Israeli Street Tacos

Fusion... usually code for "Nothing looks good so lets throw it all together and hope for the best"... Not this time folks! See I love Israeli food, and I love Mexican food. What's better than combining them?!

This may take some effort but I assure you it's well worth it....

Ingredients:

Olive Oil
a few springs of Thyme
1 Garlic Bulb
Green onions
1 lemon
salt/pepper
Parsley (flat leaf preferably but any will be fine)
Mint
Dill
Cilantro
ground Beef (try to go decent quality and around an 85/15 fat content)
1 cup chicken stock
1 sweet onion
a scant cup of bread crumbs (I just toasted some left over garlic bread and broke it down in a spice grinder)
cumin
capers
1 egg
Baharat (don't worry, recipe for that follows)
- 1 tsp black peppercorn
- 1 tsp coriander seed (I like a touch extra in mine)
- 1 small cinnamon stick, smashed into smaller pieces
- 4-5 whole cloves
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 2 tsp cumin seeds (again, I like more cumin, it's my favorite spice)
- 4 cardamom pods
- 1/2 nutmeg, grated

Naan bread
Greek yogurt
fresh diced tomato
Extra cilantro and mint



Instructions:

In a dry pan on mid heat put in all the baharat spices. Heat until you start to smell the aromatics release. It'll smell heavenly. Like a savory Christmas smell.

Put them in a spice grinder and let her rip!

In a bowl put ground beef, egg, baharat mix, bread crumbs, shredded or finely diced sweet onion, capers (chop them up if any bigger than a small corn kernel), cumin, and garlic cloves (finely diced up).

I like to use an Ulu for herbs. It's a traditional Alaskan knife used with a bowl or alone. They're extremely sharp and quite lovely. If you don't have that, put your herbs in a small cup and use kitchen scissors to give it a good mix and chop.

Add about 3/4 of your herbs along with salt and pepper to taste to your meat mixture and mix up well. Ball it up yo! About quarter sized balls are good. I put mine in a hotter than hell cast iron pan with a touch of oil and brown the outside, then add 1/2 - 1 cup of chicken stock, and put in an oven at 300 for about 20 minutes or until they're cooked and most of the liquid cooks out.

Grab some naan and toast or bake it to warm. I like the small naan breads myself. I'd tell you I make it from scratch but I have yet to find a good recipe that doesn't turn out terrible for me.

Mix some of your Greek yogurt with your remaining herbs, a touch of salt, and lemon juice.

Spread the yogurt mixture on your naan, smash up some meatballs on there, add your tomatoes, and sprinkle on some cilantro, green onions, and mint.

We like to add a bit of edamame for some green in there. That one is up to you.

So good... really... sooooo good!

Beans! Cuban Beans!

I felt the need to stock up on some extra iron this week so I went to an old standby my Mom used to make for me. Comfort food, ahh! 

It's simple and delicious and you'll love it! 

Ingredients: 

1 bag or 2 cans of black beans (if using dry, prepare as you normally would) 
3 potatoes, peeled and cubed
1/4 cup diced onion
1 clove garlic, diced
2 packets Goya Sazon seasoning
1 bunch of cilantro, loose chopped
1 whole fresh tomato, diced
salsa verde
sour creme
sliced green olives
finely diced onion

1 cup rice per person (if using regular rice ratio is 2 parts water to 1 part rice, if making quick rice, follow the box) 

Placed the peeled and cubed potatoes in a decent sized pot and cover with water. Add in 2 packets of Sazon, 1/4 cup diced onion, and clove of garlic. Place on high and let boil for 5-10 minutes until the potatoes are about 3/4 cooked. You will see them change colors a bit. 

Add in the beans and cook until they're soft, anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes depending on the bean. You should have a nice dark broth with your beans and potatoes now. 

Remove from the heat and add in some cilantro. Taste and add salt if needed, but not too much if you like the olives (like I do). They add a good saltiness to it at the end. 

Place rice in the bottom of a nice deep bowl and ladle over the beans and potato. Add a nice dollop of sour creme in the middle, sprinkle on some tomato, salsa verde, onion, and olives. Sprinkle generously with cilantro! You can add some nice Jalapenos too if you like. Although I will say they tend to overpower the whole thing. I haven't figured out how to add enough to get the heat but not too much to kill the subtle flavor of the beans and potato. 

Here's what mine looked like. I forgot cilantro at the store (will be rectifying that tomorrow!) so imagine it on there for me. 

It was really delicious. The best part is for you preggers or anemic folks, the potato and tomato contains lots of nice vitamin C which is necessary to digest the iron in the beans! Tada! Healthy blood! It's a nice rounded meal with lots of good stuff for you and easy to make. You could even do it in the crock pot (or mini crock pot) if the mood struck. 

Oompa Y'all!

Our 6+ cu ft freezer is stocked. About half of it is venison in some way shape or form. Because of that, I cook with venison a lot. Bottom line is, I'm cheap... The more cost effective the meal made from things locally or already in the home is, the more I'm going to make it.

Ran into a personal roadblock this week in terms of motivation. Yeah, the 4 loads of laundry, 3 loads of dishes, multiple meals and breads, bathing 4 dogs, trimming dog toenails, completely detailing the truck, cleaning up the garage some more, almost finishing taxes, blah... blah... blah..., just didn't quite make me feel productive...

I did what any smart woman does. I called my Mommy! She always has the best ideas. I'm super excited for her cookbook to come out (which is why some of my recipes don't end up on here). Anyway, she did some browsing of the internet and came up with Vension Gyros. Vension Gyros? Seriously? WTH!?

Then, I thought about the pita's I found on sale for $0.50 in the deli drawer, half a freezer of Vension, Greek Yogurt I bought with a coupon for like half nothing (plus it was on sale), and butt load of herbs and spices in my cabinet that I like to use within a year.

Side note: please use your spices within a year or throw them out. I know there's nothing wrong with them but if you can't get them fresh, at least have them not old!

She did some leg work for me and sent me the following Venison marinate. Jeff got the itch to grill today so we grilled the meat after marinating it with the FoodSaver container thingy. That thing is awesome by the way.

So here is the marinade.

1 tbsp cumin
2 garlic cloves, smacked hard with a knife so it kinda smashes
2 tsp marjoram
1 tsp rosemary (can be fresh, if so, just a sprig or so)
1 tbsp oregano
few splashes of red wine vinegar
2 pinches of salt
about a half a palm full of pepper (I like pepper!)

Mix this all together and sprinkle over 2 packs or so of Venison steaks. Ours were tenderized which made them SOOO good. Splash the whole thing with a few tablespoons of olive oil. Just eyeball it. It's really hard to mess it up. I put it in the Food Saver vac seal container thingy. The plastic one. Sealed it up and threw it back in the fridge.

Let it sit overnight. This is important!

After you get done with the meat, you need to mix the Tzatziki to sit overnight too. It needs to mix.

My recipe is not traditional really but it's super tasty.

1 cucumber peeled and finely diced
around 2 cups of good greek yogurt, do not substitute for regular, it's gonna be nasty!
1 1/2 tbsp olive oil
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp herbes de provance
1 tsp salt, fresh and ground in a morter and pestle
1 tsp pepper, fresh and ground in a morter and pestle
1/2 tsp coriander seeds, fresh and ground in a morter and pestle
1 small garlic clove, finely minced
2 tsp lemon juice (or Nelly & Joe's Key Lime Juice. It's really good!)

Mix everything together until it's nice and creamy. Put it in the fridge overnight to let it set up.

NEXT DAY!

If you're like me, get a husband involved with this one. Spending time with food together is a GREAT way to connect and mine is just as much a foodie as I am. :-)

Light the grill and get it screaming hot. When it's nice and hot, lay the happy meat on the grill and let it sizzle like a fat kid at the beach. After about a minute and a half, flip it. If it sticks, the meat hasn't caramelized enough, don't pull it, just let it sit a minute more. But DO NOT walk away. This will burn extraordinarily quick. When it's about medium, pull the steaks off and let them sit under foil for no less than 5 minutes. Otherwise it's gonna lose all the juice and end up dry like shoe leather.

Toast your pita on the grill for about 30 seconds. This makes them super tender and delicious.

Schmear the pita with tzatziki sauce nice all the way around. Dice up some fresh tomato but don't put it on yet.

Slice the steaks very thin at an angle into strips. The goal is something easy to bite through so you don't end up with meat dripping down your chin... that's for another time and completely your business.

Pile a decent handful of steak on the pita and throw a few tomatoes on the top. Onion if you really like it. Sometimes fresh cucumber isn't bad, but I don't think it's quite necessary here.

Dig in to your delicious low country culinary adventure!