Marinated Flank Steak Tacos with Cilantro-Lime Sour Cream

During the past few weeks, we've been relegated to simple weeknight meals, ones that we've covered on this blog or ones that we wouldn't cover because, well, they're so simple.

So we have opted to make more planned-out meals on the weekend. And I had been craving southwestern flavors, so I thought about tacos. When we make tacos, we generally use shredded beef. But the tenderness of well-grilled flank steak would be a great alternative.

Our game plan was simple: Marinate the meat, make a simple sour cream dressing, add some cabbage and avocado, and put it all on toasted corn tortillas.

Flank steak on the grill

Marinated Flank Steak Tacos with Cilantro-Lime Sour Cream
6 servings

Marinade
1 1/4 pounds flank steak
3 limes, juiced
2 oranges, juiced
1 teaspoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon toasted minced onion
1 teaspoon cumin
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
salt and pepper

Sour cream dressing
1 cup sour cream
1/4 cup mayo
1 tablespoon cilantro
1 lime, juiced

Tacos
1 head cabbage, sliced
2 avocados, sliced
12 corn tortillas

1. Put the flank steak in a gallon zip-top bag with the lime juice, orange juice, minced garlic, toasted minced onion, cumin, honey, olive oil, salt and pepper. Set bag inside storage container to avoid leaking into the rest of the fridge and set in fridge for at least two hours.

2. Prepare grill for flank steak. Place flank steak over hot area of grill for 2 to 3 minutes, then flip, to ensure nice crust. After the second side is done, move flank steak to cooler side of the grill.

3. While the meat is grilling, mix sour cream, mayo, cilantro and lime juice in a bowl; set aside.

4. Chop cabbage and avocado; set aside.

5. Take meat off of grill and let sit for 8 to 10 minutes. While meat rests, take tortillas and place on grill, about 1 minute per side.

6. Slice meat and assemble tacos with sour cream dressing, cabbage and avocado.

Citrus Black Bean and Rice Tacos

What's not to love about tacos? Nothing. But sometimes they can be bland if you just do ground beef each time you make it. That's why it's nice to vary up the fillings.

So we made an incredibly easy vegetarian filling, Citrus Black Bean and Rice Tacos. Simple: Cook the rice and while it's cooking, drain canned beans (you can use rehydrated; we've come to prefer organic canned) and add the lime juice mixture.

Citrus Black Bean and Rice Tacos
corn tortillas
2 cups rice
1 15-ounce can black beans, drained
red onion
lime juice
salt
pepper
Monterrey jack cheese

1. Cook rice.

2. Combine lime juice, red onion, salt and pepper. Add to black beans. Add rice when it's done cooking.

3. Serve on heated corn tortillas. (About 10 to 15 seconds for 2 corn tortillas will help them to not fall apart.) Top with cheese.

Readers: What kind of fillings do you like to make for your tacos at home?

Homemade Taco Meat Pizza

Tonight we got back to a recent trend: Eating homemade pizza on Friday night. Using the dough recipe we found, liked and adapted, we have made a few pizzas we have already blogged, and a few more that really weren't blog-worthy.

We knew we had pizza for tonight on our planned menu, but we weren't really sure what we were going to do. So we looked in our fridge and saw we had some yellow onion and green pepper. Melissa preferred some red onion, so we went with that, and I wanted a little bit more than just two toppings.

That's when things started to click.

We realized our green pepper wasn't fit to eat, but we still had an orange pepper, and that was good to go. Melissa opted for the black olives and we realized we had some leftover taco meat from earlier this week. Then we shredded some monterey jack cheese and sprinkled on some sharp cheddar, too. When the pizza came out, we topped with a bit of sour cream.

And that's how you get a thrown-together Homemade Taco Meat Pizza. Delicious.

Chicken Tacos with Mango Avocado Salsa

It's always a pleasant surprise when food magazines arrive in the mail. And it's hard to resist the urge to try some recipe from it.

That's the feeling we had when the October 2009 Cooking Light arrived at our home. And inside, we found a recipe for fabulous Chicken Tacos with Mango-Avocado Salsa.

First, combine garlic powder, paprika, onion powder, ground red pepper and salt in a bowl and mix it over the chicken, which we cut down to small strips. Then cook them in a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat.



In a separate bowl, combine the mango, avocado, tomato, onion, cilantro, lime juice and jalapeno pepper.


Then just layer the chicken in corn tortillas and pile on some of that amazing mango-avocado salsa.


I admit it. I'm a fool for avocado. If it's listed in a recipe, it's nearly a shoo-in for me to like the finished product. And the creaminess definitely came out in the recipe. The mango -- we cook with the fruit about, oh, never -- was a bit underripe, so that flavor didn't come out as much, but was still very good.

And the chicken had a nice bite of heat to it, and it wasn't overpowering, either. This was a great workday meal that took a little bit of prep time, and not much cook time.

Homemade Crunch-Wrap Supreme

Let's face it: Even though we eat out for only one meal per week, we often get cravings for fast food or for eating out. But that can get costly, both monetarily and nutritionally.

But when you can re-create those meals at home, well, let's face it, that's when goodness can happen.

And that happened in our home tonight after Melissa, who is thoroughly in love with Taco Bell's crunch-wrap supremes, decided to make such a meal for our dinner.

Homemade Crunch-Wrap Supreme
1 pound ground sirloin
4 reduced-fat tortillas
low-fat sour cream
reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese
baked tortilla chips
1 diced Roma tomato
romaine lettuce leaves

To start, brown the ground sirloin; drain. Add taco seasonings. Then it's on to assembly.

Take a tortilla and spread some sour cream on. Add about 1/3 to 1/2 cup of beef and top with cheese and crushed tortilla chips.


Then add tomatoes and romaine. Fold over one edge of tortilla and continue in clockwise or counter-clockwise movement until all of tortilla is folded over. Place fold side down on medium-low pan. After the bottom side is brown, flip and brown. It should take a couple of minutes per side.


It is best to put sour cream on first before the beef. Otherwise, the sour cream could ooze out. The chips provide the crunchiness, but you could use other ingredients, obviously. We had baked tortilla chips, so we decided to use that. We ate only about half of the beef, so this could be a two-night dinner.

Chipotle Chicken Salad Tacos

Sometimes, the best people to get recipes from are those who cook every day. Such is the case with us tonight when we tried a recipe from Serious Eats (the recipe was adapted from "Mexican Everyday" by Rick Bayless).

Chipotle Chicken Salad Tacos
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon oregano
2 chopped chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
1/4 cup red onion
6 ounces shredded cooked chicken breast
romaine lettuce
corn tortillas
salt
black pepper

First we cooked the chicken in a skillet over medium heat.

While that was cooking, we prepared the sauce by combining apple cider vinegar, oregano, chipotle peppers in adobo sauce and red onion. We also added some salt to taste.


Then we took the now shredded chicken and combined that with the sauce mixture in a pan over medium heat.


Meanwhile, in another skillet, cook the corn tortillas until slightly crispy or your desired texture.

We both tried the corn tortilla tacos. They were very good. (We added some shredded cheese to the top and held back on some of the chipotle.) The vinegar provided a nice acidity and the chipotle could still be felt lingering at the end of each bite.


However, we both felt serving the chicken over romaine was better. Melissa served it over shredded romaine while I made a romaine taco, serving the chicken inside the leaf.

Chipotle Chicken Taco Salad

Oh, Cooking Light. Just where would we be without you to swoop in and provide us with such a fantastically delicious-looking recipe?

The dressing for the salad is first, so combine cilantro, sour cream, chipotle chile, cumin, chili powder, lime juice and salt and mix well; set aside.

Now for the main salad. The chicken needs to be cooked before it goes on the salad. We put a blend of spices on our chicken that included cumin, chili powder, paprika, coriander, cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder, salt and pepper.


Let chicken cool, then shred.

Then, in a large bowl, mix the lettuce, chicken, cherry or grape tomatoes, avocado, red onion, black beans and corn. Then coat with dressing; toss.

The flavors were mixed very well and the seasonings on the chicken blended well with the other ingredients. The dressing wasn't too heavy on the salad. And, aside from cooking the chicken, it is a very quick meal to toss together.

Black Bean Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Rice and Salsas

We were feeling a bit spicy recently and our minds turned to Mexican. In addition, we've wanted to try to work on making our own salsas for inclusion in Mexican dishes or simply as a dip. So we thought about making our own tacos: Black Bean Tacos with Lime-Cilantro Rice and Salsas.

So to begin, we made two types of salsas, the first of which was a corn salsa. It included corn, red peppers, cilantro, jalapeno, garlic, onion and lime juice.


The other salsa we wanted was a more traditional one: pico de gallo. For this one, we had tomatoes as well (although they were chopped up much more roughly as you can see), green peppers, onions, jalapenos and lime juice.


The reason this recipe was thought of in the first place was because we tried something we never did before: We bought dried black beans and hydrate them on our own. Before this, we had always purchased canned black beans, which are probably our favorite non-meat protein. Since we've tried this recipe, we have gone fully toward purchasing dried black beans.

But the beans need to be cooked. And we included some spices in with them, including chili powder, cumin, onions, garlic, cilantro, paprika and salt and pepper.


The last element of the tacos is the rice. Very simply we cooked it and included some frozen, chopped-up cilantro and squeezed some juice out of some limes.


Building the taco is the most important part, and we differed in our approached. Mine (not pictured) was to begin with hard-shell tacos, put sour cream on the bottom, then add the black beans, rice and salsas. Another approach is to put the sour cream on top. Top with cheese and a bit of lettuce and you're ready to go.