Tortillas & turkey taco filling

In the past, I've made buckwheat tortillas with moderate success. I've both fried them and baked them. I think the baking turned out the best, I think, but I was totally winging it. I had just mixed buckwheat flour, oil and water together and went for it. That's the basic recipe, I do believe for genuine tortillas. I did find this link for authentic corn tortillas and I'm going to follow it with buckwheat flour (or possibly a half and half of buckwheat and sorghum).

I will try them this afternoon and then post an update this evening or tomorrow. Wish me luck.

UPDATE: I used Bob's Red Mill buckwheat flour - it's dark and very finely ground. It is not my favorite buckwheat flour, but it was what we have available to us, since we are trying to avoid bulk-bins (i.e. gluten contamination). I've heard there is a pre-packaged "light" buckwheat flour, so I will have to look into it. My point is, when I started making the dough based on the corn recipe, the dough was way too sticky. I added probably another cup of flour and it was still too sticky. So, I added some tapioca flour. That helped at first, but then it made it sticky in a different way. Good for holding the tortillas together; bad for allowing them to transfer from wax paper to frying pan easily. Adding even more buckwheat flour as I was flatening then (with my hands and fingers, not a roller) seemed to help. I fried them on high heat in palm oil shortening. The dash of baking soda I added to the flour helped them bubble and rise.

They were chewy and fabulous. But also very time consuming. I think it took me an hour to make a dozen. [Dave had 4; I had 4; Aevryn had 1; Lily had 3. That alone tells you how good they were.] I knew it was going to take awhile, so I had pre-chopped my veggies so I was able to just let the filling simmer while I did the tortillas. I'm not sure how these would be if I made them ahead of time, put them in the fridge or freezer and then warmed them for dinner. I wonder if I'd lose a lot of the flexibility these had.

For the sake of completeness, here is what we had for dinner last night, to go with our tortillas.

Turkey Taco Filling:

• 1 lb ground turkey
• 1/2 large onion
• 1 green pepper
• 4-5 tomatoes
• 1 lg zucchini
• bone broth
• fresh cilantro
• juice of 1 lime
• sea salt, pepper, cumin, paprika, coriander, allspice, clove
  

1. Brown turkey.
2. Add 1 cup bone broth & spices. Let simmer for a few minutes.
3. Add finely chopped veggies. Simmer some more until veggies are soft.
   

Yield: enough filling for 12 small tortillas, plus lettuce cups. roughly 6-8 servings.

Taco Toppings:

• avocado
• green salsa
• lettuce
• black olives

Cultured Condiments - Salsa

We like salsa and chips - as a snack, as a side dish, as an entire meal. However, we are currently corn-free (well, the girls and I are), so I've had to find some interesting ways to consume salsa. So far I've eaten salsa: scooped with brown rice crackers; scooped with Better Made Potato chips; wrapped up in Brown rice tortillas; mixed into cooked rice or millet;and over eggs and hashbrowns. All were fantastic, though not quite as satisfying as crunchy, salty, corn-y corn chips. (Sigh.)

As promised, here is my delicious & nutritious homemade, fermented salsa recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

• 4 tomatoes, peeled, cored & seeded
• 1 medium onion
• 1 green pepper, seeded
  
• 1 red pepper, seeded
  
• 1 jalapeno pepper, with varying amounts of seeds (depending on "heat" desired)
• 1 Tbsp sea salt
• juice of two lemons
• fresh cilantro leaves
• approx. 1/4 cup water
• 1 quart-sized or 2 pint-sized canning jars with lids

DIRECTIONS:

1. Dice everything: tomatoes, peppers & onion
2. Mince cilantro leaves
3. In a big bowl, mix chopped veggies with cilantro leaves, salt and lemon juice
4. Let it stand for a few minutes
5. Stir for a few minutes, smooshing veggies into bottom of bowl as you go.
   
6. Pour into canning jar(s).
7. Add enough water so that juices are above veggies in jar - leaving around two inches between salsa & top of jar.
8. Let it ferment at room temperature for roughly two days.
   
9. Transfer to cold storage.
   

Yield: 1 quart-sized or 2 pint-sized jars of salsa.

ALTERNATIVES:

• Try tomatillos instead of (or in addition to) tomatoes
• Try different kinds and combination of peppers
• Try roasting peppers first
• Add black beans
• Add corn
• Add garlic and/or other spices
• Try limes instead of lemons
  

Grain-free Turkey Chili with Guacamole

We are big fans of Tex-Mex influenced cuisine. (We are fans of many cuisines, as you will learn.) This Chili is easy, fast and filling.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1lb free-range ground turkey
• 1 small onion, diced
• 1 small green pepper, diced
• handful of mushrooms, diced
  
• 4 medium tomatoes, peeled, seeded & diced
• 1 large zucchini, diced (Apparently, I like dicing things!)
  
• homemade chicken bone broth (you can use water instead)
• spices: sea salt; pepper; ground cumin; clove; allspice; ground coriander; paprika; oregano
• fresh cilantro leaves, whole & diced
  
• lemon
  
• olive oil
• nutritional yeast
• medium avocado

DIRECTIONS:

1. Saute onions, peppers, mushrooms, zucchini in olive oil, sprinkled with salt. Set aside.
2. Brown ground turkey. Add bone broth as needed to keep meat from sticking to pan. Once meat is cooked, add reserved onion mixture. Stir.
3. Add diced tomatoes, chopped fresh cilantro and more bone broth. Simmer.
4. Add spices. I used: handful (well, a palmful, really) each of paprika & cumin. Liberal pinches of sea salt & pepper. Small pinch each of oregano & ground coriander. Dash each of clove and allspice. Stir well. Continue to simmer.
5. Add a couple handfuls of nutritional yeast. Stir well and continue to simmer bone broth down.
6. Once you've reached desired thickness, stir in the juice of most of one lemon, cover and let sit.
7. For guacamole, I just mash up avocado with oil oil, sea salt & lemon (or lime) juice, fresh squeezed (squeeze a bit of the lemon into the guac and then squeeze the remainder into the chili).
   

Serve the chili in a bowl with a dollop of guacamole in the middle, garnished with fresh, whole cilantro leaves.

The yield is hard to guess. This recipe easily fed all four of us for dinner with plenty left over for the girls and I for lunch the next day (and me for breakfast the following morning).

We like to make enough to have left overs. For lunch tomorrow, I will put the chili (sans gauc, because 1. it doesn't keep well & 2. my kids devour it so there's never any left) in on leafy greens - kale, lettuce, steamed cabbage - and eat like a taco. Yum!

Alternatives:

• instead of ground turkey, use free-range ground beef, buffalo, chicken, fish, whatever.

Vegetarian Alternative:

• The meat can be swapped for quinoa, millet, or rice & beans.
• Instead of swapping meat for grains, use as a meatless taco stuffing and put on brown rice tortillas - brushed with oil and nuked in the microwave or heated in the oven to soften.