Taco Salad Casserole

This sounds like it could have been taken from some outdated cookbook featuring a woman on the cover wearing a fifties-style dress and a spotless apron while holding up a casserole dish and smiling at the reader. 

Or perhaps it would come from a fabulously retro food delivery pair here in Austin like the Casserole Queens. (They've been featured on the Food Network a couple times.  How snazzy is that?  Or sizzly )

But no.  It came from my brain.  (Please, try to control your awe.)  and...IT'S HEALTHY.  (Now you can applaud.)

I've always loved the idea of 7-layer dip (despite the fact that there is rarely a chip that has the heft required for dipping into such a thing).  So, I figured, how can I make a healthier version and maybe even a full-meal version? 

Answer:

• Browned ground turkey (in place of ground beef)
• This is an instance when you can actually go for a lower fat content since it's going to be with a bunch of other items that will give it some moisture.  When using it in other applications, I typically use 93/7 (7% fat), but for this one, you can use 97/3 or 99/1.  
• Black beans
• Black beans are the best ingredient, ever.  I typically like to use Kuner's beans with lime and jalapenos in this recipe, but I actually strain out the jalapenos - just using the black beans without rinsing them includes enough heat for most people.
• Fat-free Greek yogurt instead of sour cream
• Use this instead of sour cream.  Seriously.  I promise in this application, you really won't taste any difference.  If you're unsure, don't put it as the top layer.  When it's mixed in there you definitely won't be aware of it. Fage is the best out there.  I buy a big tub of the stuff for all sorts of uses just about every week.
• Guacamole
• The fat in this one is good fat...leave it as is.  If the avocados look good to me and area  reasonable price (oddly infrequent even here in TX), I'll make my own with lime juice, garlic, and jalapenos.  However, in the other cases, I use Wholly Guacamole.  It's great in a pinch.  I'd also suggest not putting this one as the top layer as it will brown as it oxidizes.
• Brown rice
• I know that rice isn't necessarily a typical addition in the 7-layer dips that are out there.  I suppose this is what makes this a casserole (more of a full meal) rather than just a dip.  Brown rice adds some fiber to the dish (along with what the beans bring to the table).  I often use Uncle Ben's Ready Rice, but can't find the exact flavor here.
• Salsa
• Salsa is a great way to add flavor with very few calories.  There are so many good salsas out there.  Texas Texas, Kinky Friedman's Politically Correct (from which money goes to animal rescue), and Green Mountain Gringo are some of my favorites.  You could, of course, make your own too. 
• Low-fat cheese
• This is certainly a nice-to-have not a must-have.  It used to be that low-fat or fat-free cheeses weren't worth the packaging they came in, but the past few years have seen advances in the taste of low-fat cheeses, so this can be a decent addition without adding too much fat.

Some other potential additions are corn, roasted chicken, or chili.  Also, add some cumin in there.  It's potentially the best spice out there.

So there you have it.   I like to compile it in a glass Pyrex dish so the people eating it can see each layer they're about to taste.

Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

On May 5th, the IT department (and a few select guests, such as myself) had their 3rd annual Cinco de Mayo Salsa Competition. Apparently last year they had some chutneys from some of our co-workers originally from the Indian subcontinent, but this year, most items were traditionally salsa or queso.

My addition to this mix wasn't quite as stellar as I had hoped for, so I plan on revising the recipe and then posting it here at a later date. But the basics are back to my beloved corn niblets (canned, baby) and black beans (also canned). I suppose you might get a better bean flavor if you started with the soaking of the beans and so on, but this was something I had to put together very quickly, so that was not an option. I intended to put red onion in there but when I cut into my huge red onion (that felt firm to the light squeeze), it essentially exploded. The middle was rotten. Grody. Bummer. So I moved on to the huge shallot I had sitting with my garlic and put in a big shallot (finely minced) and a medium-sized clove of garlic (also finely minced). Truth be told, I attempted to grate the garlic through my microplane at first to turn it more into a mush that would work itself through the dish completely, but the ROI was lacking - not a lot of garlic mush for all the effort I was putting in. Dicing won out.

Then came the seasonings. I knew I wanted to put in cumin. It is one of my all time favorite spices. The smokey mild heat just can't be beat. (I'm a poet and I didn't even know it.) And it goes with so many other things. So I added a liberal amount of cumin, some cayenne, salt, and pepper. It still didn't have enough zing. So I added a bunch more cumin. Better, but still lacking. I opened up my pantry and searched for something that would work. Aha! Taco seasoning! So I sprinkled in probably 1/3 of the packet on this mixture (which was two cans of each corn and beans). It livened it up and got it to pretty decent, but like I said, it's going to need some refining. Oh, and measuring. That's the thing I find so hard about writing down my cooking exploits....I don't really measure. I guess I need to get better at that. Experiment while I'm in the mood, but just take note of what I'm doing.