Friday, March 20, 2009

Foody Friday: mega taco puffs?

I saw this simple recipe for Grands Taco Melts and decided I was going to try it out. Hopped to the local grocery store yesterday, got the biscuits, and I was ready to go!

First, the filling. Sautee some onions. Add 1 bag of Morning Star farms crumbles. Add 1 packet taco seasoning. Add one can of diced tomatoes, undrained. Add 1 cup of hot chunky salsa. Let it all mix together and cook for a while for flavours to gel.

Heat the oven to 350F.

Wrestle the tube of biscuits open. I got a small (5pc) can of extra large ones.

Take one and press it out to make a flat circle of dough.

Scoop some of the taco filling onto the middle of the dough, add some shredded cheese and other additions you think might go, then fold the dough over, and seal the sides together.

Easier typed than done!

At my first attempt, I scooped about a half cup of the taco filling, and could barely get the dough to meet! Ooops! So I switched to using a quarter cup worth: much better!

For two of them, I also added a dollop of my precious Porgy's extra hot BBQ sauce. That stuff is SO GOOD, even if you feel it on its way out the next day if you take too much of it. (tmi?)

<--- If you look closely you'll see the dollop(s) I'm talking about.

Folding the dough over and sealing the edges shut wasn't something that came easily to me. I tried to put in a little pinch & twist, hoping the edges would turn out like a karipap (curry puff). The dough didn't really cooperate, so I ended up just kinda blending the dough together.

This made the things look like a swollen banana rather than a half-circle.

Here you can see all five finished items on the tray, waiting to be popped into the oven. The one on the far left, that's in a "boat" of its own? That's the one with a half cup of filling that wouldn't close properly. Didn't want it leaking its guts out all over.

And the two with brown stuff on 'em? That's to mark them as containing the extra hot bbq sauce. Certainly wouldn't want to bite into one of them unknowingly!!

All in all, I used about half of the prepared filling - no worries, I can always make southwestern-themed scrambled eggs or something this weekend.



Above are more "before" pictures, close-ups of a "regular" and a "bqq" version.

And here's how they looked after about 18 minutes in the oven:



As you can see, I completely failed on the pressing the edges together to seal them. Anyone have any tips on that?

So for dinner last night, Kosh and I had one normal-sized puff each, split-shared so that we'd half each of a regular and a bbq version. We then split the mega taco puff too. Avocado went really well as an accompaniment.

We had one each of regular and bbq as leftovers: guess what I had for lunch today?



The verdict: having the taco-seasoned fake meat wrapped in a biscuit was a welcome change from the other things I've tried before. Of course, let's not think about the extra calories and carbs, k? Getting tips on how to properly seal the edges would be nice too. Overall? This is definitely a repeatable recipe.

My thanks to pattye who blogs at Quick And Easy Cooking within the today.com network, for prompting this week's Foody Friday :)

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3 comments:

  1. To seal the edges, dip your fingers in a little warm water and pat on 1 side of the dough, then press together.

    ReplyDelete
  2. hey you changed your layout. (ok, am i 'ketinggalan' or what..haha). it is green still, i dont find many green blog layouts, so this one is really nice :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. wahhhhh! paul dah pandai masak laaa.....i've never tried baking yet....takut hangus!

    ReplyDelete

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