It's Taco Tuesday, or Thursday, or Something

Fink's Recipe Blog: Tex-Mexican... ish

So I think most of us have worked off of one of those pre-made Mexican meal kits before. "Buy this box and you get all the basics items you need for a Mexican meal, from the seasoning to the sauce to the crispy tacos. Just cook and serve." Those things are easy, but they are pretty basic, too. And, frankly, they aren't really necessary once you get a feel for what goes into Mexican (or, because I'm American, Mexican-style) fare.

Someone passed me a thing a long while back that said, "to make your own taco seasoning just combine salt, cumin, chili powder, and paprika in such and such amounts," and it did work well. Thing I realized, though, was that if I knew the basics of what went into the seasoning I could make up whatever version of said seasoning when I made the dish. And then I started getting inventive and mixing things as I liked them... and then my dishes really got fun.

The thing I like about Mexican cooking (well, again, Tex-Mexi-murican fare) is that you can really go the "Taco Bell Route" with it (i.e., take this ingredient and add it to that form of serving and suddenly you have a new "item"). Just take whatever you're making and mix and match filling with shells and toppings and whatever and it always turns out good. I say that because despite the fact that we'll be making things like "taco" and "fajitas" today, I very rarely actually serve them "as intended".

Tacos

Ingredients:

1 pkg Ground Meat, cooked and drained
1 can Refried Beans
Taco Seasoning (to taste)

Optional:

Veggies for your taco mix, diced up small (onions, mushrooms, green peppers, zucchini, olives, etc.)
Taco shells, or soft tortillas, or chips, or whatever
Toppings for the tacos (sour cream, salsa, diced lettuce, diced tomatoes, etc.)

Cooking:

If you're serving these as hard shells tacos, first thing to do is turn on your oven and get your shells warming once the oven is preheated.
Sautee in a pan your ground meat (beef, chicken, turkey, whatever). Drain, then throw in your veggies (if you're adding any; I like veggies in my tacos). Sautee until cooks, then season to taste (I still use cumin, chili powder, paprika, and salt, but I'll also throw in adobo seasoning, cayenne pepper, and other additions depending on my mood). Stir and set aside.
In a pot, warm your refried beans. I like refried black beans, but grab whatever kind you like for cooking.
Prepare to serve. If you're doing hard shells, take them out of the over, let them cool just a couple of minutes, and then get ready to fill. I like a layer of beans at the bottom, then the meat (or meat and veggie mixture), followed by a fair bit of salsa and veggies on top. Of course, you can do these with a soft tortilla, or even as a "walking taco", served in a bowl with chips.

Tacos are easy and generally go over really well. As I noted, there are plenty of ways you can serve this, and in fact the taco meat barely has to go in a proper "taco" at all. Hard shells and soft shells are fine, of course, but you can also get big tortillas and make these into burritos, or put it in a bowl with chips as a "walking taco", or do as you like. Tacos are simple and can be served any number of ways.

For those looking for a vegetarian option, I have been known to take a brick of extra firm tofu and dice it up into tiny pieces and then sautee that instead of the meat. It takes a bit of time for the tofu to start to brown (longer than it takes for meat to cook, certainly) but once you get it browning the tofu takes on a really nice, firm texture and acts as a great substitute for meat.

Fajitas

Ingredients:

1 package meat, cut into strips
Veggies (onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, etc.) cut into strips
Taco seasoning (to taste)

Optional:

Soft tortillas, or hard shells, or chips, or whatever
Toppings for fajitas (sour cream, salsa, diced lettuce, diced tomatoes, etc.)

Cooking:

With everything already cut into strips, first sautee the veggies. You don't want to put the meat in first because then you'll overcook it and, if you're going for a "proper" steak fajita you don't want to turn that meat into shoe leather.
Once the veggies are cooked, throw in the meat and sautee until cooked (to desired temperature). Season to taste (as with the tacos above, I used a mix of cumin, chili powder, paprika, salt, and whatever else is in my cupboard that sounds good).
Pull off heat and serve.

Like with tacos, fajitas can be served just about any way you want. I've done them in the usual soft tortillas of course, but I've also served "fajita tacos" in a hard shell. Fajita salads are, naturally a thing you can do as well (which is basically just a "walking fajita" if you serve it with chips). Hell, plenty of Mexican restaurants serve "fajita burritos" and "fajita nachos". What matters is the preparation of the meat and veggie mix that makes it "fajita", apparently.

Note that when I say "proper fajitas" above I'm referring to the fact that, strictly speaking, a "fajita" actually refers to the meat: a strips steak (carne asada) sliced against the grain into strips before sauteeing. Naturally, us dumb Americans have decided that anything cut into strips and served in tortillas is a "fajita", and I like to make fajitas not only with steak but chicken, fish, and tofu so I'm only perpetuating the misuse of the term, haha.

If you are looking for a vegetarian option here, there are a couple I can recommend. Veggies are, of course, a required part of fajitas in my opinion, so you can take the meat out entirely and not substitute anything else and you'd be just fine. But, portabello mushrooms are a great (and very substantial) addition you could make in the place of meat. Tofu is also an option, and I do like slicing a brick of extra firm into strips and browning it before throwing in the veggies (note, again, it will take time to brown your tofu).

Spicy Mexican Chicken Burritos

Ingredients:

Rice, cooked with seasoning and a bit of bullion
1 pkg meat, cooked and drained
Cloves of garlic (to taste), diced
Hot peppers, diced

Optional:

Veggies, diced up "taco style" (onions, mushrooms, green peppers, zucchini, olives, etc.)
Soft tortillas, or hard shells, or chips, or whatever
Toppings for shoving into the burrito (sour cream, salsa, diced lettuce, diced tomatoes, etc.)

Cooking:

In a pot, bring your rice and required water to a boil. Add in a smattering of Mexican seasoning (like chili powder and paprika) along with a bit of chicken bullion. Alternatively you could skip the bullion and cook the rice directly in chicken broth. Once the rice is boiling, turn it down to low, cover, and cook until tender.
In a pan, sautee your meat (I generally use diced up chicken for this, but you could also use any ground meat, or diced meat, you like, such as ground beef or chopped up steak tips) along with your garlic and hot peppers (originally the recipe my sister came up with called for bottle jalapenos, but I've since moved on to whatever fresh, hot peppers I find at the store, like serrano or pabalano). Season this mixture to taste.
If you're adding other veggies to the meat throw them in now and sautee until everything is cooked.
Once the meat mix, and the rice, are both done, toss them together, mix, and serve.

As noted, this is a dish that my sister came up with. Her version was a little more basic -- Lipton packaged chicken rice mix, chicken, garlic, and jalapenos -- but then I took it and ran with it, adding in seasoning, more veggies, and just doing as I saw fit. Serving them as burritos was the "intended" way, but my wife likes to do these in "walking" form with corn chips. And I like to pile on the toppings because they're tasty and I want them.

As with the above dishes, browned tofu, diced "taco-style" this time, can be used as a substitute for meat. Some kind of meat or meat-substitute is recommend just to make this dish feel "substantial". As I learned, if you have a block of tofu that accidentally gets frozen, it'll take on this weird, spongy texture (more so than normal). Dicing it up small and using it as taco meat is a great way to use up this tofu without noticing this changed texture.

And with that trio of recipes we're done for this week. Next time: stews!