Tacos - A favourite, What no SEASONING ??

Tacos are a favorite in our house, i like them because its a quick easy and tasty dinner. The boys like it cause they get to make their own.

We have to have the soft tortillas (wraps) as well as the hard ones, as one child likes hard the other likes soft (its easy enough to keep the left overs for next time or cook the tortillas on the fry pan with left over meat the next day).

What do you do when you are cooking Tacos but you don't have the seasoning ?
Quite often i forget to by taco seasoning when i make tacos, i have experimented over the years and i have come up with a combination of spices that brings you taco mince very close to the packet stuff, in fact i like it better as i know exactly whats going into it :).

Ingredients:
Onions, Celery, Beef Mince, Red Kidney Beans, Tomato Paste

Spices include:
Garlic, Ground Cumin, Turmeric, Sugar, Paprikaa (the mild kind).

You could include chilli, maybe a few other spices but this is the basics.

Generally I add the spices after the onions and meet have browned, i don't measure just give a good few shakes of the dry spices out of the jar, generally you need a bit more in quantity of cumin and tumeric than the other stuff. Sugar maybe about a tablespoon. I sometimes add a squirt of tomatoe sauce for good measure.

Taste as you go, if you feel its lacking add a bit more. You will get to know what you need to add to bring up the flavour.

Normally i do some guacamole but i didn't have avocados so i missed out on that this time.

Now you know what to do if you don't have taco seasoning. Probably save you a bit of money as well those taco shells etc all add up :)

Beef Casserole with an Orange Twist. - Finale

Here is the finale :) Looks good doesn't it, have to say it was delicious the meat melted in my mouth :) Been eating this for days now .. its better on day 3 than it was first first cooked !

Served with Pasta, asparagus and spinach, normally i wouldnt serve so much but oldest loves asparagus and wanted to try the spinach .. so i try to encourage him eating vegies especially green ones :)

Beef Casserole with an Orange Twist.

Here is something i am whipping up for dinner tonight. I am making it up based on what i have in the cupboard and as i go along so i hope it comes out well. I had planned to make this up in the slow cooker but i didn't have enough time for that today so its just in the oven in this casserole dish on low for a couple of hours.

Ingredients are:

Beef (cheap cut)
Beef stock (just the cubes) (about a litre)
Tin Tomatoes
Bacon (optional)
1 Orange cut into large chunks (take this out when finished cooking)
Veggies: of Celery, onion, mushrooms, carrot
Herbs: Garlic, Rosemary, Thyme (whatever was in the garden)


Salt & Pepper, Sugar
Here are the steps:
1. Chopped up all my veggies stuck them in a big bowl









2. Floured the meat, stuck the meat in a glad bag and shook it up. The easiest no mess way to do this i have found.










3. Started browning the meat in my dish










4. You are supposed to do this in batches but ended up throwing all the meat in after a small amount of cooking and the bacon. Bits of flour will cook and stick to the bottom of the pan. This is good see next point :)

5. Don't have a photo but what you need to do is lift off those brown cooked bits. This will help to thicken your gravy. So i added a bit of the stock and stirred it hard with a wooden spoon, lifting off all the sticky bits.



6.Put my tin of tomatoes in (mushing the whole tomatoes if you have that), added the whole bowl of veggies, herbs and anything else that was due to go in here. Gave it a big mix around and ensure it was all mixed together.






7. The best bit: Put the lid on and stuck it in the oven to cook (will leave mine for a couple of hours), plan on serving with bit of pasta, but you could do potatoes, rice, bread.
(going to remember to pull out the orange before serving i think it might give it a nice flavour :)
Also plan on having spinach with mine (my oldest keeps wanting to have spinach like popeye and i promised i would cook him some lol).

Will post a pic of the finished product when done :)

Chicken Asparagus, Mushroom & Leek Pie

Chicken Asparagus, Mushroom & Leek Pie

Well here is the result of the cooking i did last week, sorry i didn't get to post it until now, apologies i didn't get a step by step for you. Maybe next time.

Basically what i did was after the stock was done, pulled out the chicken, and pulled off all the cooked meat, (a really yukky job but well worth it :) I actually did this a day or so before i cooked the pie, so all of the mess etc was all taken care of and the chicken was ready to go for when i had the time.

When the time came i made a sauce / thick gravy with some of the stock and a bit of milk and cheese, threw in some tinned asparagus, the chicken from the stock and some mushrooms, leeks etc.

This is the filling for the pie and from the quantity i had I have enough of this for two big pies,. An opiton is to put this filling into volauvents or just in pastry parcels for a variations. I made one pie with frozen puff pastry and put the rest of the filling in the freezer for another time. Quite economical its a bit of work but easy now for next time all the work is done.

Getting a couple of meals from the chicken stock, having chicken soup or Asian styled soup. Great in all this cold rainy weather :)

Chicken Stock Soup & Chicken Pie

Chicken Stock

Today i have started one of my favorite winter dishes i like to make. It takes a bit of effort in some ways, but its good as it lasts for lots of meals at a good price range.

It begins with buying a chicken and making some chicken stock. Here is the first stage. I will use the cooked chicken later in a pie.

So all here it is bubbling away, all i have in here is a whole chicken, a couple of carrots, celery, salt and pepper and some left over garlic shallots which i bought last week that need to be used up. If i didn't have these i would have just whacked in a couple of garlic cloves.

So i will let this cook for a couple of hours and then just turn it off :) let it sit. I probably wont use the stock or the chicken until tomorrow. See how the day goes. mmmmm

Spaghetti Reworked and Chicken Kiev

This is a belated post but i took the photos so i thought i would still post them for you all.
This was Friday nights dinner, which was comprised of the left over spaghetti from the other nights dinner.

I did the boys dinner in the microwave, my oldest was helping with the cheese which he loves to do, all i did was whack some chopped up ham, and olives in a bowl along with the spaghetti and heated it in the microwave for a couple of minutes. Once done we stirred through the cheese along with some tomatoes (at his request) and some rocket and avocado.
My youngest doesn't like tomatoes rocket or avocado so i just left that out for his bowl.


Easy done in about 10 mins. I didn't have enough spaghetti left for my meal so ended up using the salad ingredients for a salad, and cooked a pre done chicken kiev in the oven.
Lovely for a friday night easy dinner :)

Quick and Easy Peasy Spagetti

I love these sort of dinners, they are quick no fuss, the boys love them and best of all they use up all those bits and pieces that you have in the fridge and cupboard. I often make various combinations of this spagetti dish depending on whats in the fridge.

Tonight i had some left over ham (could use bacon or proscuitto), salami, tomotatoes and frozen peas. In the past i have thrown in mushrooms, olives, baby spinach, bit of cooken chiken, tin of tomatoes, prawns. The key to this dish is lots of garlic, i am talking 4-5 cloves finely chopped. If you have it parmazen cheese at the end sets it all off but i only had normal cheese today.

Thought i would take some photos as i go so you can see how easy this is.

1. Cook some spagetti :) (you dont need a photo of that do you ?)


2. Put the ham and salami in the frypan leave it to cook and brown and crisp up a bit.








3. Throw in the tomatoes, garlic and whatever else you like leave that to cook a bit. A good idea whenever having tomatoes like this is to put it a bit of sugar, say maybe around a tablespoon or so i dont measure i just chuck it in :)

4. Add the frozen peas. The frozen peas add a bit of water so makes a slight sauce, let cook just for a couple of mins.

Variation is to add in a tin of tomatoes just prior to this step so its more saucey if you like it that way, but takes a bit longer cooking time as you need that sauce to cook down a bit.




5. Next add in the cooked spagetti, use some tongs mix it all together, if its a bit dry use a bit of olive oil (extra virgin if you have it) cook for a min or so more and then serve it up. If you add in baby spinach just add it in here it will cook with the heat of the spagetti.








You can see my bowl in the top photo has a big dollop of chilli in it. mmmmmmm .
This is also why i love this dish, its easy for me "adulterise it" (if that is even a word) for me and I dont have to cook separately for the boys who wont eat chilli obviously.


As i said above paramazen would have been perfect here but i didnt have any, still tasted good without it.

5.0 ate 3 bowls of it, so i think it was a winner :) I good one for the whole family.