Burritos with re-fried beans

My kids love burritos, but only if they can have guacamole with them. In San Francisco it was easy enough. Just trot down the road to any old Mexican restaurant and buy some. Things are not as simple here in Germany. Yes we do have Mexican restaurants but we have not yet been able to find a good one. We have tried. The best one is run by a Sri Lankan and the food tastes like you would expect Mexican food in Sri Lanka to taste like!

Of course you could just eat it without the wrap!

So there is no choice but to make everything from scratch. At least I have found places to buy the tortillas because making them is a pain in the .... Salsa and guacamole taste really bad here in DE, so we have to make that from scratch. As a result we only make this when the tomatoes are red and ripe and the avocados are on sale.

Here is what you need to put together a burrito:

• Tortilla wraps
• Re-fried beans
• Guacamole
• Salsa
• Sour cream
• Grated cheddar cheese

Optional

• Mexican rice
• Grated iceberg salad

And of course tortilla chips on the side. 

Refried beans sprinkled with cheese

Chunky salsa

Guacamole

Yesterday I took my youngest grocery shopping with me. I usually do this all alone while I am waiting for my eldest to finish her gymnastics training. I am so used to doing it alone, which  makes it difficult to do it any other way. I get so distracted by the company and they get me to buy all kinds of things that I don't want and cause me to forget half of what I do want.

Well yesterday I was made to buy avocados and tortilla chips. The demands were very clear: "Can we have guacamole for dinner?" There were other demands made like "Can we have salad with pomegranate? Can we have Oreos? Can we have Jaffa cakes?" but only some of them were granted, including the guacamole.

We love the stuff, and I am not sure why I have never made it in Sri Lanka given that avocados are so cheap and good and all the ingredients are available. It either is because I don't have the recipe with me (no more excuses now) or due to the lack of chips to dip. A few years ago I had guacamole in Arugam Bay and they served it with papadum which is a brilliant idea (might be best to bake them though instead of frying!).

Preparation time: 30 minutes; Makes a big bowl

Ingredients:

1	Onion
2-3	Garlic cloves
2.5 cm	Ginger root
4	Haas Avocados (about 2 Sri Lankan avocados)
2	Limes, juice and grated rind
4 tbsp	Coriander leaves (cilantro)
2 tsp	Ground coriander
2 tsp	Ground cumin
1 tsp	Chili powder
2	Ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 tsp	Salt (to taste)

Method:

So there are two ways to make this. You can either have the chunky variety or the smooth variety. We usually go for chunky.

If you want to go for smooth just put the onion, garlic and ginger into your food processor and pulse. Then put in everything else except the tomatoes and pulse until smooth. Stir in the tomatoes and serve!

You might consider chunky to be a bit more time consuming but you save on cleaning the food processor!

So I first put the avocado in a bowl and smash them up to the size that we like. Then grate my ginger and garlic into the bowl. The onion I dice finely and add that together with all the other ingredients.

You can adjust the spices as you like and I was very tempted to add some finely chopped green chili but I didn't have time. If your tomatoes are watery dice them, let them sit for a few minutes and drain off the water. The tastier your avocados and tomatoes are the better your guacamole will taste.

As you probably all know avocados turn brown very quickly. To keep your guacamole a bit longer you need to stop the surface coming in contact with the air. To do this I take some cling wrap and press it down onto the surface of the mixture making sure to press any air bubbles out. Then to be extra careful I put another layer of cling wrap on top. The guacamole should be chilled before using so pop it back in the fridge until you need it. In my house it never goes back into the fridge (unless we are having visitors) but straight into some warm tummy's!!!

This is half the recipe