Steak Arrachera

On today's episode of Learning By Doing, I'm going to teach you a little bit about how to make a tough steak into a melt in your mouth taco. Now, if you're a real cook who doesn't get their basic food prep instructions from the Food Network you might already know this. But for the rest of us, I've got a few tips to keep in mind when you want to prepare a cut of beef like the flank steak. 

Now, this recipe is pretty basic. It's just a classic technique for preparing a flank or skirt steak for maximum taco enjoyment - I've seen it called Tacos Nortenos (Northern Tacos) but it seems to be more commonly know as Arrachera. 

The key here is to not Charlie Chaplin it and end up eating shoe leather. It's super important to a) tenderize the steak, b) marinate it in something acidic and c) keep it nice and medium rare. Once it's all cooked and chopped, you can serve it with basically anything you want - salsa, cheese, guacamole, a marathon of Breaking Bad. The sky's the limit!

Doro Wat

I'm going to keep my little intro here short and sweet - because this recipe is neither of those things. I had a craving for Ethiopian food, so I set about making the delicious Doro Wat - a kind of curry + stew, + delicious dish. Then I thought - this has all the makings of a taco. So rather than creating giant injera (crepe-like bread that you pull apart to use as a "utensil"), I made smaller taco-size bread and complimented it with some vegetable toppings. So it looks like a taco, tastes like Ethiopian and is literally the tastiest thing I have EVER made. No joke. You gotta make this now, it's worth the time investment. 

Red Lentil

I've been having one of those weeks where I feel like I'm spending entirely too much money. I'm eating out, buying stuff I don't need and have to spring for my biannual hair appointment. And as such, I started trying to save money in the weirdest ways. Like refusing to buy meat because it's just too darn expensive. Instead, I looked into my cupboards to whip up a low-cost taco - and found red lentils. These guys are a protein-rich meat replacement for vegetarians...and a component of fat-rich Indian food for me. Nonetheless, I decided to give them a shot in a taco.

Taking inspiration from the refried bean/rice pairing of a burrito, I mixed the lentils with basmati rice (though any rice you have will do) and added a mix of vegetables and spices. The mix came out spicy and flavourful, but the toppings are what really made the lentils sing. A salty cheese and tart crema play off the lentils perfectly, while the avocado and cilantro round out the team. Not bad for a new recipe!

Seared Tuna

On the scale of difficult jobs, writing a blog about tacos is pretty low on the list - somewhere between finishing a paint-by-number and explaining the plot of a movie starring Kate Hudson (synopsis: "it was terrible"). But somehow after my last recipe post I was a little burnt out. I took some time away to make Indian food, pastas and eat out more than I should, but now I'm back and ready to bring you some more taco goodness.

For our first taco back, I chose a seared tuna taco. I'm not well versed in the preparation of fish, so I wanted a simple recipe that would be ready in a flash. Literally - you want to keep the centre of this fish raw, so you're only cooking on each side for about a minute. Ask your butcher for a tuna steak that will be okay to eat very rare. Some other recipes suggest you need sashimi grade fish, but I guess it depends on how fresh the fish is. Since I'm in Halifax, mine was basically still moving.

Guava Duck

Even though I write a blog about cooking, I was never really much of a chef. Until I graduated university, I mostly subsisted on pasta with canned tomato sauce and grilled cheese sandwiches. But then I fell in love with tacos and started on the path to being a capable adult. Being forced to come up with new recipes every week has really helped me grow as a cook. I was so confident in my abilities that I decided to take on a challenge I'd never before attempted - cooking duck. After loads of research into cooking methods and a trip to the grocery store for the most expensive meat I've ever purchased, I rolled the dice on a recipe for a tropical fruit-inspired duck taco. Using guava jelly as a glaze base, I whipped up this recipe and surprisingly it worked out! The duck was perfectly cooked and let me assure you that if this idiot can do it, you can too.