Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label easy. Show all posts

October 22, 2013

Oven Baked Chicken Tacos

So after I made the roasted lemon chicken (go back a few entries), I had a lot of chicken left over. Saturday night, I decided I was going to make some delicious chicken tacos. Now, in my household, tacos are what some people call "tacquitos". Rolled up corn tortillas that are either baked or fried (usually fried). Mexicans call them flautas, but whatever. Whatever it is that you call your tacos, these rolled up and baked vessels of deliciousness were very good.

Undressed taco deliciousness.

Oven Baked Cheesy Chicken Tacos

Pre-heat your oven to like.. I dunno, 400 degrees. That's what I went with because I was experimenting (I've never baked my tacos before, sooo). 

Now, tear up one of your chicken breasts into strips and bite size pieces and set aside in a bowl. 

In a saute pan, with a little bit of oil, sautee some chopped onion, diced green pepper, garlic, and salt. Sautee until softened. Add in some petite diced tomatoes (or fresh tomatoes if you wanna roll that way), fresh chopped parsley, fresh chopped cilantro, little more salt, pepper, ground coriander, ground oregano, a few sprinkles of some chicken bouillon powder, some ground cumin, and a few splashes of chicken stock or broth. 

Add in your chicken and mix well, adding more chicken broth to get all the flavors incorporated as you see fit. You don't want the chicken sitting in a lot of liquid - just enough to keep it moist and spread out the flavors. 

Assembly:

Get yourself some corn tortillas and a couple of baking pans or cookie sheets, or whatever makes you happiest. 

Now corn tortillas are a bitch to roll if you ask me. Maybe its because we keep them in the fridge, I don't know. So what we do, is we take a couple of paper towels, place one on the bottom of your microwave, place about 3 corn tortillas on top nicely spread out, and place another wet/damp paper towel on top of the tortillas. Shut the microwave and heat the tortillas up for a little longer than 1 minute. It'll make the tortillas nice and soft and pliable for filling and rolling. Your welcome. 

Anyway! Spray your pans/sheets/whatever with some cooking spray and pull out a warmed tortilla. Add a nice spoonful of your chicken mixture into the tortilla, sprinkle with some shredded cheddar cheese, and roll it up. Place it on your cookie sheet, seam-side down and keep going until you run out of chicken filling. 

Bake them in the oven for however long you need to until the tortillas have browned a little bit and are noticeably tougher/crunchy on the outside. (The picture above shows you what they looked like out of the oven.)

Sauce:

Now my mother and I like to top our tacos with shredded cabbage, some salsa or hot sauce or your own homemade tomato-based sauce (my mom makes a ketchup-based, sweet salsa that I adore), and grated Parmesan cheese. Exhibit B:

Trust me, you want these in your mouth.

You can go ahead and do whatever it is you want with your tacos, but I promise you if you don't mind fresh shredded cabbage, this is an excellent way to serve them. 

And there you have it! Delicious, relatively healthy chicken tacos. You won't be disappointed. 

October 15, 2013

Strawberry Banana Dessert for a Sweet Tooth

So tonight I made the pork tenderloin and the ginger carrots that I linked to in my previous post. I'm telling you all right now, you need to try out those recipes. The pork was moist, tender, filled with flavor and super delicious. The ginger carrots paired really well with the pork and the soy sauce marinade, and I threw in maybe half a cup of rice pilaf from last night's dinner.

Of course, dinner was over, and as usual my sweet tooth started to rear its ugly head. I started picturing chocolate, caramel, marshmallow fluff, peanut butter chips, cookie dough.... My brain is a disaster when I crave sugar and sweets. So I went online and started to browse some dessert ideas, but most of them require more effort and energy and dirty dishes than I'm willing to deal with at 9:30 at night.

Then I found a fantastically simple dessert idea floating around, and if I knew who posted it originally, I would provide some credit. It was bananas, honey, and cinnamon. I thought that sounded pretty perfect but I really wanted an extra layer of flavor, so I added some strawberries that I bought yesterday. Easy, light, sweet, and delicious!

Quick and Easy Strawberry Banana Dessert





Ingredients:

1 ripe banana, sliced
4-5 strawberries, sliced
A few drizzles of honey
A few sprinkles of cinnamon

Directions:

Place fruit in a bowl or dish. Drizzle with honey. Sprinkle on some cinnamon. Eat.

Seriously. It doesn't get much easier than that.

Try it out and let me know how you like it. I think it's definitely my new favorite dessert/snack.