dudes live on the same block.

Danny’s end of the block has much cooler street art, though.

So I was very happy to find a fairly simple recipe for a vegan filling in the book. (I actually found about 5, but I picked the one that was in the sweet spot of “simple, fast, and new”. Like, sure, COULD I have made the Jackfruit taco filling? Yes, but it takes 45 minutes of stewing, and I’ve already MADE Jackfruit pulled pork.) And that recipe was Mushrooms Asada, which Trejo even appeased the pedant in me by pointing out that the name is technically wrong: asada is Spanish for “grilled”, and you fry these mushrooms. But because they’re soaked in his Asada Marinade, there’s not really a better name for them. And hey, you could grill these a la plancha, so I’m doubly in.

So, how do we make this thing?

 

All of the Asada

So the first part of the recipe is the most involved, and it’s still pretty easy. To make the marinate you need to roughly chop some onion.

Today on “Jon wrote the lead-in after forgetting what he took pictures on”: some really weird “onions”.

Then roughly chop some jalapeño. Then chop some cilantro, and peel some garlic. Then you add in a bunch of other stuff: orange juice, chipotles, olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, oaorika and cumin. All of that goes in a food processor or blender, and gets pureed. Or don’t! There’s a side-bar in the cookbook that if you don’t have a blender or food processor, you can just finely chop and stir everything together in a bowl. Lucklly, my AirBnB has a blender.

Load ‘er up and blitz ‘er down.

Thirty seconds of blending later, and we have a nice orange-colored puree. Which we will add to a pound of sliced mushrooms and toss to combine. Now, for a carne asada, you’d want to marinate overnight. But for mushrooms, you only need about 30 minutes of soaking. Which is great, because we definitely didn’t go grocery shopping until 90 minutes before we were supposed to have breakfast served, so we were able to get the mushrooms soaking while we worked on the other components.

While those go, we personally cooked up 30 eggs, a pound of hash-browns, a pound of sausage, bacon, and more. Once we had the pan free, the mushrooms went in, and started sizzling.

These are some sexy mushrooms.

The recipe says go until lightly browned, around 15 minutes. We may have shaved that a little thinner in order to ensure our vegan/vegetarian friends weren’t waiting too long. And it’s a good thing we had a whole pound of it, because quite a few people snatched up mushrooms to round out their burritos, or drizzled the excess marinade into their burritos as a sauce. I even used about a half cup of it to season the second batch of hashbrowns, which I thought was a success itself. Eventually, Nate and I were done cooking, by which time the vegan and vegetarian had finished, so I was able to put together my own vegetarian burrito.

Some will say I should have rolled this up before I took the picture, but I would say “then it’s just a tortilla, dummy”.

And there were quite good! My only main complaint was that I wish we’d had the time to make a double-batch of mushrooms, because honestly, they maybe fit the burrito too well, as they hit a kind of generic “this is a nicely seasoned burrito” vibe. And in many ways, that’s probably a success itself: a mushroom burrito that just tastes like a normal burrito is normalizing vegan and vegetarian options, after all. I’ll almost certainly try the recipe again, because seriously: 5 minutes of chopping and blending, and a quick marinade is a GREAT quick turn-around for a vegetarian taco filling.

 

FRIDAY: I’LL POP OUT A QUICK LITTLE “HERE’S SOME STUFF I ATE THIS WEEKEND” POST AS AN APOLOGIZING.

MONDAY: NO IDEA. KINDA FEELING NOODLES? I HAVEN’T HAD PASTA IN LIKE, A WEEK OR TWO.

 

Recipe

Mushroom “Asada”

Makes 3ish cups marinade, and 3/4 pound Mushroom Asada

Ingredients

                Marinade

½ large white onion, roughly chopped

2 medium jalapeños, roughly chopped

½ cup roughly chopped fresh cilantro/parsley

3 chipotle chiles from a can, with 2 tbsps of the sauce.

6 garlic cloves, peeled

¾ cup orange juice

½ cup olive oil

¼ cup soy sauce

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tbsp ground cumin

1 tbsp smoked paprika

Asada

1.5 cups marinade

1 pound of sliced mushrooms (button or crimini, by preference)

2 tbsp olive oil

 

Preparation

Place all the marinade ingredients in a blender or food processor, and puree. You can store excess marinade in an air-tight container for up to a week or so.

Toss the marinade and mushrooms in a bowl, and allow to marinate for 30 minutes.

Heat 1 tbsp oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add ½ the marinated mushrooms to the skillet, and cook, stirring often, until lightly browned, 12-15 minutes. Repeat with the remaining oil and mushrooms.

 

Mushroom Veggie Breakfast burritos

Makes 3 burritos

Ingredients

1 recipe Mushroom Asada

½ lb hashbrowns, cooked to your preference

Salsa and Guac of choice

6 eggs (optional)

½ cup cheese (optional)

Flour Burrito Tortillas

 

Preparation

If using, scramble the eggs over medium low heat. Split all ingredients across 3 tortillas, roll closed and serve.