Claire's Bean & Egg Chimichangas

Claire’s Bean & Egg Chimichangas

Claire Thomson

Featuring:

Pulses

Tomato

Effort:

Complexity:

Cost:

In season now

Serves: 4

Prep time: 15 mins

Cook time: 30 mins

Ingredients:

600g black beans, drained if necessary (about 2 tins)

1 large onion, finely diced

2 garlic, finely chopped

1 pepper, green, red or yellow, finely diced

2 tsp ground cumin

2 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp smoked paprika, or use unsmoked sweet or hot paprika, up to you

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

Good pinch of chilli flakes or powder, to taste, chipotle chilli is especially good here

1 tsp dried oregano

2 tbsp tomato puree

1 tbsp red or white wine vinegar

3 eggs

Knob of butter to scramble the eggs

100g feta cheese

2 large ripe tomatoes, diced small

1 small red onion, finely diced

1 large bunch of coriander, stalks finely chopped, leaves roughly chopped

1 large, juicy lime

Salt and plenty of black pepper, to taste

4 soft wheat tortilla

Olive oil, to fry

Hot sauce, of choice, if using

Method:

In a pan over a medium heat, add a spot of oil and fry the onion and pepper for around 5 – 8 minutes to soften, add the garlic, spices, chilli and oregano and fry for 2 minutes more, add the tomato puree and fry for 1 minute more.
Add the beans, drained of excess liquid if necessary, and mix well to coat in the tomato and spices. Add a splash of water to the pan if needed, some beans will need a splash of water, some wont, you want the beans to have a coating of sauce, but not be too soupy. Continue to cook over a medium heat for around 5 minutes, until the beans are tasting and smelling delicious, remove from heat.
Add the red wine vinegar and coriander stalks to the beans, season well with salt and plenty of black pepper, to taste. Remove from heat and keep to one side.
In a small bowl, whisk the eggs with a pinch of salt and some black pepper.
To make the salsa, in a bowl, combine the tomato, red onion and coriander leaf, add a big pinch of salt and the juice of 1/2 a lime, stir to combine.
In a small saucepan over a moderate heat add a knob of butter, heat until foaming and add the eggs to scramble, reduce the heat and gently stir and scramble the eggs to you your liking. Remove from the heat.
To assemble the chimichanga, have a tortilla wrap in front of you on your chopping board, add a spoon of the black beans, add a spoonful of the scrambled eggs, crumble over with some of the feta and add a spoonful of the salsa to the centre of the wrap. Pull the two sides of the tortilla to the centre of the wrap, then roll tightly to secure the remaining sides of the chimichanga.
Get a large frying pan hot and add a splash of oil to the pan, add the chimichangas, seam side down to the pan to begin with, reduce the heat to moderate and fry the chimichangas for around 2 – 3 minutes on each side, turning the chimichangas to fry until the sides are golden and the chimichanga is piping hot.
Remove from the heat, add some extra salsa to serve, an extra squish of the remaining lime and splash over with some hot sauce of choice, if using.

Engaging Kids

Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.

Kids in the kitchen

The eventual aim, if possible, is to get kids in the kitchen. Don’t worry, this doesn’t have to mean they are with you from start-to-end creating mess and rising stress levels! It can be as simple as giving them one small job (stirring, measuring, pouring, grating, chopping…) ideally involving veg. They can come in to do their little bit, and have fun with you for a few minutes. Getting them involved, making it playful and praising them plenty for their involvement, perhaps even serving it as dinner they “made”, makes it much more likely they will eat the food offered, not to mention teaching them important life skills. Find ideas, safety tips, videos and even a free chart in our Kids in the Kitchen section here.

Activities

While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.

Sensory

Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.

Serving

The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.

Claire Thomson

Claire Thomson is a chef, food writer and a constant source of family-cooking inspiration to her 230k Instagram followers. Claire has written for the Guardian, Telegraph, BBC Good Food Magazine and Delicious and is a Guild of Food Writers award winner for Tomato. She has appeared on BBC1's Saturday Kitchen, Channel 4's Sunday Brunch and BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour. On her podcast The 5 O'Clock Apron, she chats and chops with people from other professions about what they cook for dinner.

5oclockapron.com/

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