Flautas

I'm in the middle of another tiring weekend. I will have to stop having fun and try to get some rest soon.

Friday morning I woke up early to make flautas for an office picnic. I was assigned to bring a finger food. Vegetable trays have become so commonplace (two other people brought veggie trays and a third brought a fruit tray), so I experimented with the flauta recipe last week.



Picnic Flauta Recipe

24 tortillas
18 oz pulled chicken with barbecue sauce
1/2 sweet onion
1 tablespoon oregano
8 oz Colby Jack cheese
Olive oil for frying
paper towels for blotting
Need frying pan, tongs, plates, baking sheets, stove, and oven.

Dice half onion. Mix onion, pulled chicken, and oregano in a large bowl. Dump Colby Jack cheese into a separate bowl.

Pour 1/4 inch of oil into small frying pan (pan must be bigger than a tortilla). Heat oil to hotter than boiling water, cooler than smoking oil. With tongs, fry a tortillas for 2 seconds on one side, and 2 seconds on the other. The oil should be hot enough that the water in the tortilla turns to steam. Grip tortilla with tongs in center (the oil-soaked tortilla will tear if you grip it at the edge), let some oil drip back into the pan, and place on paper towel on a plate. Keep frying tortillas, alternating tortillas and paper towels on the plate. (I stopped at 12 and fried the other 12 later, because my baking sheet could hold 12 flautas).

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.

Put a fried tortilla on a separte plate. Put a spoonful of chicken filling mix in a line 3/4 of an inch from the edge of the tortilla. Roll the tortilla from that edge, enclosing the chicken filling tightly. When half the tortilla is rolled, sprinkle a thick line of Colby Jack cheese over the unrolled part of the tortilla and then finish rolling. Put the rolled tortilla onto the baking sheet. Do this with all the tortillas.

Bake the rolled tortillas at 400 degrees for 18 minutes. If you want, when they cool, you can cut them in half.

Note: Actually, I diluted the barbecue chicken with some plain chicken, but 18 oz. is about the right amount. Also, burnt oil will stick to non-stick coatings, so keep the frying oil below smoking temperature and use bare metal frying pan and baking sheet so you can clean them with scouring pad and elbow grease later. The result was fairly bland, so for the October first Amtgard batch I added more spices: basil, red pepper, garlic, parsley, and a hot-seasoning blend, and used taco cheese instead of Colby Jack.



frostmuffin had me make flautas again for Amtgard this Saturday, because she was making sugar cookies with coats-of-arms drawn on them in frosting.

Friday night, amethyst_dancer and Jon arrived. Saturday they went to a boat show in Maryland. They returned just as Frostmuffin and I left for church. When we returned from church, Ben (Beowulf) had also arrived. We ate at Noodles Corner for dinner. Today, we are going to the Maryland Rennaisance Festival and then out to see the Serenity movie. Sara Moore will teach my Sunday School class.

After getting up early for cooking Friday and Saturday and staying up late Friday when Frostmuffin forced me to vacuum, I am exhausted. I think at the Renn Fest I will sit and listen to Shakespearean plays mostly.

Kerowyn Puppy still barks at houseguests; however, mooching food has a greater priority for her.

Erin Schram