Taco Loco

September 5, 2016
Having explored Texas barbecue and Tex-Mex cuisine in previous books, food writer Cramby is firmly south of the border in this collection featuring Mexican street food recipes adapted for the home kitchen. Tacos—with crispy pork, beef tongue, fish, and cabbage fillings, to name a few—are the book’s centerpiece but represent only part of the equation. In addition to traditional salsa, there are also chopped cucumber and chopped pineapple varieties. Among the many sweets are calaveras azúcar (sugar skulls), vividly photographed here by Calle Stoltz, though they require a type of plastic mold that cooks outside of Mexico probably can’t easily find. Cramby sets readers straight about quesadillas, exposing them as “a kind of Latin American croque-monsieur that’s mostly served to tourists,” and goes on to explain that the most common Mexican sandwich actually involves chicken schnitzel, along with cheese and vegetables, in what is known as a torta Milanesa. To wash it all down there are aguas frescas and classic margaritas as well as a recipe for home-brewed pineapple beer known as tepache, with which Cramby offers this sage advice: “If it smells like sausages or vinegar, something has gone wrong.”