Burrito Night 8/26/08

Apartments in Mirrielees are mostly triples, and our other roommate has, so far, been left out of the blog. Welcome Kesav. Kesav is Indian and vegetarian, and he works bizarre hours for bio research and spends many evenings either playing Indian music or attending Jazz concerts as part of the Stanford Jazz Festival. As such, he spends most of his nights eating out, though when he's available, we always invite him to join us in the kitchen.

Not quite knowing what's easy and vegetarian, I asked my (vegetarian) sister near the beginning of the summer about easy choices. She mentioned several dishes, but the one that seemed most appealing was the burrito night. Since then, I bugged George and Kesav about doing burrito night. That week, the timing looked good, so at Safeway, we picked up large tortillas, fresh tomatoes, extra salsa, black beans, chicken, grated cheese and burrito mix.

Saturday night, we all jumped into the kitchen after a day at the Gilroy Garlic Festival eager to prove our kitchen as proficient as Chipotle. We roughly divided ourselves into teams with George on the frying, Kesav with the fresh vegetables and other small tasks, and me on the beans.

George seems most fond of his wok-like frying pan (for cooler areas and flipping) and did a great job on the chicken and fajita vegetables.

The beans were fairly easy to deal with. Beans first, some water, the mix, and wait until the water boils away. Turn the heat down and let the steam rise out of the simmer.

In our last step, we separated out some of the beans for Kesav then mixed the chicken into the rest of the batch.

And a pile of fresh vegetables to top it.

Because it isn't really worth it to have a full kitchen set for only a summer with a kitchen, I happen to only have plastic, compartmentalized plates. I needed a flat surface to put my burrito on and found the classic solution to that and the potential.

The burritos were absolutely delicious and as good as any I've ever had. A little more time-consuming than other meals, but stirring beans takes no attention, and we had a great time talking and shifting around while cooking. Burrito night was absolutely as good as it can be.

Watch out Chipotle. You just got served by Mirrielees 421.