Picnic, you say?

I was all prepped and ready for the Tight-Ass Tuesday challenge, successor to the Hobo Monday challenge on www.thursdaynightsmackdown.com. Until I read today’s reminder and was duly reminded the theme was picnic food. So I’ll just delay my pork quesadillas, using some of the leftover pork from Sunday, until later, and offer this instead:

Picnic fare. Well, you do need a fork for the slaw.

Which I will hereby term “Central Avenue Asian Burritos.”

Said name coming from the confluence of the following factors: I was driving home down Central, trying to figure out what I was going to make that was picnicky, and do so before I got to Kroger so I could stop. And I was sitting at a red light with Mexican restaurants on both sides of the street. And I still had my pork quesadilla on my mind and was trying to contemplate if I could make that work in a picnic setting, and decided I couldn’t, because I couldn’t see any convenient way to serve it other than straight off the stove.

I knew I had a thawed bag of chicken thighs out of a big package I’d broken down and frozen. I was thinking about making a chicken salad, but the one I wanted to make called for walnuts, which, while I had ‘em, would’ve probably put me over the limit. And I would’ve had to stuff pita pockets with it, which would have called for some kind of greenery I didn’t have.  And I thought, well, if I’m not going to do Mexican, how about Oriental?

Thus was born the inspiration for the Central Avenue Asian Burrito.

• 4 chicken thighs
• 1/2 onion
• 3 cloves garlic
• 1 1/2 tbsp minced ginger
• 1 tbsp oil
• 2 tsp sriracha chile paste, or to taste (I used more like a tablespoon, and they will make you sit up and take notice)
• 2 tbsp. rice wine
• 2 tbsp tamari or soy sauce
• 2 cups cooked brown rice
• 3 tbsp hoisin sauce
• 1 can water chestnuts, chopped, optional
• egg roll wrappers

Skin and debone the chicken thighs and dice (small; I probably should have ground it in the FoPro) (you could just as easily boil them and then skin and debone and shred, but I didn’t want to get two pans dirty). Set aside. Dice 1/2 onion and saute in 1 tbsp oil over medium-high heat until translucent and soft. Meanwhile, mince ginger and garlic. Lower heat to medium, add ginger, garlic and chicken; cook until chicken is white. Add sriracha paste, rice wine, sesame oil and tamari or soy sauce, reduce heat to medium low, and let simmer until half the liquid is gone. Add cooked rice (unlike fried rice, this can be hot out of rice cooker, because you want it to get gloppy), water chestnuts and hoisin sauce; stir well to combine. Allow to cool in pan.

Use 2-3 tablespoons of mixture on each egg roll wrapper and roll up. Bake in 400-degree oven for about 10 minutes. Serve with sweet-and-sour sauce or dipping sauce of your choice. I added a serving of sesame ginger slaw, left over from the weekend, and a couple of refrigerator pickles.

Note: This makes enough filling for “burritos” for four adults; I made only eight rolls, because that’s how many wrappers I had left. Two of ‘em were plenty for me, but I’d count on four for most adults for a main course.

The tab:

• Chicken thighs  – $1.28
• Brown rice — $0.85
• Water chestnuts — $1.29
• 1/3 of a package of egg roll wrappers — $0.63
• 1/2 onion — $0.41
• Ginger, garlic, rice wine, soy sauce, sesame oil, sriracha, hoisin sauce — pantry staples

The filling ingredients came to $3.83, and I used only half the filling in my 8 rolls, so call it $1.92. Plus the wrappers, makes it $2.55.

If you want to throw in the slaw, which serves about 12, half of two different heads of cabbage (red and green) was about $2; a cup of chopped carrots was about half a $1.89 bag, so $0.95. The dressing — rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, soy sauce, sugar — are all pantry staples. So 12 servings for $2.94, and a sixth of that for two adults, I’ll round up and call it 50 cents.  The pickles, probably one cucumber, pickled in cider vinegar and sugar, somewhere maybe around 40 cents, and I’m estimating here. So add another 90 cents for the complete meal and you’re up to $3.45. At eight bucks a sixpack, you could split a Tsing Tao beer with this one and still come in under 5 bucks!

And nothing has mayo so you don’t even have to worry with food poisoning. The slaw and pickles benefit from being chilled, but all the burritos need are wrapping in waxed paper or some such.

My picnic was on my couch watching baseball. I can only take versimilitude so far. But maybe I’ll make some and take to the lake this weekend.

You and y’mama ‘n ‘em check in with Michelle at Thursday Night Smackdown and see what all everyone else is picnicking on, sometime this weekend.