chorizo tacos with cornmeal tortillas

For dinner we cooked a relatively straight-forward recipe of cornmeal tortillas wrapped around a fresh chorizo filling.

The chorizo recipe was pretty simple: cut six dried chili peppers off the braid that hangs on one cabinet, dry toast them in a cast iron skillet to punch up the flavors, rough cut them with scissors (seeds and all!), soak in a 1/2 c. of hot water for 10 minutes, then blend with salt, pepper, garlic, and paprika. This paste then gets mixed into the ground pork and fried up, just as if you were doing Friday night taco night with the small envelope of spices from the supermarket.

Jennifer prepared the corn tortillas. The recipe called for masa (corn tortilla mix; preferably Maseca brand), and instead of half-assing it with one of the three different types of cornmeal we already have on hand for various reasons, we went out and bought the real thing.

We also used the tortilla press that I’ve mentioned before. The first time I tried it I was underwhelmed. Turns out Mexicans make tortilla presses, Mexicans make corn tortillas, and there is a correlation between these two things. In exactly the way that wheat tortillas fail in a tortilla press, corn tortillas succeed.

Served with field-expedient guacamole and pico de gallo made according to the usual rules of thumb.

I gave it a B but Jennifer gave it an A.

I guess I reconcile these in the following way: while I wouldn’t class it up with the other foodie recipes that I award A’s to in terms of complexity, sophisticated blends of flavors, novelty, etc., I would say that it’s only a bit more work than making the same old beef tacos with the pouch of powder (and, as has already been established elsewhere, you shouldn’t be doing that anyway).

So, will cook again.