tacos

Fried Brussels sprout and bacon tacos with charred tomato salsa

October 15, 2013 by Lesley Tellez

Last week I went to a food fair near Madison Square Park, and I was super excited to try a deep-fried Brussels sprout taco I’d read about online.

The taco, which I gobbled up in about three bites, was fine enough. It had creamy sauce and pureed beans, and some pickled onions.

But it wasn’t what I was envisioning in my head. I’d wanted just plain old fried Brussels sprouts. Maybe their papery insides lightly charred. Some bacon mixed in. And a simple, good salsa on top.

I don’t fault the taco stand for not selling this, by the way. As Roberto Santibañez told the New York Times recently, if you put one item in a tortilla and try to sell it as a taco, no one in New York will buy it.

In my house, though, we are free to taquear whatever we want. Yesterday I fried up the Brussels sprouts and bacon (splattering my yoga shirt in the process — note to self, do not fry bacon in yoga clothes), and while everything cooked, I charred our last CSA tomato on the comal.

I whipped up a quick toasted chile de árbol salsa, then spritzed the hot, crispy Brussels sprouts with lime juice and a few spoonfuls of the red stuff. One bite and it was exactly what I’d been hoping for: sweet, acidic, tangy. Not exactly unfussy, but perfect for me.

Fried Brussels Sprout and bacon tacos, with charred tomato salsa
Makes 6-8 tacos
Serves 4 for a light appetizer, or 2 for dinner with leftovers

Notes: You can make the salsa the day before, to save some time.

For the charred tomato salsa:
1 large, ripe beefsteak tomato (about 1/2 lb.)
5 chile de árbol
1 medium-sized clove garlic, unpeeled
1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, or to taste

For the fried Brussels sprout tacos:
Just under 1/4 lb. thick-sliced bacon (I used about 9 slices); or lardons
1 lb. fresh Brussels sprouts, rinsed and thorughly dried
About 1/4 cup olive oil, plus more as needed
A package of corn tortillas
Lime wedges for serving

1. First, the salsa: Heat a comal or nonstick skillet to medium-low. When hot, place the tomato in the center, and the garlic clove and chile de árbol on the side. (Sides of pan = less direct heat = less chance of burning.) Turn the chiles frequently until they start to release their spicy aroma, about 30 seconds to a minute. Remove chiles from the comal to cool. Meanwhile, turn the tomato and garlic until they’re soft and blackened in spots.

Pluck off and discard the chile stems. Crumble or tear the chiles — with their seeds, if you like it hot — into the blender jar. Peel and roughly chop the garlic clove, and add that, too. Blitz until minced. Quarter the tomato and add to the blender jar with one or two tablespoons of water. (Or none.) Once salsa reaches your desired texture, pour into a bowl with 1/4 teaspoon salt. Let sit while you fry the sprouts.

2. Then, the tacos: Cook the bacon over medium-low heat in a large cast-iron skillet. Alternately, you can use this very cool water method from Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats, which ensures that the bacon cooks evenly.

While the bacon cooks, remove any funny-looking outer leaves from the Brussels sprouts. Cut off the hard end nubs, and slice them neatly in half. Set aside.

Cool the cooked bacon on a plate lined with paper towels.

In the same pan as you fried the bacon — yep, we’re gonna use that grease — add 2 tablespoons of olive oil, and heat over a medium flame. When hot, use tongs to carefully place Brussels sprouts cut-side down, in one layer. They should sizzle. Don’t move them. And don’t leave the kitchen or start washing dishes, because these things cook quickly. Turn them once the edges start to darken, about 3 minutes. Remove from pan once they’re dark-golden on both sides.

Repeat with the rest of the Brussels sprouts, draining each batch on paper towels. (This took me about three batches in a 10-inch cast iron skillet. I really need a larger one. Santa?) Chop the cooled bacon and toss with sprouts.

Warm the tortillas on the stove or the microwave. (I usually start with two per person, for a light meal.) Place tortillas in a cloth or basket to keep warm, and serve Brussels sprouts and bacon immediately, passing lime wedges and salsa.

Instagrammers I love: Mexican Food Porn

October 11, 2013 by Lesley Tellez

Tacos Leo in Los Angeles. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Mexican Food Porn’s photos make me ache for Mexico City.

His images — shared both on Tumblr and his Instagram account — capture Mexican food’s rich colors and layers, and sometimes its chaos. Chilaquiles bask in a messy lagoon of cream; a shrimp taco with a harsh sheen of cheese shines a little too brightly under white lights. (Haven’t we all eaten that shrimp taco, maybe a little too late at night?)

The owner of the account is a 27-year-old Mexico City resident, who spent five years living in California’s Bay Area. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico.

MFP agreed to answer some questions for me via email, but he said he preferred to remain anonymous, as he’s actively pursuing other interests unrelated to photography and food.

Here’s more from him. (Disclaimer: he sometimes uses stronger language than I generally do on this site.)

Q: Why Mexican food and not some other kind of food?

Tacos Guisados in Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Ask any Mexican who leaves the country for any period of time, what do you miss the most? Politics? Traffic? No… people miss their food. The blog was formed in San Francisco, basically because of my nostalgia for Mexican food and culture. During my five years in SF, I noticed that while the Bay Area has some decent Mexican food spots, I was always longing for more authentic stuff.

While exploring, I realized that Mexican food, or any food really, is marked by geography and culture. A taco in L.A. is way different from the ones in S.F. A burrito in SF is way different than in San Diego. The possibilities are endless, and I tried to embrace everything. One of my favorite burritos? Señor Sisig California burrito. A fusion between Filipino and Mexican/Californian, stuffed with French fries. Is it “authentic”? Nope, but who cares? It’s a niche on its own.

Also, Mexicans tend to “Mexicanize” anything in their way, especially food. Go to a Japanese restaurant in Mexico and it’s not uncommon to see bits of jalapeño in your soy sauce. Hot dogs? Wrap them in bacon and top them with grilled onions and serrano peppers. Fettuccine with creamy chipotle… so what is truly Mexican cuisine?

Fettuccine with creamy chipotle sauce. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Finally, more than Mexican food I want to emphasize one of life’s greatest pleasures: sitting down, ordering drinks and enjoying a meal with loved ones. Doesn’t matter if it’s Chinese, high-end Indian or drunk greasy tacos at 4 a.m.

Q: What was the best thing you ate recently?

A barbacoa taco with avocado cream, from Pujol, Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Pujol in Mexico City. I went for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it was simply amazing. The food, the decor, the concepts. It was a great experience. From that entire meal, the barbacoa taco with a tortilla made with poblano peppers and the Mole Madre were fucking unreal. I forgot I was sitting in a fine dining establishment. Enrique Olvera is redefining our cuisine in amazing ways.

Another amazing spot? La Panga del Impostor in Guadalajara, a little informal hip seafood joint run by Chef Antonio de Livier and restaurateur Javier Rodriguez. Everything in the menu is jaw-droppingly good. You happen to be in Guadalajara and have a near-death hangover? Go there.

A scallop, octopus and shrimp tostada from La Panga de Guadalajara. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

A scallop, octopus and shrimp tostada from La Panga del Impostor.

Q: You’re stranded on a desert island and can only take 3 antojitos. What are they?
This is a cruel question. Only 3?

– Guacamole with pork cracklings to scoop
– Tacos de carnitas
– Tortas – Cemitas

It’s interesting, because seafood isn’t considered to be in the antojitos realm, but I think they totally should. And since I am in a deserted island:

-Aguachile
-Coctél Vuelve a la Vida
-Oysters. Oysters and more oysters.

Extra points:
-Mezcal, tequila and ice cold beer. (Better be hydrated.)

Q: Do you cook?
I try to as much as I can. I tend not to measure things, I just throw things around, scoop with my finger to taste. For me cooking has been lately some sort of laboratory-style therapy. Chopping things, letting things simmer, smells… just simply engaging all the senses and testing. It’s pretty relaxing. That said, I don’t think I would last 3 minutes as a line cook, but I can feed a small group of people.

Mexican Food Porn’s homemade tomatillo salsa.

Q: Have you found any Mexican food dishes particularly hard to photograph?
Not really. As of now most of the food pictures I take are with my iPhone. I guess the challenging part is to have a good angle and right lighting. At times it’s hard to just whip out the phone and take pictures. You know, just holding your plate of tacos, or at a restaurant. Moving around the plate and other eaters. I’m getting better dealing with the “what the fuck are you doing?” looks.

Q: Chile de árbol or habanero?
Lately I have been eating a lot of habanero. But how can you say no to chile de árbol?

My favorite food moments of 2012

December 31, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A tlayoyo — a rustic Poblano version of the DF tlacoyo, made with mashed alberjón beans and avocado leaves — was one of my favorite foods of 2012.

I’m grateful for so many things this year.

We saw a little bit more of the world. We had lively conversations with good friends and stared out at gorgeous vistas and sipped excellent wine. (And excellent mezcal.) I got to come back to a city that I love like no place else — fetid air, crushing traffic, raw chicken vendors who hoot at me and all — and I got to learn and share everything I know about Mexican food, a job that I still cannot believe is mine.

My family, thankfully, stayed healthy, and my husband did not complain when I had to work weekends, on vacation, or until 9 p.m. on a weeknight. (Thank you honey, and I promise not to make you visit any more markets if you don’t want to.) I’m also thankful for the vendors who said hi to me when I was walking down the street, and for the stoic tlacoyo lady who prepared her last tlacoyo of the day for me, for free — “Un regalo de navidad,” she said. I’m thankful for the roof over our head and the abundance of food in our lives.

I really don’t know how I ended up with this life, but I am so glad it’s mine.

Here are some of my favorite food moments of the year:

1. The Tamales Course at Fundación Herdez. This four-day course was probably the best cooking class I’ve ever taken in Mexico City. The instructor gave an exhausting overview of tamales from prehispanic times to the present, and we supplemented our knowledge with a trip to the Botanic Garden at UNAM.

Grilled tamales at the Fundación Herdez cooking course in January, 2012

The filling for a grilled tamal: one small mojarra fish, a leaf of purple epazote, tomatillos and xoconostle slices.

2. Judging a small-town tamale fair. We arrived to Tetepango, Hidalgo thinking we’d peruse the tamales and atoles and that would be that. Instead we ended up judging more than 100 homemade tamales and atoles, in flavors like cajeta con whisky and bean maguey-worm. It was a blast.

A “tamalchil” — tamal with chile ancho — at the Tamales & Atoles Fair in Tetepango, Hidalgo.

Ben and I deep in thought. Was the masa too dry? Too dense? These were the questions we grappled with.

3. Making homemade tortillas at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana. This was my second-favorite cooking class of the year. We made tortillas with guajillo chiles, and tortillas embedded with quelites. Mine inflated (ya me puedo casar), and I realized that a huge part of making good tortillas is a hot comal. I’m blaming my non-inflated tortilla failures at home on my stupid electric stove.

Homemade tortillas with quelites and guajillo chiles at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana

4. Visiting the farmers of Xochimilco. I’d heard of De La Chinampa, a group that supplies organic, locally grown produce to restaurants and local residents in Mexico City. In March, I finally had a chance to see the chinampas up close during a trip with Ricardo Rodriguez, the organization’s director. We met a farmer, who explained his farming practices to us; then we floated around the most tranquil part of Xochimilco that I’ve seen.

Cilantro seedings, farmed in the chinampas of Xochimilco

The Xochimilco canals at sunset

5. Touring Queens with Madhur Jaffrey. In April, I was one of the few lucky ones who got to take an Indian food tour of Queens with Madhur Jaffrey, part of an event with the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Ms. Jaffrey was gracious and kind, and she taught us the history and preparation of every food we tried. This ranks in my top food experiences ever.

One of my favorite things was chaat, a cold-spicy-sour-sweet salad that’s eaten as a snack.

6. Puebla’s International Mole Festival. In May I tasted some of the best foods in the state of Puebla — moles, molotes, tlayoyos and more — and listened to Rick Bayless, Marcela Valladolid, Mark Bittman and others share their personal experiences with mole and Mexican food. Completely worth the journey there and back, and I’m already looking forward to the festival again next year.

Spooning chilayo onto a molote. Chilayo is made with sesame seeds, white beans and red jalapeños.

7.The joy of Oaxacan tamales. I thought I had tasted tamales before I went to Oaxaca. Let’s be clear: I had not tasted tamales. These tamales have ruined me on all other tamales, now and into the future. Every time I make tamales, I know they will not be as good as the Oaxacan ones, and that is the cross I have to bear.

A bean tamal with hoja santa in Etla, Oaxaca

8. Burning a tortilla on an outdoor stove, for homemade mole. During the same June trip to Oaxaca, I took a cooking class with Susana Trilling. I volunteered to make the chichilo mole (no one else wanted to do it), which entailed burning a whole tortilla on the clay comal and then adding the ash to the stew. Can I tell you how fun this was?

Burning a tortilla for chichilo mole

The tortilla’s on fire, the tortilla’s on fire!

9. Roast suckling pig in Mealhada, Portugal. When we were in Portugal in July, Crayton insisted (yes, Crayton!) on taking a side trip to Mealhada, also known as roast suckling pig central. We got lost on the way there, so we had to pull over and ask for directions in Crayton’s Brazilian-style Portuguese. Eventually we found Pedro Dos Leitoes, a huge restaurant with skewers of pigs roasting in the front lobby. We gobbled down an entire lechón with the crispest skin, plus potato chips, salad, bread, olives and dry, fizzy white wine.

Lechón (roast suckling pig) at Pedro dos Leitoes in Mealhada, Portugal

10. A long weekend in Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz. So what if the city is feíto? The food is fantastic, and I’d love to go back. I had the best time touring the markets with my friend Janneth and her mom, Martha. We stopped at little restaurants and I helped make homemade tamales de masa colada.

Camarones enchipotlados (shrimp in chipotle sauce) outside Coatzacoalcos, Veracruz

11. A food tour of Tijuana. I’m going to write about this soon — hey, it barely happened in October (wince) — but Crayton and I had the pleasure of taking a food tour with Bill Esparza, a blogger and Mexican food expert who lives in LA. Of the places he showed us, my favorite was Mariscos Ruben. The goopy, creamy taco de marlin still lives on in my dreams.

A taco de marlin from Mariscos Ruben in Tijuana, Mexico

12. My first homemade chile en nogada. In hopes of channeling the 19th-century Poblana nuns who invented this dish, I went to Puebla to buy my ingredients and I peeled walnuts for six hours. When it came time to fry the chiles, curls of smoke wafted out of my kitchen and floated over my guests’ heads. In the end — the chile was spectacular.

I forgot one more thing that I’m thankful for: you reading this blog, and commenting (or not), and generally making The Mija Chronicles a lovely place to be. I wish you a wonderful New Year, and hope you get a few moments of reflection before all the craziness begins.

Un abrazote a todos!

A visit to the tianguis in Col. Santo Domingo

April 17, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A mixiote taco from the tianguis on Coyamel street in the Col. Santo Domingo.

My friend Mojdeh does cultural tours in Mexico City, and for more than a year we’ve been planning for me to go visit her neighborhood south of town. She lives in the Colonia Santo Domingo near Metro Copilco, almost to the UNAM.

There are several tianguis (the Nahuatl word meaning outdoor neighborhood market) in Santo Domingo. The one near her house is on Coyamel street on Wednesdays.

She told me I was going to love it, and she was right. The Coyamel tianguis was larger than the two markets near my house, full of people eating and saying hi to each other and pushing shopping trolleys. Smoke billowed from a taco stand offering fresh cecina cooked on a wood-fired grill. Mojdeh and I waited 30 minutes, along with 15 other people, just for tortillas — one woman sold blue and white versions, plus sopes, tlacoyos and gorditas out of big boxes lined with dish towels. Her steamy, delicate blancas were worth the wait.

We ate and wandered, and ate some more. I bought some gorgeous tomatillos that the vendor told me were from Ixtlahuaca, past Toluca. I bought fresh requesón and homemade pan de pulque, and a white zapote, which tastes kind of like sweet avocado. And I spotted a quelite I’d never seen before — trébol de carretilla (medicago polymorpha).

A few photos:

Tomatillos from Ixlahuaca, in the State of Mexico

Spotted this unusual cinnamon bark. The vendor said he grows it in Tuxtla, Veracruz. It smelled much more intense than the usual Mexican cinnamon.

The cinnamon vendor

A big pile of trébol de carretilla

Serving tacos de mixiote from a gigantic steam pot.

A vendor makes cecina tacos, known as tasajo in Oaxaca, from a wood-fired grill.

A taco with grilled cecina and longaniza. This tasted even better with a few spoonfuls of crema on top.

Here’s a map to the location, in case you want to visit yourself someday (click to open in Google maps):

Tacos al pastor in Mexico City

February 9, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

I snapped this a few months ago at Plaza Meave on Eje Central, in the Centro Histórico. They’ve got the biggest spit (trompo in Spanish) that I’ve seen in the city. It’s always crowded, and fun to just sit and watch — the taquero works like a madman, slicing meat with one hand and catching it in a tortilla.

The tacos are decent. I’ve only had them at mid-day, when the meat isn’t quite caramelized enough. If you want to go, it’s located on Eje Central, north of Mesones.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce

October 21, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

We like to buy trout from the organic tianguis that comes to the Roma every two weeks. A vendor sells it whole and in filets. The trout isn’t available all the time, so when we buy it, it’s a treat.

In the past, I’ve poached the fish and served it with a salsa verde (one day I’m going to post all these recipes for you, I swear). But lately I’ve been bored with poaching. I said to Crayton, who is slowly coming around to eating seafood, what would you like to do with this fish? Usually when I ask him what he wants to eat, he says meatloaf. This time he said, Why not fish tacos?

The idea zapped me, because I’ve never actually made fish tacos before. Salad tacos, peanut butter tacos, roasted carrot and banh mi tacos, yes. Fish tacos no.

The dream fish taco… and the reality

My favorite kind of fish taco is deep-fried: nuggets of bland white fish, sheathed in beer batter, puffed up in hot oil and served with shredded cabbage and a spicy cream sauce. The cream sauce is kinda half tartar sauce, half salsa.

For our meal at home, I wanted to make something healthier while keeping the idea of that sauce intact. The fish, because I would not be marinating it, needed a little zing.

So I pan-fried my trout filets. I made a sauce using the Oaxacan chile pasilla (I am obsessed), garlic, yogurt and mayonnaise. The result, thrown together in 30 minutes, was exactly what I wanted it to be: a simple taco that felt hefty because of the cabbage, and that wowed you with its smoky-creaminess. My friend Liz came over for dinner and moaned when she bit into these. “What is the name of this chile?” she demanded.

If you don’t have Oaxacan pasillas, you could substitute morita or chipotle.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce
Serves 4 with a few side dishes

For the sauce (makes about 1/4 cup):
1 Oaxaca chile pasilla, or any other intensely smoky, spicy chile
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

For the fish:
12 ounces trout filets
Vegetable or olive oil (or oil of your choice)
Six to 8 corn tortillas
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
Lime wedges
Shredded cabbage

Directions

It’s a good idea to make the sauce first, so the flavors mix while you’re preparing the rest of the dish. Using kitchen shears or a knife, make an incision in the chile and scrape out the seeds and veins. Don’t use your fingers — it’s better to use a small spoon or a butter knife. Cover chile in hot water and let hydrate until the skin has softened, about five to 10 minutes. While the chile rests, you can slice your cabbage and let it sit in cold water, so it stays fresh.

Once the chile is sufficiently softened, add it to a blender with the garlic and just a little (1 or 2 tablespoons) water. Blend until as smooth as possible. Don’t worry if you see pieces of chile — that’s okay. Scrape or pour mixture into a small bowl, and whisk in mayonnaise and yogurt. Taste for salt and add if necessary. Store sauce in fridge until ready to use.

Wash and pat dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper. To cook, drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet and heat to medium. Add the fish when the pan is hot. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

To serve tacos, take a fork and shred a little bit of fish into a warm corn tortilla. Top with a spritz of lime juice, a spoonful of salsa and the cabbage.

Mexico City Street Food

July 11, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

I’m helping out my friend Penny de los Santos with her photography workshop this weekend. I’ve been leading folks around, taking them to markets and street food stands, and encouraging them to try pulque and mezcal.

In return they’ve encouraged me to take out my camera from its lonely hiding place. It’s not that I haven’t been taking pictures — I have, but in the comfort of my own kitchen and not on the streets.

Here’s just a small set of what I shot, of Mexico City street food. (I’m ignoring the little voice that’s telling me that several of these could’ve been better.) I’ll have more over the coming days, and a little more about what I learned while hanging out with Penny.

Baked, sugar-dusted sweet potato with condensed milk

Palomitas, chicharrones and more for sale on the sidewalk

A carnitas taco

Roasted elote, served with cheese, chile powder and lime juice

Sprinkling salt -- or is it cheese? -- on the roasted corn

Papas, or potato chips, with Valentina sauce

Late night tacos al pastor... more to come on this stand later.

Where to eat in Mexico City: Con Sabor a Tixtla

April 5, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

Con Sabor a Tixtla, a fonda in the Col. Roma. Photo by Martin de la Torre.

I stumbled on Con Sabor a Tixtla by chance.

I’d been wandering around the Roma neighborhood, looking for a few new places to add to Eat Mexico’s Taco Tour, when I saw a chalkboard menu propped up on the sidewalk. Colorful tables and umbrellas had been spread out in a neat row, and baskets of paper flowers dangled underneath the awning.

The cheeriness of it all made me stop. And so did the menu. This place offered “tacos guerrerenses.” What were those?

As soon as I sat down, the waiter dropped off a little bowl of toasted pumpkin seeds. They didn’t taste like any pumpkin seeds I’d had before. Sheathed in their papery armor, they were crunchy and warm and tasted like the sun.

Then came a little bowl of beans, another botanita provided by the house. And then, on the waiter’s recommendation, I ordered a mole verde taco.

Like the pumpkin seeds, this mole was unique — herbal, assertive, not subtle as green moles normally are. (Marilau would call these pipianes.) The waiter explained that the mole contained a mix of hoja santa, avocado leaf, pumpkin seeds and something called hoja de mole. Most of the ingredients were brought directly from Tixtla, a small town in Guerrero state.

Then this man, whom I’d later find out was Alfredo, one of the owners, volunteered another nugget: his mother cooked all of the food.

At that moment, I felt really, really lucky to be living in Mexico.

I ended up adding Con Sabor a Tixtla to my Taco Tour, and I’ve since gone back several times. It’s right around the corner from my cooking school and Mercado Medellín, so when I’m in the neighborhood, I like to stop and say hi to Alfredo, who runs the place with his brother Juan Patricio. Once I even saw Yuri and Edmundo there — they’re big fans of the place, too.

The food, prepared by Alfredo and Juan Patricio’s mother Enedina Bello, consistently tastes like it’s been cooked with love and care. The menu focuses on typical items from Tixtla, so they’re items you rarely see anywhere else. Besides the herbal mole, there’s fiambre, a mix of marinated meats and crunchy bits of chorizo served with white bread; Tixtla-style tostadas with sweet-and-sour dressing, and pollo enchipotlado, or chicken stewed with tomatoes, raisins and chipotle peppers.

And the salsas — the salsas! The ensaladita de rábano, made from hoja santa stems, lime, onion and radish, waps you over the head with its simplicity. A smoky, creamy salsa de jalapeño con aceite tastes like it contains avocado, but it’s actually just jalapeños fried with onion and garlic, and blended with olive oil. I wanted to gulp it down like milk in a cereal bowl.

Con Sabor a Tixtla recently added a list of platos fuertes to the menu, and they do a special pozole guerrerense once a week. But if you go, you must get the fiambre. The meat is falling-apart tender, and seasoned simply but dazzlingly — the kind of seasoning I wish I could emulate as a home cook. It’s served on a bed of lettuce that’s dressed the same salsa agridulce that comes with the tostadas. The dressing tastes like something you’d get at an Asian restaurant, which makes sense, considering Acapulco (Guerrero state’s biggest city) was Mexico’s major port to Asia and the Philippines for 250 years.

On my last visit to Con Sabor a Tixtla, my friend Martin and I found ourselves sopping up the fiambre sauce with hunks of bread, even though we were stuffed. Here’s the plate before we tore into it.

Here are a few more photos of the place. If you’re in the mood for a visit, it’s located at Manzanillo 45b, in between Coahuila and Campeche. They don’t have a website, but they do have a Facebook page.

UPDATE: Con Sabor a Tixtla has moved! You can find them now at Chiapas 173, near the corner of Medellín. They’re right next door to the pastes shop. The fonda also now has a website.

…

Peanut butter tacos, and other secret tortilla behaviors

November 11, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

The New York Times had an article on spaghetti tacos awhile back. Did you see it? It was about how popular spaghetti tacos have become among kids. The tacos are exactly what they sound like, by the way: spaghetti noodles and tomato sauce, stuffed inside a tortilla.

It got me thinking about all the stuff I used to put in tortillas as a kid. We didn’t always have bread in the house, but we always, always had a package of flour tortillas in the lunch meat drawer. One of my favorite after-school snacks was a hot dog wrapped in a tortilla. Or a slice of bologna in a tortilla. Loved a tortilla with a smear of crunchy peanut butter, or layered with Kraft singles and microwaved until the cheese bubbled out the sides.

These days, my tortilla preference has switched to corn, but I still eat corn tortillas with peanut butter all the time. Sometimes I even add a little jelly. (PB&J in a tortilla! Yes, I’m fully admitting that’s weird.)

I’m curious: What is your favorite odd filling to put in a tortilla? What about when you were a kid?

A Mexico City taquería, in pictures

May 27, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

The first time I saw Taquería Jalisco, it was right after we moved to Cuauhtémoc, and Crayton and I were walking down Rio Lerma at night, checking out our new environs. (Or “rumbos,” as Mexicans say.)

Taquería Jalisco looked charming: it was a tiny fonda-slash-puesto, half indoors, half out, situated next to a parking garage. A few plastic tables and chairs had been set up near the driveway. Four orange stools, accented with chrome, stood in front of a small counter area. A big bunch of greens sprouted from a tin can.

Steam wafted about about the taqueros heads as they moved about, chopping and scooping and slicing. I was across the street, but I could almost smell that greasy meat smell. I wanted that greasy meat smell.

Taquería Jalisco offers several types of tacos, but my favorite is their suadero, a tender, fatty cut that comes from the area underneath the cow’s skin. (The definition from Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Mexican gastronomic dictionary.) When suadero’s cooked, it’s greasy, crisp, meaty. Topped with a spritz of lime juice and a spoonful of red salsa, it’s very hard to eat just two, which is my usual limit with street tacos. Last time I visited Taquería Jalisco, I ate four.

Really, it’s not just about the taste for me, but the way taco-making works in Mexico. The precision of it, the efficiency. The taquero tosses a handful of meat onto the comal, and watches the fat bubble and sizzle. He palms a few barely silver-dollar-sized corn tortillas, scoops up the meat, and tosses it, meat-side up, onto a plastic plate that’s lined with a square of paper. He asks: “Con todo?” and that’s a shortened code for “Do you want cilantro and onions?” The whole transaction — the making of the taco itself, whether you’ve ordered one or four — is done in under 30 seconds. It’s like this everywhere.

My pictorial tribute is below. Oh, and here’s the info on the place, should you ever be in the ‘hood:

Taquería Jalisco
On Rio Lerma, between Rio Sena and Rio Tigris
Col. Cuauhtémoc
They’re open 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
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