Turkey & Black Bean Tacos with Pineapple Mango Salsa

Last week on the Taste of Home blog, they posted a link to their recipe for Pineapple Mango Salsa. Even before I made it, my tongue started to tingle. That’s always a good sign (in cooking and in romance!) Pineapple Mango Salsa... The flavor of the tropics without the humidity!

I decided to make it with turkey and black bean tacos. And with regular salsa because my husband said the Pineapple Mango Salsa sounded fruity.

Uh… yes. It’s made out of fruit.

Turkey and Black Bean Tacos

1 T olive oil
1 pound ground turkey
1 can black beans, undrained
1 can of diced green chilis
1 envelope of taco seasoning
½ C water

Brown the turkey in oil over medium heat. Add the remaining ingredients and simmer for 10 minutes or so. Serve on flour tortillas with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and cheese. I also like to add ranch dressing to give it a different kick.

Pineapple Mango Salsa

You can click the link above to get the recipe. In the meantime, I did want to share a tip on how to chop mangos. First you have to cut the mango in half. I don’t have any tips on that part. It’s a bugger! If you have a tip, please share it with me in the comments.

But once the mango is cut in half, leave it in the peel and slice vertical and horizontal cuts into the flesh. Then invert the peel and cut your delicious little mango chunks off the peel.

The colors in this salsa are incredible! A bowl full of summer.

When making the tomato salsa, I decided to break out my new toy, a Ninja. I had bought the Ninja to replace my blender because I read reviews online that it was the best at crushing ice. (For those all important margaritas.) The blender came with this little food chopper.

The blender/food processor design has been rethought, so the motor is in this little handheld part that you place on top of the food container. The Ninja people say that pulsing works best, so I pulsed away. As you can see from the pictures below, it pulverized the food except for one big chunk.

To add texture, I chopped one tomato by hand and added it to the mix. Much better! Of course, in the end, my husband said he liked both the Pineapple Mango Salsa and the Tomato Salsa equally.

Pulverized by pulsing

Pulverized, plus one chopped tomato

Tomato Salsa

2 large tomatoes
1 jalapeno, with seeds if you like it spicy, without seeds if you like it mild
2-3 green onions with tops
1t ground cumin
¼ C fresh cilantro
Salt to taste

Chop everything as fine as you like it or put it all in a food processor if you like slushy salsa. There are endless variations. You can use canned tomatoes instead of fresh or a mixture of both. You can chop the tomatoes and then warm them in the microwave for 30 seconds to bring out their sweetness. Or even sprinkle them with a little bit of sugar. Use as much or as little of each ingredient as you like.

The next day, we used the leftover Turkey and Black Bean Taco meat to make nachos. Delicioso!

A Golden Wedding

This is my first non-recipe post, but I couldn't resist sharing. Check out this interactive magazine article about Josh & Charity's wedding. (Josh and Charity were the hero and heroine of the first Fool's Gold book, CHASING PERFECT.) You can click on the magazine to see it in full screen mode, and you can even flip through the pages.

The Fool's Gold website is my gift to all those readers who write to me asking for updates on the characters. Lots of freebies and fun stuff over there! I hope you'll check it out.

Open publication - Free publishing

Old Fashioned Peach Cobbler

Last week, I was in the mood for peach cobbler, so I asked my Facebook fans to tell me their favorite cooking blog or website. I wanted to find a recipe online that I could try because I’m all about making connections. One of my readers told me about the fabulous My Baking Addiction (thanks, Jessica!), and it just so happened that Jamie had made peach cobbler earlier this month.

The recipe calls for a 1.5-quart casserole. I had 1 quart, and I had 2.5 quart, but no 1.5 quart. Make less or make more? When in doubt, always make more.

My standard rule of thumb when it comes to peaches is to only buy them when I happen to smell them while walking through the store. I find that when they emit that lovely, peachy scent, they’re juicy and delicious. Otherwise, they’re likely to disappoint.

Sad to say, no scent. But I had already publicly committed to making the cobbler, and I could not back down.

Then it was time to peel, and I didn’t know the proper peach-peeling protocol. A potato peeler worked just fine, and I was off!

Simmering the peaches filled my house with the aroma of peachy goodness.

When it came time to spoon the peaches gently onto the batter, I was filled with angst. Was I gentle enough? I’m more of a “slap it down” kind of cook. “Gentle” doesn’t come naturally to me. Are they supposed to look like this?

I knew I would have to bake this longer because I had doubled the recipe, but I didn’t know how long. The recipe says the batter would rise to the top during baking, so I kept turning on the oven light to see whether the batter was at the top yet. I looked for a lovely golden brown crust.

Then I looked again. And again.

It never came. I don’t know what I was thinking. That the batter would sneak past the layer of peaches? What happened instead is that the batter firmed up beneath the peaches. From the top, it didn’t look much different than when I put it into the oven.

But ohhhh, did it taste like heaven!

Marinated Swai (White Fish) and Grilled Avocados

I have a shameful secret, and I’m about to confess it publicly: I bought frozen fish.

It’s entirely possible this wouldn’t be shameful where you live, but I live in Seattle where frozen fish is sacrilege. But in my defense, I’m a word girl, so when I saw an unfamiliar word on a package of fish at the supermarket, I couldn’t resist.

Swai.

That was the word that caused me to turn my back on my Seattle brethren. Swai. I don’t even know how it’s pronounced. Sway, as in Sway to the music? Or Swhy, as in Swhy on earth did you buy frozen fish?!
But whatever, I bought it. I’ll get over the guilt.

One of my goals when I started this blog was to link to recipes I find online and, since I had no idea how to cook swai, this seemed like a good time to get started. So I searched for swai recipes and discovered the fish is also known as basa and panga. It’s from the catfish family, a firm white fish.

And it’s farm-raised in Viet Nam.

I’m nervous eating seafood in Illinois because the fish is flown in from the coast. And now I'm going to eat frozen fish flown all the way in from Viet Nam? What was I thinking?

I settled on this recipe for Basa Swai with Lemon Pepper. Which, interestingly, does not have lemon pepper on it. It has lemon and pepper, but no lemon pepper.

The first ingredient of the marinade is white wine or Italian dressing. Rule of thumb: Always choose the wine.

I marinated the fish for four hours. The fillets weren’t completely thawed when I put them into the marinade, but they were by the time I took them out.
While they were marinating, a Facebook fan told me that she found a recipe for Avocado Fries on the Taste of Home Facebook page. That recipe was on Kitchn.com. Although they looked delicious, I decided that recipe was more work than I wanted to do last night, but I noticed a recipe for Grilled Guacamole. I was intrigued.

In the end, even smooshing the avocados with a fork was more work than I wanted to do, so I grilled the avocados and sprinkled them with a little salt and pepper and left it at that. I was worried that flipping the avocados would be difficult because they’re so soft, but it wasn’t too bad. I did leave little bits of green on the grill.

My husband loved the grilled avocado. I liked it fine, but I like it better raw and didn’t think grilling was worth the effort. My dog felt that she would’ve liked either of them, and she felt it very strongly.

And voila! Marinated Swai and Grilled Avocado. Doesn’t it look pretty?

The marinade is light and tasty, and the fish tasted pretty good. I’ll make it again… but I’ll use it on fresh fish next time.

Fluffy Puffy Pancakes

Last week, a reader emailed me via SusanMallery.com to share a recipe for pancakes that she said are “melt-in-your-mouth good.” So good, in fact, that her boys hover in the kitchen chanting, “Are they done yet? Are they done yet?”

Sounds like a great excuse for breakfast for dinner to me! (I only have pancakes for breakfast when we go to a restaurant. I’m not nearly energetic enough to cook until at least 3 pm. I need coffee, more coffee, and lunch before I can think about doing anything that involves mixing. Even then, it’s hit or miss.)

Recipe: Fluffy Puffy Pancakes

4 eggs – separated
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup small curd cottage cheese
1 cup sour cream
3/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder

Preheat the griddle to 375 degrees. Whip the egg whites until they’re stiff, then set aside. Beat the egg yolks with the vanilla, cottage cheese, and sour cream. Add the dry ingredients and stir just until moist, then fold in the egg whites. Pour four-inch pancakes on the hot griddle. Keep warm in the oven.

Yield: 11 four-inch pancakes, plus one half-inch pancake for Nikki, my toy poodle

When I saw the list of ingredients, I was skeptical. (Sorry, Coleen!) Four eggs, cottage cheese, sour cream, and vanilla seemed like a lot of wet stuff when compared to less than a cup of flour. But I soldiered on, regardless.

I whipped up the egg whites with an electric mixer. I have no knack for wrist action with a whisk. If I ever appear on a TV cooking show, they’ll have to use a stunt double for the whisk segments. If I’d had two bowls with my KitchenAid, I would’ve used the electric mixer for the other parts, too. I’m a somewhat lazy cook, though, and I had to weigh the amount of effort of mixing by hand against the amount of effort of pouring the egg whites into a separate bowl. I mixed the rest by hand.

I realize today that I forgot the vanilla. That’s not as bad as it could’ve been – I almost forgot the sugar and the salt. I’m pretty sure some mysterious chemical reaction would’ve failed to take place without those two ingredients. In my defense, I was watching HGTV at the time, and I can’t be expected to focus on cooking when I’m trying to figure out which home the House Hunters will choose.

Fortunately, the pancakes were delicious even without the vanilla. “Melt-in-your-mouth” is a terrific description. Because of the stiffened egg whites and the wet-stuff to dry-stuff ratio, the pancakes felt almost fizzy on my tongue. Little pockets of air popped when I pressed the pancake to the roof of my mouth. (Yes, I play with my food.)

The sour cream and cottage cheese gave the pancakes an ever-so-slight tartness, which contrasted nicely to the sweetness of the maple syrup. I had real maple syrup because I ate these on Canada Day and wanted to give a nod to my northern friends.

Yum! Thanks, Coleen! Don’t they look pretty?