KC 255 – Broc Tacs
Why hello there, and welcome to Kitchen Catastrophe, where trendy neologisms are functionally indecipherable from ancient or foreign texts. I’m your Tasty Translator, Jon O’Guin, and today’s recipe WOULD be a classic instance of “I picked something too simple, now I don’t know what to do”, except that I had 4 slices of apple pizza this afternoon, and therefore my blood sugar is high enough that I can LITERALLY EAT THE MOON. IF you want to avoid the madness that follows and just get to munching, take this link, and go in safety. For everyone else, let’s dig in.
Anoint me with Adulation For My Awesome Adulting
Quick Sidebar before we get to the REAL bar and get scwasted on schwhite schwine: Apparently it’s ‘cringe’ to say “adulting” now, according to Gen Z. Which I am all for. Throw our millennial asses under the tank treads of generational conflict, you doomer fucks. Maybe we wouldn’t feel so accomplished at achieving basic functioning adulthood if the WORLD WASN’T ON FIRE.
Also on Fire, thanks for asking.
What was I saying? Nothing yet? Good. I strive to say nothing. Wait, no, “I frequently silence myself due to crippling overanalysis and social anxiety”. Yes. That’s what I meant. Oh good, the tangents are getting tangents. I’d say at least we eventually have to loop back around to the original point, but I don’t think that’s a mathematically valid conclusion, given what little I remember of tangents.
So I started a diet recently. That’s the real ‘news’. And let me tell you, I don’t know if it was liberating or depressing when the app pushed me to keep reaching for deeper reasons to hit my weight goal, and the end conclusion was “That’s how much I weighed when I was last truly content, so I’m basically hoping that on the way to losing the weight, I find, you know, drive, purpose and joy again.” (Though I did note that it would ALSO allow me to not throw out most of my closet, since a lot of my clothes are in the L/XL range, and I am not in the 2X to 3 range. …Is that better? Is justifying hoarding better than “I just want to be happy again?” Is all of this WAY too much dark honesty for what’s normally a fun romp through food etymology, especially after a WEEK of “Remember all the ways our nation has fucked over and killed exceptional Black Americans?)
Man, this is a perfect face for the last year, isn’t it?
“Jokes” aside, a less soul-wounding description of the goal would be “A lot of my weight gain is directly connected with the depression, anxiety, and feelings of helplessness I developed after moving back and during my father’s battle with Cancer, so returning to my previous, healthier weight would represent a physical effort to overcome the lasting pain of those events.”
All of that is to explain that you might see more veggie/fruit dishes, or like, soups. Or maybe it’ll all go wrong. Like this whole explanation, because SURPRISE, this section wasn’t even supposed to be ABOUT any of this: the section title was a reference to the cookbook used for the recipe!
One of the parts about being grown up is the ongoing existential dread.
So, if you don’t know, Tasty is a Buzzfeed brand. Specifically, it is the branch of Buzzfeed dedicated to making food/infiltrating your Facebook feed, since that’s the major outlet of the brand: creating recipe videos that get put on FB to essentially advertise to all those people, because yes, if you haven’t been paying attention, this is 2021, we’re in full Late-Stage Capitalism, and the company whose primary product is “take this vague personality quiz based off of COMPANY WE ARE GETTING PAID TO REMIND YOU EXISTS for answers that would be applicable to basically anyone” also has a food video line with multiple published cookbooks.
LOOK, Buzzfeed, I don’t need YOU chiming in on this issue, thank you!
Adulting is…honestly, as such texts go, pretty good. It’s a little too “I am a mid-to-late 30’s person trying to write in the voice of a mid-20’s Instagram influencer” in a lot of places (or at least that’s the vibe I get), but in terms of “here’s a cookbook with clear instructions for relatively easy dishes, many of which are easily identifiable as dishes you probably already like” it’s pretty solid. Recipes for Spaghetti and Meatballs, Chicken Noodle Soup, Fried Fish, lead to things like “Here’s how to make your own Pop-tarts” or “Hey, you should try this skirt steak with a gochujang-sesame glaze: It’s going to be savory and spicy.” And “hey, we all love dipping veggies straight into ranch dressing, here’s a grown-up version of that as like, a dinner salad”. Almost everything is in 2-4 servings (a great number for someone learning to cook with their roommates, a teen cooking for a small family), and it makes effort to set up good habits like mise en place, labeling leftovers, batch-cooking broth for freezing, etc. It’s a solid approach to the idea of “adulting” in the kitchen, if I do find the kind of “generic motivational speech” summation of what “adulting” is at the start of the book a little grating.
I have used that term a couple times now , so in case you don’t know: Millennials use the term “adulting” to refer to a broad suite of activities or issues, mostly aligned with the idea of “what a responsible adult would do/has to handle”. Running errands, making appointments, dealing with bureaucracies, mastering aspects of household tasks or responsibilities that weren’t made clear to us as children, etc. The basic idea is that “being an adult” is too passive a construction for the amount of effort/stress it takes to do the responsible or “adult” things, so we’ve turned “adulting” into an active verb/gerund to encompass that. It’s often used to justify a ‘lapse’ in adult mannerisms, in a sort of reverse form of “treating myself”: rather than saying “I’ve had a long day, so I’m going to treat myself to some delivery pizza and Netflix on the couch”, we might say “Done with adulting for the day, time for some pizza and Bridgerton!”
Look, are both these people hot? Undoubtedly. Am I going to watch the show? Eh?
So, what “adult” desire is today’s recipe going to explore? Tacos and Fiber.
Things Get Green
Broc Tacs, which is how I choose to spell it, because the cookbook’s version of “Broc Tocs” performs what I feel is an unnecessary vowel replacement in addition to its hip elision: I get that “Broccoli Tacos” sounds weird as shit, so you want to shorten it, but why swap the A in “Tacos” for an O? Wait. I’ve JUST seen how you can think that’s pronounced like “Tax”, instead of like “Talks”. Fine, I see why you did it, BUT I STILL DON’T AGREE. Oh no. The sugar high is crashing. AID ME, Future Jon!
Why hello there, and welcome to Sunday evening Jon, who is NOT in nearly as good a mood as Saturday evening Jon. He was hopped up enough that a rough morning didn’t phase him too bad. I, on the other hand, have had TWO rough mornings and are therefore already starting to get sleepy hours before my bed time. So let’s try and steer this sucker in and get us a nice post, eh? SO, the first thing you’re going to need, OBVIOUSLY, is shallots.
Because when I hear Broccoli Taco, I think “shallots”.
Right, I should explain what’s going on. The Broc Tacs, as Saturday-Jon sideswiped an explanation of, are just normal tacos with a filling of roasted Broccoli. The biggest hint of flair to them is that A: they use the “Double Decker Taco” shell construction (a hard taco shell that has a soft flour tortilla adhered to it by extra cheese), and the other ingredients in the filling being closer to a classic Mexican street taco/The Broccoli Heroes we made a year or two ago: some crumbled feta cheese, hot sauce, and pickled onions. Or, rather, shallots. So the first thing we gotta do is get some thinly sliced shallot in some lime juice with a pinch of salt to get some simple pink-pickled onion to toss on the tacs. That pink color is probably one of the two major reasons for using shallots: they’re nice and small, and as they leach their color into the brine, and back into themselves, they look more “altered”, and thus feel more cooked.
As that’s happening, chop up a head or broccoli, or, as I will give you the secret hint now, maybe 2. We did one, because we were in the before-time, when we didn’t have secret hints.
There are no secrets in the broccoli.
Toss in some olive oil, season with some salt, and throw in a hot oven to roast for 20 minutes. So I guess the ACTUAL first step was “preheat your oven”, but c’mon. That doesn’t count as a REAL step. Once the broccoli is in the oven, you COULD be done, but Nate wanted dinner faster, and noticed that the recipe uses the same oven heat, but two different oven racks, and thus we could make the Double-Decker taco shells by baking the tortillas AND THE BROCCOLI, in FULL Double-Decker Style! We slapped some tortillas on a baking sheet, started sprinkling cheese…and then immediately realized we should put a silicone base underneath so we don’t have to scrape off burnt cheese if it melts over the edge of the tortillas.
A smart move we recorded for posterity, to prove we CAN, at some points, think things through.
Pop that in the oven for 5ish minutes, and then pull it out, and try to press the tortillas onto some hard taco shells while still hot so the molten cheese can adhere the two surfaces. If you’re not trained with, as Kenji calls them, “asbestos fingers” (and yes, J Kenji Lopez-Alt and I are now on first name terms. Don’t ask him, though. He’s very busy. He just moved. Give the man some time to breathe!) it will likely be moderately uncomfortable to take these tortillas that were just in 400+ degree heat and push on them with your delicate hands. There is no solution to this, I just want you to know as you suffer through it that you are seen, and your pain is valid. Or get like, an Ove Glove? Either’s fine.
OWW.
The cheese hopefully adhering well (and, second pro-tip: keep an eye on them as they cook. If the cheese renders out too much fat, it will be harder to get it to adhere. We actually pulled our second batch a minute earlier because the first batch was a bit of a hassle, and we were much happier. ) you definitely should toss the broccoli half-way through cooking, and not 3/4s of the way through because you realized that was probably a step and didn’t check while you were burning your fingers on tortillas. But eventually, you get some slightly charred, but overall soft roasted broccoli.
Look at those nice browned bits.
Our broccoli only ended up being enough to fill 4 tacos, while the recipe is supposed to be for 6, so Nate and I had two empty taco shells, hence our secret tip of a second head: better to make too much broccoli, since you can always just season and EAT the extra broccoli, rather than try and perfectly match broc and tac.
Sprinkle with some feta cheese, top with some pickled shallots, and drizzle with hot sauce, and you’ve got broc tacs.
Behold, CONTRASTING COLORS.
They were pretty good, too. Personally, I think another reason I’d like to use 2 heads of broccoli is to get the tacos a little more filled, but overall I was a big fan of what was going on. I mean, you already know Cheese and Broccoli work together. This is soft-and-crunchy, charred-and-cheesy, and it’s actually pretty healthy, since there’s a lot of fiber and veggies involved. Not, you know, SUPER healthy, since the rest of the recipe is “cheese”, but hey, progress. All in all, I’d call them a success. (And they work out to about $1.75 a taco, so they’re a solid cheap entree option.)
THURSDAY: I AM BESET WITH ENNUI. I COULD COVER THE COOKBOOK SOME MORE, OR CHECK IF THERE’S A FOOD DOCUMENTARY TO SEE. LET US SEE IF MONDAY JON HAS ANY IDEAS. (MONDAY JON: I’M IN A MOOD, SO PROBABLY NOT, UNLESS PEOPLE WANT A RANT ABOUT HOW MINIMUM WAGE, TAXES, AND PROFIT MARGINS WORK, SINCE I’VE HAD LIKE, 6 VARIATIONS OF THE SAME BASIC ARGUMENTS IN THE LAST COUPLE DAYS.)
MONDAY: TOM BRADY IS A SONUVABITCH, AND I HATE HIM. BY WHICH I MEAN “JOIN US FOR OUR ANNUAL NFL GAME-DAY RECIPES”, WHICH APPARENTLY ARE EITHER COMING FROM TAMPA BAY, OR KANSAS CITY. AND SINCE WE DID KC LAST YEAR, I FEEL LIKE I’M GOING TO HAVE TO MAKE FREAKING CUBANOS, AND THOSE ARE COMPLICATED. BUT WE’LL SEE WHAT I CAN FIGURE OUT. MAYBE SOME TAMPA BAY DEVILED CRAB, OR A KANSAS CITY CHEESE SLIPPER! WHICH, ASTONISHINGLY, I DID NOT JUST MAKE UP.
Please enjoy this
Recipe
Broc Tacs
Makes 6 tacos
Ingredients
Pickled Shallot
½ of a shallot, thinly sliced
1-2 tbsp lime juice (just juice 1 lime, and whatever you get, you get)
Pinch of salt
Tacos
1-2 heads of broccoli, cut into small florets, stem peeled and sliced into coins
1 tbsp olive oil
Pinch of salt
6 hard taco shells
6 (6 inch) flour tortillas
1 cup shredded Mexican cheese
Crumbled Feta Cheese and Hot sauce, for serving
Preparation
Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Place the shallot slices in a small bowl, toss with lime juice and salt, let sit while you work on the rest of the dish.
Toss the broccoli, olive oil, and salt on a rimmed baking sheet, and place in the oven when ready, roasting for 20 minutes, tossing halfway through. You want the broccoli to be charred in places, and tender.
Lay the flour tortillas on another baking sheet (you’ll probably only be able to fit 3 on at a time), lined if you’re worried about cheese spill-over, and sprinkle with half the shredded cheese. Place in the oven and cook for 4-5 minutes, until cheese is fully melted. Remove from the oven, place a hard taco shell onto the cheesy tortillas, and fold and press (lightly) to adhere. Move to a cutting board, setting upside down to allow gravity to help the tortilla adhere, while you repeat the process with remaining tortillas, cheese, and shells.
Remove the broccoli from the oven, stir lightly, and then scoop into taco shells. Top with crumbled feta, hot sauce, and pickled shallots, and serve.
