Healthy! Cheap! Turkey Tacos!

Messy Chef Brooklyn should really be posting this one as it's her specialty, but I'm on a roll tonight.

This is a once-a-week standard in the Messy Chef Brooklyn household, and will likely become a standard in the Messy Chef Boston household as well. It's easy and healthy. What's not to love?

Turkey Taco Tuesday

Ground turkey ~ 1 lb

Bell pepper (your choice of color. I personally hate the green ones).

Onion

Taco seasoning

Soft tacos

Salsa

Low/non fat plain greek yogurt

Cilantro (optional. cilantro, though, is my favorite vegetable*)

Cheese for topping

Saute the onions and peppers. If you are crazy, like we are, grill the onions and peppers.

Saute the ground turkey with the taco seasoning, breaking it up as it cooks. I usually don't add the full amount of water that's called for on the taco seasoning packet. I might add half the amount.

Assemble the tacos, topping with cheese, salsa, and yogurt.

* bonus points if you know which red sox player claims cilantro as his "favorite vegetable."

Thai Grilled Beefs

Ok, it's been over two years. Who is counting? What's tragic is that our dear readers have been without the messy chefs for two years. What we've been up to is not important. We've been busy cooking and buying real estate. But tonight, I bring you Thai Grilled Beef Salad.

It's amazing. And comes straight outta this month's (July/Aug 2011) Cook's Illustrated. I am already looking forward to tomorrow's leftovers.

Thai Grilled Beef Salad

1 tsp sweet paprika

1 tsp cayenne

1 tbsp white rice

2 tbsp lime juice

2 tbsp fish sauce

2 tbsp water

1/2 tsp sugar

1 flank or skirt steak

4 shallots, thinly sliced

1 1/2 cups mint leaves, torn

1 1/2 cups cilantro

1 thai chile, stemmed and sliced in thin rounds

1 seedless cucumber, sliced 1/4 inch thick on bias cut

1. Heat paprika in cayenne in skilled over medium heat; cook, shaking pan for about a minute. Transfer to small bowl.
2. Return empty skilled to medium high heat and toast white rice, stirring frequently, for about 5 minutes ... until golden brown. Transfer to small bowl and let cool for about 5 minutes.
3. Grind toasted rice with spice grinder, mini food processor, or mortar & pestle until it looks like a fine meal.
4. Whisk lime juice, fish sauce, water, sugar, and 1/4 tsp toasted paprika mixture in large bowl and set aside.
5. Get grill ready: for gas grills, turn on all burners to high, cover, and heat grill until hot (about 15 min). Leave primary burner on high, and turn off other burners.
6. Clean and oil cooking grate. Season the steak with salt and white pepper. Place steak over hot part of grill and cook until beginning to char. About 5-6 minutes (for flank steak). Flip steak and cook on second side until charred and center registers 125 degrees ... about 5 more minutes. Transfer to plate, tent loosely with foil, and rest for 5-10 minutes.
7. Slice meat against grain in 1/4 thick slices. Transfer steak to bowl with the liquid mixture.
8. Add shallots, mint, cilantro, chile, and half of rice powder, toss to combine. Transfer to platter lined with cucumbers.
9. Serve with rice, passing remaining rice powder and toasted paprika mixture

A few things that I'd like to add after making this:

- DO NOT SKIP the toasted rice. It totally makes the dish.

- I only mixed in half the mint and cilantro with the meat and sauce ... I left the other half to sprinkle on the steak after I put everything on the platter.

- The paprika/cayenne addition was nice, but I am not sure it needs a full 2 tsp. I think the next time I do this I will make with 1/2 tsp of each instead.

Easy Weeknight Pasta Sin Tomatoes

A friend of mine from high school, Needham, kept posting about this pasta recipe on his Facebook page so I had to try it out.

It's gemelli with lemon, feta, pine nuts, and arugula. All things I enjoy eating. We tried it out last night and it was a hit and will make another appearance in our kitchen. The flavors are different from the usual tomato-based pastas I make, so this is a great pasta dish to vary up the routine.

Check it out at: www.fightthepants.blogspot.com

Yet Another Roast Chicken

Finding the perfect roast chicken is my life's mission, and while I think I've come close (Gordon Hammersley's & my friend Karen's French salt encrusted chicken) I haven't found the perfect chicken recipe yet.

The Zuni Cafe roast chicken/bread salad recipe keeps popping up in the blogosphere, so tonight I figured I'd give it a shot.

I followed the recipe pretty much to the T, so I won't re-post Judy Roger's extensive recipe here.  Just google it and you'll find it.

I was pretty nervous going into this chicken endeavor because the recipe was over 5 pages long, and I am TERRIBLE at reading recipes and paying attention to them.  Also, I decided not to make a whole chicken and instead used just a whole bone-in breast roaster and was pretty sure that would be the ruin of me.

Shockingly, everything worked out well!  I didn't spill salt, the kitchen wasn't a mess.  Aside from massive amounts of acrid smoke pouring out of my oven due to the high roasting temperature, everything went smoothly!  (Thankfully, in this house I have a vent AND a window that opens easily.  Ah, modernity.)

I probably overcooked the chicken by about 3 minutes, but other than that, the bread salad was awesome.  I think if we had used a nice, local chicken the flavor would have been better, but alas, we cooked a frozen grocery store bird.  Going forward, if we're going to make a simple chicken recipe like this one, or Thomas Keller's, we'll get a local bird.

I'll make this one again, even if it's just for the bread salad.

 

No Lycopene Shortage in this House.

Today was sort of a meh day in the Messy Chef Central Mass household.  We got about a foot of snow, which at this point in the season is depressing, not "picturesque." In addition, Mr. Messy Chef lost a colleague quite unexpectedly over the weekend in a tragic accident.  It was a tough day in the office.

Given everything going on, nothing said "dinner" more to me than a nice, creamy risotto and a lot of nice wine.  Tonight I popped open a bottle of Hogl Riesling, which I discovered at the Slanted Door in San Francisco.

I didn't have much on hand, except for some slow roasted tomatoes and fennel.  I also had the standard onion & garlic, as well as leftover tomato soup and frozen pesto.

Given that I had pretty much nothing in the fridge, I figured I'd make some roasted tomato risotto, using the soup to add additional tomato flavor, and use the pesto instead of fresh basil.

I chopped the fennel and the onion and sauteed them in butter/olive oil and red pepper flakes.  About this time, I realized that we don't have any Arborio rice in the house.  I have about 900 half-empty bags of basmati rice, two boxes of wild rice, and a box of ditalini pasta.  My husband and I TORE UP the house looking for the missing box of Trader Joe's Arborio Rice, but no luck.  Um ... so, looks like I was making risotto out of ditalini.

Ingredients

1/2 lb ditalini pasta

1/4 - 1/2 cup of white wine

small fennel bulb

small onion

1 tablespoon of pesto

1 cup chopped slow roasted tomatoes

2 tablespoons tomato paste (or 1 T paste and 2 T tomato soup)

chicken broth (1 and 1/2 cans Swanson broth)

Parmesan, to grate over the pasta

Saute the fennel and onion with a pinch of red pepper flakes in butter and olive oil.

Add the pasta and stir for a minute or so.  Add the wine and stir for another 2 minutes.

Slowly add in the chicken broth, a ladleful at a time.  Wait for the broth to be absorbed by the pasta before adding another ladle.  While this is going on, add the tablespoon of pesto and the tomato paste/soup to the pasta.  (I used soup because I had some in the fridge.  It added a really nice flavor to the pasta.  I used the pesto since I didn't have any fresh basil.  It worked).

Once the pasta has absorbed enough broth to be fully cooked, add the chopped roasted tomatoes.  

Spoon the risotto into bowl and grate fresh Parmesan over the top.

What? We disappeared for a year??

So, the Messy Chefs had a kinda hectic year since we last saw you.  The following things have happened, in no particular order:

a) Messy Chef Cambridge got married.

b) Messy Chef Manhattan got a dog.

c) Messy Chef Manhattan was in grad school, working as a personal assistant to the wife of an Important Titan of Finance, interning for NY Historical Society for free (but she got a cool tri-cornered hat), and interning for an unnamed-yet-famous designer (from whom Messy Chef Cambridge scored a lovely handbag).  All at the same time.

d) Messy Chef Cambridge and her husband had a life crisis, moved from Cambridge and out to The Woods (aka, central Massachusetts) into her parent's summer house.  The house is a good 45 minute drive from the nearest Whole Foods.  Oh, the tragedy.

e) Messy Chef Cambridge took a new job that required massive amounts of travel to San Francisco.

However, we are now back, and better than ever.  Especially since Messy Chef Central Mass now has a vent over her stove and a working oven.

Messy Chef Manhattan's kitchen is still about 4 sq feet total.

Updates from the Chefs

The Chefs may be quiet, but we've been busy. For two weekends in a row we've been together. Stay tuned for our post on a drunken attempt at spinach gnocchi, which tragically ended in the loss of one wooden turner.