Marinade Makes the Difference: Ideas and Chicken Fajitas

We’ve all heard the stories. Literary lightning strikes, and the perfect concept erupts in the writer’s mind fully grown, like armored Athena bursting out of Zeus’s skull. (No, really, that’s her origin story!)

Sure, I’ve been there a time or two. A complete story comes out of nowhere and begs me to write it down. By and large, though, this isn’t how it works. And I would argue that even those fully formed ideas are much improved by plunging them into the mental marinade for a while.

Mental marinade—yeah, I know it sounds like something a zombie chef would use—is the combination of themes, dreams, and schemes that fill up a person’s conscious and subconscious mind. It’s the primordial soup where most brilliant ideas start. So what better place could there be for nurturing a concept into a story, or better yet, for evolving that story you want to tell into the story you need to tell?

Mental marinade. It’s a resource, not an excuse. While one idea soaks, another can find its home on the page. How long you let ideas bathe is up to you. (My work-in-progress has absorbed nearly a decade's worth of creative nutrients.)

Mental marinade. It’s fun to say, and whether you use it for hours, weeks, or years, the flavors it brings out are well worth the wait.

Although I wish I could say today’s recipe is completely mental, it does at least feature marinade. A good fajita is fun, impressive, and versatile—plus you get to add your own toppings! It’s also tough to screw up. Even a mediocre fajita is worth the wait, but with any luck, we can a do bit better than mediocre.

Chicken Fajitas

Ingredients:

6 boned chicken breasts

¾ tsp. black pepper

1 tsp. sea salt

1 tsp. garlic powder

1 tsp. garlic salt

1 tsp. chili powder

1 c. lemon juice

6 T. vegetable oil

6 T. wine vinegar

Optional ingredients: (Important—make second batch of seasonings and marinade if cooking veggies, but omit the sea salt.)

2 large bell peppers

2 onions

Cut chicken into strips ¼- to ½-inch thick and put in shallow pan.

Mix dry seasonings and rub evenly over chicken. In a separate bowl, mix lemon juice, oil, and vinegar. Pour over chicken, making sure each piece is completely coated. Marinate for at least 1 hour. (Longer is better.)

If peppers and onions are used, give them the same treatment as the chicken, but omit the sea salt.

Cook on skewers over grill or in pan/skillet over medium heat until cooked through.

Taste before serving, and adjust seasoning according to your preferences. Serve with tortillas and all the fixin’s. But please ignore my pitiful plating. :(

Note: This recipe responds well to alterations (fresh limes, Tabasco, a tablespoon or two of Jack Daniels, etc.).

Let’s get marinating!

Meet the Contributors: Sarah Bromley

It's going to be hard to follow up Cole's amazing basil, tomato, and mozzarella salad recipe from yesterday, but I'll do my best. Books give the reader a sense of a time and place, and food can do the same.

Just as Cole said that food can transport you to a different culture, I think that food has the ability to tell you a lot about a person. I have many memories of being the same age as my little girl and peek-a-booing around my mother's chair to watch her chop the celery for the Thanksgiving stuffing as she told me the how and why she did what she did. Likewise, the smell of chopped bacon and onion frying together in a skillet takes me back to the many nights I made my mom's "bacon spaghetti" for dinner while she and Dad worked long hours and spaghetti was about the only thing my older sister and I could successfully cook at ages 9 and 13. These memories tell you some minute details about me--that I learned a lot from my mom and that I was left to fend for myself quite a bit. And as small as those food-related details might seem, they actually explain a lot about why I am the way I am as an adult.

For me, food is a way for family to spend time together, even families as dysfunctional as the ones I write about. One of my YA characters finds herself in a makeshift family and has to live with her father's best friend, who is Mexican-American. So here's my spin on a Mexican classic, the quesadilla.

Steak & Blue Cheese Quesadillas


Ingredients:
2 thin, lean steaks (often called breakfast steaks), cut into strips
1/2 medium-sized white onion, sliced into thin wedges
1-2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 red or yellow bell pepper, cut into thin strips
1T chili powder
1 T ground cumin
2 t olive oil
Salt to taste
Blue cheese crumbles
Tortillas


First, cut up your onion, garlic, and bell peppers. Set aside in a small bowl. I used some marinated roasted peppers that I had in a jar, but fresh peppers work equally well.


Next, slice your steaks into thin strips.



In a skillet over medium to medium-high heat, add your olive oil and, once that's warmed, add the strips of steak. You want the heat to be high enough to get a quick sear on the meat. It's thin enough that you don't need to cook it for more than a few minutes. Then add the peppers, garlic, and onion. Cook until heated but still crisp. Lastly, add the cumin, chili powder, and salt. I add these last to avoid burning the spices. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.


Heat a second skillet (or even a griddle pan) over low to medium-low heat. Place a tortilla into the pan. Sprinkle one half of the tortilla with blue cheese crumbles.


Then add some of the steak and vegetable mixture, topping with more blue cheese.

Fold the empty side of the tortilla over the steak, vegetable, and cheese mix.

Flip. Heat just until the cheese melts.


Rest on a cutting board before using a pizza slicer to cut into wedges. This usually makes 3-4 quesadillas for my family.