It's all in the dressing

I had a couple of chicken thighs left over from the pack I'd bought to make the kebabs, so I decided to use them up making tostadas (p153). The recipe actually calls for cooked chicken breasts, but as I was making smaller quantities, I figured it wouldn't matter if I used thighs.


You're supposed to serve the tostadas with tomato salsa (p153), which requires an hour's chilling time, so I got that made first. It's pretty simple: you just mix together chopped tomato, parsley, salt and lemon juice.

When the salsa was in the fridge I turned to the tostadas. I hadn't heard of these before, but they seem to be, in essence, tortillas with stuff piled on top. The first thing I did was heat up some refried beans to spread on the tortillas. I've never really used refried beans, mostly just because they look a bit unappealing: sort of congealed brown mush in a can.

Still, when you've warmed them up they don't look quite as grotty. I spread some over a tortilla and topped it with shredded lettuce, avocado, cooked chicken and sour cream. Then there's a dressing to drizzle over the top: a mixture of lemon juice, oil, salt and cumin.

Finally, I topped my tostada with a few spoonfuls of salsa. It looked delicious, but I had no idea how to go about eating it. I ended up picking at the toppings with a fork until the point where I was able to fold the remaining filling in the tortilla and eat it with my fingers.


I wasn't mistaken when I thought it looked delicious. Most of the flavours were quite familiar, being the kind of fillings I'd normally put in a tortilla wrap, but the tangy cumin dressing made all the difference, oozing around the lettuce, mixing with the sour cream, and cutting through the furriness of the beans. It was so tasty I went and made a second one, even though I was quite full from the one I had already eaten.

Carefully separating the soggy ingredients in individual containers, I packed the leftovers into my lunchbox. At lunchtime today, I turned these leftovers into a wrap and sat at my desk going "num num num" and raving on about the cumin dressing. The salad ingredients had gone a bit limp and the beans dried out a bit overnight, but the dressing was still just as good.


You should try this one. Seriously: give it a go. It's really easy and (in case I haven't made this clear) really, really yummy.