Tacos: Recipes and Provocations: A Cookbook

What a great month it's been for lovers of the taco - first the fun, hip, irreverent love letter to Mexican taco culture that was Tacopedia, and now this intense, punk-rock manifesto of the taco as high cuisine. Tacos: Recipes and Provocations delivers on both halves of its subtitle, in spades. His recipes range from the traditional to the avant-garde, with a strong core of fundamental respect for the cuisine, its techniques, and its multicultural and evolving spirit. His provocations will rattle the cage of many a pretentious foodie who'd prefer to see Mexican cuisine frozen in time and served for under $5. The first half or so of the book centers on fundamentals: tortillas and salsas. Stupak is uncompromising here: fresh tortillas, or nothing. I tend to agree. He walks the reader through nixtamalizing corn, grinding it for masa, and pressing tortillas, including instructions on storage and on starting with masa preparada. Of note here is the range of flavored and amended tortillas, enriched by obvious (spinach, spices) and nonobvious (chorizo?!) additions, which have a long history in Mexico. He also has a pretty good flour tortilla recipe. The salsas are phenomenal. I made two of the salsas last night, and found them to be mindblowing - well balanced, intense, and unusual. I especially recommend the salsa macha, which reminded me of a cross between a pipian and buffalo wing sauce. My wife, who was born and raised in the DF, is ecstatic. Recipes range from old favorites (carnitas, al pastor, barbacoa) to high-concept rethinks (pineapple tacos with lardo, pastrami with mustard seed salsa, sea urchin and guacamole.) With the exception of the pastrami one, which is a little precious, I think they all manage to embody a Mexican sensibility, flavor profile, ingredients, and general approach - even if the end result is cheffed-up and unconventional. Having eaten tacos filled with octopus slathered with Thai basil pesto in the DF and a memorable one of raw marlin tartare in Tijuana, I'm perfectly fine with some wild tacos in the mix. Tacos al pastor have their roots in 1950s Puebla and its Lebanese immigrants hawking shawarmah, and fried fish tacos use Japanese tempura batter. There's cosmopolitan, modern, gourmet restaurants all over Mexico serving food that's influenced by that of the Mediterranean, Asia, and even India. If incorporating other cultures' ideas was off-limits in Mexican cuisine, Mexican cuisine would not exist at all. I can't wait to tackle some of the off-the-wall recipes here. Which brings me to my own provocation. As we've already seen in some of the reviews, many people - often Caucasians, often casual visitors to Mexico - seem to hold strong opinions on Mexican cuisine. They loudly and snarkily deride as "not traditional!" or "completely inauthentic" any food not served on their last vacation to Mexico or served in the grungy taqueria they pride themselves on having "discovered." These folks know just what authentic really is, and they're the arbiters of it. Obviously, I regard this attitude as deeply patronizing - and ironically unaware of the diversity and evolving nature of Mexican food.

From the foundations of tortillas to salsas and then full taco recipes, this book has been amazing! It got me out of my usual recipes and exposed me to new styles, strategies and ingredients. The shoshito pepper tacos are INSANE!

This is an excellent book. The author, Alex Stupak, runs an outstanding Mexican restaurant that treats the ingredients in such a way as to produce top quality mexican food. Alex compares and contrasts traditional mexican cooking with what his recipes are doing. In several cases he has a New England twist to his recipes, but before giving any recipe, he talks about its inspiration and its origins in Mexican cuisine. If you don't like how he has changed the recipes, then he gives enough information to reverse engineer a more "Mexican" version of the recipe. Many claim that his recipes are not authentic, but he argues that Mexican cuisine is a continually evolving animal and not a fixed set of dishes. The techniques Alex has laid out in the book make it worth the humble price of $20 (as of 2017). Alex teaches you how to make corn tortillas at home, discusses the best ways of keeping them hot (they should not drop below 120 F), and then also discusses flour tortillas (which are not as sensitive as corn tortillas) and how to use masa harina. After the section on tortillas, Alex then moves on to describe the best ways to make Salsas (the pesto/curry of Mexican cuisine). He takes a very good educational perspective in that he builds from very simple salsa verdes up to making mole (one of the most complicated and time consuming sauces in all of cooking). Finally, the last section is all about Tacos! Page after page is full of stories and recipes about tacos and their development. I drool all over my book when I read it, and you probably will too. I've made several of the recipes in here. They are outstanding and fun projects. Just be prepared to spend a day (or several) to get to a good result. This is Tacos as haute cuisine. It's going to take some work and failures before you get to something you like.

This is a very stylish book with beautiful photographs and interesting stories from the authors about their travels in Mexico. Yes there are a few unusual taco fillings, but I would not expect to try everything in a cookery book necessarily. The salsa recipes alone are worth buying the book for, like the Cape Gooseberry salsa on page 83. If I had one criticism it would be that the basic fillings such as chicken, beef and pork seem a bit bland, personally I would build more flavour in by using marinades and more smokey cooking techniques. The fillings are enhanced though with the addition of things like chilli and lime juice, salad elements and so forth which the book suggests. A lovely book and recommended.

Absolutely fantastic read.

Love this taco cookbook! Tons of great recipes and we use often.

A friend recommended this book for its instruction on making tortillas, and I finally made some 100% corn ones successfully! The writing is thoughtful and hilarious, and the entire book has me thinking differently about the way our culture values and de-values food from different countries. I’ve already made the adobo sauce and al pastor tacos (that I would have never attempted before this book), and everything turned out beautifully. I highly recommend this book, and I can’t wait to cook more from it!

Alex Stupak sait transmettre son amour de la cuisine en général et de la mexicaine en particulier. Nouvelles expériences en perspective!