I'm Back!

A week since my last post, I made my way home from Montreal, only to travel to Toronto just a few days later for 4 days. Finally I am home and back to normalcy.

Montreal was fantastic! We had some interesting living arrangements but had a great time at the course. I love the city and want to visit again in the winter becuase I think old Montreal would be beautiful covered in snow. To save some money we took a trip to the grocery store upon arrival. I sustained most days off of hard boiled eggs, bread, cottage cheese, peanut butter, apples, bananas, and oatmeal (how exciting, haha). Can't say I came up with any novel recipes with that grocery list.

We did manage to have a few nights out for dinner. The highlight of our dining experiences was Gorgio's in Old Montreal.

Not only was the restaurant in a dungeon with an interesting history, but it was BYOW with no corking fee, and had a menu consisting of $10 pizza and pasta. I had pizza with pesto, provalone cheese, peppers, onions and sausage. The crust was thinner than I prefer but was delicious none-the-less.

The building was an old schoolhouse and then was used to store the firs for the Hudson's Bay Company. Pretty cool I'd say!

The wrestling that was on TV ruined the atmosphere a little bit

Down the street from our hostel was a restaurant O.NOIR which I have heard about but never seen. No one was daring enough to go with me but I DEFINITELY want to go to Toronto location sometime in the future. There was also a frozen yogurt shop down the street called Yeh! It was a great concept! They had tons of flavours to choose from and it was self serve. You could mix whatever flavours you wanted and then you paid by the weight. They had every topping you could ever want including fresh fruit! It was a nice change from our usual TCBY fare.

Clearly I didn't go for the fresh fruit

After a very long trip back from Montreal I had a few days to recover from the severe lack of sleep that resulted from staying up until 3 am and waking up at 7 am the last few days in Montreal. Then it was time to head to Toronto to attend a conference. Across the street from the conference there was a gourmet burrito place that we tried for lunch one day. It was called Z-Teca.

Now as you probably know, I LOVE burritos. This place had a really neat concept and tasted very fresh and somewhat healthier than your usual burrito. I had a vegetarian burrito with roasted tomatillo & jalapeno salsa which was delicious.

This photo is a little unappetizing. Burritos just don't photograph well (that's my excuse anyway)

There was something missing however and it is hard to put my finger on it. It probably was a combination of using regular black beans instead of refried beans and the slight under-grilling. I would have liked it to be a bit crisper. While not better than Burrito Boyz, still better than any burrito I have made (see rice paper burrito fail).

On our last night in Toronto we walked along Harbord St. in attempts to find some good pizza. We found it at a place called Pizza Gigi. Great price and fantastic pizza! We ordered a whole pizza but the pre-made slices looked to-die-for. I see this place being a great late-night stop after a night out. The man that made ALL the pizza's (we witnessed TONS of phone orders while waiting for our pizza; a very popular delivery place I suspect) was grumpy and Italian, which is probably how it should be.

With all the eating out the last couple weeks I was looking forward to cooking. I made a nice big pot of soup today which will last me all week I am sure. Keep an eye out for the recipe!

Rice Paper Black Bean Burrito Failure

I thought of something that I thought would be revolutionary on the weekend and tried it out on Monday night. Like I have said before, I like Mexican food, including burritos. While tasty and can be healthy when packed with lots of veggies, the tortilla can ruin it. The ones you can buy in the grocery stores are not very tasty and are never as good as the one's in the restaurants.

To find a lower carbohydrate option I thought of rice paper. Ideally it would still hold all the contents together and could be baked. In case you missed the title of this post, this idea was a fail. This was a fail because not only had I never made burritos, I had never worked with rice paper, and therefore, had never used rice paper to make burritos. I will go through how I went about this and discuss some possible reasons for the failure.

I will admit that I was in a bit of a rush when making these. I made the filling using a similar recipe to the Black Bean Tomato Sauce I have made in the past.

Black Bean Burrito Filling

1 tbsp olive oil
2.5 cups cooked black beans
1/2 large onion
2 bell peppers
3 cups diced tomatoes
1/4 jalepeno (this was being timid)
1/2 can tomato paste
chili powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

I highly recommend chopping the veggies up very finely, and slightly smashing up the beans. I didn't do this, but I think this gives it a better texture for a burrito filling.

I heated the olive oil on medium-high. The onions were sauteed for 3-5 minutes and then I added the peppers. After 5 minutes I added the beans, tomatoes, jalapeno, tomato paste and some chili powder. I made sure it was stirred well and allowed it to simmer on medium-low for about 10 minutes before tasting it for spice. From here you can add as much chili powder as you like. Then allow the mixture to simmer until the desired thickness is reached. You do not want much liquid left. You could even reduce the amount of tomatoes and add other veggies instead, be creative!

Like I said, these chunks are just too big (that is what happens when you are in a rush).

Another reason to make burritos is to have another reason to make and eat guacamole (as if I need another reason). I had half an avocado so I whipped up a 2 serving portion of guacamole.

Guacamole

1/2 large avocado chopped
1 garlic clove
1/4 cup diced onion
~1 tbsp lemon juice

Mash it all together or leave it chunky, its up to you!

Now I had the two stars of the burrito show. It was time to attempt to wrap them up in rice paper. To use rice paper, you soak it in warm water for about 5 seconds. I scooped 1/2 cup of the burrito mixture, 1/2 the guacamole and 1 tbsp cottage cheese into the center of the paper. I then folded each side up to form a sac. It held farely well together.

Unfolded rice paper (no guacamole in this one, how unfortunate):

After wrapping, before baking:

I should have saved some sauce to put on top but I forgot :( . I then baked the sacs (I refuse to call them burritos at this point), for 10 minutes at 400 F. The rice paper stiffened a bit and stuck to any rice paper that was close to it, resulting in a big mess! My make-shift burrito project was a fail.

I am wondering if little mini burritos would have been better and then not bake them after wrapping. The rice paper wasn't designed to be eaten with a knife and a fork so making them smaller, to eat with one's hands, may have been a better approach.

Does anyone have any creative burrito-like ideas?

I just though of one now! Burrito potato skins! The skin of the potato is the best part anyway! Into a hollowed out potato, add the burrito filling plus any other toppings (guac and cheese obvi) and bake to melt it all together. I think this would be fabulous; a much healthier alternative to tortillas and a more successful alternative to rice paper.

Now what am I going to do with all this rice paper?!?