Chorizo and Potato Tacos with Black Bean and Radish Side

Skipping Red Currant-Glazed Chicken with Spinach for now... will blog on the next go around...

Okay, these chorizo and potato tacos are awesome. My husband actually saw this recipe in the magazine and asked every night if we were finally having it. It's one of those silly things -- I love tacos with potatoes but never made them at home because I thought the true dice would be too time-consuming. However, when you use bursting-with-flavor chorizo, you can spend an extra minute chopping because you save time on seasoning. Similarly, I usually serve plain canned black beans, which I like but don't love. Here, though, the beans are not reheated. The radish/lime/cumin/cilantro combo really helped step them up (although I refuse to call it a "salsa" since there aren't any peppers). We used low-carb wheat tortillas and ate the beans on the side since the chorizo mixture more than filled them up. This recipe followed the warm meat, cold side pattern the other recipes used; I'll have to see if that carries through the other weeks.

Overall, YUM, but... by far the least healthy of the week. It's difficult to get an exact count on chorizo, since we used the Central Market links, but it was not bueno. The pork fat covered potatoes, though-- muy bueno.

Fish Tacos and Green Guacamole

Serendipity! I dvred Good Eats: American Classics VIII: Tacos last week and before I watched it, received the Central Market circular advertising a tilapia special. I added tilapia and taco ingredients to my menu planning list and my husband asked, "Are you going to make the fish tacos from Good Eats this week?" Aha! The episode turned out to be exactly what I was envisioning on my shopping list. When it came time to make the tacos, we skipped the complex tortilla preparation/homemade crema and just went with simple queso fresca and Nigella's green guacamole. I tasted the marinade after I prepared it and I was alarmed-- it is pungent. But cooked off and paired together with the flaky white fish, it added a lot of flavor without overwhelming the fish with hot spice. We made the guacamole extra lime-y to complement the fish. Yummy.

Note: I'm not sure that I would wholeheartedly recommend the guacamole on its own with chips, as I love a thick dip with a strong onion-y and tomato-y flavor for that, but as a complement to an entree, this was perfect. I may make it again with my Enchilados Camerones-- I'll be using up the queso fresca on that recipe later this weekend!

Enchilados Camerones

May's Real Simple featured a "my mother's best recipe" article that completely surprised me. I was expecting 50s-style casseroles, but the recipes were varied and interesting, including this Puerto Rican recipe for Enchilados Camerones. These mouth-watering shrimp tacos are a fresh alternative to the heavy, cheesy Tex-Mex my husband and I love but shouldn't eat as often as we do. The recipe reads almost like a Latin version of cacciatore, but the tomato-based sauce for the shrimp ends up making a warm, mild salsa. It was my first time using sweet smoked paprika and I was amazed that it smelled just like barbeque Lay's potato chips! The trickiest part of the recipe was making sure the shrimp cooked. I had to turn the heat down fairly low on the sauce to get it to simmer, and had difficulty determining when the shrimp were opaque due to the sauce. I ended up turning the heat up to medium and cooking for several minutes longer. With simple canned black beans on the side, this ended up making an impressive spread that I'm sure guests would gobble up as fast as we did!