Poultry Archive

Tuesday, August 1, 2006

chicken tacos and salsa fresca

taco night!

I had my first taco when I was about seven, at the home of a down-the-street neighbor who used to watch me after school until my parents got home from work. As she began to arrange fixings for a greatly-anticipated feast they called Taco Night, I baffled the lot by telling them I didn’t know what one was. (I could have baffled them further by explaining the proper way to boil and then eat a whole artichoke thus proving that no I was NOT raised under an epicurean rock but I refrained. I’ve since lost such restraint.).

She assembled one for me with some mess of ground beef and taco seasonings, a pile of shredded cheese, lettuce and tomato in an El Paso shell and then zapping it in the microwave for a minute. I took one bite and it crumbled, dripping orange-ish grease down my shirt and oh, I did not like it AT ALL. Who invented these shells and how come they get to sit on a pile of money while I’m scrubbing taco out from under my fingernails? You cannot bite into a bent shell filled with messy things without it breaking into several pieces, and yet this is supposed to be something you eat while holding it? Not that you have a choice, really, since they won’t stand up on their own. They’re fundamentally flawed and I haven’t had one since, or at least not until a fit of nostalgia and Mark Bittman’s feature in the New York Times Dining Section called The Taco Joint in Your Kitchen, got the better of me Sunday night.

salsa fresca

Continued after the jump »