Tacos in Pasta Shells

Ok, let’s be honest here, this isn’t the prettiest food ever made.  What it lacks in beauty, however, it more than makes up for in flavor.  I don’t know if I can say for certain that this is my husband’s favorite meal I make, but it’s definitely top three. 

Unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this fabulous creation, and I have no idea who to give credit to for it.  I got the recipe from my sister-in-law, who got it from a church cookbook, I believe.  I have made very few changes to the original I was given, so a big thanks to whomever the original creator may have been. 

Alright, let’s get started.  Here’s what you’ll need:

 

1.25 Pounds lean ground beef

8 oz. cream cheese

5-6 green onions

1 Large bottle of Taco Sauce

3 cups grated cheese (I used Colby jack and extra sharp cheddar)

1 box Jumbo Shells Pasta

3 cups broken corn chips

I forgot to include the ground beef in the picture of ingredients (I'll probably do that a lot), but here it is. 

 

Chop the green onions and throw them into a bowl with the cream cheese.  Set them aside for now. 

 

Brown the ground beef, draining excess oil if necessary, and pour the hot meat over the cream cheese.  Yes, that is diced onion you see in my ground beef, and no, I didn’t include it in the list of ingredients.  It’s not strictly necessary, but pretty much, if I’m using ground meat, there is going to be diced onion cooked in with it.  Not only does it add flavor, but when you’re buying organic meat, it can get pretty expensive, and adding onion makes it go a bit further.

 

Cover the bowl and leave it while you work on the pasta.  Basically just follow the directions on the package.  When it’s cooked, drain it and rinse it with cold water to cool the shells down.  Stir together the meat mixture.  My husband said I couldn’t post a picture of the filling by itself.  He says it looks like brains.  So, let’s just get to the stuffing part. 

First, this is probably a good time to preheat your oven to 350°.  Also, you’ll need to drizzle the bottom of your pan/pans with taco sauce.  Just enough to keep the shells from sticking.  This recipe makes 24 shells.  I like to separate them into two pans, because with only two of us in the house, that easily feeds us twice.  I just put one pan in the fridge uncooked.  You can plan on about 4-6 shells per person, depending on how hungry everyone is.    

Ok, stuffing… Gently open a shell and allow the excess water to run off. 

 

Using a spoon, fill it with meat mixture, but not so full that it can’t close.  I like to overfill them slightly, then squeeze them shut (gentle, they split easily) and wipe any excess off, back into the bowl.

 

Line them all up in the pan and drizzle them with taco sauce.  Don’t skimp here.

 

Cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes.  Now for the fun part.  Break up your corn chips and sprinkle them over the top.  Looking better by the minute, isn't it? 

 

Next comes the cheese.  When it comes to cheese, I rarely think a little is sufficient. 

 

Now pop it back in the oven for another 15 minutes.  It’s amazing what a little heat does to a pile of shredded cheese.  It has now transformed into bubbly, golden, deliciousness. 

 

Ok, so it kind of looks like nachos in that shot, but it is so much more.  Scoop out the desired number of shells and sprinkle with a few more green onions. 

 

**Disclaimer**  

Authors Kitchen is not responsible for discomfort or missing buttons caused from eating “just one more shell”.       

Dessert from the desert

So, it seems that over the past week recipes have not only specialized in having naughty words or phrases in the title, they've also been from the same general area.

Hummus and pita are pretty well known middle eastern / Mediterranean foods and make a great meal on their own, or on a platter with a few other nibbly things. Of course, at the end of dinner, there's always dessert. Baklava is the usual thing, yes, but never one to be normal, I decided to go for something a little different.

I've moved south into the area known in trashy romance novels as Persia. I write medievals mostly, and Iran was known as Persia until well into the 20th century. Persia was quite the superpower, and held its own against the Romans in ancient times. But its proximity to the east, bordering Pakistan, seems to have removed it not only from western culture, but also a bit from the rest of the middle east, at least in culinary terms. Spices that feature prominently in curries and other Indian dishes (curry is English yes, but the spices are Indian) appear regularly in Persian foods. Cardamom being one of my favourites.

Cardamom is what drew me to these little cakes. And then I saw the rose water. There is something exotic and luxurious about eating flowers and I will take any opportunity to do so. Put the two together and I am guaranteed to want to try the recipe.

LIke this one:

Yazdi Cakes

What you need:

2 eggs

1/2 cup white sugar

3/4 cup butter, melted

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom

3 teaspoons rose water

1 cup all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 c chopped pistachio nuts

What you gotta do:

Preheat the overn to 350.

Get a pan of water simmering on the stove.

Crack your eggs into a metal or glass bowl, add the sugar, and set the bowl over the pan of simmering water.

With a whisk (or electric mixer if you insist), beat them together until they look pale and creamy. It will take about 6 or 8 minutes, and you'll think at first that they're never going to change colour and thicken, but they will. And when they do, they'll look like this:

Srsly, there is nothing in that bowl but eggs and sugar. What you've basically made here is a the beginnings of a very light custard called zabaione. This is the Mediterranean influence.

Once you've decided that you do want to make cakes, and not veer off into the land of custard, remove the bowl from the heat, and keep whipping it until it's cooled a bit. Yes, I did this by hand with a whisk. No, I don't have forearms like Popeye, but I also don't have (or want) an electric mixer. I can make whipped cream by hand in less than 3 minutes.

Anyway, once it's cooled a bit, add the butter, yogurt, rosewater and cardamom. The last two are your more eastern ingredients.

See how thick and creamy that yogurt looks? That's because it has fat in it. I've managed to find a brand of yogurt with 10% milk fat. The typical complaint about yogurt is that it's unpallatably sour. Well, that's because most of what you find in the grocery has a mere 0 - 2% MF. It's watery and thin, bluish in colour, and virtually inedible unless it's loaded with sugar (or more commonly, artificial sweeteners). You want something with at least 5% MF. Even if you're using yogurt to decrease fat content, such as a replacement for sour cream, you're still ahead of the game since sour cream is usually 14% MF. And you know why it tastes good? Yeah, that's why 0% yogurt tastes like crap.

Once you've mixed in the butter, yogurt, cardamom and rosewater

sift the baking powder into the flour, add them to the batter, and switch to a wooden spoon (no mixer allowed here).

Mix until smooth, then fill 12 cupcake liners about 3/4 full.

Coarsly chop your pistachios, (the above pic is pistachio porn for Taneasha, who loves them) and sprinkle them on the top of the cakes.

Bake at 350 until they're golden, about 25 minutes.

The smell is divine. They have a decidedly exotic aroma, but that familiar and comforting cupcake shape. 

If it weren't for the pistachios on top, you'd probably want to put icing on these, but really, they're just not made for it. They're wonderfully rich and flavourful all on their own. The texture is dense, almost muffin like, which makes them a tempting breakfast. Particularly with a side of yogurt and berries.

If you absolutely insist that they need something on them, I recommend splitting them open like a muffin and topping them with butter, honey or rose petal jelly.

Yes, more roses. Have you ever eaten flowers?