Charred Zucchini and Poblano Wraps with Smashed Pinto Beans
Zucchini planks and poblano strips blistered in a dry skillet, rolled into warm corn tortillas over cumin-smashed pinto beans with shredded kale, avocado, and lime.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
Californian lunches taught me to stop boiling zucchini and start burning it a little. A hot dry pan drives the water out of the cut faces before the inside has time to go slack, so the planks stay firm and pick up dark stripes that taste faintly of smoke. Poblanos do something similar and take about the same six minutes, which is the whole reason these two share a pan. The beans get smashed rather than pureed, so the filling has texture and holds onto the tortilla instead of sliding out of the far end on the second bite.
Some days lunch has to be something you can pick up. Eight small tortillas across four people means two apiece, which eats more generously than one large wrap and lets everybody build their own. The temperatures are the pleasure: hot vegetables, warm beans, cool avocado, and cold kale ribbons dressed with lime, all inside the same fold. Corn tortillas are worth the extra minute of warming, because a tortilla straight from the bag is stiff and cracks the moment you roll it, while one heated properly goes soft and pliable and smells like toasted corn.
It belongs in a week where the refrigerator has odds and ends of vegetables and no clear plan. The beans, the spices, and the tortillas are pantry items, which means the only fresh things you truly need are the squash and the peppers. It packs well too, if you keep the components separate and assemble at the table, and I often make the bean smash and the kale slaw on Sunday and char the vegetables fresh in the six minutes before lunch. Late summer, when zucchini arrives by the armload, is when it earns its keep.
Ingredients
- 2 medium zucchini (about 14 oz), halved crosswise and cut lengthwise into 1/3-inch planks
- 2 poblano peppers (about 7 oz), seeded and cut into wide strips
- 8 corn tortillas, 6-inch
- 1 (15 oz) can pinto beans, drained and rinsed well, about 1 1/2 cups
- 1 large avocado, halved, pitted, and sliced
- 4 cups lacinato kale, stemmed and sliced into thin ribbons
- 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
- 2 tbsp lime juice, from 1 lime, plus wedges for the table
- 4 scallions, sliced thin
- 1/2 cup chopped cilantro, stems and all
- 3 cloves garlic, grated
- 1 1/2 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp dried oregano, preferably Mexican
- 1/4 tsp fine sea salt
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
Instructions
- Dress the kale: Put the kale ribbons in a bowl with half the lime juice, a pinch of the salt, and 1 tsp of the olive oil, and squeeze it in your hands for about thirty seconds. The leaves darken, soften, and shrink by a third, which is what turns kale from a chore into a slaw. Fold in the scallions and half the cilantro and leave it to sit.
- Smash the beans: Warm 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a small pan over medium heat, add the grated garlic and the cumin, and stir for about forty five seconds until it smells toasted rather than sharp. Add the drained beans and 3 tbsp water and mash them with a fork or a potato masher into a coarse, spreadable paste with plenty of whole beans left in it. Season with the oregano and black pepper and keep it warm.
- Char the vegetables: Set a wide cast iron skillet over medium-high until a drop of water skitters. Rub the zucchini planks and poblano strips with the remaining oil and the rest of the salt, then lay them in the dry pan in a single layer, without crowding. Leave them alone for 3 to 4 minutes, until the undersides are striped dark brown and the pan smells sweet, then turn and give them 2 to 3 minutes more. Work in two batches if your pan is small.
- Warm the tortillas: Wipe the skillet and set it back over medium heat. Warm the tortillas one or two at a time, about 30 seconds a side, until they puff slightly and go soft and flexible. Stack them in a clean kitchen towel as they come off so they steam each other and stay pliable while you finish.
- Roll and eat: Spread a generous spoonful of the smashed beans down the middle of each warm tortilla, lay two or three pieces of zucchini and a strip of poblano on top, then add avocado slices and a pinch of the kale slaw. Scatter the remaining cilantro, squeeze lime over the open face, and roll it up tight. Eat them as you build them, while the vegetables are still hot.
Variations
- Charred corn: Add a cup of corn kernels to the skillet after the vegetables come out and let them pop and blacken for two minutes.
- Chipotle beans: Stir half a teaspoon of chipotle powder into the beans with the cumin for smoke and a low, slow heat.
- Tahini lime drizzle: Thin two tablespoons of tahini with lime juice and water until it pours, and spoon it over the vegetables before rolling.
- Summer squash and fennel: Swap one zucchini for a yellow squash and add a few thin wedges of fennel to the pan, which char sweet and hold a little crunch.
Storage & Leftovers
Keep the parts separate and everything holds well for four days in the refrigerator. The bean smash firms up as it chills and needs a spoonful of water and a minute in a pan to loosen back into something spreadable. The charred vegetables keep their texture better than you would expect and are good cold, straight from the container.
The kale slaw is the exception that improves overnight, since the lime keeps working on the leaves. Dress it a day ahead if that suits your week, and hold the avocado until the last minute, because it browns within an hour of being cut no matter what you squeeze on it.
Assembled wraps do not keep. The tortilla goes damp from the beans and tears when you unroll it. If you want these for a packed lunch, carry the components in separate containers and build the wraps where you eat them, which takes under two minutes.
Notes & Tips
- Dry pan, hot pan: Oil the vegetables, not the skillet. Oil in the pan smokes and turns bitter at the heat you need here, while oil on the zucchini goes straight into the browning.
- Cut the planks thick: A third of an inch survives the char and keeps a little bite. Thin coins go limp before the stripes ever form.
- Mash, do not blend: A fork leaves whole beans and broken ones together, which is what makes the spread grip the tortilla. A food processor turns it into a smooth paste that slides.
- Squeeze the kale: Thirty seconds of pressure with lime and a pinch of salt does what twenty minutes of marinating will not. The leaves go glossy and tender and lose their squeak.
- Build one at a time: These are best about ten seconds after they are rolled. Set everything out and let people assemble as they go rather than lining up eight finished wraps on a plate.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The beans, the tortillas, and the vegetables carry this between them. The pinto smash gives the wrap its body and its plant protein, corn tortillas bring the toasted flavor and a steady base of whole grain carbohydrate, and the zucchini, poblano, and kale are where most of the color and fiber come from.
- Pinto beans mash into a coarse, creamy spread because their starch is soft and their skins break down easily, and that same soft starch is largely resistant fiber, the kind that feeds the bacteria living in your gut.
- Kale squeezed with lime turns tender in half a minute, and it is one of the more generous plant sources of calcium, along with the vitamin K that goes with it. The acid is doing the work here, breaking down the leaf structure so the greens eat soft rather than tough.
- Avocado slices go on cold and turn the whole wrap richer, and the monounsaturated fat they carry helps your body take up the carotenoids from the peppers and the greens sitting next to them.
- Cumin toasted in oil for under a minute is what makes the beans taste cooked rather than canned, and the lime squeezed over the open tortilla at the end lifts everything. Between the char on the vegetables and that squeeze of acid, this eats far bigger than its short ingredient list suggests.
- As you eat, pay attention to the temperatures moving against each other, hot charred squash and cool avocado in the same bite, and let the second wrap wait until you have finished the first.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use flour tortillas?
You can, and they roll more forgivingly. Corn is what I reach for because the toasted corn flavor stands up to the char on the vegetables, and because two small ones eat better than one large one. Either way, warm them properly before rolling.
My tortillas keep cracking. What am I doing wrong?
They are not hot enough or not steamed. Thirty seconds a side in a dry pan gets them flexible, and stacking them inside a folded towel afterward keeps the steam in so they stay that way. A cold tortilla will split every time.
What can I use in place of poblano?
Anaheim peppers behave almost identically, and a red bell pepper works if you want it sweeter with no heat at all. If your poblanos turn out spicy, and they sometimes do, pull the ribs out along with the seeds.
Do I have to salt the zucchini first?
Not for this. Salting and draining matters when zucchini is going into a batter or a bake, but here the hot dry pan drives the water off in a few minutes and does the same job faster. Just make sure the pan is properly hot before the planks go in.