Avocado Tacos With Roasted Corn and Black Beans

First post of the new blog. Hopefully this one wont get me fired (inside joke). My fiance, Melissa, and I are amateur foodies. We both cook and love to try out new things at the house. One of the problems I find when looking for new recipes, both online and in most cookbooks, is that they are "family friendly," that is, they are designed to feed four or more people. Neither of us are big fans of leftovers, so the problem with cooking that casserole that serves six is that at least half of it is going in the trash or down the disposal a few days later (or it  will sit in the back of the fridge for six weeks until it gains sentience and the ability to move on its own). 

Here on Feeding Melissa I'm not only going to break the ingredients into two person portions, I'm going to tell you what you'll need around the kitchen before you get started. As a bachelor until recently I often found that I'd print out a recipe at work, stop at the store on the way home, and realize halfway through the cooking process that I didn't have a mandolin, a meat mallet or some other essential utensil. That led to more nights of ordering from Papa John's than are really healthy.

So here's the first recipe. Melissa will be gone on a business trip the rest of the week, so I've declared it Taco Week. I've got four taco recipes lined up. I figured I'd make one of the more healthy ones while Melissa is still in town.

Avocado Tacos With Roasted Corn and Black Beans

What it is:
It's almost guacamole in a soft taco, with some added beans and corn for texture and flavor. Fairly healthy as there is no meat and only a small amount of cheese (per taco). This recipes is designed to give you three tacos each.


What You'll Need (Food):
2 Haas avocados (peeled, pitted and mashed)
1/4 Cup yellow onion (finely diced)
1/2 teaspoon garlic salt
6 Corn tortillas
10 springs fresh cilantro (finely chopped, from a normal store "bunch" of cilantro, pull 10 individual stalks)
1 Lime (cut into six wedges)
1 Small can black beans (warmed then drained)
1 Ear of corn (roasted, preferably on a grill but it's not super important, you can even use half a can of canned corn)
1/2 Teaspoon seasoning salt (like Lawrey's)
2/3 Cup Monterrey Jack cheese (grated)
Salsa (optional)
Sour Cream (optional)

What You'll Need (Cooking):
Baking Sheet
Cheese grater
Measuring cup
Small sauce pot
Potato masher (or some other kind of mashing device, or your hand if you don't mind getting all avocado-y

Here's the disassembled product, minus black beans

Lets cook.

First, preheat an oven to 250. This is a good time to get your beans simmering too. Dump them into a small pot and heat over low-medium heat. Don't let them boil or get super hot. If you're going to roast your corn, now is the time to get your grill going. Because it's just one ear of corn, use a gas grill, medium heat. If you don't have a gas grill, it's probably not worth the effort of using a charcoal grill so just heat the corn in hot water. Place the corn on the grill and rotate every 3-4 minutes, for about 12 minutes. If it gets a little char, that's fine. I kinda prefer mine a little charred. Once your corn is done, remove it from grill. You can do the preparation work below while your corn is roasting.

The preparation work for this simple recipe is about 90% of the effort here, and it's very easy. We'll take it one ingredient at a time. If you haven't already mashed your avocados, that's fine, if you have, that's fine too. Place the avocado (pitted at peeled) in a mixing bowl. Add the diced onion and garlic salt. Go ahead and mash it up if you haven't done that already. If you already mashed, just mix in the onion and garlic salt.

Go ahead and get your cheese grated (or just be lazy and use bagged cheese, either way is fine) and finely chop the cilantro. If your grocery store is like mine it sells fresh cilantro in bunches. You'll want 10ish sprigs of cilantro from the bunch. I cut the stems off mine so it's more leaf, less stem, but do what you like.

Get your corn and (assuming you used corn on the cob) use a good knife to cut the kernels off the cob. Just run the knife long-wise down the cob using a little sawing motion. The kernels will mostly just come right off as you move the knife down the cob.  Put your corn tortillas on a baking sheet and put them in the pre-heated oven for 3-4 minutes just to warm them up. Drain your black beans. Now all that's left is assembly. 

Put two big spoonfuls of the avocado mixture on the tortilla. Add black beans and roasted corn. Sprinkle on cheese and cilantro. Squeeze a lime wedge over each taco. If you want, add sour cream or salsa.

Finished Product