Thursday, June 13, 2013

Southwest Turkey Meatballs turned Enchiladas turned Tacos. What?

Every Saturday morning I sit down and plan out a dinner menu for the upcoming week in advance of our weekly trip to the farmer’s market and grocery store.  As much as it pains me sometimes to put thought and effort into the menu, I never regret having done so when I get home from work and need (and want!) to get a home-cooked, delicious and fairly quick dinner on the table during the week.

Sometimes I find so many yummy recipes that I want to try and I start to make my grocery list before I’ve 100% confirmed what I’ll cook that week.  Then once I decide on the menu, I forget to edit my list.  Oops.  This was one of those weeks.  I had found three Mexican recipes I wanted to try, but after more thought I decided that all of these in one week might be a little much.

So, I scaled back on the fiesta week theme and settled on these Southwest Turkey Meatballs which were on the menu tonight.  While gathering everything for the recipe, I discovered I had a few extra ingredients on hand that were meant for those other meals that didn’t make the cut.  No problem, I love to improvise and create and wouldn't want these items to go to waste!

I followed the recipe pretty much to the letter (except for: using bread crumbs instead of panko, adding more cumin than it called for and no lime zest, just lime juice) and it was looking good.  


But then... instead of adding chicken broth, I added – wait for it – enchilada sauce.  Oh yesssss.  I let that simmer and cook down till the meatballs were cooked through.

 


I know one wouldn't normally associate turkey meatballs with corn tortillas, but I thought, why not!?  I heated up a stack and we built our meatball-tortilla-enchilada-taco-thingies on our plates with shredded Monterey Jack cheese (another item that wasn’t meant to be on this week’s list), salsa, sour cream and avocado. 

The hubs and I ate ours with a knife and fork, the teen rolled his up taco style, and the toddler, well he just went at it with his hands.  It was definitely a winner and I will make it again. 

Do you like to improvise and create in the kitchen or are you a stick-to-the-recipe kinda cook? 
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