Sunday, January 5, 2014

My kind of comfort food: all day tacos!!!!



I finished reading The Feast Nearby by Robin Mather, and I have to say I was really impressed with it. All the things I’ve dreamed about doing, but (1) didn’t know how and (2) people told me were pointless in the day and age we live in, I suddenly feel encouraged inspired to do! Granted I still don’t know what I’m going to be able to find at the local farmer’s market (if I can find the local farmer’s market), and I don’t know what grows out here in the middle of the desert, but I’m inspired none the less.

One of the later passages from her book, she discussed comfort foods. She mentioned that the foods we grew up eating are typically the foods we considered comforts when we are adults, and then she asks if our kids today are going to grow up thinking chicken mcNuggets are comfort foods. I had to laugh. For as much as Rosalyn loves chicken nuggets, macaroni and cheese, and pizza, her all time favorite food is refried black beans and rice.

For the last couple years it has been Rosarita’s canned refried black beans and Zattaran’s boxed Spanish rice that she has loved so much, but then I learned how to cook beans. It took quite a few trial and errors to figure out what flavors to add to get her to eat my homemade beans (and I admit a few of my first attempts I didn’t like either), but I got it.

I start with 2 pounds of black beans. I used to buy them in bulk at WinCo, but now I have to buy 2 bags at Safeway instead.  I soak them overnight,  completely covering them with water, bringing it to a boil, and then turning the heat off and covering it to sit over night.

In the morning I drain the beans, add fresh water, a medium white onion chopped, a packet of McCormick taco seasoning (I know, I really need to be making my own! I’ll get there!) and a jar of Herdez salsa verde. I bring it back up to a boil, and then let it simmer until the beans are super soft and most of the water is gone. At this point I used to just mash the beans with a potato masher, but that just didn’t work for me, so I borrowed a neighbor’s fancy schmancy immersion blender, and that was awesome, and now I have a brand new Ninja blender that I got for Christmas, and that was even better than awesome. I let the beans cool a bit so I didn’t burn myself pouring them into the blender, and then a couple pulses later they were perfectly mashed, with some still looking like beans, and some not so much, and then when I poured them back into the pan and simmered them a bit longer, they thickened up beautifully, and Rosalyn asked for a burrito. She declared them perfect.

Us adults like more than just beans for dinner, so I pulled out my friend Danielle’s shredded beef recipe for us. This means that last night in the crock pot I put a 3 pound roast in with the same seasonings for the beans (this recipe actually came first and is how I came up with the seasoning for the beans!). Recap for you: 1 packet of taco seasoning and a jar of salsa verde. Hold onto the onion until later. I added enough water to cover the meat and set the crop pot on low and went to bed. This morning, with the house smelling so good my mouth was watering, I turned the crock pot off and just let it sit for a bit while I dealt with the beans, and made a pot of coffee, and made breakfast for David and Rosalyn, and a smoothie for myself. Then finally after I did all the dishes, I pulled out a big pot and started shredding the meat from the crock pot by hand. I know some people think they can just use 2 forks to shred their meat, but it really doesn’t work here. The best kind of roast to use for shredded beef has ribbons of fat  and maybe a bone in it, so I shred it by hand so that I can pull out and set aside those things I don’t want in my final product. The bones gets saved for later use, and the fat gets put into a bowl for Koda (David’s dog). The beef gets put into the big pot, along with the juices from the crock put, and a sliced onion. It continues to cook on lower than a simmer (if your stove goes that low, my old one didn’t), until most of the juices are gone, the onions are soft, and the meat is just about perfect.

It’s an all day process to make tacos around here, but it is so worth it! Now if only I could make Spanish rice Rosalyn would eat, I could stop buying boxed foods!

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