TACOS - Winter 2023 (Jan-Mar) Dish of the Quarter

Braised beef cheeks and short ribs in guajillo, pasilla, and ancho Chile and garlic with homemade roasted tomatillo and serrano salsa on corn tortillas. Cross posted from the WFD thread. Delicious!

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beef cheeks are totally underrated in the culinary world. beef tongue too.

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Agreed!

Seafood tacos for lunch! Battered cod on one, shrimp on the other, with avocado, roasted red pepper, and crumbled feta.

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So many delicious-looking tacos!!

I make a lot of tacos with corn tortillas. When I have the time, I start with whole corn and make nixtamal using pickling lime. One of those big, red painted iron corn grinders, from Columbia, has had the burrs polished down so the whole kernels can be ground into fresh masa dough. If you’ve ever had this type of tortilla, you know the flavor is more like roasted corn and the tortilla is both softer and sturdier, less brittle than tortillas made from dried masa.

Still, masa harina gets used a lot. A flat cast iron griddle stands in for a comal. There are tricks to getting a tortilla press to work correctly. The one I got made tortillas too thick and somewhat uneven. The device needed some paperboard cutout to fit the bottom, and I use a couple pennies (US), taped to the cardboard to act as spacers. The pennies are just outside the area where the masa gets pressed.

A press saves a lot of time, once you get it adjusted for your needs. I’m pressing tortillas while the prior one is cooking, so it’s an assembly line that proceeds very quickly. Using thicker plastic bags, like freezer bags, works better than thin film to line the top and bottom of the press. I’ll try to get a picture up, showing the press setup, with coins, when I get a chance.

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Tacos de Pescado Ahumado a la Vinagreta
These are adapted from the Tacos de Mariscos a la Vinagreta recipe in the January 2023 COTM, Mexican Everyday. I love this dish! Very simple to put together and can be used with any cooked seafood you have on hand.

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I made some carnitas in the oven following this recipe and made some tacos with them on blue corn tortillas, topped with some avocado tomatillo salsa (recipe)

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Here’s a picture of the spacers I use in the tortilla press. If I were making a stuffed tortilla (such as a gordita), which is thicker and balloons when cooked, the spacers would get removed.

When closed, the top rests on the coins, in this case US pennies. Two layers of shoebox cardboard also helped get the thickness right for regular corn tortillas.

Using this press setup, I can crank out tortillas faster than they cook.

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fish tacos

Still working on my corn tortilla skillz, which are better than my first attempt, but very much not there yet. Fish tacos (the fish was ocean perch, and excellent). Note extremely interested party in background, who snatched a bite when I left the room for a minute. Bastard.

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Screenshot 2023-02-18 at 9.26.13 PM

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:joy_cat:

Keep an eye on your cheese and drink, too.

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Your soft-boiled egg isn’t safe, either.

laszlo

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Hah! Truth be told, he gets a taste of whatever he wants (cheese, milk, chicken), but he has to wait for it to be offered. No getting grabby!

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Chickpeas and mushrooms in the style of chorizo in tacos, with roasted zucchini and more mushrooms! Adapted from Forks Over Knives:

The chickpeas and mushrooms ended up with a hummus like consistency (I probably over processed it). So, it was more like a refried bean taco with chorizo flavors. Stiil, nothing wrong with that!.. Tomatillo salsa and crema to go with. Very satisfying!

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Voting for the March Cookbook of the month is happening now and is extended until Sunday evening. Head over and vote if you are interested in cooking along!

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Chipotle chorizo and potato tacos with cheese, salsa, and crema.

The chipotle chorizo is from the Amá cookbook, which I made a batch of and froze in 1/2lb portions. This is the last of it. Here’s a link to the recipe.

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That looks amazing!

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Thank you!

I made some pibil pork on Sunday using this recipe more or less but in a pressure cooker for about an hour rather than in a slow cooker. I made some tacos with it tonight with pickled onions and various habanero hot sauces, on corn tortillas.

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