Who loves tacos?

I have a confession to make.

I judge a recipe by the length of its name.  It's true.  I have a standard rule that if I open a new cookbook to three different pages, and each page has a recipe title with more than 78 syllables, I'm not going to buy it. If you toss in all sorts of foreign languages and refer to regular vegetables with obscure names, I'm not interested.

It's alright. You can judge me.  Clearly I have it coming.

Cooking Light is probably the worst offender. Added to that is the fact that most of the time when I skim an ingredient list I only have two of the items: olive oil and a stove.  And I'm pretty sure the stove doesn't count as an ingredient.

Today I wanted to try a new recipe.  Something tasty, maybe ethnic, definitely something healthy and low cal... which almost necessarily leads to me to Cooking Light.  The encounter was delightfully unexpected.  Cooking Light offered me some great cooking tips and I in turn printed off two recipes that looked delicious, had only moderately ridiculous names and nearly completely normal ingredient lists.

Cooking Light, I apologize for calling you ostentatious and snobbish.  Thanks for this recipe.  Let's be friends.

Tonight I made Chicken Carne Asada Tacos with Pickled Onions... fourteen syllable recipe and a whole lotta taste!  Carne Asada is traditionally a Mexican beef dish, and literally means 'roasted meat'.  The 'pickling' of the onions was rather intriguing, and added such a rich flavour to the dish!  We'll definitely be having this again, at which point I will probably just call it 'Those Awesome Chicken Tacos'.

Chicken Carne Asada Tacos with Pickled Onions (link to Cooking Light)

I made a few substitutions, mostly because I didn't know what Cojita cheese was and I already had whole wheat tortillas.  I also used chicken breast instead of chicken thighs, again because that was what I had on hand.  At any rate, here is my recap of the delicious experience:

Squeezing the juice for the onion marinade.

Squeez-a-licious!

The onions, having been boiled and allowed to sit in an ice bath.  They were very transparent yet still crispy.  I really enjoyed this part of the meal prep since I had never done this before.

The onions in the marinade.

The spices and the sliced chicken breast.

All mixed up.

 

On the hot skillet.  They called for a cast iron pan. My frying pan worked just fine.  I read online today that one of the common mistakes people make when cooking is not letting the pan get hot enough. I took extra care this time, and it worked quite well!

The aroma of the spices while this was cooking was amazing!

My first time buying/peeling/chopping an avocado.  I didn't realize there is a giant pit in the centre!

Delicious flavour, however! I can't wait to use the other half of the avocado tomorrow!

And the final ensemble...

Hopefully Cooking Light will forgive me for just using regular shredded cheese instead of Cojito. I think next time I'll get the smaller corn tacos, since the larger wraps proved a bit unwieldy.

We served it with a black bean recipe that didn't work out as well I had hoped.  I think I'll try it again, however, once I can convince my sweet Mexican co-worker to pick me up some authentic adobo sauce from the store by her house. 

The lesson here: don't judge a recipe by its name.

By the accompanying photo?  That's okay...