Adventures in Cooking

Many of my blogger friends have something they call Tasty Tuesday (or Domestic Goddess Monday) where they share awesome time-tested recipes with their faithful readers.  Well, I am no gourmet chef or domestic goddess, but I do enjoy cooking.  I try to keep it simple, since most of my "adventures" in cooking turn out to be unsuccessful.  We eat a lot of Mexican (taco night, quesadilla night, bean soup and tortilla chips night) around Casa de Self because it's really hard to mess that up.

The other day, when thumbing through my Woman's Day magazine (which I love, by the way), I saw this meal idea and thought I'd try it.

One of the reasons my adventures don't always turn out so well is that from the get-go, I make modifications.  So I put my own Megan spin on this recipe.  Now, before I go farther, this is not one of those "This is awesome, here's the recipe, including measurements to the 1/8 tsp" blogs.  This is more of a story of how I made dinner.

The Meat:
The recipe called for skirt steak.  The grocery store had a sale on top sirloin.  Take a guess as to which cut of meat I chose.  The sirloin needed a lot of butchering, so I went ahead and cut it into thin slices before cooking it (instead of cooking it whole and slicing later).

I seasoned it with anything in my house that said "Mexican" to me -- salt, garlic powder, tons of cumin, sriracha (not Mexican, but spicy), cayenne pepper, and a splash of Worcestershire (which doesn't say "Mexican" at all, but got added nevertheless).  With all that, the meat was still a little flat, so I may go a different route next time.

The Veg:
The recipe called for fresh corn cut off the cob, so I obliged.  I've seen my mom do this a million times (along with countless Food Network people), but it was still quite an ordeal!  This is what it ended up looking like:

The recipe also called for one chopped onion and pickled jalapenos.  Jason's coworker Marian had given us some fresh jalapenos, so I used those instead.

You saute the onions, add the corn and chopped jalapenos, then fold in sour cream at the end.  I originally thought this was going to be like a corn salsa, but the recipe actually calls this "Southwest-Style Creamed Corn."  It needed some extra flavor (specifically salt and cumin), but ended up being pretty tasty.  I think it will be better as leftovers when the flavors have had more time to marry.

The Newbie:
I don't buy many new ingredients at the grocery store.  Sure, I may make new recipes, but they usually involve ingredients I know and love.  After a recent taco episode of "Good Eats," I decided to splurge on some queso fresco, a fresh crumbling Mexican cheese.

It was lightly salty and the texture of feta cheese (minus the feta funk).  It was $4, more than I usually spend on cheese, but we used maybe 1/8 of it for dinner, so we'll eventually get our money's worth out of it.

The Final Product:
I ate mine as a taco, while Jason chose to fold his up like a burrito.  Steak, corn concoction, queso...

Things I Liked:
~Having a new spin on our weekly Mexican meal
~Finding another way to utilize fresh corn in the summer
~Having something other than pepper-jack or cheddar on a taco

Things I Would Change:
~More seasoning in the meat
~Adding acid to the corn.  It was crying out for some lime juice (which I didn't have), or maybe I'd even make more of a salsa/relish with some diced tomatoes next time.

So that's today's adventure in cooking.  Tonight's meal is not as exciting but just as tasty -- breakfast for dinner!