Taquitos (that aren't from your freezer!)

Freezer food.  It's convenient, for sure, but it's kind of a drag...full of processed gunk, chemicals you can't pronounce (disodium inosinate...more like disodium NAUSEATE), and that freezer flavor you just can't quite get rid of.  Would you like to avoid all that?  Would you??  Really??  Of course you would.  You want to have your taquitos and eat them too, but without the mystery stuff.  Leave the MSG behind and follow me...

I bring you: Creamy Chicken Taquitos!  *cue the music*

Man, are these good!  Mix the stuff, stuff the things, put the things in the oven, eat 'em.  4 step process, really. 

The one little hiccup is that you'll need already cooked and then shredded chicken for this recipe.  Short answer?  A whole Rotisserie chicken from your grocery store.  Grab one and rip it up.  Longer answer?  It sounds crazy, but boiling your raw boneless, skinless chicken works really well.  Bring a large pot of water to a boil and add your chicken.  When the water begins to boil again, time it for 5 minutes.  Drain the hot water and soak the chicken in ice water for a few minutes to cool it down and then shred it by hand.  I did it for this recipe and you can too.  Get messy...it's fun!

Now that you've got shredded chicken, let's do this thing!

Oven to 425 degrees.  Into a large bowl, place the "stuff that makes it taste good": cream cheese, onion, salsa, cumin, onion powder, garlic, chili powder, cilantro, lime juice.

Oh!  I forgot the CHEESE:

Mix your good tastin' stuff up with your shredded chicken:

Now, grab a package of tortillas (I used low-carb flour tortillas for mine).  Microwave each tortilla for about 10 seconds so it will be soft and pliable.  Scoop a few spoonfulls of your chicken mixture across the upper third of your tortilla like so:

Roll it up as tightly as you can (being careful not to rip the tortilla) and place each taquito side by side, not touching, on a parchment paper covered baking sheet.  Spray lightly with cooking spray and sprinkle with salt (if ya like).  Pop em in the oven!

They'll hang out in there for about 15 minutes.  About 2 minutes before you're going to take them out, I like to sprinkle a bit of extra cheese on top so it can melt. 

Aww, how lovely!  It's almost decorative...yet functional it its yummy-ness. Good call.  Except for that one on the right...looks like I missed.  Oops.
 
I enjoy serving these delectable morsels with homemade guacamole, salsa, and sour cream.  Do what you love. 

Wait...what's that you say?  You don't know how to make guacamole?  *gasp*  Well, that's something we'll have to remedy, isn't it?

Cut 4 ripe avocados in half and scoop all that yummy green stuff into a bowl, discarding the large round pit.  Add 1/4 cup chopped onion, 2 tsp. garlic salt, 1 tsp. Tony Chachere seasoning, juice from half a lime, and hot sauce to taste (I like Siracha aka: rooster sauce).  Mix all in a bowl until desired consistency is reached.  Guac is great stuff.  Now that you know how to make it, you should eat it more often. 

BAKED CREAMY CHICKEN TAQUITOS
Makes 12 taquitos

3 ounces cream cheese, softened
1/4 cup salsa
1 Tbsp fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp chopped cilantro
1/4 cup onion
1 lb. shredded cooked chicken
1 cup shredded cheese (I used Cheddar)
small flour or corn tortillas
kosher salt
cooking spray

Preheat your oven to 425˚F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, mix the cream cheese, salsa, lime juice, ground cumin, chili powder, onion powder and garlic. Once combined, stir in the cilantro and onion. Add the cheese and your shredded chicken and mix it up.

Heat your tortillas for about 10 seconds until pliable.  Spoon 2-3 Tablespoons of the chicken mixture onto the tortilla and roll tightly.  Place each rolled tortilla seam side down, not touching, on the baking sheet. Spray lightly with cooking spray and sprinkle with salt. Bake for 15 minutes (sprinkling more shredded cheese on top about 2 min prior to the end, if you'd like).

Serve with salsa, sour cream and/or guacamole.

Try it.  You'll like it.

-Sam

Coconut Key Lime Bars

Jess's mom Nita invited us over for dinner last night and asked if I would make a dessert.  It was St. Patrick's Day, we were out most of the previous night, got up early yesterday morning, and I was frickin exhausted...but duty calls!  My kitchen missed me! 

As I only had about an hour, I needed a dessert I could whip up pretty quickly, but I wanted to make something different as well.  It just so happened that I had some random stockpiled ingredients on hand to make something more fun than just cookies or brownies...I had all the makings of coconut key lime bars.  As it was St. Patrick's Day, I feel like all 17 of us who got to eat these were pretty darn LUCKY folks! 

Check this out...

Coconut Key Lime Bars

Crust:

1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs
2 tbsp sugar

1/2 cup sweet, flaky coconut
1/3 cup melted butter

Filling:

3 cans sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup sour cream
3/4 cup key lime juice (yes, I really did have this in my fridge)
1 tbsp grated lime zest
Topping:
1 cup whipping cream
2 tbps sugar
1/4 cup sweet, flaky coconut

Preheat oven to 350.   Line an 8 x 11 baking pan (I used a glass pyrex one) with parchment paper, overlapping the paper over the sides.  This will let you lift the whole thing out of the pan later for easier cutting. Mix the crumbs, sugar, coconut, and butter in a bowl and press it into the bottom of the pan to create a graham layer. Bake for 8-10 minutes. Remove and cool slightly.

In a bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, sour cream, lime juice, and lime zest until it's smooth.  Pour on top of crust; bake for 8-10 minutes.  It will not look cooked, so don't freak out. Cool at room temperature, then chill completely in the fridge.

Doesn't that look lovely?

Pour the cream and sugar into a bowl and mix with a hand mixer until it reaches your desired whipped cream consistency.  Did you know making whipped cream at home was so darn easy?  You'll never buy that junk at the grocery store again!  Spread your whippy creation on top of the key lime bars.  Sprinkle with toasted coconut.  To toast the coconut, line a baking sheet with parchment paper, spread the sweetened, shredded coconut on top, and bake at 400 degrees for 3-4 minutes until it's lightly golden brown. 

 I really like coconut...

Once topped, lift the whole thing out of the pan using the parchment paper and place on a cutting board or other flat surface (cookie sheet, neglected/knife-scored countertop, etc.) so we may slice the darn thing into these lovely chunks:

I was so excited to eat, that I think my hands shook. Hence the blurry-ness...my bad!

Sorry the photo isn't as pretty as I thought.  Whoopsie!  You'll have to make it yourself and send me a better photo, mmkay?  This one pan of goodness fed 17 folks.  Not bad, huh?  In fact, let me show you the aftermath!

Total carnage with one lone survivor

Quick to make, minimal ingredients, and rave reviews.  What's not to love?

Try it.  You'll like it.

-Sam

Jerked Ribs

Ribs.  We wanted 'em.  We needed 'em.  We got 'em.  But now, how to make them?  What to season them with?  So many choices!! 

My brilliant Jess thought to jerk them and then grill them...did I mention she's an unparalleled grillmistress?  Some sort of strange alchemy occurs when you combine a piece of meat, a hot grill, and her skill (unintentional rhyme!) with timing.  She's also really pretty, so it's like dinner and a show! 

Tonight, I witnessed that magic first hand as I acted as sous chef and let Jess take the reins.  We found a nice slab of ribs, around 5 lbs, nicely meaty but with just enough fat to keep things interesting.  This slab also had a great "skirt," which is not an item of clothing in this case but is rather a nice bit of meat that's somewhat on the outside of the rib bones.  First, Jess cut the skirt from the main slab leaving us with two gorgeous pieces of pork goodness.  Ooo baby...  She had me salt and pepper the two pieces, squirt them with dijon/wine mustard, and then sprinkle each liberally with jarred jerk seasoning.  She rubbed the mix in to the meat and we gazed in awe...

Cue the "Hallelujah" choir!

 

These two beautiful pieces went onto our hot grill to sear, about 15 minutes on each side.  The grill was then turned on low so the pieces could brown and cook but retain their moisture. 

 

Seared and sizzling...

 

Jess flipped them often every 10-15 minutes to make sure they cooked evenly, rotating them over the hottest part of our grill. They smelled heavenly! 

 

After about 40 minutes, the skirt was already done.  So we ate it!  That's pretty much what the skirt is for...it's an appetizer for the cooks while you wait for the main event to finish.  Ribs are so clever!  We made up a quick batch of the mustard/jerk mixture and basted the slab with it about an hour into the grilling process.  It began to make a beautiful crust almost instantly. 

 

After an eternity (ok, ok, only an hour and a half) of smelling good smells and hearing meat sizzle and gazing into the open grill with rapture, our slab of ribs was ready!

 

Grilled meat was a great invention.  Well played, cavemen.

 

The ribs were covered in foil and left to rest for 10 minutes on this cutting board to reabsorb some of their juices.  The suspense nearly killed us; we drank some beers to maintain sanity.  Feel free to do the same while you wait!

 

I made up a quick batch of broccoli and onions so as to not look like complete savages.  After the slab was chopped up into its component riblets, we ate like there was no tomorrow!

 

We thought about just eating the meat.  But veggies are good for you!





 

What an amazing meal.  If I may say...it was positively rib-stickin' good.  ;)   

 

Try it.  You'll like it.

 

-Sam





Friday Night Steak

Friday night...what to do, what to do.  Not gonna lie, usually we go out somewhere.  But it's been a long week and we really needed a night in.  A night in means a dinner night!

Yesterday morning, I took out our flat iron steak that had been resting comfortably in the fridge since the day before.  Our soon-to-be-amazing main course went into a gallon sized ziploc bag while I mixed together about 4 tbsp of worcheshire sauce, 1 tbsp garlic salt, and several cranks of freshly ground black pepper, which subsequently also went into the bag with our steak.  Then back into the fridge, it went! 

10 hours later, we got home from work, popped open the fridge and took out our steak to warm up a bit.  Jess fired up the grill while I worked on our sides-show.  From my (fortunately well-stocked thanks to a recent farmer's market trip) fridge, I picked out a couple of large portobello mushroom caps, a sweet yellow onion, and a bunch of asparagus.  Oh, it's ON!

Oven preheated to 400 degrees...asparagus snapped, laid on a baking sheet, sprinkled happily with olive oil & garlic salt...ahh, just lovely!  What could possibly make these better?  Hmmm...

Oh!  How bout a ton of shaved parmesan!!!  Done.  Boom.

Ready for their closeup

Popped in the oven for 10 minutes aaaaaand....

Mmmm...melty..........

Time for the shrooms...after a quick rinse under the sink to remove all (most of?) the dirt, each cap got a quick schmear of olive oil over the top and bottom.  Garlic salt and pepper followed.  Then, the good stuff...goat cheese...LOTS of goat cheese filled each cap to the brim.  A quick sprinkle of thyme and rosemary, and those bad boys went on the grill.

Twinsies!

Last, but certainly not least in my kitchen, I sauteed an onion. It took about 10 minutes but just made this meal.  And it filled up my house with amazing onion-y cooking smells...NICE.

 Gratuitous onion shot!

Steak and onion...it's like PB&J...Mickey and Minnie...Milo & Otis...they belong together!  Mushrooms don't hurt either.  See how happy they look?

It's amazing what a grill can do!

When all these elements are combined, you get one heck of a dinner. 

 Of course, you wanted to see my plate, right? 

This is the "before I shoved it all in my mouth like I haven't eaten in years" shot.



Perfect low carb, low stress, super tasty meal.  And quick too! 

Try it.  You'll like it.

-Sam