Spaghetti Tacos!

So this all started with two things.  First was this show that I have only a dim awareness of...it is called iCarly, and it is usually playing somewhere in the background when the teenager is home, and when she isn't watching House or Glee (two shows that I actually have heard of and like and watch.)  Until last week, I hadn't given more than a split seconds-worth of thought to the fact that iCarly even existed in the world.

Then I read this article in the New York Times.

And it got my competitive juices flowing.  Apparently spaghetti tacos are enough of a phenomenon on this show that kids across the country are asking for them for dinner, thanks to whomever this guy is on the show.

Made the traditional way, I could see why parents are scratching their heads.  But just to be totally fair, I did put one of the classic versions together.

Classic - did I just say that?  Anyway, the "recipe" on the iCarly site calls for spaghetti, meat sauce and a taco shell.  And a spoon.  Creative, but not as tasty as it could be.  I pondered this a while, and then it came to me.  Way back before iCarly was even a twinkle in anyone's eye, the New York Times printed a recipe for something called Spaghetti on a Stick by the always awesome Mario Batali.  It called for making an easy but rich tomato sauce, some gorgeous meatballs, and cooking up a mess of spaghetti.  You douse the spaghetti with the fabulous sauce, swirl a pile of the spaghetti around a chopstick, stick a meatball on the top of the stick to hold the spaghetti in place, wrap the whole thing in a piece of soft flatbread for easier handling, and there you have it - Spaghetti on a Stick.  I made it once, and it was scrumptious thanks to the whole sauce and meatball wonderfulness...but the whole stick thing just seemed like more trouble than it was worth.  But then this whole spaghetti taco business rolled around and a lightbulb went off in my head.

What if I made the Mario Batali sauce?  What if I made the meatballs tiny?  What if I used soft tacos instead of hard ones?  With no stick?

NOW we're talking.

Maybe I need to watch more Nickelodeon.

Maybe not.

Spaghetti Tacos, with thanks to  Mario Batali's Spaghetti on a Stick

• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 Spanish onion, finely diced
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and thinly sliced
• 3 tablespoons fresh thyme, chopped
• 1/2 medium carrot, finely shredded
• 2 28-ounce cans peeled whole tomatoes
• Salt to taste

• 3 cups day-old bread, in 1-inch cubes
• 1 1/4 pounds ground beef
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 3 garlic cloves, minced
• 3/4 cup grated pecorino cheese
• 1/4 cup finely chopped Italian parsley
• 2 tablespoons plus 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 pound spaghetti
• Flour tortillas

1.

In a 3-quart saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook until soft and light brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.

2.

Add the thyme and carrot and cook 5 minutes, until carrot is quite soft. Add the tomatoes and juice and bring to a boil, stirring often. Simmer 30 minutes. Season with salt.

3.

Soak the bread in water for 1 to 2 minutes. Drain and squeeze out excess water with your fingers.

4.

Combine the bread, beef, eggs, garlic, pecorino, parsley,  1/2 teaspoon of the salt and the pepper and mix with wet hands. Form the mixture into one inch meatballs.

5.

In a large, heavy skillet, heat the oil on medium until almost smoking. Add the meatballs and, working in batches to avoid crowding, cook until browned, about 10 minutes. Add the tomato sauce, cover and simmer all the meatballs for 30 minutes. Allow to cool.

6.

Bring 6 quarts of water to a rolling boil and add 2 tablespoons salt. Add the pasta and cook according to the package directions, until tender but still al dente. Drain well in a colander.

7.

Meanwhile, gently reheat the meatballs and sauce. Add the pasta to the sauce in the pan and toss until completely coated and pour into large serving dish.  Warm tortillas in microwave and serve with pasta, allowing folks to scoop out their own spaghetti and meatballs into tortillas.  

Click here for printable recipe

Crescent Roll Burritos

All you lovers of completely authentic Mexican food, I apologize and please close your eyes and cover your ears.  Because this recipe, which is quick and easy and tasty, involves one of my favorite cooking ingredients, and that is a tube of crescent roll dough.  I'm sorry, but it's true, and I'm not ashamed to admit it.  Crescent roll dough in a tube, you ROCK.

Here's the deal.  You make whatever kind of taco filling you like.  Since I was already down the road with the crescent roll dough, I opted to stay with the theme and make good old taco meat with ground beef, chopped onion and a packet of Old El Paso taco seasoning.  You can add in some refried beans as well if you want.  Personally, I am not a refried beans lover, but you should do your own thing.

Next you separate the crescent roll dough into rectangles, pushing on the perforations to seal them.  Ladle s few spoonfuls of beef onto each rectangle, a little salsa and a little shredded cheese.  Roll them up, pinch the edges to seal them, and pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes.  From there on in, you can get as creative as you want.  I made a sort of homemade salsa with chopped tomato, onion, lime juice, parsley and jalapeno and ladled it on the top with some sour cream.  You can drape some cheese over the top and pop it back in the oven for a few minutes until the cheese melts.  Throw some guacamole on the plate...whatever catches your fancy.  The world is your burrito.

That's what you get when we Irish girls start cooking Mexican food -- mass chaos.  But it did taste good!

Crescent Roll Burritos, adapted from a Pillsbury recipe (of course!)

1/2 pound ground beef

2 tablespoons chopped onion

2 tablespoons taco seasoning

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup refried beans (optional)

2 cans crescent dinner rolls

1/2 cup salsa plus more for garnish

1/2 cup shredded cheddar or jack cheese

Sour cream, guacamole or any other garnish you like!

1. Preheat oven to 350.  Spray cookie sheet with cooking spray.

2. Cook ground beef and onion in skillet until thoroughly cooked, drain.  Stir in taco seasoning and water and cook over medium for about 5 minutes.  Stir in beans if using.

3. Separate dough into eight rectangles and press perforations to seal.  Divide beef mixture over rectangles and top with a tablespoon of salsa and a tablespoon or so of cheese.  Starting with the short end of the dough, roll up each rectangle and pinch the edges to seal.  Place seam side down on cookie sheet.

4. Bake for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve with more salsa, guacamole, sour cream or whatever catches your fancy.

Click here for printable recipe

Chipolte Chicken Salad

I love this salad. It's right up there for me with my favorite taco salad -- one of those "chop up a bunch of those things that you like, toss them all together and voila! a scrumptious dinner" type of recipes. I will be perfectly honest and say that the original recipe for this dish, which I found in my new favorite Cooking Light cookbook, called for black beans, and if you like black beans you should feel perfectly free to throw them on in there. But in my house, I am sorry to tell you that black beans are the enemy, along with: mushrooms, eggplant, lima beans and cilantro. I wish I could like all that stuff, and so does my mother, who keeps getting me to "just try them." But I have, and I don't, and I gotta be me.

But everything else in this recipe was A-okay with me -- chicken, corn, tomato, avocado, lettuce, all tossed with a spicy sour cream dressing and served with some nice tortilla chips on the side. Which leads me to ask you about one of the great searches of my life: the quest for the perfect tortilla chip. I am looking for suggestions, folks...I still haven't landed on a brand that makes me stop and sing. So if you have, please share in the comments section? And in the meantime, here is my black-bean-less version of this nifty chicken salad. Yum.

CHIPOLTE CHICKEN SALAD, adapted from The Essential Dinner Tonight Cookbook

Dressing:

• 2/3 cup sour cream
• 4 teaspoons lime juice
• 2 tablespoons minced chipolte chile in adobo sauce
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

Salad:

• 4 cups shredded romaine lettuce
• 2 cups cooked shredded chicken breast
• 1 cup halved cherry tomatoes
• 1 peeled and diced avocado
• 1/3 cup sliced red onion
• 1 cup corn

1. Combine all dressing ingredients and mix well.
2. Combine all salad ingredients and toss. Drizzle dressing over salad and toss again. Serve with your favorite tortilla chips...whatever they are.

Click here for printable recipe

Tilapia Tacos with Peach Salsa

I'll admit, I am not a big fish person. I do love most shellfish (ah, lobster!!), but when it comes to fish fish, I tread very carefully. Even though I know it is oh, so good for you. But over the years I have found some types of fish that I really do like, and one of them is tilapia. It's light and mild, so mild in fact that it needs to be paired with something that can dress it up and give it some pizzazz...and this great little taco dish is just the ticket.

The tilapia itself is cut up into strips, breaded and popped into the oven for a a few minutes just to cook it up and brown the bread crumbs. The real prep for this dish is the fabulous peach salsa that goes with it. Chopped peaches, red onion, lime juice, jalapeno...sweet and spicy and wonderful! You tuck the tilapia strips into a nice warm tortilla, spoon some peach salsa over the top, and you are in fish taco heaven.

Now, naturally I did not decide to make this until it was completely not peach season...not even my beloved Fairway had any fresh peaches. But happily, they did have frozen peach slices which in the long run actually turned out to be better. They defrosted into already peeled slices, and all I had to do was chop them up. Way easier than battling with a fresh peach...I don't know about you, but I still haven't learned the easy secret way of getting a peach pit OUT of the peach without completely mangling it. (I do know the avocado pit trick). I'm sure there absolutely is a peach pit trick and one day I will learn it. One day. You have to have goals in life, right?

Meantime, here's the taco recipe, adapted from Cooking Light.

TILAPIA TACOS WITH PEACH SALSA

Salsa:

• 2 cups chopped peaches
• 1/2 cup chopped red onion
• 1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/8 teaspoon red pepper
• 1 jalapeno, seeded and finely chopped (wear gloves!!)
• 1 minced garlic clove

Fish and tacos:

• 1/2 cup breadcrumbs (panko crumbs are great)
• 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1/4 teaspoon red pepper
• 1 pound tilapia, cut into 2 inch strips
• 8 corn tortillas

1. Combine all salsa ingredients and let stand at room temp for 3o minutes
2. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 375. Combine crumbs, salt and pepper in medium bowl. Add fish strips and toss to coat.
3. Bake fish strips on greased cookie sheet for 10 minutes, turning once during cooking.
4. Heat tortillas in microwave for 30 seconds. Divide fish among tortillas, and spoon salsa over the top.

Click here for printable recipe

Kate's Taco Salad

Okay, I love love love this taco salad, and here's why. Not because it is ridiculously easy to make (and it is). Not because it tastes ridiculously good (and it does). It's because -- unlike 99.9% of most taco salads -- the crunchy part of the taco salad is actually worth eating. You know what I am talking about. Usually you order a taco salad and it comes in a giant tortilla "bowl." You say to yourself, Self, I'm just going to eat the salad part, and you work through all that good stuff in the bowl. The spicy taco meat, the avocado chunks, the chopped tomatoes, the cheese (ah! the cheese!!) and pretty soon your taco salad is gone and the only thing left standing is the tortilla bowl.

So you break off a piece of the side of it, and honestly? It's not that good. It's okay....but it's kind of bland and not that tasty...but it's there on your plate, and pretty soon you have picked off most of the sides of it. And so your awesome taco salad has ended with a whimper.

But in MY taco salad, my friends, that tortilla bowl is transformed into Fritos, which are added to the salad at the very end and tossed right into the salad along with everything else. So every other bite contains a hit of salty corn chip wonderfulness along with all the other taco salad taste sensations. Now there are those among you out there (my oldest friend? are you listening to me?) who will say Fritos are the work of the devil. And maybe they are...but DANG! they are good. And all I have to say is, if you are going to eat the taco salad bowl -- and you KNOW you are -- let's at least make sure it tastes pretty great going down.



These pictures show the ingredients before the tossing (and the lettuce is underneath all that other good stuff) just because it is more photogenic that way, but let me be clear -- you should be toss, toss, tossing all those great ingredients together so that each bite is a mixture of all those rocking taste sensations. So for all of you who like to walk on the wild side with the Fritos, here is my favorite taco salad recipe.

KATE'S TACO SALAD

• 1 pound ground beef
• Taco seasoning mix
• 1 head iceberg lettuce, chopped
• 3 chopped tomatoes
• 2 chopped avocados
• 1 cup shredded cheddar
• 2 cups Fritos
• Whatever else you like in your taco salad. Corn, beans, onion, etc etc.

1. Prepare taco meat with ground beef according to taco seasoning mix directions.
2. Combine all ingredients except Fritos in large mixing bowl. The taco flavoring in the meat juices will serve as the "dressing" for the salad.
3. Add Fritos and toss again.
4. Throw caution to the wind and have seconds.

Click here for printable recipe

Mexican Layered Salad

We were SUPPOSED to go out to dinner last Saturday night. I was all set to hit my favorite Mexican restaurant, the one were they give you the free quesadillas when you come in, and the free fried banana in a sugared tortilla with whipped cream and honey at the end. But then my teenager appeared in my living room and mentioned that she had asked if she could have several thousand of her friends over, that they were arriving at 6, and remember Mom? You said yes?

I'm sure I did. My short term memory has started blocking out things like giant hordes of teenagers coming over on nights when I am yearning for tacos. But being the responsible parents that we are, we resigned ourselves to staying home. Or I resigned myself, anyway -- my Southern husband practically danced back into the living room to finish watching the Yankees/Red Sox game, which was only half over.

So, what to make for dinner with stuff I had on hand? Something that would address my unrequited Mexican food longings? I realized I had all the fixings for one of my favorite things to bring to potluck parties: Mexican layered salad. It is half taco salad, half dip, and perfect for eating in front of a baseball game. (Which turned into watching the movie version of BRIDESHEAD REVISITED once the game was over, because fair is fair.)

This is exactly as described -- layers of the various things found in tacos, or taco salad or dips, all in one bowl and served with tortilla chips, although I also put out some soft corn tortillas to wrap around spoonfuls of it. You can see most of the layers in the above picture -- a layer of sour cream and cream cheese mixed with taco seasoning, a layer of spiced ground beef on top of that, a layer of guacamole, a layer of shredded cheddar on top of that (I forgot that one in the picture shot but I added it back later!), a layer of tomatoes, finished with a topping of chopped lettuce (see picture below). Set it all out with some tortilla chips and/or soft tortillas, some napkins, and dig in - make sure you dig all the way to the bottom to get the full effect.

Maybe a Saturday night at home isn't so bad after all.

MEXICAN LAYERED SALAD

Serves a crowd. Can be halved or quartered. Or doubled or tripled.

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 16 oz jar taco sauce
• 1 16 ounce container sour cream
• 1 8 oz package cream cheese
• 1 package taco seasoning mix
• 2 medium avocados
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice
• 1 16 oz package shredded cheddar
• 1 cup shredded lettuce
• 1 chopped tomato

1. Brown ground beef and drain. Return to skillet and stir in taco sauce.
2. In a large bowl, combine sour cream, cream cheese and taco seasoning. Spread over bottom of large serving dish. Spread ground beef over sour cream layer.
3. Mash avocados with lemon juice. Spread over beef layer.
4. Sprinkle cheese over avocado layer, scatter tomatoes over cheese layer, finish with layer of shredded lettuce
5. Serve with tortilla chips and/or soft corn tacos.