Turkey Tacos

This is another recipe from the current issue (95) of Fine Cooking. These are the Turkey Tacos from the Quick and Delicious section at the back of the mag. And they are indeed, Q & D. Almost as easy as opening a packet of Old El Paso or Lawry's Taco seasoning and sprinkling it on - and they're way better because they're made with real stuff. These aren't authentic mexican tacos, these are classic american tacos. The kind your mom made, though she probably used the packet and made them with beef. (And let's not forget those hard u-shaped shells.) Not to slight those, they are still good. These are a little fresher and lighter and you still get that taste you remember.

To make this recipe, you would need to invest in some Chipotle Tabasco sauce, but that lasts forever in the fridge and you'll use it again (or you could experiment using some chopped chipotles and some vinegar.) We topped our tacos with some cilantro and salsa. I made some beans and roasted veg on the side. I also made a cabbage slaw dressed with cilantro lime yogurt (with a dash of green Tabasco,) but failed to take a picture of that. We liked the slaw as a topping for our tacos.

Turkey Tacos

2 Tbs. Tabasco chipotle pepper sauce

1 Tbs. tomato paste

2 Tbs. vegetable oil

1 medium yellow onion, finely diced

2 medium cloves garlic, minced

1 Tbs. chili powder

2 tsp. ground cumin

1 to 1-1/4 lb. ground turkey (not ground turkey breast)

Kosher salt

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

12 taco-size (6-inch) flour tortillas, heated

In a small dish, whisk the chipotle Tabasco, tomato paste, and 2 Tbs. water. Heat the oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring very frequently, until lightly browned, 3 to 5 minutes. Add the garlic, chili powder, and cumin and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.

Add the turkey and sprinkle with 1 tsp. salt. Cook, using a wooden spoon to break the meat into small pieces, until just cooked through, about 3 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste mixture and let cook until the liquid is almost absorbed, 1 to 2 minutes.

Off the heat, stir in the cilantro and season to taste with more salt if needed. Serve folded in the tortillas with your favorite taco toppings.

From Fine Cooking 95, pp. 94a
September 1, 2008

Turkey Burgers with a Twist

Here is one of my favorite new recipes from this summer. I hope it is free on Fine Cooking's website because I'm lazy and don't feeling like copying it over. There's always a bit of editing to do with the text. So here's the link for some great Middle Eastern Turkey Burgers. (If you can't get the recipe, drop me a line and I'll make sure you do.) We've made these burgers three times since issue #94 came out. The meat is generously seasoned with garlic, spices and herbs. On a pita, you'll think you're eating a gyros. And since so many of us are faced with an overabundance of cucumbers these days, you can use one to make the Tsatziki sauce (yogurt cucumber sauce) that you need to top your delicious grilled burger. I highly recommend seeking out the greek yogurt (specifically Fage) for the sauce. It makes a big difference in the thick and creamy quality. Spray some olive oil on your pita and heat it briefly on the grill before cozying up your burger in the warm, chewy bread and dolloping on some cool Tsatziki. Yum. I like these burgers with a side of tomatoes, sliced, and topped with crumbled feta. Our neighbor did a nice greek flavored Orzo salad with olives, tomatoes and feta that also went nicely with these burgers.

Ellie's Mom's Turkey Meatloaf

I had a craving for meatloaf. Just one regular morning .... I woke up and my inner voice called to me and said "Meatloaf for dinner." I would have written this off as just another typical craving, but you see, I don't even like meatloaf. Never have. As a kid, my mom would make me a hamburger when the rest of the family was having meatloaf for dinner. It was just something about that thickness of ground beef that turned me off. And by all accounts, my mom makes a darn good one, don't get me wrong.

But as it was with mayo, mushrooms and fish, out of the blue the cells in my body did a 180 and my tastebuds suddenly became more ingratiating to a formerly distasteful food. So it is with meatloaf.

Since it had been so long (forever) since my tastebuds had even tasted meatloaf, I didn't want to spoil them right away with the beefy, porky, wrapped in bacon-type loaf. So I decided to try turkey meatloaf. For the record, there are nearly 292,000 turkey meatloaf recipes currently on the internet.

Ellie Krieger's meatloaf from her book The Food You Crave is where I started. She and her book have yet to disappoint. As far as I can tell, the unique thing about this recipe is that she uses quick oats for a binder instead of breadcrumbs. She promises they will be undetectable. This is true. There was no oat flavor in the meat at all. The meatloaf is also studded with flavorful vegetables, like onion and pepper, which add to the flavor and texture but is off-putting to children, both the 4 and 11 year old variety. But otherwise, dear husband and I really enjoyed it. It uses two pounds of meat which made it a little large. I would halve it next time, or maybe just reduce it to 1 1/2 lbs because the leftovers were great. There's a little ketchup mixed in but the top is sauced with tomato sauce and that gives it a saucy Italian flavor. I really thought the 4-year old meatball-eating champion was going to go for it.

I liked this recipe and wouldn't hesitate to make it again. But there are so many recipes out there that I think I'll try some different ones before I revisit this one. Barefoot Contessa has one that interests me. But it uses 5 lbs of turkey. Yikes! Maybe if you had a family of ten. If you have a recipe that you like, I'd love to know more about it.

Turkey Black Bean Tamale Pie

We didn't host Thanksgiving this year so I had only a limited amount of leftovers. I decided to use my precious turkey on this recipe by Rick Rodgers, a cookbook author and frequent contributer to Fine Cooking magazine. This is his recipe for Turkey Tamale Pie. I have no former experience with Tamale Pie, so I can't compare it to others. But this was delicious. (Jeanette, if you're visiting, I was thinking of you and Mark the whole time I was making this.) You make a sauce with jalapenos, onions, garlic, tomato sauce and chili powder (I added some some cumin, ground coriander seed, cayenne and chipotle powder to our sauce to spice things up a bit more.) And then you mix in some chopped turkey meat, black beans and corn.

This is all heaped into a baking dish and covered with a cornmeal crust. Then the whole concoction (dare I call it a casserole?) is baked to bubbly goodness. Did I mention you cover the cornmeal with some shredded sharp cheddar cheese? The cornmeal crust is made from stone ground cornmeal and water - no fat is cut into the dough which makes this recipe reasonably healthy. The only oil you use is to saute the aromatics and there's not a huge amount of cheese. I halved the entire recipe. It fitted nicely in a medium size oval baking dish. This one is about 2 inches deep.

Mole Making

I don't know about others, but whole turkey breasts are not something that I often cook. I'll do the occasional turkey chili and that is about it. But recently I bought a turkey breast because it seemed like such a good value. At 99 cents per pound, I could get more than a couple meals from it. With the holiday coming so soon, I didn't want to prepare it in a traditional way. Roasting one half for the boys would be smart; and then I could do something "interesting" with the other half.

After thumbing through cookbooks, it became apparent that turkey is often paired with mole sauces. I love mexican cooking and do a great deal of it, but I have never made a mole sauce. It just seemed too exotic and difficult because there is so much blending of flavors. How would I know if it even came out right? Mole is a complex-flavored mexican sauce that often includes: nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, and chiles. But this recipe didn't intimidate me. The Simple Red Mole recipe that I decided to use came from the Joy of Cooking, 2nd edition. Rick Bayless was a contributor. I compared this recipe to Bayless' mole recipes in his other books and it was very similar. I decided to use tomatillos (ala the Bayless books) instead of the canned tomatoes that the Joy of Cooking recipe called for. But other than that, I stuck to the recipe.

First, I needed to de-bone my turkey breast. A turkey, is anatomically, nothing more than a large chicken. I tried to keep that in mind as I proceded. I was concerned that the bird would be difficult to work with because it is heavy and cold. It turns out that de-boning a turkey is easier than a chicken because being bigger makes it easier to see what you are doing. When you give a lesson to someone on how to de-bone a chicken breast, you should USE a turkey breast! Where to align my knife was so much clearer to me, I think I learned a lot and will be better at boning out chickens because of it. I have a new, razor sharp, Wusthof knife and it made light work of gliding along the rib bones and freeing the meat. But that is enough of Butchery Talk for today.

One breast half was removed and simply roasted in the oven for children's dinners and sandwiches. The carcasse was also roasted to make a broth. And the other breast half waited in the fridge for the mole...



I spent the day toasting and soaking ancho chiles, chopping almonds, garlic, onions, and mexican chocolate, roasting tomatillos, sauteeing various items, blending and straining sauce... It was gloriously fun. The turkey breast was browned and then braised in the finished mole for close to an hour. I couldn't believe how fast it was done. I used a meat thermometer and took it to 170. The results were good. The mole tasted like what I hoped it would. I've had fabulously more complex moles at Frontera Grill that really have to grow on you. This one tasted good right off, "a starter mole." It had the sweet dark flavor of the chiles and raisins, the acid of cooked-down tomatillos, onions, garlic, almonds, mex choc., cloves, and cinnamon. I served the turkey sliced and doused with the sauce and warm corn tortillas on the side. I'll admit that my presentation of the Turkey Mole is somewhat lackluster, but I was exhausted from mole-making! I made up for it the next day...




with the leftovers: turkey enchiladas. Mmmm.