American

It’s the crunchy contrast of hard shell and moist filling that does it for fans of fried tacos. Throughout the book are traditional and innovative fillings that make perfect partners to crispy fried tortillas. Try the take-out standard updated and refined as Classic Ground Beef with Guajillo Chiles (page 92), the smoky Tex-Mex allure of Barbecued Brisket (page 99), the fusion appeal of Thai Shrimp (page 59), or the unexpected meatiness of Portobello Mushrooms with Chipotle (page 24). These are just a few of the recipes that let you bring home the crunch without a trip to the drive-through. You can purchase ready-to-fill crispy corn taco shells at most grocery stores. As the shells can quickly get stale and go rancid, buy them at a store with a very high turnover and buy just the amount you need for a meal, as they don’t keep well. Of the national brands that I’ve tasted, those made by Taco Bell were the best and most reliable. With not much effort, though, you can make taco shells that are tastier, fresher, and crisper than any you can buy and in just the size you need. And you don’t even have to use tortillas. Wonton skins and egg roll wrappers, available at almost any supermarket, fry up into delicious shells ready for filling.

This is the classic vegetable layer for the familiar ground beef taco. It adds freshness and crunch to the taco and absorbs some of the meat juices, but you can use it with any number of other fillings—up to you. The addition of salsa fresca to bland iceberg lettuce adds vibrant color and flavor.

Perhaps expecting the red-tinged, tasteless, so-called Mexican or Spanish rice you see in most restaurants, guests at Coyote Cafe are pleasantly surprised as soon as they take a forkful of this rice. This is a real trailblazer of a side dish, with plenty of personality. For best results, use a good, fresh, pure chile powder. The rice will keep for 2 to 3 days in the refrigerator.

One herald of fall’s cooler weather in northern New Mexico is the ristra—the strings of ripe, red chiles that hang outside to dry alongside doorways and against brown adobe walls. Once dried, the chiles are stored to use throughout the winter in sauces like this one. This recipe is a classic New Mexican red chile sauce and the perfect stage for a whole range of Southwestern foods or as a base for other, more complex sauces from barbecue sauce to moles to stews.

“Red or green?” means what color chile sauce do you prefer? It’s the usual question posed to anyone ordering a main course in traditional New Mexican restaurants. This is my version of the favorite cooked green chile sauce served with just about everything in New Mexico and other parts of the Southwest. It pairs well with all kinds of dishes, from eggs to roast beef. Make it hot or hotter by the type of chile you use—up to you. I prefer the fall chiles, roasted when they are turning red from green and a little sweeter.

This green rice is the side dish that we have used at the Coyote Cantina for over twenty years. Its bright balance of herbs and chiles works well with almost every dish because it is not the usual “red-chile Mexican rice.” It tastes of pureed vegetables and chiles, but doesn’t overpower some of the milder tacos. And as most tacos contain smoky grilled flavors, this rice provides a fresh accent, rather than duplication of what’s already there.

This recipe highlights the wonderful flavor of the fresh green chiles widely abundant at roadside stands throughout New Mexico during the late summer and all through the fall. Often the chiles are roasted on the spot in hand-turned, butane-fired drums. You can smell the roasting chiles long before you can see them. Just follow your nose to find a vendor, as the air is thick with fiery oils that can clear your head. I look forward to fall in Santa Fe every year mainly because of that nostalgic, pungent and spicy aroma I have come to love.

The green tomatillo has a bright sharp flavor akin to that of green plums or rhubarbs. In the winter months, when it’s sometimes hard to get fresh red tomatoes, I use tomatillos, which are available all year. This sauce makes the ideal cool counterpart to spicy salsas. The unusual addition of ice keeps the cilantro green when pureed with the other ingredients.

These knife-and-fork (not grab-and-go) egg tacos can be found on almost every breakfast menu in New Mexico and the southwestern United States, and throughout Mexico. They’re called huevos divorciados—“divorced eggs”—because the eggs are “separated” by their chile sauces, green spooned on one, red on the other. Chorizo or bacon is a nice addition. Two tortillas and two eggs make one serving.

These smoky, wonderfully juicy tacos mix two great culinary traditions—Mexican and Texas barbecue, both notable for their intense, but subtle seasoning. In the United States, the cooking of the Old West was heavily influenced by the charros (Mexican cowboys) who cooked over open fires that infused meat with a smoky essence that so many of us find addictive. In Texas, the wood both of choice and necessity is mesquite, usually mixed with oak to soften the hard green tones of the mesquite. This recipe is easy to do, but requires some advance planning, as the brisket must sit in its rub overnight, and a little patience during the slow cooking. But the results are some of the best tasting barbecue that you have ever eaten. Buy fresh, not prepackaged, brisket that isn’t overly fatty—the fat should cover no more than one-third of its surface. Or, you can buy the leaner, thinner end, if you prefer. A piquant cabbage slaw makes a good accompaniment.

This is a very rustic, traditional recipe created for its portability. The charros, the nomadic first cowboys of Mexico and the American Southwest, traveled by horseback far from home so their food was limited to simple choices like jerky that stayed fresh on the trail. You’ll find a wide variety of commercially prepared dried beef and buffalo jerky available today, including ones flavored with chiles. Be sure to use an all-natural, preservative-free jerky with consistent color that is fresh and flexible and packaged in an airtight bag. Jerky can be rehydrated directly in boiling water, but most of the flavor will be lost in the water. A tamale steamer or vegetable steamer works well for this process.

This favorite of American households is the usual “starter” taco served at schools, airports, and drive-ins, and undoubtedly what most of us picture when we think of tacos. It’s the familiar fried folded corn tortilla shell layered with shredded iceberg or romaine lettuce, piquant fresh tomato salsa, and a cumin-flavored ground beef filling topped with grated cheese—but this one is so much tastier. As with any taco served in a crispy shell, fill and eat it right away or it will get soggy. Try to buy a high-quality ground beef, preferably pure ground chuck with a 25 to 30 percent fat content. Less expensive hamburger grinds will work fine, but they won’t be as flavorful or juicy.

Mondongo is usually a thick, spicy stew made with beef tripe and lots of locally grown vegetables, probably Spanish in origin. You can find many versions of it throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The one I am most familiar with was prepared by our wonderful Mexican chef Daniel Alvarez, who cooked at the Coyote Cantina for over twenty years. His version used pork butt instead of tripe, lots of green chiles, sometimes posole or corn, and other green vegetables. He made this dish often for the staff meal and sometimes as a special at the Cantina. It always sold out quickly.

Unlike Baja fish tacos, which are deep-fried in batter, those made Maui-style are grilled. In all my travels, whenever I’m near the ocean—whether it’s in Hawaii, Mexico, Alaska, Thailand, or Australia—there has always been a small stand somewhere that serves the local catch in an affordable, portable (usually grilled) form. One of my funniest fish taco experiences occurred in a small town in Alaska where we had stopped for supplies during a sailing trip through Prince William Sound. There in front of us was an old school bus painted in bright, tropical colors now converted to a walk-up kitchen selling, of all things—Maui tacos! We were a long way from Hawaii, but the methods were the same—the local catch (salmon and crab, in this case), simply grilled and served with salsa on fresh tortillas. To reduce the heat of this dish, you can substitute Tabasco for the habanero hot sauce. If necessary, to prevent the pieces of snapper from falling through the grill grate into the fire, use a seafood grilling screen. The pineapple can be grilled ahead, if you prefer, and held at room temperature. Both the pineapple and snapper can also be grilled indoors on a nonstick ridged grill pan. For the pineapple use medium heat, 5 minutes per side; for the fish, very high heat, 3 to 4 minutes per side.

Ground nuts or seeds are the singular ingredient in the sauces known as pipiáns, which are sort of like Southwestern pestos. Peanuts, native to South America, were first used, as were pumpkin seeds, but regionally, cooks would incorporate what was available—in the American Southwest, for instance, it could be pine nuts or pecans, or wild hickory nuts in other parts of the country. The richness of the duck is perfectly complemented by this rich, complex sauce that I created to use New Mexico pecans, a wonderful local crop. It’s very versatile, a great condiment for grilled satay skewers or as a sandwich spread or a party dip. It’s much easier to prepare than it sounds—a whirl in a blender, then a quick turn in a skillet to marry the flavors.

This quick, convenient recipe is a Southwestern take on a popular Southern classic—sweet summer corn and barbecued chicken. Sautéing the chicken to brown the surface deepens both color and flavor and approximates the Mexican technique of cooking on a comal or griddle. To cut down on the preparation time for this recipe, use a good, all-natural rotisserie chicken from the grocery store.

A Southwest twist on the old classic of grilled cheese, this version is spicier and good comfort food. In the Southwest, the Spanish word rajas (slivers) has come to mean slim strips of cooked chile peppers or sweet bell peppers, here lifted with aromatic spices, a buttery cream, and slightly tangy cheese. When spooned into smaller tortillas, this enticingly rich filling makes a great appetizer or hors d’oeuvre taco. For a heartier snack, add chicken or beef. Large or small, with or without meat, they’ll go as fast as you can make them. To reduce the heat level of this dish, leave out the seeds from the jalapeños.

During the summer monsoons in Santa Fe, we forage for wild mushrooms—mostly porcini-like varieties—in the high-altitude forests of the nearby Sangre de Cristo Mountains. We’re always looking for new ways to use our earthy, robust bounty, and this woodsy taco is one of our favorites. Buy wild mushrooms in at least three colors or textures. They’ll add interest to the filling and give you the option of mixing less costly types with the more pricey ones. Avoid shiitakes and enokis, which don’t pair well with wild mushrooms (the enoki are too acrid, and the shiitake too powerful) or lobster mushrooms as they don’t cook at the same rate and remain hard. Aim for a mix that is woodsy, rich, delicate, and very flavorful. Good substitutions for fresh wild mushrooms are a mix of dried wild mushrooms and fresh criminis, or dried porcini and thinly sliced portobellos.

Flour tortillas are a mainstay of Tex-Mex cooking. You can see them rolling hot off the tortilla machines into baskets at many of the Tex-Mex restaurant chains (a show that kids love to watch), perfect for fajitas and juicy meats. One of my favorite ways to enjoy a flour tortilla is possible in Santa Fe only in August and September during the chile harvest. I’ll peel and seed a fire-roasted fresh green chile, roll it, still steaming, in a warm fresh flour tortilla, and eat it up. Such a simple treat, yet so memorable. These tortillas are very easy to make and so much fresher and lighter than any you can buy at the store. I’ve used bleached all-purpose flour for this recipe rather than bread flour. All-purpose flour has less gluten, so the dough is easier to roll out into thin tortillas that stay flat without shrinking back. As an alternative to making the dough from scratch, you can try Quaker Harina Preparada para Tortillas, a mix that contains all the ingredients in dry form that you need to make flour tortillas, including the fat. Just add water to prepare the dough. Some Hispanic markets stock it, or look for an online source.

These tacos are a great way to enjoy the harvest from your late summer garden. The delicate orange-and-yellow flowers of squash plants are a prized treat through out Mexico and the southwestern United States. Squash blossoms are an ideal partner to the green chiles grown in Hatch, New Mexico, widely available in the Southwest during late summer and early fall (see Sources, page 167). If you can’t find New Mexico green chiles, you can use Anaheims, their slightly less robust California counterpart, found in produce markets throughout the country. I like to serve these tacos with a cold, citrusy beverage—margaritas for the adults and limeade for the kids. The tartness of the limes beautifully complements the warm, buttery cheese that oozes out of the taco with each bite.