Taco Goodness!

Tonight I made a delicious, yet very simple dinner in my soup bowls! I found the recipe on www.allrecipes.com and it's entitled: "Taco Ramekins" I put a little bit of my own spin on it, but I really didn't change much. Here's the original recipe:

Taco Ramekins

Prep Time: 15 Minutes Cook Time: 20 Minutes Ready In: 35 Minutes Servings: 2

INGREDIENTS:

1/4 pound ground beef 1/4 teaspoon chili powder 1/8 teaspoon salt 1/8 teaspoon pepper 3/4 cup biscuit baking mix 3 tablespoons cold water

1 medium tomato, sliced 1/4 cup chopped green pepper 2 tablespoons sour cream 2 tablespoons mayonnaise 2 tablespoons shredded Cheddar cheese 1 tablespoon chopped onion

DIRECTIONS:

1. In a skillet, cook beef over medium heat until no longer pink; drain. Stir in the chili powder, salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and set aside.

2. Combine biscuit mix and water to form a soft dough. Press onto the bottom and up the sides of two 10-oz. ramekins or custard cups coated with nonstick cooking spray. Fill with meat mixture; top with tomato and green pepper. Combine the sour cream, mayonnaise, cheese and onion; spread evenly over top. Bake, uncovered, at 375 degrees F for 20-25 minutes or until heated through.

Here's what I did:

First change - I used ground turkey instead of beef because a) I had some in my freezer, and b) I like to use it in the place of ground beef sometimes....only for certain dishes though, and I knew this would be one where it would work. I browned it in some olive oil, then added the chili powder, and s&p. I set that aside.

Next - I put together the biscuit mix for the bottoms of the soup bowls. It was really simpy - just bisquick & water!

I then pressed the dough in to the bottoms of my olive oil sprayed bowls.

Next - time to add the meat. I noticed it looked a bit dry so I added a few tbsp of spicy taco sauce, and I'm glad I did...it really added to the 'taco' flavor!

Now I added the chopped green pepper...oh and I chopped up 2 fresh jalapenos also. We usually keep the seeds in when we cook with jalapenos, but this time I played it safe and only left the seeds in one of them.

Then a added a nice fat juicy tomato slice (I sprinkled some chopped onion on top too, after I snapped the picture)!

Next - the topping. Sorry for my lack of pictures - I was a bit lazy tonight. The sauce was two good spoonfuls of mayonaise and sour cream both....plus some chopped onion and a good 1/2 C shredded mexican cheese blend. I definitely made more of the sauce then the recipe called for - but it's okay, it was light mayo, sour cream, AND cheese! :-)

Then I sprinkled some extra cheese on the top, and ground some salt & pepper lastly.

I baked it in the 375 degree oven for 25 minutes, let it cool for 10, and then...YUM!

I decided to serve it with a sliced avocado (sprinkled with lime juice and s & p) because I absolutely LOVE avocado...and I figured it was the perfect time to have it! Also - I served it with some tortilla chips (just in case), some tobasco sauce, and some extra sour cream (for my husband - the sour cream adict).

It came out really good! It was the perfect level of spicy-ness...and nice and creamy and tasty! The only thing I'll change next time is the biscuit. It really didn't 'go' with the rest of the dish. I have decided that the next time I'll crush up some tortilla chips and use that as a base (and maybe add a layer under the cheese sauce). Besides that - it was fantastic! :-)