Table Of ContentTAA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:AATTTA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATATA:ATA:ATA:
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W
T A C O S
i
l
s COOKING $16.95 U.S.
o
n
Scott Wilson grew up eating hard shell Th e Recipes Are Simple
ground beef tacos with orange cheese ¡MUY DELICIOSO! Th e Variations Are Many
and iceberg lettuce . . . until the taco
Th e Results, DELICIOUS
trucks arrived in his hometown of Red-
wood City, CA. When he’s not think- ,
Take a corn or fl our tortilla. Add your
ing about tacos, he’s writing, gardening,
AATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:ATA:AT choice of rice, beans, shredded cheese,
cooking, making beer, teaching classes
pickled jalapeños, onions, you name it.
on herbal brewing and food preserva- :
T Now it’s time for the main fi lling—beef,
tion, and spending time with his wife and
pork, fi sh, or sautéed veggies are just a
two kids on their homestead in Oregon. t Scott Wilson
few options. Pour on salsa, maybe some
guacamole or sour cream, then fold it
a
up. In your hands, you have a taco—easy
Lara Ferroni is a Seattle-based photog-
c to prepare, made to your specifi cations,
rapher who has contributed images to
and oh-so-yummy.
Epicurious.com, Gourmet.com, Seattle o
Th is book shows how to make the best
magazine, and Portland Monthly, among
s tacos you’ll ever eat. Try out such varia-
others. She also blogs about food on
tions as Beef Meatball Taco in Guajillo
Cook & Eat (www.cookandeat.com) and
about food photography and styling on T Sauce, Chorizo and Cactus Taco Dorado,
and Garlic–Wild Mushroom Taco with
Still Life With (www.stilllifewith.com). :
A
Creamed Corn and Morita Salsa. Th ere’s
even a Spicy Hot Fudge Taco recipe for
Photographs by Lara Ferroni
, , , , dessert.
Book design by Rosebud Eustace
Printed in China Also included:
,
T Recipes for salsas, side dishes, and
6
aguas frescas.
T Advice on how to create your own
tortillas.
U U
T Tips for throwing your own taco party.
$16.95 U.S.
ISBN-10: 1-57061-612-4 T Resources for fi nding specialized
www.sasquatchbooks.com www.sasquatchbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-57061-612-9
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t a c o s
authentic, festive & flavorful
Scott Wilson
2
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Copyright © 2009 by Scott Wilson
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form, or by any
electronic, mechanical, or other means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Printed in China
Published by Sasquatch Books
Distributed by PGW/Perseus
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover photographs: Lara Ferroni
Cover design: Rosebud Eustace
Interior design and composition: Rosebud Eustace
Interior photographs: Lara Ferroni
Textured patterns: Billy Alexander / www.sxc.hu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilson, Scott, 1965–
Tacos : authentic, festive & flavorful / Scott Wilson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN-13: 978-1-57061-612-9
ISBN-10: 1-57061-612-4
1. Tacos. 2. Salsas (Cookery) 3. Cookery, American--Southwestern style. I. Title.
TX836.W45 2009
641.8’4--dc22
2009016940
Sasquatch Books
119 South Main Street, Suite 400
Seattle, WA 98104
(206) 467-4300
www.sasquatchbooks.com
[email protected]
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contents
Introduction v
salsas and
sIdes 1
tacos 29
drInks and
desserts 83
References and Resources 96
Index 98
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IntroductIon
The twenty-first century is destined to be the “Century of the Taco.” The 1900s
were most definitely the Pizza Century, as that delicious invention that began
modestly in Italy ended up being available in every town from Tierra del Fuego
to the Arctic Circle. I don’t believe that pizza is going away, or that it will be
knocked from its mighty throne by the up-and-coming taco. No, there’s room
in this world for more than one superstar finger food.
Consider the rapidly growing Latino food and beverage market in the United
States, with expected sales in 2011 of $8.4 billion, a 47 percent increase from
2006, as reported on American Public Media’s Marketplace Web site. Consider
that, according to the Tortilla Industry Association, as of 2002, tortillas were
the second-most-popular bread product in the United States, with 32 percent
of the market, trailing white bread by only 2 percent. It also estimates that
Americans ate eighty-five billion tortillas in 2000!
wanted: authentic tacos!
Increasingly, travelers to Mexico and other Latin American destinations
are wrapping a culinary cloak around their trips. The expanding sophistica-
tion of globe-trotters’ palates means that they seek to immerse themselves in
the gastronomic heritage of their host countries, not only observing authen-
tic foodways, but egnaging in the food preparation as well. When they return
home, they seek to re-create these dishes. Observe magazines such as Gour-
met, Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Saveur, and others to notice that their recipes
increasingly call for ingredients that were mostly unknown a short time ago.
Huitlacoche, anyone?
Fueling this trend are moves by top cooking schools in the United States
to focus on Latin American cuisine. The Culinary Institute of America (CIA)
is building a new facility on its Hyde Park, New York, campus featuring a tra-
ditional Mexican kitchen and a Yucatán-style underground oven for making
cochinita pibil (pit-roasted pork) and other authentic dishes. Also, in conjunc-
tion with billionaire philanthropist Christopher Goldsbury, the CIA is opening
the Center for Foods of the Americas in San Antonio, Texas. As newly trained
chefs emerge from programs such as these, we can expect to see even more
authentic, delicious, and innovative creations on menus across the country.
v
And believe me, these creations will be filling tacos as fast as we can eat them.
Already, chefs across the country and beyond are serving up tacos that give a
nod to the true essence of the dish: fresh, local ingredients prepared on the
spot and served right away, devoured immediately in all their juicy goodness.
The taco is the heart and soul of Mexico; it is the root manifestation of the
mother food. Not bad for a food that’s classified as an antojito, or little whim,
in Mexican cuisine.
the global rise of the taco
Yet the rise of the taco into the global consciousness is quite recent. The first
comprehensive Mexican cookbook, Mariano Galván Rivera’s Diccionario de
cocina, published in 1845, ran over a thousand pages but didn’t include tacos.
Though the histories of Mexico and the western United States are intertwined,
the Anglo population of the United States didn’t become interested in eating
Mexican foods until the early twentieth century. By the late nineteenth cen-
tury, American cookbooks began publishing recipes for “Mexican” dishes such
as tamale pie and enchiladas, but it wasn’t until 1914 that the first taco recipe
appeared in print. By the 1930s, specific taco recipes began to appear, such as
Tacos de San Luis in Blanche and Edna McNeill’s First Foods of America.
Tacos really began to sear themselves into the consciousness of Americans
in the 1940s with the advent of the Bracero Program, under which more than
over four million Mexican farm workers came to the United States to work,
mainly in agricultural jobs.
Tacos entered the world of American fast food with the opening of taco
stands in Southern California in the 1950s, such as Taco Tiq, El Tacos, and Taco
Bell. But it was Juvencio Maldonado who, in 1950, patented the form for deep-
frying tortillas into U-shaped shells, and the hard-shell taco was born.
In this book you will find recipes that range from authentic to eclectic.
Having spent a large part of my taco life in my hometown of Redwood City,
in the San Francisco area, I’ve been to countless taquerías and taco trucks. In
fact, I invented the “Taco Triple Crown” over twenty years ago in order to jus-
tify eating tacos for every meal, raising the bar on the extreme taco crawl con-
cept. My patrón is San Vicente, “El Taquero Celestial.” So I don’t take messing
around with tacos lightly. Herein, you will find are recipes that seek to honor
vi Introduction
the ingredients by using cooking and preparation methods that coax out the
best they have to offer.
Most of the recipes are fairly simple. A couple of them involve several steps
but are not complicated. Nearly all of the ingredients are widely available in the
United States, especially if you have access to a Mexican or Latin American
market. And I’ve offered substitutes for ingredients that may be hard to find.
Be assured, though, that you can make most of the recipes with ingredients
purchased at a well-stocked supermarket. If you live far from town and/or a
Mexican or Latin American market, you may want to check out the mail-order
sources at the end of the book for ingredients.
There are, in my estimation, three critical elements in a successful taco
session. The first is serving the tacos hot, hot, hot, especially when grilling.
Most of the meat is cut thin in order to facilitate fast cooking and retention of
juices. The meat heats up fast and cools down fast, too, so make sure the hun-
gry mouths of friends and family are nearby. This is easy to do if you, as grill
master, keep the cooler of beer and aguas frescas nearby. It’s even easier once
your guests smell the marinated meats and onions as they hit the grill. As an
added bonus, use fresh seasonal and local ingredients when possible. The fla-
vor and quality are generally superb, and it makes sense to support your local
businesses.
The second element is a basket of hot soft tortillas, be they corn or flour. To
this end, it is best to have a tortilla master who is in tune with the grill mas-
ter and can heat the tortillas just before the fillings are ready. If you’re serving
buffet style, you can heat a whole bunch of tortillas and nestle them inside a
kitchen towel inside a tortilla warmer. If you’re serving á la carte, taco truck
style, then have your tortilla person start heating tortillas a couple of minutes
before the grilled food is ready.
The third element is family, and that includes good friends. After all, the
culture from which tacos emerged is deeply oriented toward family. Over the
years, I’ve found that I only really need a few things in life: good food, good
family, and good friends. I believe, by the grace of God, that I have all three. I
extend to you, dear reader, what I hope you find to be a gift of good tacos to
add to your repertoire.
Introduction vii
a short history of tortillas
Before the tortilla there was nothing. After the tortilla there was the taco.
The most profound truths are often based on simplicity. So it is with the
tortilla, made from nothing more than corn, mineral lime, and water. From
these ingredients, ancient farmers of Mexico and Central America created a
flatbread that over five thousand years later is sweeping the globe. Fillings for
tacos number in the hundreds, yet the tortilla remains the same. Some factories
do add chemicals to their tortillas, and flour tortillas joined corn tortillas after
the Spanish Conquest, but by and large the tortilla of today is the tortilla of
3400 BC.
Before corn there was teosinte (Zea mexicana), which is widely believed by
scientists to be the plant that Mesoamericans developed over thousands of years
into what we know as corn (Zea mays). Unlike other grains, including teosinte,
corn cannot distribute its mature seed, which is bound securely inside the husk.
It needs human intervention for dispersal. The oldest corn specimens yet found,
in the Guilá Naquitz cave in Oaxaca, Mexico, are 5,400 years old!
Not surprisingly, corn figures prominently in the creation stories of Meso-
american peoples. Within the Mayan cosmology, Yum Kaax is the deity respon-
sible for agriculture in general and corn specifically. He is always depicted
holding ears of corn and wearing a corn headdress.
In Popol Vuh: The Sacred Book of the Maya, the translation of the Mayan
creation story, the emergence of humanity is intricately linked with the discov-
ery of corn. It describes the fifth creation of earth as when humanity appeared:
This, then, is the beginning [literally, “planting” in the Quiché
language] of the conception of humanity, when that which would
become the flesh of mankind was sought. Then spoke they who are
called She Who Has Borne Children and He Who Has Begotten
Sons, The Framer and the Shaper, Sovereign and Quetzal Serpent.
“The dawn approaches, and our work is not successfully completed.
A provider and a sustainer have yet to appear—a child of light, a son
of light. Humanity has yet to appear to populate the face of the
earth,” they said.
Thus they gathered together and joined their thoughts in the
darkness, in the night. They searched and they sifted. Here they
viii Introduction
thought and they pondered. Their thoughts came forth bright and
clear. They discovered and established that which would become the
flesh of humanity.
The story goes on to tell how four animals—fox, coyote, parakeet, and
raven—revealed to the humans the yellow and white ears of maize, or corn, and
pointed them in the direction of Paxil, “an excellent mountain filled with the
maize that would eventually be used to form the flesh of humanity.”
We know from the Franciscan priest Bernardino de Sahagún that corn was
still very important during the time of the Spanish Conquest. The most famous
of his works is General History of the Things of New Spain. In it he writes, “Their
sustenance and food was maize, which they sowed in the varieties of white and
other colors; and they used it as currency.”
The Aztec word for tortilla in their Nahuatl language is tlaxcalli. It’s hard
to imagine that the Aztecs didn’t roll up some of their favorite foods in a tlax-
calli and munch on it. Just like today, there was no shortage of fillings in the
pre-Hispanic era, with myriad ingredients available, such as corn fungus, called
huitlacoche, numerous greens, beans, potatoes, chiles, cactus pads, insects and
worms, wild mushrooms, fish, crustaceans, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
During the millennia before the Spanish arrived, corn passed from hand to
hand southward and northward, throughout North and Central America. It is
estimated to have been cultivated in what is now the United States for over
three thousand years. By the time Europeans arrived in North America, most
tribes grew corn. But interestingly, they didn’t make tortillas.
One of the great food contributions the Spanish brought to America was
wheat, a grain that grew well in the regions north of Mexico City. With the culti-
vation of wheat came flour tortillas. The first known written reference that men-
tions flour tortillas , dated January 15, 1734, comes from the northern Mexican
state of Coahuila. The cultivation of wheat, however, began in 1542. Dr. Sergio
Antonio Corona Páez, professor of history at the Universidad Iberoamericana
Santa Fe in Mexico City, believes that the manufacture of flour tortillas began in
1591 in Santiago de Saltillo. That year, a new system of irrigation canals allowed
for significant production of wheat. With a population of Hispanicized Tlax-
caltecas (southern groups that normally ate corn tortillas) in that town, they
began to make flour tortillas. Since that time, flour tortillas have become well
established and are now generally preferred in northern Mexico.
Introduction ix
