Soft tacos = win

[alias_sqbr]

seaya suggested I try soft tortilla tacos, and I just made them and they were tasty. They were even bordering on authentic (for me) if you ignore the lack of chili and cheese :)

I found this site with lots of promising looking recipes but ended up making the traditional "mince +cumin" sort (plus green capsicum, coriander, onion, oregano, and cornflour) with lettuce, tomato, avacado, and left over Doritos mild salsa. (Which I really shouldn't eat since it sets off my reflux, but it was there) I've yet to try the "boil the ingredients without browning" cooking technique though, it goes too much against the grain.

The trick with soft corn tortillas I've found is to never eat them cold and fresh. Either eat them warmed up, or toasted/fried etc to crispiness.

Now I'm all inspired to try other foods from countries-in-the-americas-south-of-the-US, including making my own tortillas (they're expensive!). I think I need to track down some masa flour. A brief google implies it's not really available in australia :(

Comments

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

We had the good luck to do a cooking workshop in Leon, Nicaragua, earlier this year, and see the amazing "community tortilla" system in the poor communities there. They have a practice of taking all of the community's corn, drying it, and then the whole place has one massive corn-grinder which is kept in a little house by itself, under watch. From the grinder, the cornflour passes on to a cadre of older women whose only occupation is to make tortillas for everyone. Sometimes they work making tortillas (by hand, mind) for up to fourteen hours in one day.

[alias_sqbr]

Wow.

I'm assuming the cooking workshop didn't have instructions like "go to your village's grindstone..." :)

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

No, we just toured the "grind-house", visited the tortilla ladies and had a chat to them, made 10 or so tortillas by hand, and then made ... this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indio_Viejo), which is really, really nice and AFAIK unheard of in Australia.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Here's a proper-ish recipe (http://www.nicatour.net/en/nicaraguan_cuisine/indio_viejo.htm) for it actually, although the one we made used these fruit called naranjas agrias ("sour" oranges) which are sort of halfway between an orange and a lemon, and only seem to exist in Centroamerica.

[alias_sqbr]

Maybe you could just combine an orange and a lemon :)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Cheese is not authentic for standard Mexican tacos. Obviously it's not prohibited or anything like that, but it's not typical.

Cheese on tacos is American.

[alias_sqbr]

Awesome, so I can be all food-snob about it :D

tangent:
Getting into this sort of cuisine has got me thinking about "authenticity" and appropriation with regards to food. Most other cuisines I've gotten into it's been a more fluid/unconscious acquisition of stuff going on around me (ie I grow up in an area with lots of italians, I eat italian food, I hang out with singaporean friends, I eat singaporean food, etc) while there's very little mexican/south american presence here so it feel a lot more artificial. Not to say it's any worse, but it got me thinking (in a no-conclusions-likely-for-a-while kind of way)

[seaya.livejournal.com]

Cheese *is* genuinely Cal-Mex/Tex-Mex. Things hybridize all the time. Food isn't sacred really, so I don't think appropriation is really the word for it, as long as you know where it came from.

Also, you have to go with the ingredients you have there. That's what immigrants do when they move to a new place as well. That's how things evolve.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh yes, and (as you could tell if you were psychic) that was kind of my point: I'm not sure it's any more respectful to copy a recipe exactly than to be inspired and make something random, or to make an "authentic" hybridisation (as with me making Tex-mex food)

I read an interesting article about cultural appropriation of food ages ago, I think it can be an issue but it's not very clear cut. Certainly I think it's bad to claim to be authentically X when you're not, but beyond that..I dunno :)

[fred-mouse.livejournal.com]

I have seen masa flour somewhere in perth in the last couple of years, but can't think where. I would start by looking either at the Re store, or at Koukoulous (sp?)

If neither of these work for you, I'll poke around in the back of the memory and see what else comes out

[alias_sqbr]

Oh hey, the ReStore, that never occurred to me. I don't remember it from my last Kakoulis visit but I wasn't looking for it particularly.