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Thanksgiving Tacos!

November 27, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Now, some of you may think I’m a freak, but: I don’t really like turkey. Dark meat is okay, but white meat does absolutely nothing for me. And it’s not even like I’m being served dry, over-cooked turkey; my mother-in-law does a great job at cooking turkey and keeping it moist, but even so I’m still not a fan. So a year or two ago, when faced with a mountain of leftovers and no bread to make a delicious sandwich filled with sides and minimal turkey, I came up with the perfect solution — THANKSGIVING TACOS.

I know we’re a little over the top with our love of tacos at Casa Shenanigans but this is seriously good/genius. It’s also not really a recipe per se, but it’s something we enjoy and I think everyone else should too. There’s no wrong or right way to do this, but basic idea is layering different sides with turkey on a tortilla, then cheese, then heating it up. Like so:

Butternut squash is spread over half of the tortilla, with shredded turkey on top of it. You can really do whatever you’d like on this taco, as long as it is somewhat spreadable. My husband prefers to have turnips and carrots with his, but I prefer the sweeter base to mine. Then, add stuffing (or mashed potatoes) and top with cheese.

You can either heat it up in the microwave or oven/toaster oven until the cheese is nice and melty and everything is heated through. It doesn’t look particularly pretty when it’s done, but it’s good. The only thing that would’ve made mine better was having leftover cranberry sauce in there between the squash and turkey.

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Why don't we just move to Mexico?

April 2, 2010 by 31 Comments

Seriously. I feel like I cook some sort of Mexican inspired food quite frequently, we might as well live there. We actually did discuss this briefly on our honeymoon, after we were sold some Cuban cigars by an American expat living in Cancun. Of course, we will likely spend the rest of our lives in Boston, complaining about its weather, the college students that invade our fair city every September – May, and the joys of being moderate (me) and conservative (husband) independents in a city full of liberals.

Also, I almost gave everyone at poker salmonella, as I definitely undercooked some fried chicken. In my defense, the damn chicken was only about 1/3″ thick and 1.5″ wide; it was the damn beer batter that took so long! We shoved it in the oven and all was well. Also, note to self: Cap’n Crunch chicken is not worth the effort.

Anyway, back to me. Er.. back to the topic, I mean. Riiiiight. I made more tacos and they were delicious. Next, I really need to make my own tortillas, but I’m not going to drive myself crazy in making anything labor intensive until I know for sure whether or not I have to pack up my whole kitchen.

Since the husband would probably eat salmon every day if I let him/we could afford it, I decided to try making salmon tacos instead of the normal white fish variety you see everywhere. Man, these are good. Good enough for me to reconsider my indifferent response to salmon and say we should make these often. And to prove that point, I even bought more salmon when I went to Trader Joe’s last week.

Salmon Tacos
1lb salmon, cut into 6 fillets
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil
6 flour or corn tortillas
Salsa, optional
Sour cream, optional
Shredded cabbage, optional

Preheat oven to 250 F. Mix together the spices. Lightly coat the top of the salmon fillets with olive oil, then dredge in the spice mixture [I realized I should have done this after the fact; what I did was just sprinkle the spices over the salmon]. Place tortillas in the oven to heat, wrapped in foil. Heat a large skillet over medium high heat, then add the salmon and cook 3 – 4 minutes on each side. Once the salmon is done, remove from the pan. Remove tortillas from the oven, place a salmon fillet in each of the tortillas and use the toppings of your choice.

Personally, I like cabbage, sour cream [with lime juice] and salsa on mine. My in-laws got me a great little food processor for Christmas, so I made up a really quick salsa to go with the tacos that was pretty good. I would have used the pictures with the sour cream, but… it didn’t so much drizzle as plop onto the tacos and this is a family blog. If you know what I mean. Enjoy!

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Carnitas means little meats.

July 25, 2009 by 1 Comment

It also loosely translates into delicious, fyi.

For some reason, I usually end up making either some quasi-Mexican food or pasta for poker night. It’s always easy to make and it’s not too expensive to make for a large group (on poker night, we can go through 3 – 5 pounds of meat, along with whatever else I make). This time around, I decided to bust out the slow cooker my mother-in-law got me for Christmas and use it to to slow cook some pork for tacos.
 

 
I figured the rub probably couldn’t be screwed up, so I didn’t bother looking for a recipe. For the 4.5 pound pork shoulder that I bought, I used the following mix:

2 teaspoons garlic powder
2 teaspoons cumin
2 teaspoons Mexican chili power
1 teaspoon coriander
1 teaspoon salt

That went onto the pork shoulder, and then I wrapped it tightly in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge overnight. Then in the morning before I went to work, I tossed it [almost literally, I came pretty close to dropping it] into the slow cooker along with 2 cups of chicken stock. Now, before you say it, I know that traditional carnitas should be cooked in lard, but .. c’mon. I just can’t do it. I know it would have added more flavor, but it’s LARD. I am slowly broadening my cooking horizons, but I’m not there yet, dudes.
 
The pork shoulder cooked for just about 10 hours, and when I got home from work it was perfect. Tender enough to shred apart, still enough bite that it wasn’t just mush. Also? The rub was great. Next time I’ll probably cut the pork shoulder up into smaller pieces and sear those, so that the flavor really comes through.
 

 
After it was shredded, I threw it in the pan to crisp up a bit with some oil, to give it something closer to the traditional carnitas, with the crispy, almost caramelized edges and tender meat.
 
Once all of that was done, I served the carnitas with diced chicken breast [seasoned with salt, pepper and Mexican chili powder, with a splash of lime juice], refried beans, salsa, and corn on the cob.
 

 
This is a nice way to still keep the poker food budget down, but still also make something that’s a bit more creative than the typical stuff I’ve been making lately. I also liked the fact that it’s a pretty healthy meal and has great flavor from the pork and the fresh salsa.
 

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The best tacos are shrimp tacos!

June 23, 2009 by 2 Comments

These tacos are delicious and not at all difficult to make. They will definitely be making another appearance in our rotation of meals, as the husband still talks about how good they were. I made them as more of a Baja-style taco, ’cause I loved the tacos at the greatly missed El Pelon and any way I can work more vegetables into what we eat is a-okay with me.

Along with the shrimp, I made some pickled cabbage, fried plantains, and corn on the cob. The pickled cabbage in particular is something I really enjoy, as the cabbage was still crisp, but had a great flavorful bite to it. I’m pretty sure I could have eaten this on it’s own, but that probably wouldn’t have made a good dinner.

The cabbage is being pickled in a mixture of a cup of rice vinegar, 2/3 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup water that was brought to a boil and then mixed into the cabbage along with a sprinkle of salt.

For the plantains, I sliced them kind of thick (maybe half an inch? .. actually, I’m not gonna lie, I don’t even know what half an inch looks like), then fried them in my cast iron pan until they started to brown. Then I took them out, salted them, and let them rest for a bit, and repeated the frying process again right before I was about to serve the tacos to crisp them up and warm them.

The shrimp were the easiest part, as I just tossed them with some spices (salt, pepper, cumin and cayenne pepper) and cooked them quickly in a pan. I figured they didn’t need to have overpowering flavor, since I had the cabbage and also some fresh salsa I picked up at the grocery store.

Once everything was ready (which, by the way, was a personal best of mine in getting everything to be ready at the same time – I almost always end up with something being just lukewarm by the time I’m ready to serve the meal), I set up a little taco assembly line complete with shrimp, cabbage, salsa, warm soft tortillas. And the end product? Such a perfect meal for a warm spring night:

Also, you guys? Why do people have such a hard time spelling shenanigans? It’s a word that’s bandied about occasionally by our group of friends (thus, the blog name) but for real, when I check how the stats on how people find our blog, I’m kind of amused/bewildered by the many variations of shenanigans that come up: shennanigans, shanagains, shannagians, and my personal favorite, shennanigin. The funniest part is that at least half of the misspellings came from our friends – I guess the important part is that they tried to find us?

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