Vietnamese Tacos and an OXO Good Grips Giveaway

This recipe has all the necessary qualities for a fun family meal:  it's easy to make, it tastes great, everyone can customize his own meal, it's super-healthy, and what's more fun than dinner rolled up in a nice warm tortilla?  My whole family (and two dinner guests) loved these Vietnamese Tacos!  I found the original recipe in the April 2012 issue of Southern Living and modified it slightly.

VIETNAMESE TACOS

2 1/2 pounds sirloin steak (London Broil)
6-inch flour tortillas
1 bag Cole Slaw mix or 3 cups shredded cabbage and carrots
2 scallions, sliced
2 cucumbers, peeled and sliced thin

Marinade:

Get this recipe (with nutrition facts) at Cook and Count!

Dipping Sauce:
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup fish sauce
1/4 cup white vinegar
3 TBL sugar
juice of one lime
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tsp freshly-ground pepper

Marinate steak for 8 to 24 hours.  Mix dipping sauce and chill until ready to serve.  Grill steak until done, discarding remaining marinade.  Allow meat to rest 10 minutes before slicing.  Slice into thin strips and serve in warmed tortillas with dipping sauce and vegetables.

This made a great and easy meal with a side of salad, steamed rice and a raw vegetable platter.  Everyone used the extra dipping sauce on the raw vegetables (it was particularly delicious with cucumbers.)

Slicing those cucumbers was really easy thanks to a cool kitchen tool from OXO Good Grips!  I used the Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer to make short work of that job.  This slicer was easy to hook over the top of a bowl, and the cucumbers were sliced in no time at all.  With a carefully-designed finger guard, I never had to worry that I'd slice off a fingertip or knuckle on the mandoline blade.

It was easy to adjust the thickness of the slices with a nonslip knob located on the side.  The thinnest slices were practically transparent--there's no way I could have done that with a knife.

I've also tried this slicer with onions and it made that chore quick and easy.  There's no better way to get paper-thin onion slices to top burgers or sandwiches.

This mandoline is dishwasher-safe (top rack) and the finger guard fits over the blade for safe storage of this handy kitchen tool.  It's going to be well-used in my kitchen this summer!

Thanks to OXO, I have a Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer to give away to one reader!  It's easy to enter this giveaway.  Simply leave a comment on this post, making sure there's an email address where you can be reached.  For one extra entry, "like" Mom's Fridge on Facebook and leave a comment here letting me know you did that.  The contest will close at 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 24 and the winner will be chosen and notified on Friday, May 25.  Because of the holiday, the winner will have until 11:59 PM EDT on Tuesday, May 29 to respond.

I received a Hand-Held Mandoline Slicer to try out for the purposes of this review and giveaway. The winner of the giveaway will receive an identical product. I did not receive any other compensation from OXO or any other source. All opinions are mine. UPDATE: And the winner is...comment #5, Jamie! The winner will be contacted via email as described above. Congratulations and thanks to everyone for participating!

Secret Recipe Club: Taco Pizza

It's the March Madness Edition of the Secret Recipe Club!  In this group, each member is secretly assigned the recipe blog of another member.  The recipe is then prepared and taste-tested, photographed for cyber-posterity and posted.  It's fun to try new recipes, and I'm lucky to have a family that's generally good-natured about such experiments.

Of course, if I left the choosing to the kids, they'd pick cookies every time.  While cookies are fun, I like finding new main-dish recipes too.  So even though my assigned blog for March is really heavy on cookies, I focused on the non-dessert offerings at Sweetie Pettiti.  But that doesn't mean I didn't find a "fun" recipe!

Susie worked hard to duplicate her childhood favorite, Happy Joe's Taco Pizza.  She had to find a recipe that lived up to her high nostalgic expectations.  I had no such expectations, since I never ate at Happy Joe's.  The idea of Taco Pizza was appealing, though--and I figured my family would love it.  And salad on a pizza sounded fun, different, and even (imagine that) good for you!

Changes I made:

Instead of one huge pizza, I made individual ones.  This allowed each family member to customize their Taco Pizza.  If your kids like to help in the kitchen, this is an ideal recipe.  Once the ingredients are all assembled, kids can spread their favorite toppings on their pizza, then the grownups can bake it until done.

I also added sauteed onions as a topping.  (YUM!)

I had no tomatoes in the house, so I skipped those.  This is not the time of year for tomatoes.  In the summer, though, I'd have to add them!

I made my own pizza dough based on the recipe at Once a Month Mom rather than using premade dough.

Finally, I made a meatless pizza for my daughter, at her request.

Survey Says:

This is a yummy dish!  It would be a fun meal to have while you're watching a little March Madness--just be sure to have plenty of napkins handy, because (as Susie pointed out in the original recipe) the toppings fall all over the place.  It was easy to customize to individual tastes.  My daughter had a meatless pizza.  My husband ate his salad separately and spread sour cream on top.  It's also frugal:  I used up some pizza sauce and refried beans that were already in the refrigerator, so it's a good way to reinvent some leftovers.  I found that it was easier to "fold" this pizza like a huge taco and eat it that way rather than slicing and lifting little pieces of it.

Here's how to make this at home:

Taco Pizza

Makes 8 individual pizzas

1 batch pizza dough, divided in 8 portions, rolled and par-baked for 5 minutes at 425

1 lb. ground beef, browned and drained

1/2 onion, finely chopped and cooked until onions are soft

2 TBL taco seasoning

1/4 cup water

1 can refried beans

1/4 cup taco sauce

1/4 cup pizza sauce

1/2 cup mozzarella cheese, shredded

1 1/2 cups cheddar-jack cheese, shredded

Lettuce, shredded

Tortilla chips, broken into small pieces 

Additional taco sauce, optional

Sour cream, optional

Season cooked ground beef with taco seasoning.  Add water and simmer until water cooks off.  Meanwhile, mix refried beans, taco sauce and pizza sauce.  (I found that heating the beans in the microwave for about a minute made them easier to mix up with the other ingredients).  Spread bean mixture on your par-baked pizza crusts.  

Top with mozzarella cheese, then with seasoned taco meat.

Add onions, then cheddar-jack.  Bake at 450 for 8 to 10 minutes, until cheese is melted and crust is golden brown on the edges.

Allow pizza to sit a few minutes before you try to slice or eat it.  Then top with salad and chips.

Grab a napkin or three, and dig in!

Don't miss the other recipes in today's Secret Recipe Club big reveal.  I always find a whole bunch that I want to taste-test!

Combo Tacos

Kind of a taco, kind of a burrito...very delicious.

INGREDIENTS
1 can refried beans, heated
1 can Rotel (I used the lime & cilantro flavor)
1 lb. ground beef, browned & drained
1 small onion, chopped fine
10 flour tortillas
1 1/2 cups shredded cheese (Cheddar, Jack or a blend)
1 TBL adobo (if without pepper, add 1/2 tsp pepper)

After browning ground beef, saute the onions in the same pan until slightly caramelized. Return ground beef to pan and add Rotel and adobo. Simmer 10 minutes.
Serve on warmed tortillas with refried beans and cheese.

Secret Recipe Club: Shrimp Tacos

I could get carried away trying new desserts, thanks to the Secret Recipe Club, but I decided that when possible I'd make a new-to-me main dish recipe instead. We don't eat dessert very often (except for ice cream) and we do eat dinner every single night.

This recipe turned out to be great for those nights when it's just too hot to cook--because there's only 5 minutes of cook time involved!

My assigned blog this month was Every Little Thing. This blog emphasizes the use of fresh ingredients, and it's full of photos that will make you drool!  Stacy's recipe for Shrimp Tacos was truly simple to make and everybody here loved it! In fact, we had it twice in two weeks--by popular demand :)

I doubled the original shrimp recipe to feed my crew and used a different salsa recipe, so here it is as I made it:

SHRIMP TACOS

Get the recipe and nutrition facts at Cook and Count.

MY OWN PICO DE GALLO

Get the recipe and nutrition facts at Cook and Count.

Join the club! It's lots of fun. And visit the other participating Secret Recipe Club blogs:

Taco Taco Taco

The last time I made Enchiladas, I was thinking how good the meat-and-Rotel mixture would taste as a soft taco.

3/4 lb. ground beef
1 small onion, chopped fine
1/4 teaspoon adobo without pepper
1/4 tsp pepper
1 can (10-oz) Rotel

Brown ground beef, onion, adobo and pepper in skillet. Drain. Stir in the Rotel.  Simmer 10 minutes and serve with your favorite taco fixings.

No "taco seasoning" required!  It's not a traditional taco, but it's really good.

For a party:  Triple the recipe.  Cook as described above.  After stirring in the Rotel, transfer to a slow cooker.  Cook on "Low" for an hour and then switch to "Warm" if you have that setting.