The end of my quest is near

[Gabi]

I have acquired the most elusive ingredient*! I have the recipes at hand**. Tomorrow... I shall eat... Tacos***!

I'll let you know how that turns out.

*Soft shells, I couldn't find the hard ones.
**For both the filling and the salsa.
***Or the closest thing I can achieve. Some day I may get to try the originals and compare, but I'm not holding my breath.

Thanks to Amber for the recipes, and to everyone else who has offered me advice.

This is the recipe I'm going with:

TACOS

Ingredients

   1-2/3 cups fresh or frozen corn, thawed
   1 small zucchini, finely chopped (still haven't found it; if I can't get it by tomorrow I'm switching to cucumber).
   1 small onion, finely chopped
   1 tablespoon canola oil
   1 can (15 ounces) black beans, rinsed and drained
   1/4 cup salsa
   8 flour tortillas (6 inches), warmed
   1/2 cup sour cream
   1 cup (4 ounces) shredded cheddar cheese

Directions

   In a large skillet, saute the corn, zucchini and onion in oil until tender.
   Stir in beans and salsa. Cook, uncovered, over medium heat for 3-4 minutes or until heated through, stirring occasionally.
   Spoon a heaping 1/3 cupful onto half of each tortilla; top with sour cream and cheese. Fold tortilla over filling. Yield: 4 servings.
------------------
SALSA

Ingredients

   6 tomatoes, chopped
   4 garlic cloves, minced
   2 seeded and minced jalapenos, plus 2 roasted, skinned and chopped jalapenos - 3 Chinese chili peppers, finely chopped. Can't find jalapeños.
   1 red bell pepper, fine dice - What's a bell pepper? I'm going with the nicest red pepper I could find.
   1/2 red onion, fine chopped - I hope purple onion works. Are there really red ones?
   2 dry ancho chiles, seeded, cut into short strips and snipped into pieces - I'm doing without these, I have no idea what an ancho chili is. I just know ancho means wide, but I don't know of any wide chili.
   1 tablespoon oil
   1 lime, juiced
   Chili powder, salt, and pepper, to taste
   Fresh scallions, cilantro or parsley, to taste - Going with parsley, which is the most easily obtainable and tastes good.

Directions

In a bowl, combine all ingredients.

[Brunhidden]

if getting hard or soft shelled tortillas is that difficult, i have a simple recipe for a modified crepe batter which can make what amount to flour tortillas surprisingly well, and if you enjoy the sensation of 'i made this' then there is another ingredient to the whole you get to feel that about. they're also good with some fruit filling and whipped cream as a desert too, multitasking food is always worth having

my experiments with corn tortillas from scratch, did not end well...



also- the purple onion is a 'red' onion, and a 'bell' pepper typically reffers to a large pepper with no heat, the kind commonly stuffed with meat and rice based fillings as a dish although poblanos are having that done too now.

[Lurkie]

Your tacos sound nice, especially with the soft shells.  I've always had trouble with the hard shells shattering and making a big mess of my nummy taco filling.  :-(

   2 seeded and minced jalapenos, plus 2 roasted, skinned and chopped jalapenos - 3 Chinese chili peppers, finely chopped. Can't find jalapeños.

Chinese peppers should work, though the flavor probably won't quite be the same.  You could try canned jalapeños, I suppose.  They wouldn't be as pretty, though since they're going to be part of the salsa, it may not matter.  (I've made my own salsa with canned peppers, and it tasted good.  It just wasn't as pretty as it would have been using fresh peppers.)

   1 red bell pepper, fine dice - What's a bell pepper? I'm going with the nicest red pepper I could find.

Bell peppers are the mildest variety of capsicum pepper.  They're roughly the size of my fist, and quite sweet and mild.  They come in a variety of colors, from green to red, same as any other pepper.  The red ones are the sweetest.  I prefer them raw, or if cooked, just hot through.  They're nice in a stir fry.  (The flesh softens quickly when cooked, but the skin stays tough.  Sort of like a tomato skin, only more so.)

   1/2 red onion, fine chopped - I hope purple onion works. Are there really red ones?

The purple ones are the red ones.  :-)  They're purplish-red, and normally called red onions, though sometimes they're called purple onions.  They're just as good as the normal dry (yellow) onions; only the color has been changed.

   2 dry ancho chiles, seeded, cut into short strips and snipped into pieces - I'm doing without these, I have no idea what an ancho chili is. I just know ancho means wide, but I don't know of any wide chili.

Anchos are dried poblano peppers.  Poblanos are roughly 5 to 8 cm wide and 7 to 15 cm long.  They are generally mildly warm, rather than hot, and are used for flavoring rather than heat.  They have a Scoville rating of 1,000 to 1,500.  (For comparison, jalapeños have Scoville rating from 2,500 to 10,000.)

As for the zucchini, you might try a small yellow summer squash.  They're similar to zucchini, more so than cucumber, certainly.  Oh, and if you can find it, try some Monterey Jack cheese along with, or in place of, the cheddar.  Yummy.  Very, very yummy.

[Darkmoon]

Yeah, avoid cucumbers in this dish. You're better off with a mild squash (like the yellow summer squash, a recommended).

I like Serrano peppers over Jalapenos. Easy to get where I'm at (Indiana), but I dunno the ready supply down south. As a recommendation:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_capsicum_cultivars

That might help you find something that is around the heat Mabby recommends, but also is available in your area.

[Brunhidden]

i still remember back when you asked me to describe what 'taco bell' was, and i can only imagine what the face you made was

im imagining it was this face
http://www.myfacewhen.com/14/

[Damaris]

Next year, we need to make sure to take Gabi for Tex Mex.

[Gabi]

Hehe. OK, I got a zucchini and I think the red pepper I got may be a bell pepper after all. Thanks for the list, Darkmoon! I was unable to find a lime, though, even thoughh it's citrus season. So I'm using lemon instead. Quite different, I know, but I think it should work.

I can't find jalapeños, canned or otherwise, so the Chinese peppers will have to do.

The tacos will be done soon.

Edit: done! I don't really know if these are tacos, but I do know they're good!



I had to pour some water into the mix near the end so that it would finish cooking properly. Oh, and I mixed cream with lemon to make the sour cream. I don't know if that's the standard procedure, but I liked the outcome.

And the cheese wasn't cheddar because I couldn't find it, but it was close enough.

And here's a Photobucket album where I documented the process of taco making, step by step.

Oh, and Damaris, that would be really nice, thanks. (As long as it's not Taco Bell because I've heard much about it and none of it was good).

[Damaris]

That looks delicious

And honestly, I love Taco Bell, in that "this is barely food but it's delicious" kind of way.  I don't think it's necessarily the best for giving you a taste of tacos, though

[Gabi]

Thanks!

I gave some to my mom last night. She'd never tried a taco either, but when she did, her first reaction was to exclaim: "Mmmm! How delicious!" So I must say I'm really happy with the outcome.

And of course, I'm still looking forward to trying the original.

[Lurkie]

Your tacos look nice, Gabi.  As for the substitutions, hey, if it tastes good, go for it!  Who cares if it's Not Traditional?    Enjoy!

[Brunhidden]

you.... could not find cheddar?


i feel like i must take a long shower now because that statement makes me feel dirty, in the future see if queso blanco or queso fresca are on hand instead- im unsure of their labels in other languages, but its somewhat closer to what 'authentic' tacos would include even if it does not have that bite of cheddar. and i keep forgetting that double, five year, and triple sharp cheddars are typically not available outside my state so regular and three year are likely what everyone is the most familiar with...



Send forth the dairy knights of war!

[Darkmoon]

you.... could not find cheddar?


i feel like i must take a long shower now because that statement makes me feel dirty, in the future see if queso blanco or queso fresca are on hand instead- im unsure of their labels in other languages, but its somewhat closer to what 'authentic' tacos would include even if it does not have that bite of cheddar. and i keep forgetting that double, five year, and triple sharp cheddars are typically not available outside my state so regular and three year are likely what everyone is the most familiar with...



Send forth the dairy knights of war!

I prefer a good Irish five-year reserve, myself.

[Gabi]

I have queso blanco (white cheese, which is like cream cheese but with less cream and almost liquid; I didn't know it existed in your country). And "queso fresco" means "fresh cheese". Hard to get literally fresh cheese in the city, but what I used was close enough. I may use real cheddar in thew future, though. I just rushed things to get everything ready, but I'm sure I can find it if I look hard enough. Sometimes they have cheddar at the supermarket. And some nearby cheese shop may have it too.

[justacritic]

Congrats on sampling the cuisine our wonderful world can provide. So what's next on your menu?

[Gabi]

I don't know. I do try new recipes every now and then, but the thing with tacos was that everyone on these forums kept talking about them, so I decided I had to try them and see for myself (it took me months to get the tortillas, so once I found them, I knew the time had come). Right now, there is no other meal in that situation.

But I'm having home-made shui jiao (Chinese dumplings) tomorrow, if that's what you're asking. Another example of the fine cuisine our world has to offer.

[justacritic]

Wait is that the one where you boil the dumplings in water and the skins covering them are white? Also are they meat or vegetable based?

[Gabi]

I'm a vegetarian, so vegetable based. And yes, those are the ones.

[justacritic]

Then be careful. If I remember correctly the recipe calls for chives in the filling and too much chives makes the dumpling bitter.

[Gabi]

There are many different recipes. The ones I make have no chives in them. They have hakusai (nappa cabbage), carrots, texturized soy, 5 spice powder and shitake mushrooms. And salt, of course.

I've tried many other variants (some at restaurants, some bought from Chinese supermarkets). The best ones were served at a specialized restaurant in Xi'an, but I don't know what was in them (something spinach-green, something white and crunchy - garlic? -, something red and mildly hot, and spices I couldn't recognize). The worst ones had spinach and fried eggs inside... don't try that. A close second worst were the ones that had hakusai and nothing else inside. After trying those two, I stopped buying them at supermarkets because there was no telling what they would have inside.

[Lurkie]

Something white and crunchy?  It might have been daikon radish.  They're fairly common in east Asian cooking.  I've stir-fried them, which leaves them on the crunchy side.

Daikon are a root vegetable, that looks sort of like a white carrot on steroids.  The ones I've seen are have been about 5 to 6 cm across at the top, and at least 30 cm long.  In fact, the store I usually shop at chops them up into 15 cm or so hunks.  They do have a bit of a rind, so I always peel them.  Raw, they have a texture like ordinary red radishes, though they are sweet and mild, not sharp like red radishes.  Here's a Wikipedia link that can tell you more.

[Gabi]

Thanks for the tip. That may have been it. Not that I can reproduce the recipe, but it's a good thing to know anyway.

[Brunhidden]

keep in mind virtually anything can be inside of an 'authentic' taco, so if mexico street vendors sell tacos filled with ground burro, cattle eyes, fried crickets, and so fourth really anything tasty you assemble into a tortilla shell is the correct way to make a taco

except that, thats an incorrect taco

[Darkmoon]

I'd eat it.

[Gabi]

I've found jalapeños and limes in Chinatown! It's amazing, those people have just about everything! I might even find those "wide" peppers if I knew what they looked like. I bought the green jalapeños because they were the ones I saw in pictures the most (and because they looked fresher). There were red ones too. I hope I've made the right choice.

I've also found cheddar cheese at my local supermarket, so I'm going to try a version that's closer to the original later this week. The first tacos were good, I hope the new ones are too.

[justacritic]

You'll be surprised at what the people of Asia will resort to eating in order to survive, the continent's history isn't a happy one and that often means famines. That said cuisine had to be raised to a high art. Oh what do you mean by "wide" peppers?

[Gabi]

Ancho peppers. That's what the original recipe said. I have no idea what those are, "ancho" means "wide".

And yes, I know about what hunger can do. Not personally, thankfully, but my great-grandfather was from Russia and fought in the war against Japan... He had to go without any food for so long that he ended up eating the soles of his boots.

[Inumo]

It's a type of chile pepper, according to Google.

http://www.food.com/library/ancho-chile-pepper-3

[Gabi]

Interesting. Too bad they don't look like anything I've seen before, but my Chinese peppers are dried, chili and rather sweet, so they should be a suitable replacement.

[Damaris]

A little nosing around the internet led me to some information - Ancho Chilies are actually dried Poblano peppers. So either should probably work. (somewhat like the prune/plum thing - same fruit, different names for different states)

[Gabi]

Interesting. And it would be even more interesting if I had ever seen a poblano pepper. XD But maybe someday I will.