Olympic Food Challenge - Honduras - Baleadas

Geography is not my strong point and I hadn't even heard of Honduras, never mind about knew where it was or what type of cuisine I would be faced with. On checking a map, I was glad to see it lies close to Mexico. After all, we all like Mexican food don't we?

Sadly Honduras is yet to win a medal, but I don't care. Today is all about Team GB as we won six. Six medals in a day. And three of them were won between 9.00 and 9.45 tonight thanks to Jess Ennis, Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford!



After a bit of research I learnt that baleadas are very popular in Honduras; so much so that there are a few fast food chains specialising in the things. They're quite similar to the Mexican taco and make for great street food.

Although I probably could have got away with buying tortillas, they wouldn't have been right (as they make them with wheat flour not corn flour in Honduras) and I hadn't wimped out on anything else so far so wanted to go the whole hog and make my own.

I followed this recipe which resulted in a very sloppy mix so I ended up adding quite a bit more flour; enough  to create a dough I could manipulate. Cooking them was pretty easy, just make sure you use a non-stick frying pan (and very, very little oil) and flip them over once they start to bubble up.

I then made some refried beans using this recipe, which is the only one I could find claiming to be Honduran. It was pretty dull to be honest as there were no herbs or spices to be added. Also, I wasn't clear what type of beans I should have used. I guessed pinto beans would be a good bet, but I couldn't find any so I just went for borlotti beans.

I also grilled some hickory smoked sausages, made some scrambled eggs, grated some cheese and diced up a tomato. Once everything was ready I spread the refried beans onto a couple of tortillas, piled up the rest of the filling ingredients to cover half of the tortilla and folded over.

So, how were they? Well, they were tasty, and I was pretty impressed with the tortillas, but I think they missed the fresh and zingy flavours of a tomato salsa. See, they were crying out for a bit of chilli, coriander and some zesty lime.

They were good for reheating though as I discovered when Gav came home from his 12 hour shift. I just filled a couple of tortillas with some of the cold ingredients, folded them over and stuck them in the oven for about 12 minutes. Perfect!