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The husband and I spent our college years in Southern California, and we frequently find ourselves craving authentic tacos. We’ve identified a few local establishments over the years, but I’ve also discovered it’s fairly easy to make great carnitas (roasted pork) at home. The main ingredient is time, but other than browning the roast in the beginning and then shredding the meat part way through, all the work is done in the oven. (Or on the grill, if you like.) You can also cut the meat into cubes, but I prefer it shredded. If you finish the carnitas the same day you roast the pork, it will keep a couple days in the fridge to make an easy weeknight meal — I had enough to freeze half for another time too.

The boy loves Mexican food, but typically sticks to quesadillas and burritos. He insisted he didn’t like tacos, so I made him a “taco pocket” instead … a.k.a., burrito, with veggies on the side. I suspect I may get him to warm up to tacos if we make fresh, kid-size tortillas, but that’s a project for another day.

Recipe: Pork Carnitas Tacos (& Taco Pockets)

Ingredients:

• 1 3-4 pound pork shoulder, roasted as in the previous post
• 1 cup salsa verde

for tacos:

• tortillas
• shredded romaine lettuce
• thinly sliced red peppers
• salsa verde
• sour cream

for “taco pockets” (a.k.a. burritos):

• tortillas
• brown rice
• black beans
• shredded cheddar cheese

Instructions: Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Transfer the roasted pork to a shallow roasting pan. Shred the pork, using two forks, into large segments. Trim excess fat as you shred. Top with the salsa and roast for 1 hour, turning over once. Top should develop a crisp, carmelized crust, while interior remains moist. Remove from oven and serve with warmed tortillas, sour cream, sliced bell peppers, lettuce and any other desired accompaniments.

Kid-Friendly Taco Pockets: For the taco pocket, warm a tortilla in a skillet over medium heat. In the center, layer rice, beans, pork, and cheese. Fold in sides, then ends, to make a rectangle-shaped pocket. Place back in skillet and warm about a minute on each side to melt the cheese. To avoid toddler troubles, I serve the veggies next to it but you could certainly add peppers inside if that’s not an issue in your house.

For more on pork carnitas, read David Lebovitz’s (a fellow Cali ex-pat) tale of serving carnitas in Paris.

After getting through the first trimester of my pregnancy, where we relied on take-out dinners far more frequently than usual, I’ve been trying to get back into the habit of daily cooking and adopting some new strategies that’ll make it easier to get dinner on the table when dealing with two kids underfoot. My favorite trick: cooking a Sunday supper that can be re-purposed into different quick meals during the week. This has the added benefit of stretching the budget for local, pastured meats.

First up, Cuban roast pork. Pork shoulder is a less expensive, higher fat cut of meat that benefits from a long cooking time. Once prepped and placed in the oven, you can head out to the playground for a while and let it cook. I served the pork, sliced, with brown rice and black beans cooked with bacon and garlic. If you can’t find a blood orange, a regular one will do.

Recipe: Cuban Roast Pork

Ingredients:

• 3 to 4-pound pork shoulder (also called Boston butt)
• 1 yellow onion, sliced
• 1 blood orange, cut into eighths
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• kosher salt
• pepper
• smoked paprika
• 2 bay leaves
• 8 ounces salsa verde
• 1 bottle Mexican beer

Instructions: Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Season pork generously with salt, pepper and a touch of smoked paprika and set aside. Heat oil in Dutch oven over medium high heat. Sear pork until browned, 4-5 minutes on each side. Spread onions around and under pork, and arrange orange slices around pan. Add bay leaves, salsa and the beer. Cover and cook in oven for 2 hours. Remove lid and cook 1 hour more, until pork falls apart when prodded with a fork.

Remove from oven and let rest 10 minutes. Cut out excess fat, and slice a portion for the first night. Serve with rice, black beans, fresh cilantro and additional orange slices.

Prep for Night 2: Shred remaining pork, using two forks, and removing excess fat. Refrigerate shredded pork. Check back Thursday for the second recipe: carnitas!

So glad it’s Friday, and even gladder that we should have some gorgeous sunny weather finally this weekend. Spring is on the way!

Food FAIL of the Week: The corn farmers are lashing out at Food Inc.’s Oscar nomination, saying the farming practices portrayed negatively in the film are responsible for America’s “affordable” food. Well yes, but there’s a cost to that food beyond what’s paid at the supermarket. Take your own stand: snack on organic (GMO-free) popcorn with real butter while watching the Oscars this weekend!

Recipe of the Week: Jen’s “Guaca-mame Dip” combines two of my son’s first finger foods, avocado and edamame, into a nutritious snack for all ages. Yum!

Fun Find of the Week: Last week my son had to dress up for “Superhero Day” during spirit week at preschool. His superhero of choice? Super Why! I know it’s only a matter of time before he’s exposed to all those other superheroes, but for now we have a new weapon in our PBS indoctrination arsenal: the new Super Why! learn-to-read iPhone app. (On a related note, is anyone else buying an iPhone for their kid’s 4th birthday?)

Lunch Bite of the Week: Reforming school lunch often seems like a daunting battle. Here’s an inspiring story of a DC elementary school that’s succeeded in getting fresh food on the lunch trays … including a fresh salad bar where they “literally run out of most things we put out, especially the uncooked cauliflower, broccoli and leaf spinach.” Yeah!

Blog of the Week: Speaking of school lunch, my friend Michelle at What’s Cooking has started a task force to look at her local school district’s lunch program. Michelle also teaches children to cook and to help others through food. Add What’s Cooking to your blog reader right now, if you haven’t already.

As I mentioned Friday, I planned to make Jewish cookies known as hamantaschen over the weekend. Hamantaschen are triangle-shaped cookies traditionally filled with thick poppyseed or prune spread, or other fruit preserves. They are traditionally made during Purim — a Jewish holiday festival similar to Mardi Gras — but can be found year-round in Jewish bakeries if you’re fortunate enough to have one nearby. We are not, so the past couple years I’ve simply picked up hamantaschen from Whole Foods, which were fine but nothing to get excited about.

Fortunately, Ruth of Once Upon A Feast came to my rescue with not one but two hamantaschen recipes; I went with Marcy Goldman’s recipe. With all due respect to Marcy’s Bubbie, I swapped butter for the oil (I prefer not to bake with oil), and omitted the orange zest in deference to the husband’s zest-dislike. Next time I’ll try it with the zest for a little more flavor.

The dough was simple and resulted in a soft, sweet cookie. The husband doesn’t like the traditional fillings, so I took advantage of our extensive jam collection and we made an assortment of flavors: strawberry-rhubarb (courtesy of my sister-in-law), apricot, raspberry (both from local farms), and some Ficoco — a fantastic fig and chocolate spread, think a fruity twist on Nutella.

I’m pretty certain we’ll stick with homemade from now on, these were fun and delicious!

Since only one cookie unfolded into a pancake while baking, I consider myself fully qualified to offer the following expert suggestions:

• Don’t go overboard with the filling, but don’t be too stingy either — the ones my son plopped a larger spoonful of jelly on turned out best. I think the weight of the jam helped keep the center from puffing up as much when they baked. And, they have the perfect jam-to-cookie ratio.
• Don’t be afraid to fold the edges up over most of the jam — and pinch tightly. The ones folded up more tightly also held their shape better while baking.
• I brushed the outside of the cookies with egg wash — in reading other posts, it seems this may help them stay together while baking.

I have a bad habit of “starring” links in my Twitter feed to share later, and then never getting back to them. (Surely someone out there could create an app that reads those links and sends you back a cliff notes version, right??) So I thought I’d try sharing a few favorite things with you on Fridays, with the caveat that I may not get to it every Friday. But I hope you find it useful and will share anything interesting you’ve come across during the week, too, okay?

• Health Note of the Week: A new study gives hope that some of the negative effects of exposure to BPA (you know, if you used plastic baby bottles pre-2009, or ever eat food or beverages from a can, or use toilet paper, or … ) may be offset by eating leafy greens and soy. Bring on the miso soup!
• Food FAIL of the Week: New York City schools have decided that kids can buy pre-approved packaged snacks like Doritos and Pop Tarts at school bake sales, but not homemade treats with all those frightening real sugars and non-trans-fats. It would almost be funny if it wasn’t just so flat-out maddening.  Speaking of bake sales, remember to save the date for the National Food Blogger Bake Sale on Saturday, April 17 — coming to a city near you!
  
• Lunch Bite of the Week: Moms are getting fired up for Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative, and particularly for getting healthier food into school lunches. Here’s a great post from Ilina at Dirt and Noise.
  (Have you emailed your Congressman/woman yet?)
• Recipe of the Week: The Jewish festival of Purim is this weekend, and I promised the husband homemade hamantaschen this year. Anyone got a favorite recipe to share?
• Blog Find of the Week: One of my favorite parenting blogs, Simple Mom, has launched a new food site, Simple Bites. Even better, Simple Bites is edited by one of my favorite foodie mamas, Aimée of Under the High Chair. (Why do I love Aimée? Check out the adorable Pat-the-Bunny cake she made for her younger son’s first birthday.) And there’s the new Simple Organic, too. Love.