… Also known as the time I almost burned my house down. I’ll get to that in a bit, though.
First, thank you all so much for your sweet words… I’m feeling a LOT better. I still don’t know what I was sick with but all I have to say is thank goodness for medication and lots of sleep 😉
Like I mentioned the other day, I hadn’t been grocery shopping in a looong time, so on Tuesday I spent a good couple hours grocery store hopping buying ingredients for a handful of recipes I had bookmarked. One of them happened to be Chicken and Summer Vegetable Tostadas that I saw on Cooking Light. I knew the weather in Boston this week was going to be brutally hot so I wanted recipes that required little to no cooking time! These tostadas turned out to be a great option for a sweltering hot night, filled with fresh and crunchy seasonal vegetables all wrapped up in a light tortilla.
Chicken and Summer Vegetable Tostadas (serves 4)
Adapted from Cooking Light
Print this Recipe!
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 teaspoons vegetable or canola oil
• 12 ounces chicken breast tenders, chopped
• 1 cup chopped red onion
• 1 cup fresh corn kernels (about 2 ears)
• 1 cup chopped zucchini
• 1/2 cup salsa (You can use whatever kind you like or have. The recipe called for salsa verde but I happened to have Corn and Chile salsa from Trader Joe’s on hand, so that’s what I used.)
• 3 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
• 4 flour tortillas
• cooking spray
• 1 cup shredded cheese, I used Cabot’s Reduced Fat Jalapeno Cheddar. (The original recipe calls for Monterey Jack.)
Preheat broiler.
In a small bowl, combine the ground cumin, salt, and black pepper. Sprinkle evenly over chicken.
Heat oil in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat. Add chicken to pan and saute for about 3 minutes. In the same pan, add onion, corn, and zucchini. Continue to saute until chicken is done.
Stir in salsa of your choice and 2 tablespoons of cilantro. Cook until the liquid has evaporated.
Arrange two tortillas in a single layer on a baking sheet and lightly coat with cooking spray.
And this is when I almost burned my house down.
Broil until lightly browned.
Or, on my first attempt… until charred. Flames everywhere. Mom and dad, please stop reading now.
HOLD THE PHONE!
Yup. The recipe said to “broil for 3 minutes or until lightly browned” but after about 30 seconds under the broiler I happened to open the oven door (thank GOD!) to take a peek to find these tortillas up in flames! LEGIT FLAMES. Thankfully my oven is about 2 steps from the sink, so I immediately threw the entire baking sheet under water. Flames and all. I was literally shaking for a good 30 minutes after the fact… never in my life have I seen so much fire in my kitchen, eeek! Clearly not a Martha move 😉
This was round two:
Much better 😉
In the center of each lightly browned tortilla, add about 3/4 cup of the corn mixture and top with your cheese of choice.
Pop back in the broiler until cheese has nicely melted. This time there weren’t any near-death accidents 😉
I enjoyed these while sitting out on my deck with a glass of wine while listening to This American Life. It was kind of the perfect low-key summer evening 🙂
What was your worst or scariest kitchen mishap? Don’t be shy 😉
[Chels]
Glad to hear you’re feeling better! This looks like an awesome dinner! I totally want to try that cheese. The broiler is a great little toaster, but I’ve burned my share of items under it 🙂 Scariest kitchen mishap? Not mine, but in my kitchen in college…one of my roommates put her metal coffee mug in the microwave to reheat….
yikes i’m glad everything is ok! my broiler does that too, i can only keep stuff in there for about 30 seconds! can’t wait to make these yummy tostadas!
My dad got me a fire extinguisher when I moved to Boston after college. Thankfully I’ve never had to use it….but I’m always glad to have it handy!
I made pureed tomato soup, using a blender to do the pureeing. The combination of the steam from the soup breaking the seal of the lid, and filling the blender too high led to tomato soup dripping from the ceiling, cabinets and me. I went out and bought an immersion blender the next day.
And on the same theme as Erica above, when I was 9 I put the tea kettle in the microwave to make hot chocolate. Sparks, flames, and the smell of burned appliances. I tried to cover it up with air freshener so my parents wouldn’t know. They weren’t fooled.
Hi there – great to find your blog! Eek – my scariest kitchen mishap — don’t know if you have seen those little red plastic things you put in boiling water to tell you when you pull your hard boiling/poaching eggs out (they sell them at Crate & Barrel) — anyways… I left 4 eggs hard boiling with that thing and went out… Totally forgot… well I returned to exploded eggs (everywhere and the HORRIBLE smell of burnt plastic…shocked I didn’t burn my apt down…it took days to get that smell out of our apt!
I cannot believe how hot it is in Boston right now! I’m a big fan of recipes requiring little time standing over the stove. These look fantastic. I’ll be careful of my broiler though, that sounds so scary!
Yum! This looks great! 🙂
Oh dear, that is SO scary!! I actually set fire to an oven-mitt once… while it was on my hand. I only realized it was on fire when I smelled something burned and felt my hand warm up. Eek!!! Glad that after your second attempt the tortillas turned out fine! Well worth the trouble to make the dish, haha.
TAL is the most perfect, post-flame chillout. that looks delish!
Be careful! But thanks for this great summer recipe. oxox
I left an ovenmit on the stove and forgot to turn off the burner…I almost finished dinner by the time I realized something was wrong. The oven mitt was onfire, the kitchen was filled with smoke and the sink was full of old dishes (some plastic) so I had to run outside and hose down the mitt. Thought I was going to light the doorway on fire, too!
Glad you’re feeling better!! I once flooded my kitchen. Phone rang in the middle of doing dishes, left the water on when I ran to get it and forgot to come back and turn it off. In the meantime, a blender I was washing (which happened to be the exact size of a drain plug) slid into the drain and stopped up the sink. Phone call lasted too long and when I came back, water, water, everywhere…and my landlord was obviously less than pleased. Whoops!
oh no!! Glad everything was alright. I totally sliced my hand open when cutting an apple when I was 10. Remember the way they tell you NOT to do it? There’s a reason for that.
Tostadas are my favorite btw!
Ahh mistakes happen! I actually put up a post today about kitchen mishaps! I think they happen to all of us. Looks like the final result was delicious and healthy though!
Thanks for sharing this recipe – I made these tonight and they were DELISH. Incredibly easy and I can think of all kinds of variations depending on what we have on hand. We’re also going to make these when SIL/BIL come to visit – she’s a vegetarian and he’s not, so we’re always looking for meals that can be easily customized when they’re here.
Scariest mishaps – tried to make homemade fries (I’d had a roommate who did these) and the oil I was heating for deep frying boiled over and ignited. My first thought was to “put something white on it” – so I grabbed flour. Which started burning. Then I remembered it was BAKING SODA for a grease fire…smoke alarm is going off, cat is running around meowing loudly, I finally get the soda on which did the trick. I opened the windows to air it out and went and picked up Chinese. OY.
Good thing you’re OK! That’s scary. We’ve had kitchen scares (hasn’t everybody?), and it’s always better when they end with no trips to the ER. 🙂 You did it all in the name of good food.
Ha – I’ve totally had kitchen disasters that involved flames. It’s a rite of passage…or something 🙂 Great end result!
Holy cow your broiler must be hot…or I’m guessing the racks are that close to the coils? 30 seconds doesn’t seem long enough to make that happen, and yet 3 minutes seems like way too long for a broiler, too. Oops!