Charred Asparagus Tacos with Creamy Adobo and Pickled Red Onions

There are a lot of things that I love about this recipe.  The first is the asparagus itself.  Fresh asparagus is one of the things I love most about spring.  Charred in a pan with evoo, s&p, the asparagus was sweet but grassy.  The second is how wonderful the creamy adobo sauce is.  This is a sauce that I want to slather on all sorts of dishes - it is spicy, sweet and tangy.  Actually, I think this sauce would work really nicely with skirt steak tacos.  I told Alex that if we ever have people over for a Mexican fiesta I want to simply grill up some skirt steak for tacos and make these asparagus tacos.  You can use all of the same fixings for both sets of tacos, whip up some homemade guacamole and some elote and it will be an amazing meal.  Somehow you taste all of the various flavors here - the adobo sauce adds a ton of flavor without obscuring the flavor of the asparagus or the sweetness of the pickled onions.  My two biggest complaints about the Smoky Chicken Tinga Tacos we made were that the flavor of the chipotles obscured everything else and the tacos didn't have any texture.  All you tasted was heat and everything was soft.  This dish had varying textures and serious depth of flavor.  It was sweet, spicy, crunchy, creamy and tangy.  In a nutshell, these tacos were delicious.  And I will be adding them to my regular taco rotation.  They were great with fresh asparagus, but with all of the other flavors and textures going on, normal supermarket asparagus would work too.

Recipe after the jump!

Smoky Chicken Tinga Tacos

In mid-April I started thinking tacos and Cinco de Mayo.  Mexican food screams warm weather to me and I have been dreaming about warm weather since about December...  If only I had visited the farmers' market on Monday I would have made these charred asparagus tacos for Cinco de Mayo but I didn't have time to visit the farmers' market before today.  Before today I hadn't been to the farmers market in 2 weeks so I was pretty excited when I went today and saw all of the fresh spring veggies.  Thank goodness for spring!  I was so sick of winter and so very excited for fresh asparagus.  When sugar snaps finally make it to the farmers' market I will do a giant happy dance.  Moving on.  My other Cinco de Mayo alternative was to make carnitas (Smitten Kitchen posted a slight variation on Homesick Texan's carnitas recipe and it looks super simple and tasty and Bon Appetit has a Beer-Braised Carnitas recipe that I find intriguing), but because Cinco de Mayo fell on a Monday this year it wasn't going to happen.  I don't know about you, but I am barely prepared enough on Monday to throw something together - roasting or braising pork shoulder for 2-4 hours (or cooking it all day a slow cooker) just isn't going to happen. 

So I guess you can fairly say that this recipe was my backup.  Alex occasionally orders chicken tacos but I don't think I ever do.  Then again, I do like chicken enchiladas so I guess it's not all that different.  But chicken generally seems like such a cop out to me.  I decided to try out this recipe anyway because what did I have to lose?  It sounded good and the pictures looked good.  And to be honest, I didn't have anything else planned.  I was looking for a little more depth of flavor - instead I mostly tasted the chipotles and adobo sauce.  And once I topped the chicken with tomatillo salsa I mostly tasted heat.  The tomatillo salsa added brightness and acidity, but I wish we had made an equally bright and spicy pineapple salsa or maybe a mango salsa instead.  I think a little sweetness would have been a good counterpoint to the chicken tinga tacos and some textural contrast would have been a really welcome addition.  With the salsa and the braised chicken you ended up with a mouthful of fairly wet and somewhat mushy taco.  Pineapple would provide some texture, but adding jicama to any salsa would work too.  If you do make these tacos, make sure to drain the chicken fairly well before putting it on the tortilla.  Same goes for the salsa.  Otherwise you end up with a pool of liquid in your taco, which leads to a rapidly disintegrating corn tortilla...

Recipe after the jump!

Rodrigo-Style Fish Tacos

I wanted something healthy and easy for dinner tonight after feasting on black and white cookies and other baked goods today and immediately thought of seafood.  So I sent Alex off to pick up some chicken for tomorrow night's dinner and headed to the seafood counter.  Fairway had some wild striped bass fillets that looked really nice and decided that we should make fish tacos.  I love tacos.  And I love seafood.  So it is natural that I try to combine the two fairly regularly.  I found the recipe for Rodrigo-Style Fish on Serious Eats several months ago, but we never got around to making it.  I looked at it while at the grocery store and decided that we could make some variation on it and turn it into tacos.  I didn't read far enough to see that the author already suggested serving the fish with corn tortillas, but clearly we were on the same wavelength.  Since the striped bass I picked out looked so nice I adapted the cooking method to basically season it with salt and pepper and sear it using another recipe/cooking method that I found online for perfect seared fish.  I highly recommend trying the cooking method for the fish.  Our striped bass was beautifully cooked, with a wonderfully crispy skin and a moist, flaky flesh.  It was perfect.  This fish would have worked with a just a squeeze of lemon, but I thought the sauce was a really nice touch - full of citrus and herbs.  I never would have thought to use Maggi sauce because when I think of Maggi sauce I think soy sauce and Asian food, but it added a nice saltiness to the fish.  I'm a huge fan of this recipe.  I would definitely try both the fish and the tacos again separately and together, and also with other types of fish depending on what is fresh.

Recipe after the jump!

Tacos de Camaron

There is a restaurant in the East Village called Mercadito that has the best shrimp tacos I have ever tasted.  They also make really good fried fish tacos and guacamole, but it's the shrimp tacos that really stick with me because the shrimp are in this creamy, spicy chipotle sauce that I love.  Yum.  About a month ago I saw a recipe on People.com for those tacos and I got really excited.  We had originally been planning on making a variation on some shrimp tacos that I had at Nada in Cincinnati, but I got all excited when I saw this recipe.  The tacos were good, but I'm not sure how faithful they are to the recipe that the restaurant actually uses.  At the very least, they have to puree the chipotle sauce because the shrimp is bathed in a really creamy, spicy and rich sauce at the restaurant with no discernible chunks.  This version was a lot more rustic (and a lot spicier than I remember), which isn't necessarily a bad thing.  The sauce was a lot thinner - I think to replicate the sauce you would have to add some more butter and puree.  It might need a little something to give it some more oomph.  I didn't bother to take a bunch of pictures trying to get a really nice one because the tacos looked like a mess on a tortilla and there's really only so much you can do about that.  So long as you aren't afraid of mess, spice or chipotles, they are very tasty.  These aren't the best shrimp tacos we have ever made, but I would make them again with a few minor tweaks.

Recipe after the jump!

Charred Corn and Zucchini Tacos

Hurray tacos!  I love tacos.  And I love fresh corn.  So I knew this recipe was going to be good.  There are actually a ton of corn taco recipes out there so before fresh corn season ends I hope I have the chance to try out a few more.  This recipe was one of the easier ones out there and didn't require an additional trip to the grocery store.  It also included a number of ingredients that I love (corn, zucchini and cotija cheese) and that are at the peak of their season right now.  I thought these tacos were nice (and very summery), but I'm positive that the perfect corn taco is out there.  I just know it.  I tried the tacos with two different salsas and I thought the salsas added another level of flavor that I really appreciated.  I might try the corn-zucchini filling for quesadillas, enchiladas or tostadas.  And I wonder if some blackbeans would make a good addition?  So many thoughts, so little time left before fresh corn goes out of season...

Recipe after the jump!

Southwestern Pulled Brisket Tacos with Spicy Pickled Shallots and Spicy Green Onion Slaw

When left to his own devices, if I ask Alex to pick out a recipe for dinner he will pick an Asian (or Asian-influenced) recipe nine times out of ten.  I usually go with it, but Sunday night I wasn't in the mood for Asian food.  Thursday night Alex and I went to Ma Peche for dinner for upscale Vietnamese-influenced food.  Then we made a chicken stir-fry over sizzling rice for dinner on Friday.  On Saturday Alex and I took his brother to Biang! in Flushing and then gorged ourselves on dumplings that we picked up in Flushing that evening.  And then Sunday afternoon we made a tofu dish from Every Grain of Rice:  Simple Chinese Home Cooking.  Enough already.  Don't get me wrong - I love Asian food.  But sometimes I want to experiment with other cuisines.  I crave variety.  So I called an audible on the brisket recipe that Alex had selected (braised brisket with star anise, soy, etc.) and declared that we were making a brisket taco recipe I found on Smitten Kitchen instead.  The recipe at Smitten Kitchen called for cooking the brisket in the slow cooker for 8-10 hours but I was too lazy to get the slow cooker out of storage so we decided to braise it in the oven instead.  In some ways I wish we had used the slow cooker because the brisket might have been more tender, but whatever.  It might also have helped with the tenderness if we bought a brisket with slightly more fat on it.  Our brisket was fairly lean, but I wasn't going to hit the grocery store again for a fattier piece.

This dish was one where each element contributed to the final dish in some crucial way.  When I sampled each component I wasn't blown away by any of them.  But when you combine them something really delicious happens.  The brisket was sweet, meaty and (relatively) tender.  It represented one of the few instances where I thought that molasses did wonderful things to a dish by providing depth of flavor and sweetness, without being too overpowering.  The slaw and the pickled shallots added some much needed heat and acidity to the tacos.  I really liked the combinatation of olive oil and mayo in the slaw because it added moisture and creaminess without cooling the slaw down too much and making it heavy and mayo-laden.  As a side note, this isn't a slaw that I would eat on its own - I think it is a little aggressively spicy for that (perhaps if I used one chili it would be better for snacking), but it was the perfect slaw to serve on top of (or with) the brisket to really kick it up a notch.

Recipes after the jump!

Red Snapper Tacos

 

I will be the first to admit that these tacos were initially conceived of as a guacamole-delivery system.  The thought process went something like this - I wanted to make guacamole, tacos taste good with guacamole, so I should make fish tacos.  And that my friends was how lunch was planned.  I have always had a soft spot for fish tacos.  When my mother and I went to San Diego a few years ago for a mommy-daughter bonding weekend I gorged myself on fish tacos of all kinds.  One night we went to happy hour at a restaurant called South Beach Bar & Grille on a recommendation from a friend of mine and it had perhaps the best fish tacos I have ever tasted.  They were so fresh and delicious.  I love baja fish tacos (lightly battered and fried fish with a crunchy cabbage topping) and theirs were totally perfect, but I also liked their grilled fish tacos.  Every once in awhile I decide to make fish tacos at home and when I do they are always grilled.  I have tried a number of different types of fish including tuna, mahi mahi and snapper (and my usual seafood taco default is shrimp because it's cheap and easy), and they have all worked well.  I totally believe that certain types of fish lend themselves better to fish tacos than others.  Salmon and swordfish are both too meaty and heavy for me.  When I want a grilled fish taco I want something light and fresh.  These red snapper tacos fit the bill perfectly.  We have several different types of chili powder in the apartment so I picked two and seasoned the fish lightly before grilling.  I wanted to top the tacos with something (in addition to the Mango Pomegranate Guacamole) and we had some cherry tomatoes in the kitchen so I threw together a quick tomato salad.  It all came together relatively quickly and easily.  I'm not saying that these fish tacos can in any way compare to those at South Beach Bar & Grille, but they weren't half bad for some lazy fish tacos in an UWS apartment.

Recipe after the jump!

Chili-Marinated Skirt Steak Tacos and Green Salsa with Avocado

Sometimes we get stuck in a rut.  Sometimes we try to mix it up.  This dish came about when I was trying to use one of our cookbooks that we never use - Rosa's New Mexican Table.  I bought the cookbook ages ago at Costco or Sam's Club when I saw that they had the recipe for their homemade guacamole and salsas, plus several other interesting recipes in there.  And then it proceeded to sit on the bookshelf.  For years.  We have our go to cookbooks and the rest tend to get lost in the fray.  In case you were wondering, our go to cookbooks are probably Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics: Fabulous Flavor from Simple Ingredients, Hot Sour Salty Sweet: A Culinary Journey Through Southeast Asia, our two Fuchsia Dunlop cookbooks and Into the Vietnamese Kitchen: Treasured Foodways, Modern Flavor.  Runners up probably include The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook: Home Cooking from Asian American Kitchens and Crescent City Cooking: Unforgettable Recipes from Susan Spicer's New Orleans.  We really need to branch out into our other cookbooks more often.  I periodically page through all of the cookbooks that we don't regularly use and pick out recipes that I want to make.  We have tons of recipes on deck from those other books and yet they still don't get made.  Perhaps making at least one recipe from each of our cookbooks should be my goal for this year.  In case you're wondering, we probably have about 30 cookbooks, so that should keep us busy for awhile...

This salsa recipe came straight out of the cookbook and the taco recipe was inspired by a recipe in the cookbook.  We rarely marinate our skirt steak when we make tacos because it has so much flavor on its own, but every once in awhile I like to mix it up.  Plus we had all of these dried chilis in our pantry that I wanted to use - cascabels, ancho chilis, chipotle chilis, chilis de arbol, etc.  So I got out my blender and decided to whip up some marinade.  In the end, I thought the tacos were good, but not amazing.  The steak by itself was almost overwhelmingly smoky/aggressively flavored with the dried chilis. It wasn't exactly spicy, but it was heavily spiced (if you get what I am saying).  But the coolness and brightness of the salsa went really well with the marinated steak and gave it some much needed acidity (as did the squeeze of fresh lime juice at the end).  And I really thought the creaminess that the avocado gave the salsa was an interesting touch.  Altogether it worked, but it wasn't my favorite skirt steak taco recipe.  I  will probably make the salsa again in the future, but I think the tacos themselves are doomed to be a one time experiment.  It's not the type of salsa that I think would work well as just chips and salsas, but I think it would work well as an accompaniment to any meat dish.  I think the cookbook actually says to serve it with empanadas and other fried food, which sounds like a brilliant pairing.
 
Recipes after the jump!

Ancho and Cocoa-Rubbed Skirt Steak Tacos

 A long time ago I saw a recipe in Gourmet magazine for carne asada using ancho chili powder, cocoa and cinnamon.  It sounded interesting enough that it stuck with me.  And tonight when I was trying to come up with a spice rub for some tacos I hit up Epicurious (which is my go-to website for finding recipes) until I found the recipe from the May 2009 issue of Gourmet for Ancho and Cocoa Carne Asada.  Score!  I roughly stuck to the proportions of the chili powder-cocoa-cinnamon spice rub and then decided to play around with the toppings.  We pickled some jalapenos and shallots, chopped up some avocado and cilantro, and charred up some scallions.  I love being able to throw different toppings together with tacos to see what I like best.  My favorite topping here was the quick-pickled shallot and jalapeno mixture because it really brightened up the tacos and gave them a lot of flavor.  The shallots actually absorbed some of the heat from the jalapenos, which was new and interesting.  For my last taco I threw on all of the toppings for a super taco and I think that one might have been my favorite combination - a little bit of everything. 

As for the skirt steak itself, I'm not sure that I was a fan of the chili powder-cocoa-cinnamon spice rub.  It was kind of gummy and mushy; it just coated the outside of the steak in a really strange way (and then your tongue) that I didn't find particularly appetizing.  I think it was the cocoa powder.  The steak was fine when you had it with the toppings, but I would never eat it alone.  Beyond the strange mouthfeel, I'm just not sure that the flavor was all that great.  I much preferred the Beef Tacos with Radish and Avocado Salsa (where the steak is seasoned with cumin, s&p) and other tacos we have made where the skirt steak was seasoned simply with s&p and served with some sort of salsa, like the Skirt Steak Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa.  I thought that the flavor of the beef itself really shined in those recipes and was augmented by the seasonings, whereas I thought the flavor here was obscured by the overpowering (and almost cloying) flavor of the cocoa powder in this recipe. 

Recipe after the jump!

Kogi-Inspired Bulgogi Tacos with Spicy Slaw

When I went out of town last weekend I instructed Alex to eat leftovers and use up some ground beef we had defrosted.  I thought he was going to make some tacos (as in the type that comes in the Old El Paso kit with the taco sauce, taco seasoning, and hard taco shells).  Alex likes those box kit tacos, but it's usually a fairly hard sell to get me to indulge because I would rather have shrimp tacos or fish tacos.  Or if I have to have beef tacos, how about skirt steak tacos?  Since this was his one opportunity to have ghetto box tacos without having to sell me on it first, I was pretty surprised when Alex told me that instead of box tacos, he was making bulgogi tacos from a recipe he found online.  Then again, Alex loves Korean food so I guess I shouldn't have been all that surprised.

So I brought in some of the leftovers for lunch today and was actually pretty impressed.  Go Alex!  The tacos are pretty delicious.  Now, I say all that with one caveat.  You absolutely have to make the slaw and you have to serve your tacos with a decent serving of slaw on top.  The slaw is really what makes the tacos so good.  The beef is good - slightly sweet, with just a hint of sesame oil.  But if you have it by itself it's kind of dry and boring.  And you wouldn't immediately realize that the tacos are supposed to be Asian-influenced.  But when you add in the slaw, you get much needed moisture, all kinds of flavor, a little bit of spice and a nice crunchy texture.  I really liked the addition of the ginger in the slaw because it really brightens the dish up.  For some reason I wasn't digging the flour tortillas, which I don't think really go with the tacos.  But I'm not sure what alternatives exist.  I think corn tortillas (and hard taco shells) wouldn't work at all.  Maybe just some lettuce to make ssams?  Flour tortillas are probably the best option, but maybe I will try eating more of the leftover meat as a ssam and see how that goes.  Alex's take on the tacos was that they were tasty and relatively easy to make.  He said (and I agree) that they reminded him of the burritos from the Korilla BBQ truck.  Actually, another option with the ground beef and slaw is to make it into a burrito with some rice, etc.  Apparently I should leave Alex at home alone for the weekend more often because when I do yummy leftover lunches await.

Recipe after the jump!

Beef Tacos with Radish and Avocado Salsa

So it seems that I like radishes.  A lot.  Who knew?  After we made (and loved) the Sugar Snap Pea Salad with Radishes, Mint and Ricotta Salata I decided to pick up some more radishes in the hope that we would get more sugar snap peas from our CSA.  But there were no sugar snap peas to be had last week, so I had to figure out something to do with our radishes.  This recipe was one of those recipes that just seemed to come together perfectly.  I had already defrosted a nice skirt steak and happened to have just picked up cilantro, scallions, and corn tortillas the other day.  The only thing we needed was an avocado.

Steak tacos are one of my absolute favorite quick and easy meals. Skirt steak and hanger steak are both so inherently flavorful that they make fantastic tacos. I have made several different variations - on the blog alone I have made Skirt Steak Fajitas with Lime and Pepper, Six-Spice Hanger Steak Tacos with Pickled Onions, and Skirt Steak Tacos with Roasted Tomato Salsa.  This version was delicious.  I loved the salsa.  It had very little heat, but a ton of flavor.  And the combination of the avocados and radishes gave the tacos some really nice textures to go with the bold flavors of the steak and lime juice.

Recipe after the jump!

Tacos of Carnitas Roasted with Orange, Milk and Pepper

Pork is by far Alex's favorite meat.  I'm on the fence.  I love meats of all sorts, but I'm not sure that I can pick a favorite.  I mean, I love a great steak or a juicy burger just as much as I love pork belly and pulled pork.  And then there is always my occasional yen for lamb.  And don't get me started on poultry.  Guinea hen anyone?  Yum.  Anyway, making carnitas has been on my mind for quite some time.  Sometimes I get an idea in my head and then I just fixate.  I found this recipe last week, and then stumbled across a beautiful hunk of pork shoulder at the butcher.  And luckily I had most of the other ingredients in the fridge, with the exception of one ingredient, the chicharrones, that we ended up leaving out of the recipe entirely.

The orange flavor of the pork is very delicate.  I would say that the carnitas are intensely porky and only just slightly perfumed by the orange.  Over a year ago Alex and I made a recipe from Top Chef - Howie's Braised Pork Shoulder with Yucca and Pickled Onions.  That pork was far more flavorful, but much less intensely porky.  Instead you tasted primarily the sweetness of the oranges and brown sugar, the perfume of the spices (cinnamon, star anise and ginger), and the sourness of the lime and vinegar.  The meat was wonderfully flavorful, as were the pickled onions, but it definitely wasn't all about the flavor of the pork itself.  Now with that said, I have to say that in the future I might add some more spices and other elements from that recipe when I make carnitas in the future.  For instance, I might add some additional orange juice and spices to the braising liquid just to kick up the flavor a bit.  But, at the same time, I wouldn't want to overpower the more subtle flavors of the pork itself.  It's a rather difficult balance to achieve.  With all of that said, this was a delicious dish.  When you layered the flavors of the pork, the bright cilantro, the sharp red onion, the tangy tomatillo salsa, and the creamy avocado everything came together.  If your intention was to eat the pork solo I would recommend flavoring the braising liquid with a heavier hand, but if your intention is to enjoy the taco as a whole, then it's pretty perfect as is!

Recipe after the jump!

Six-Spice Hanger Steak Tacos with Pickled Onions

For the past year I feel like you couldn't turn around without hearing some reference to the Kogi taco truck and Asian-inspired tacos, quesadillas and hot dogs.  Most of the variations that I hear about are Korean, but I decided to whip up some Chinese-inspired tacos using hanger steak.  Part of this decision was based on our lunch today at Umi Nom out in Brooklyn where we had some seriously delicious Filipino or more generally Asian-inspired dishes.  Actually, one of the dishes we had today, the crispy chicken wings, seemed like a good variation on one of my favorite dishes, butter-fried frog legs, served at Huong Viet, a Vietnamese restaurant in Falls Church, Virginia.  The main difference (aside from the fact that these were chicken wings and the others are truly frog legs) was that at Umi Nom the chicken wings were made using tempura batter, rather than a more standard batter for deep frying, so the coating was shatteringly crisp.  So delicious.  The bahay kubo fried rice with chicken, shrimp, and Chinese sausage was similarly delicious.  What a great restaurant.  Too bad it's all the way out in Clinton Hill.  After such an amazing lunch I couldn't decide whether making another Asian-inspired dish was a good idea since I was worried that anything Asian we made couldn't possibly compare to our lunch.  And in some ways I was right because I am no professional chef, but these tacos were truly delicious.

This recipe is a play off a hanger steak recipe that I featured in My favorite recipes of 2009 post.  Generally speaking, you have to be somewhat wary of Sichuan peppercorns in any recipe because they can be somewhat overpowering.  And our current batch of peppercorns is far more pungent than our last batch, so I had to seriously dial down the amount of Sichuan peppercorns in the recipe here.  Otherwise you would quickly learn why the Sichuan peppercorns are sometimes referred to as "numbing" - after an overdose of Sichuan peppercorns your entire mouth tingles and then eventually go numb.  It's definitely a peculiar and not altogether pleasant sensation.  When all of the ingredients in this spice rub are in proper balance, it results in a very flavorful piece of steak.  When served with my pickled onions, fresh cilantro, a squirt of fresh lime juice, and sliced avocado it results in a very delicious and unusual taco.  The creaminess of the avocado is the perfect foil for the six-spice seasoning.  It gives the dish some richness and fat to balance out the fairly assertive flavors of the six-spice.  The sweet, yet savory pickled onions (based off a recipe by David Leibovitz) add another fantastic level of flavor.  Those onions are seriously amazing.  I definitely recommend making them, if nothing else.  They would be delicious on top of almost any sandwich, or served alongside all sorts of other dishes.  On top of everything else, the fresh flavors of the lime juice and the cilantro brightens the entire dish.  Every bite of the tacos sings.  There are levels upon levels of flavor that play off one another.  Now maybe these tacos weren't as well-executed, or as fancy, as the dishes we enjoyed today at Umi Nom, but they sure were delicious. 

Recipe after the jump!

Shrimp Tacos

Every cook has a few easy, reliable and quick meals that they fall back on.  This is one of mine.  Fish and shrimp tacos are one of my favorite dishes, both to eat and to make.  During the summer I make tacos regularly, because they just strike me as the perfect summertime meal with a couple of nice cold beers and some chips and guacamole, or chips and salsa.  Somehow spicy Mexican and summer just seem to go hand-in-hand for me.  But after a week of feasting only on Asian-inspired dishes and in anticipation of some fairly heavy, meaty meals this week, shrimp tacos seemed like the perfect simple foil for the richness of Dinosaur BBQ this evening, and a bacon-centric cooking class we took last night.

I marinate my shrimp for my tacos in a blend of chili powders, cayenne pepper, lime zest, garlic, cinnamon (just a touch for a hint of cinnamon sweetness and aroma), and cumin for smokiness.  Then you have the fattiness of the guacamole with the bite of red onion and jalapeno, and the brightness of the cilantro and the spritz of fresh lime juice.  Delicious - even in winter time.

Recipe after the jump!