Chicken Carnitas Daikon Tacos

Chicken Carnitas Daikon TacosTrying new recipes is really the main purpose of this blog. Every week, I rummage around the web looking for new recipes for our meals. Sometimes we find a recipe that we use over and over, though even the most repeated of our recipes has only been re-used 4 times. I am constantly amazed by the variety of recipes out there, and that we’re closing in on 4 years of menus and there’s always more recipes to try.

When we find one that turns out well, I’ll make a note of it, perhaps snap a photo and, for some really great ones, write up the recipe, especially if I’ve modified it a bit. This recipe is one that I almost skipped over because the original is a pdf file (often problematic) and is written to make 48 tacos by a chef at a restaurant–all flags that this could go badly in my hands. But what we ended up with was so delicious that it had to be written up! The flavors and textures were amazing! The recipe below is probably a poor rendition of Richard Sandoval’s Duck Carnitas Daikon Tacos, but wow, they are delicious!

I simplified this a lot–perhaps too much?? Be sure to look at the original recipe and follow it where you want. I am sure duck would be delicious, and I’m not sure what Peking duck is, but sounds like it’s kind of orange-flavored, so I opted for chicken thighs and brushing with marmalade since we had some. You could steep the sauce overnight, but hadn’t read that part and it was fine without it, plus we used ground coriander, and finally grated orange zest, so no need to remove the solids.

Anyway, enjoy and let me know if you try it. I am sure we will do them again and I’ll update the recipe and add some more photos–this was a cell phone shot taken at the table when we realized just how delicious these were.

Chicken Carnitas Daikon Tacos

MealsWeLike.com
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Course Main
Servings 4

Ingredients
  

  • 8 Boneless/skinless chicken thighs
  • 1/4 Cup Orange marmalade
  • 1/2 Daikon sliced thin ~1/8 in on a mandolin (probably even less--a few slices per taco is good)
  • 1 Green apple sliced thin
  • Orange Coriander Sauce below
  • Curry Aioli below
  • 1/4 Cup Cilantro chopped

Orange Coriander Sauce

  • 1/2 Cup Sugar
  • 1/2 Cup Water
  • Zest of 1 Orange
  • 1/2 tsp. ground corriander
  • 1/4 cup Sweet Chili sauce
  • 1 Orange cut the peal off, slice and remove seeds
  • 1 Tbs Corn starch
  • 1 Tbs water

Curry Aioli

  • 1 Tbs Curry powder
  • 1 Tbs Turmeric
  • 1 Tbs White balsamic vinegar
  • 1/2 Tbs Lemon juice
  • 1 Tbs Honey
  • 1/4 Cup Mayonnaise

Instructions
 

Chicken

  • Barbecue the chicken thighs, brushing with the marmalade in the last 5 minutes or so.
  • Slice the daikon and apple with a mandolin

Orange Coriander Sauce

  • Bring the sugar and water to a boil
  • Stir in the orange zest and coriander powder
  • Add the hot sauce and orange segments
  • Make a slurry with the corn starch and water
  • Add cornstarch slurry to the sauce and simmer until thickened
  • Keep warm

Curry Aioli

  • Combine all the ingredients and mix well.

Assembly

  • On a tortilla, place a few pieces of daikon and then apple.
  • Add half a chicken thigh.
  • Top with Orange Coriander sauce
  • Top with Curry Aioli
  • Sprinkle with cilantro
  • Serve warm

 

Meals for the Week, Dec 20-26

CSA_Dec19Merry Christmas!

Here’s the CSA haul for this week…now to figure out how to work it all into Christmas dinner and other meals for a crazy week: sweet potatoes, carrots, daikon, scallions, green and red cabbage, tatsoi, mint, broccoli, hakurei turnips, collards.

 

  1. I normally don’t link to PDFs, or recipes built to serve 48, but this Duck Carnitas Daikon Tacos looks doable. We’ll use chicken and scale down as needed.
  2. Ginger Beef Tatsoi, maybe adding the collards?
  3. Chipotle-Orange Broccoli and Tofu
  4. Grilled chicken and Hannah’s Buffalo Style Hakurei Turnips
  5. Christmas dinner to include sweet potatoes and a slaw with cabbage, orange and cranberries.

Meals for the Week, Dec 13-20

CSA_Dec12We’re starting to get a bit of a backlog of veggies that need to be used up, so some of these recipes may include things from last week. It is that time of year when one activity leads into another and we missed making a meal or two last week while running from work to concerts. This week looks similarly hectic, but we’ll do our best. The CSA veggies this week include: sweet potatoes (now we have enough for a good recipe), carrots, daikon, beets–already used up–one tatsoi that may be a bit small for much, lettuce, cabbage, broccoli , parsley and kale.

  1. Simmered Chicken with Daikon Radish
  2. We’ll have to do some improv, since the recipe has a link to another recipe which doesn’t seem to be working and both use peanuts, but Mushroom Kale Rice Bowls seem doable.
  3. We’ll need to prep this in advance: Cabbage and Onion Marmalade Pizza
  4. Burgers with something like this  Carrot & Mizuna Salad
  5. The Sweet Potato Samosas we didn’t get to last week
  6. Hamburger Stir-Fry–using ground turkey.

Meals for the Week, Dec 6-12

CSA Veggies for Dec 5Last week we had our first CSA veggie casualty–the really good looking head of butter lettuce froze in the fridge before we could use it 🙁
Luckily there’s more this week, so we can enjoy some. Here’s what’s in this week’s share: daikon, Napa cabbage, turnips, beets, chard, red and green lettuce, mint, braising mix, garlic chives, and collards.

  1. [Chicken] Nuggets with [Collards] and Bacon
  2. Asian Lettuce Wraps with Carrot and Daikon Pickles
  3. A modified version of [Chard and Broccoli] Quiche with [Purple] Sweet Potato Crust
  4. Salad with hard boiled eggs and veggies (tomato, cucumber, bell pepper, some garlic chives) with Turnips Anna (While there’s many recipes out there for this, many including bacon, like this tempting one, I couldn’t pass up the ease and coolness of the Cartoon Kitchen version).
  5. Sweet Potato Samosas
  6. Chicken of some sort with Roasted Beets, Cabbage and Apples

Meals for the Week, Nov 29-Dec 5

CSA_Nov28After a yummy and fun Thanksgiving meal with friends and family, and the awesome Salvadoran Pupusas con Cutrido from TheKitchn from last week’s menu (photos coming soon), I’m ready for some more tasty meals. Here’s this week’s CSA haul: kale, lettuce, tatsoi, sweet potatoes, beets, parsley, rutabagas, broccoli, spinach and scallions.

  1. Grilled sausages with Carrots and Rutabagas with Lemon and Honey
  2. A combination of Sweet Potato and Quinoa Tacos and Spinach and Sweet Potato Quesadillas: sweet potatoes, quinoa, spinach, adobo sauce, queso blanco, green pepper, black olives, scallions.
  3. [Chicken] and Egg Fried Rice with Napa Cabbage, adding broccoli (we still have 1/2 the cabbage from last week…and we just did shrimp, so mix it up and save the budget)
  4. Chicken Enchiladas with Pumpkin Sauce
  5. Beet salad with Corn Bread Croutons and [Bacon]
  6. Orecchiette with Sausage and Kale
  7. Mushroom and Tatsoi Soup (note this is for 1 serving) and grilled cheese sandwiches

 

Sweet Potato Kale Pizza

Sweet potato kale pizzaLooks like we’ve been on a pizza kick lately–I posted the Arugula pizza last week and now this. I’ll get to some other recipes in a bit, but it is always fun playing with new ways of making a classic like pizza. I opted not to use our purple sweet potatoes for this recipe, though I suppose that could work too…

I adapted this from this recipe at TwoPeasAndTheirPod.com.

Sweet Potato Kale Pizza

MealsWeLike.com
Sweet potato kale pizza with rosemary and red onion
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 50 minutes
Course Pizza
Servings 4

Ingredients
  

  • Recipe of pizza dough
  • 1 Large sweet potato sliced into 1/4 in rounds
  • 1 Red onion sliced
  • 1 Tbs Olive Oil
  • 2 Cups Shredded mozzarella cheese
  • 2 Cups Kale leaves stem removed and chopped into pieces
  • 1 Tbs Balsamic vinegar
  • 1 tsp dried Rosemary

Instructions
 

  • Preheat the oven to 400 F, if you have a pizza stone put it in now
  • Toss the sweet potatoes and onion slices with olive oil
  • Spread on a baking dish
  • Bake for about 20 minutes
  • Raise the oven to 500F.
  • Roll out the pizza dough
  • Brush with a little olive oil
  • Spread 1/2 (about 1 cup) of the cheese on the crust
  • Top with the roasted potatoes and onions
  • Toss the kale with balsamic vinegar
  • Put the kale on the pizza
  • Top with the rest of the cheese
  • Bake for 10-15 minutes or until crust is golden and cheese begins to brown.

 

Meals for the Week, Nov 22-28

Nov 21 CSA shareThis week we’ve got some more purple potatoes, Napa cabbage, salad greens, kale and arugula–oh and one turnip?? (not sure what to do with that, but we’ll see…). The first recipe is the result of following a chain of ideas from Smitten Kitchen’s Pickled Cabbage Salad, to the comments about this being great for fish tacos (which we can’t do, so shrimp it is!) and the similarity of this recipe to Curtido and TheKitchn’s recipe linked below. So looking forward to this meal!

  1. Salvadoran Papusas con Curtido (using Napa cabbage) with garlic sautéed shrimp
  2. Pulled pork (from the freezer) with Fork Crushed Purple Sweet Potatoes
  3. Spicy Stir-Fried Tofu with Kale
  4. Risotto with Corn Spicy Sausage and Wilted Arugula
  5. Humus-Crusted Chicken (just the chicken part of this) with Red Leaf Salad with Oranges
  6. I think we can get close to this Steak and Wasabi Pea Salad…maybe some left over radishes can be added to this?

Arugula Pizza

Arugula PizzaOne of the things everyone says about getting a CSA share is that it forces you to find new ways of using vegetables you may never have used in the first place. Sometimes this can be a good thing. One of the items we seem to be getting a lot of is arugula. We’ve used arugula in various ways before, but mostly in salads of various forms. With a recent batch of arugula, I looked around on some of my standby sites and found this Lemon Arugula Pizza on TwoPeasAndTheirPod.com. The original recipe calls for squirting lemon juice over the pizza, which was the plan, but when it came out of the oven we forgot…by the time I realized, the pizza was gone…might add it next time, but delicious without it.

We typically use the no-knead pizza dough recipe in Mark Bittman’s Food Matters Cook Book, which is adapted from Jim Lahey’s recipes like this one. This time we forgot to make the dough an grabbed one from a local pizza place that sells dough.

The pizza was excellent and even the kids who often balk at the spiciness of arugula ate it all up.

Arugula Pizza

MealsWeLike.com
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 20 minutes
Total Time 30 minutes
Course Pizza
Servings 4

Ingredients
  

  • A pizza dough see description for no-knead options we normally use, or grab one somewhere
  • 1 Tbs Olive oil
  • 6 oz Grated mozzarella cheese
  • 1/2 Cup Shredded Parmesan cheese plus some to sprinkle on top
  • 2 Cups Arugula
  • A grinding of pepper

Instructions
 

  • Preheat the oven to 450
  • Roll out the dough
  • Spread the olive oil across the pizza with a brush or your hands
  • Top with mozzarella and parmesan cheese
  • Place the pizza in the oven
  • Bake for 12-15 minutes or until pizza crust is golden and cheese is melted
  • Remove the pizza from the oven
  • Top with arugula
  • Season with a grinding of black pepper
  • Sprinkle with additional parmesan cheese
  • Slice and serve

 

 

Meals for the Week, Nov 15-20

CSA VeggiesHere’s what we’re working with from the CSA: Purple sweet potatoes, radishes, green beans, arugula, spinach, scallions, baby bok choy, parsley, red lettuce.

  1. Roasted [Purple] Sweet Potato, Wild Rice and Arugula Salad, adding ham cubes
  2. Sweet and Spicy Orange Chicken with Baby Bok Choy
  3. Vietnamese Chicken Sandwiches (on potato rolls)
  4. Kale and Sweet Potato Pizza with Salads
  5. Grilled Sausages with Winter Squash and Spinach Salad with Cranberry Vinaigrette
  6. Salads and something along the lines of Grilled Cheese and Fried Egg Sandwiches
  7. Green Beans with Parsley-Lemon Pesto and grilled chicken

Meals for the Week, Nov 8-14

CSA Nov Here’s this week’s recipes. I’ll try and get some of the recipes as we made them posted with photos soon–there’s been some really good ones! The arugula pizza was good enough I almost added it back in this week (even the kids loved it!) but I found a couple of other yummy looking ways to use arugula.

  1. Roasted Daikon Radish, Carrots and Peppers with Bacon Arugula BLTs
  2. Shrimp and Egg Fried Rice with Napa Cabbage
  3. Chicken with Goat Cheese and Arugula with garlic sautéed eggplant
  4. Green Bean Quiche, adding ham
  5. Baked Turnip Chips, Cider Vinegar-Braised Greens, and Burgers