Blogging For Books: Tacos--Recipes and Provocations

I'm just going to let this book speak for itself:

"Let's get this out of the way right up front. I'm a white boy from suburban Massachusetts where Old El Paso taco nights were mother's milk. I loved that stuff."

"I was clocking ninety hours a week in the pastry kitchen at Alinea in Chicago. I'd fallen hard for methylcellulose and xanthan gum--staples of the modernist cuisine tool belt--and I regarded Albert Adria's first pastry book, Los Postres de el Bulli, as sacred writ. The early days of Alinea were creatively grueling. And like a Dostoevsky student who offsets all the Slavic gloom with a smutty beach read, I spent my downtime chasing a deliverance from haute cuisine."

"I've had three defining moments as a cook: the first time I got to touch a black truffle; the first time I made a stable foam; and the first time I tasted a freshly made tortilla at La Parrilla. It was elastic and gently blistered. Earthy and supple with the flavor of toasted corn. It tasted ancient. That tortilla got under my skin."

"Journalists called me daily looking for word on the latest gastro-trickery coming out of my corner of the kitchen. Investors called, too. It would have been easy enough to peel off from wd--50 and open my own temple of progressive cooking. But I knew if I piggybacked on the work of my mentors--guys like Wylie, Grant Achatz, and Kent Oringer at Boston's Clio, where I began my career--I'd see it as a personal failure. I wouldn't have made a statement, wouldn't have ruffled any feathers. I needed to do something provocative."

"Jalapeno: The most commonly known chile outside of Mexico, spicy jalapenos are typically about 2 or 3 inches in length and have a bright green grassy flavor. They are named after Xalapa Veracruz, the region of Mexico where they were originally cultivated. When jalapenos are smoke dried, they are also known as chipotles, but they are also delicious raw, roasted, or pickled. Try charring them and stuffing them with cheese, breading them, and then deep frying them. I invented this. I call it a jalapeno popper."

"Just like sushi rice, a tortilla is so much more than its function of delivering food to mouth. It can offer some of the most stirring and intangible flavors in the culinary universe and is the single make-or-break factor that separates a forgettable taco from an epiphany. A tortilla is not a background player. It isn't godddamn Muzak."

"Note that some of these salsas call for use of a molcajete and tejolote, the traditional Mesoamerican basalt stone mortar and pestle. (You've probably seen this used to make tableside guacamole in the United States. Don't even get me started.)

"Nut-and seed-based Salsas and Moles. Here's where shit gets real."

"I'm a New England kid with modernist pastry credentials, so there are fried oysters, crab cakes, and foamy emulsions, too. I don't apologize for continuing to ask questions of an ancient cuisine--or for letting it evolve in my hands."

"I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of posturing as the white knight of Mexico. That I'm trying to save a coarse cuisine from itself with my magic Anglo fairy dust. Or that the food I cook is a rip-off because someone's roommate knows of a place in East Harlem that serves the same stuff for a song."