Butternut Squash Enchiladas

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

I’ve always loved La Tortilla Factory’s handmade-style corn tortillas for tacos (like black bean tacoschili tacos, chicken tinga tacos, steak tacos, tuna tacos), so when they sent me a different product to review, I was excited to try something else from the line. Since they sent me low carb, high fiber tortillas in the larger size, I wanted to venture away from my taco comfort zone and try something new. And so butternut squash enchiladas were born. butternut squash enchiladas {the kosher foodies} Continue reading

Black Bean Tacos

It’s Taco Tuesday! It’s no secret that we love making tacos for dinner (see: tuna tacos, steak tacos, chicken tacos, chili tacos), but these are actually what we usually eat on taco night:

black bean tacos {the kosher foodies} Continue reading

Chicken Tinga Tacos

Have you ever had tinga before? I hadn’t until I made this. Basically, it’s shredded meat in a tomato-chipotle sauce.

I made these one Sunday to have dinner ready for the next day. Actually, that same Sunday I spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Do you ever do that, spend a lot of time in the kitchen on Sundays? I bet you do. I like to prepare for the week ahead, that way my time in the kitchen on weekdays after work is significantly diminished.

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Guacamole

Guacamole is one of those those ever-adaptable foods that everyone loves. Jessica and I aren’t big tomato fans, so we leave those out of our guac; sometimes we add red pepper instead, for the color. Sometimes I don’t have any jalapenos, so I put some cayenne pepper for spice. You get the idea.

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Meatless Monday: Black Bean Soup with Crispy Tortillas

Happy Monday! Today we’d like to share with you a hearty and healthy soup that serves as a main course. It’s a great meal for Meatless Monday!

This black bean soup comes together so quickly and easily. Sure, you have to fry up the tortillas, but you can always skip that step and use store-bought tortilla chips, especially if you don’t have a package of corn tortillas in your fridge that you can’t remember when it was purchased…

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Steak Tacos

Wednesday is always Mexican night at our house. Well, not officially, but it seems that on Wednesdays we happen to eat tacos. It can be fish tacos, chopped meat or bean tacos, but this time it was steak tacos! And it was delicious.

Tacos don’t photograph that well, but I tried my best to show you what my dinner looked like above.

I marinated two sandwich steaks all day, and when I got home from work I “grilled” them in my cast iron pan before slicing them up and loading them into a tortilla with some complementing flavors.

These steak tacos were fun, and felt a little bit fancier than the chopped meat kinds we usually have on meat taco night, especially since I marinated the beef all day. Sure, it took some extra time before leaving for work, but I’d say it was worth it. It didn’t take that long!

Steak Tacos

Ingredients:

For the steak:

  • 2 sandwich steaks
  • juice of 1 lime
  • 1 small yellow onion
  • 1 clove of garlic
  • 1 tablespoon cumin
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • a few cracks of black pepper

For the salad:

  • 1 bunch of arugula, cleaned, dried, and chopped
  • a handful of cilantro, cleaned, dried, and chopped
  • 1 green pepper, chopped
  • juice of one lime
  • olive oil
  • salt and pepper

For assembling the tacos:

  • 8″ corn tortillas, toasted over the open flame of your stove – careful not to light them on fire!
  • your favorite salsa, taco sauce or homemade guacamole (I made some of that! I’ll share that recipe with you, too.)
  • sauteed onions and peppers, or whatever else you want to put on top of your taco…

Directions:

For the steak:

  1. Put all of the spices in a mini food processor (you can use a mortar and pestle) and pulse until it turns into a paste.
  2. Place steak in a glass dish and cover both sides with the marinade. Cover and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours or all day.
  3. Heat a cast iron skillet over high heat. Drizzle with a bit of olive oil and cook the steak, only about 4 minutes on each side. Put on a plate and let sit for 10 minutes.
  4. Cut the steaks in thin strips against the grain.

For the salad:

  1. Add lime juice, salt and pepper to a small bowl. Whisk in some olive oil to make the dressing.
  2. Combine arugula, cilantro and peppers in a bigger bowl. Add dressing and toss to coat.

Assemble your tacos:

  1. After heating the tortillas, place them on a place. Smear some salsa or guac and place a few strips of steak on top. Finish with some salad on top, fold and eat! Don’t forget extra napkins!

So, what’s your favorite kind of taco? Do you prefer the meat kind, or do you miss melty cheese and sour cream too much, and prefer bean tacos?

Spicy Tuna Tacos

I have been wanting to make fish tacos for a long time; it’s always what we order at Mexican restaurants! We often have Mexican-style dinners at home, but they’re usually either chopped meat-based or bean/vegetarian tacos. This recipe was slightly more work than our typical taco night, but was much more fun and delicious. Plus, I had been meaning to use the frozen tuna steaks I bought at Trader Joe’s.

The fun in this meal is that you put all of the taco components on the table and then you build your own dinner. Continue reading

Guest Post: Vegetarian Empanadas

These were a team effort by me and Ricky Dweck. While he makes empanadas all the time, it was my first time, and his first time making vegetarian ones; usually there is chicken involved, but since we were serving these with pizza, we had to skip it.

These are very satisfying and delicious, and we made things easier by using store-bought empanada dough. It takes some time to dice up all of the vegetables and crimp all of the edges, so make a lot at a time and freeze what you’re not eating – they freeze very well.

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Quesadillas

You can put almost anything inside two tortillas and pan-fry them. The insides get gooey and the outsides get crisp and you can cut them into tiny wedges and they will be delicious.

quesadillas

I prepared six of these in advance, fried them up a few hours before I was ready to serve them, and then heated them on a cookie sheet immediately before serving. Continue reading

Emergency Snack Burritos

Sometimes my refrigerator is empty and I have to go out and buy food. It gets expensive and truthfully, sometimes I just really don’t want to go outside. So I don’t. And I get very hungry/grumpy.

I already had some leftover vegetarian chili, and I was at the the supermarket and became inspired; tortillas were on sale and I didn’t want to pay the price of the kosher/vegetarian frozen burritos I saw there. So I decided to make my own frozen snacks. These are my emergency snack burritos:

burritos

Some are prettier than others, but they'll all keep me from starving.

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