Open Flavor Fridays - Tacos! and Authenticity

But one of my all time favorites is chilli. To a Texan, Chilli con Carne is just that. Chillis and beef. Forget everything else and definitely not beans. But in the rest of America, chilli is a dish that can be ammended in many ways. My family’s recipe follows a more Cincinnati version of the dish without all of the ways. Not interested in spaghetti with my chilli. But I do use whole kidney beans or black beans, onions and tomato and my spice mix pushes more toward the warm aromatics. I routinely include allspice, cinnamon, mexican chocolate, vanilla paste, coriander, garlic and grains of paradise along with mild chilli powder. Would make a Texan snob cringe, but man does it taste good. One of the rules in my kitchen is that food shouldn’t hurt. I will include enough heat to tip my hat to the heat, but I am not interested in eating as a measure of my testosterone levels.

I get Taco Del Mar at lunch by my work all the time, and I get a wheat mondo burrito (I know, not a taco) with pork (usually), black beans, cheese, no tomato, hot sauce and sometimes jalapenos. Love it so much.

The other tacos I get are from the taco truck outside of the north end of stadium if I’d rather eat before I go inside. Love those.

Tacos!

I like flank Ticos too!!!

Oh… and mexican pizza is perhaps the best “inauthentic” food ever… from I-5 Pizza of course.

—au

For about 16 years I thought that all fried rice had bacon in it. That made for a very odd experience the first time I tried it dining out

Now I’m going to have to get off my butt and go get a burrito from Rancho Bravo. Do you think I need those calories? No, I do not. Thanks for nothing.

Anyway, one thing I enjoyed in an inauthentic manner was when I was visiting Japan a lot. I’m a fan of jazz and made a habit of trying out different Japanese jazz clubs. Sometimes I’d get lucky and a heavily accented Japanese singer would sing American jazz standards. Utterly charming.

My wife and I like to season lean ground beef for our tacos. We also use flour tortillas. I prefer black beans over refried beans because of the difference in fat content. I always feel tired after eating anything with too much fat. We usually use the Mexican blend of shredded cheese because it has a longer shelf life. I like to top off my tacos with sour cream.

There is a great local taco truck in Tacoma on south 12th street called Los 3 Hermanos. They have 99 cent tacos that are delicious and filling. I usually spend the extra buck on carne asada tacos there.

I’m originally from Texas, so I miss Tex Mex a lot. Of course it isn’t authentic, but there are some dishes that are much better there than here. Tex Mex enchiladas are amazing. They tend to do a better job of chips and salsa and queso down there too. My favorite place to get tortillas is a little hole in the wall place in Bastrop, TX that sells home made flour tortillas for $1.00 per dozen. Those are so good, I’ll eat those with nothing on them. The best Mexican restaurant I’ve ever eaten at is a place called Mamacita’s in Kerrville, TX (my avatar pic was taken in the foyer there). Everything there is good. If you’re ever staying in San Antonio, I highly recommend making the one hour drive out to Kerrville (which is a beautiful town in the hill country)..

i love the morning star fake ground beef crumbles, do that just like my mom used to do the ground beef with all the taco seasonings and onions. i also dig taco bell’s idea of wrapping a flour tortilla around a crunchy shell, homemade double deckers rule.

When she first saw me do it, my wife said it must be a “Spokane” thing (my hometown). Now she’s a regular too, always makes sure we have the mustard out on taco night.

My wife and I love taco night. For us it’s usually more “burrito” than taco, but that’s how we do!

-soft flour tortillas
-lean ground turkey with taco seasoning
-refried OR black beans, depends on what’s in the pantry
-lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese
-sour cream and Tapatio Hot sauce

The great thing about tacos is that they are so versatile. My wife and I eat them on a pretty regular basis, but we make them at home a lot more now than we did when we were in California. It’s been surprisingly difficult to find Mexican food we really like here, but we have found a few places that do a pretty decent job. Here are a few of our favorites:

Best California-style taco truck taco: Taqueria La Fondita in White Center. I won’t pretend to have tried every one in Seattle, but this was the one that most reminded me of what I’d get in California. Be aware that it is in an absolutely horrible part of town, but I thought it was totally worth it.

Best California-style taco truck burrito: El Camion. They have a few around town, one of which stakes out the post game at CenturyLink. Huge burritos. Pretty high quality.

Best Mexican breakfast: Senor Moose in Ballard. It might just be worst named Mexican restaurant I’ve ever been to, but damn is it good. Hands down the best Mexican-style breakfast I’ve eaten in Seattle and maybe the best I’ve ever had at a restaurant anywhere. Never been there for another meal, but I plan to. If you go, try to horchata latte.

Best Mexican food: Carta Oaxaca in Ballard. I find that the line is longer than I’m willing to tolerate and the service can be a bit prickly, but the food is really quite good. If you’re into moles and that kind of thing, it’s hard to imagine anywhere in town doing it better.

How we do tacos at my house: My wife is mexican and I grew up in a town that was heavily Mexican so we tend to eat Mexican-style food quite a bit. We do lots of variations of tacos, but we tend to pan fry some meat that is mixed with onions and various spices. We’ll then stuff them into lightly fried corn tortillas, close the tortillas with a toothpick and throw a tray of them into the oven. Once they are nice and crispy, you remove the toothpick, and stuff them with lettuce, cilantro, onions and salsa. We also like using potatoes as taco filling.

One other thing I’d love to share: If you’re a fan of carne asada tacos, I’ve found one of the easiest and tastiest store-bought cuts to be the “Tri-Tip Asada” from Trader Joe’s. In a dutch oven, what I do is sautee some onions, a 12oz can of tomatoes and a couple canned jalapenos. Drop in the meat and lightly sear it on both sides and then cover it and throw the whole thing in the oven. In about an hour you have a perfectly cooked piece of meat that you can then cut up into taco-sized portions. The best part is the sauce that is made from the veggies and drippings. You won’t regret it.