No pretty taco photos, sorry we were too busy eating!  This week’s potluck theme and inspired by an Eric Ripert photo of grilled achiote flank steak tacos with roasted corn salad, fantastic and no real recipe of his to be found, but with several recipes for an achiote marinade and roasted corn salads to take inspiration from I managed  to have a great summer dinner for a couple of weary travelers.  I think that I just had fun in the kitchen today playing around like a kitchen magician.  I was even impressed with my baked beans and I’m not a big baked bean lover.

Fantastic preseasoned canned beans, 3 kinds, chili-seasoned dark red kidney beans, chili-seasoned white beans a pantry choice honey baked beans, chopped red onion, a sprinkle or two of anyone’s chili seasoning ( McCormick Tex-Mex was handy) chopped jalapeño pepper, chopped garlic, top with bacon and bake at 350º for 45 minutes to 1 hour…pretty darned easy and choose a bean blend that you prefer.

Another appliance that I put to good use today was the Ninja Bullet, not just for smoothies anymore in this house and since I bought the achiote paste some time ago and totally forgot what I was going to use it for, but I managed a great thoroughly blended marinade for flank steak.  Now that I have used achiote paste I plan to keep some in the pantry for any number of dishes in the future.  I’ve seen a ton of recipes for the paste itself, but with specialty items now so readily available there is really no need to make it, or at least for me that is to say.

Having glanced at several marinades, I just tossed some of this and that from several sources for a nice not too spicy hot marinade and marinated the steak for about 8 hours in my seafood sealer marinating canister.  Mike did the grilling 450-500º’s about 4-4 1/2 minutes per side, rest at least 7 minutes while you grill the tortillas then thinly slice the steak at a slight angle across the grain.  Serve with sides of baked beans, roasted corn salad and Giada’s spicy sliced and dressed melon.