Korean Steak Tacos and Guacamole

We're trying to switch from Where should we eat lunch? to What are we making for lunch? these weekends. We found that we ate out for almost every meal starting on Friday night to Sunday evening. And it's not like we were eating lots of unhealthy fried foods, but it was getting expensive! So we're trying to limit our weekend meal allowance, starting to think ahead during the weekdays, shopping for minimal ingredients, and stay cooking at home. At least for lunch, because we do like trying new restaurants with our friends for dinner.

Last Monday, I flagged a recipe in Curtis Stone's new cookbook, What's for Dinner? (I know how this looks as I'm using his recipes for lunch). Korean Steak Tacos. Perfect as we've been trying different Mexican restaurants in the city and still haven't gotten enough of tacos.

Around midnight, I started making the marinade by whisking 1/2 cup of chopped cilantro; 1/4 cup of dark brown sugar; 3 tablespoons of canola oil; 3 tablespoons of soy sauce (I had dark and light soy sauce at home and opted for the light one); 1 tablespoon of sesame oil; 2 garlic cloves, chopped; 1 jalapeño pepper, chopped; 1 teaspoon of freshly grounded black pepper; and 1 teaspoon of coriander powder. Pour out 1/4 of the marinade, cover and refrigerate. Then place the steak in the dish, cover and refrigerate overnight.

Woke up and gave the steak (about 2 pounds and 1.5 inches thick) a flip to the other side. Mmm this marinate smells so good!

While the other side of the steak is soaking, you can prep the veggies for the taco. It's pretty easy, shred some napa cabbage, cut 1 large carrot into matchstick-size strips, and clean some fresh cilantro sprigs.

Don't forget to make guacamole! We used 3 ripe avocados; 1 jalapeño pepper, finely chopped; 1 garlic clove, finely chopped; cilantro; juice from 1 lemon (oops, forgot to pick up lime); and a pinch of sea salt. Mix well!

Remove the steak from the marinade (discard the marinade) and grill for a total of about 5 minutes on each side (for a total of 10 minutes). Transfer the steak to a cutting board and let it sit for 5 minutes.

While the steak is resting, pop your tortillas into the oven for a light toast. Take out the marinade you saved.

Cut the steak into 1/4-inch-thick slices. Pour the reserved marinade over. Assemble the tacos by spreading guacamole on the tortilla, throwing on some cabbages, carrots, and steak. Garnish with cilantro. Or you can fill the tacos with everything and have the guacamole on the side. Up to you!

Enjoy! How do you go about planning weekend meals? Do you plan for the whole week? Play it by ear?

Disclaimer: An ambassador and account manager for Avocados from Mexico contacted us about featuring their products. A #LuvMexAvocado Blogger Pack was sent to us for the campaign. We received recipes featuring avocados from Mexico, a $25 gift card for the purchase of recipe ingredients, and fact sheets about Mexico and avocados from Mexico. We were not required to use the recipes provided or produce a positive feature. All opinions are our own.

Wordless Wednesday: May 1, 2013

My bookshelves are full and I'm still looking to add these cookbooks to my wishlist. There's not much to say about this collage of covers except for eeeeee!!! I would have provided more information, but release dates and schedules change, even covers change, but hopefully these ones will stay as they're quite beautiful! So I'll stay quiet for now, plus this post is supposed to be wordless and I've already broken that rule.

Buttermilk Biscuits

This weekend, I found out three things:
1) biscuits are surprisingly easy to make
2) biscuits are irresistible when they just come out of the oven
3) watching the butter melt in a biscuit makes me happy

I made a batch of buttermilk biscuits for a friend's casual (and I mean this in the truest sense as I wore sweatpants to it) barbecue. The weather in Toronto is finally warming up and it's a great time to meet up with new friends for dinner. All the meat groups and dessert were pretty much taken care of, so I made a small batch of biscuits to bring over.

Buttermilk Biscuits
Recipe adapted from Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook
(Makes about 8-10)

2 cups of all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons of baking powder
1 1/2 tablespoons of sugar
1/3 teaspoon of salt
1/2 stick of unsalted butter, chilled and cube
1/2 stick of vegetable shortening, chilled and cube
3/4 cup of buttermilk

Preheat your oven to 175°C (350°F), if you have a convection oven like me, go with 160°C (325°F). You can make these by hand or with a mixer, just make sure to powder your hands with flour to prevent the dough from sticking to it.

In your bowl, mix the flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt on low until combined. While this is mixing, you can take the butter and vegetable shortening out of the fridge and cut them into tiny cubes shapes. When you're done, add the butter and shortening into the bowl and mix on low speed. The dough should reach a crumbly texture (see photo above) and you can turn off the mixer.

Pour in the buttermilk and mix for about 10 seconds on low. You just want the dough to come together, so don't over mix.

Take the dough out of the bowl and place it on a floured surface. Gently knead the dough two or three times. Then pat the dough out to about 3/4-1 inch thickness and form a loose rectangle shape. The top does not have to be smooth, the more cracks and blisters, the more character your biscuits will have. I love that about biscuits!

Using a 2 inch round cutter (my round cutter is frilly on the other side!), cut out your biscuits. Do not twist the cutter in the dough. Push straight down and then lift. Gather up the dough scraps and form the remaining dough into another rectangle to cut out more biscuits.

The biscuits don't expand to the side as much, so I could have placed more on a tray. But space them out evenly and bake for 15-17 minutes or until the biscuits are golden brown and cooked through.

Serve with butter or jam! These biscuits are not salty like the ones you buy at fast-food restaurants, so spread on the butter without guilt!

Burger Buns

Hello readers! We hope you're having a wonderful long weekend. Here in Toronto, we are finally getting some lovely sunshine and the temperature is slowly increasing. We can't wait to stow away our bulky winter coats!

A lot of our friends went away this weekend to visit New York City and Chicago, but for those of us still at home, we decided on an impromptu dinner. We had arugula, spinach, red and yellow peppers, sausages, and burger patties. Let's have our first BBQ of the year!

Except . . . we didn't have buns for the burgers. The grocery stores were closed for Good Friday. What do we do? We search the world wide web of course and the answer was there!

We came across a recipe for beautiful burger buns and had all the ingredients on hand. This review had gotten a five star rating from so many people, we were pretty sure it would be fail proof.

Of course, it was only when we reached the flattening stage that we realized there was a step-by-step photo blog about the recipe too. We would highly encourage you to read that before starting!

Since it was an impromptu dinner, we had to cut some of the dough's rising time. The first time we let it poof was shortened to an hour and the second time was shortened to 45 minutes. We did want to eat before 7 pm.

Oh and we would recommend doing the egg white wash instead of the butter. Just follow the blog post.

See, not much colour with the butter wash. The burger buns turned out to have more of a biscuit quality to it. We will point out again that we didn't have enough time for the dough to rise and didn't use egg white.

Regardless, it would have been difficult to eat the burgers without the buns. So in the end, it did save dinner!

One Million

Hello friends! Something special happened this weekend . . . our all time history count tells us that we've reached over one million views! It's a little unbelievable, but hopefully the stat isn't tricking us, because we we want to thank you.

Thank you for visiting our blog. Thank you for commenting on our posts. Thank you for following us on facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, and all of the other neat platforms. Thanks for sticking around and reading about our food adventures and kitchen stories. We wish we could give each and every one of you a bouquet of cupcakes. Since no one has invented a cupcake-teleportation device, we hope that you'll accept this for now:

One-Bowl Chocolate Cupcakes
Adapted from Martha Stewart Cupcakes
(Makes about 22 cupcakes)

2 large eggs
3/4 cup of milk
1 teaspoon of pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup of warm water
3 tablespoons of vegetable oil
3/4 cup of cocoa powder
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups of sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons of baking soda
3/4 teaspoon of baking powder
3/4 teaspoon of salt

1. Preheat the oven to 175°C (350°F) and line your tray with cupcake liners.
2. In your bowl, mix the eggs, milk, vanilla extract, warm water, and vegetable oil together.
3. Sift in the cocoa powder, all-purpose flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the mixture. Mix until incorporated (don't over mix).
4. Using an ice cream scoop, evenly distribute the batter into the cupcake liners.
5. Bake for about 20-22 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean. Let the cupcakes cook before frosting.

You can use your favourite buttercream or frosting recipe. Make sure the consistency is firm enough to hold the shape of the flowers.

Vanilla Buttercream

1 stick of unsalted butter, room temperature
3 cups of icing sugar
1/4 cup of milk
2 teaspoons of pure vanilla extract
Gel colour dyes

1. Using a stand mixer, put the butter into the bowl and cream until smooth. Add in the icing sugar in three batches. Slowly start the mixer as you don't want the icing sugar to fly out! When it is all incorporated, add the vanilla extract.
2. You will need to use your own judgement here, add the milk a tablespoon at a time and check the consistency of the buttercream. It should not be so stiff that your spatula can stand upright if you stuck it in the middle of the ball of buttercream. It shouldn't be so soft that it won't hold it's shape after piping.
3. Add the gel colour you prefer and scoop the buttercream into your piping bag. Fit it with a large petal decorating tip (we used Wilton 127).

Holding both the cupcake and your piping bag, with the wider end of the tip on the bottom, rotate the cupcake as you pipe a small volcano. There should be a small opening on the top and a wide base at the bottom.

Then, pipe three petals around the middle, notice that these are not full petals. They don't go all the way around. Try surrounding the middle tip in three overlapping parts.

Continue and slightly angle your piping tip so that the petals eventually lay flat on the edge of the cupcake.

Even if the buttercream ruffles, tips over, or doesn't fold exactly where you want it to, it'll still look beautiful!

Try a different colour! It is almost spring!

We can't say it enough. Thank you!

Now let's eat cake!