Oaxaca Tacos

I think it's time to add something new to my repertoire. Enter the Cafe Flora Cookbook and one of the restaurant's most popular dishes. Cute, aren't they? Sitting there all propped up on black beans? Tasty, too, crispy and oven-fried. I will be filing this away in the "usable recipes" section of my brain. The techniques I learned are applicable in... oh, billions of ways. Oaxaca tacos will be back, in one form or another. Just you wait.

Reading the ingredients, I didn't find it to look all that... nutritionally balanced. A corn tortilla (starch) filled with potato (starch) and cheese (fat). Mmm, fatty starch. But then I read on and noticed that it is typically served with a black bean "stew" (enter fiber and protein, albeit carried by more starch) and pico de gallo (YAY! color!). Well. If it has fiber and protein and fatty starch, and is naturally colorful, sign me up. Especially when the fat includes smoked mozzarella.

Dear sweet son of a biscuit-eating bulldog, try some smoked mozarella if you haven't had it before.

Unfortunately for those who might want to make this, I feel obligated to refrain from posting the exact recipe. You can buy the book. If you live in Seattle, go eat at Cafe Flora and order the Oaxaca tacos.

I don't feel guilty enough to refrain from posting my progression through cooking, however. I am confident that if you follow along and experiment a little, you can recreate them. Or at least something similar.

--- --- ---

So, I started the day prior to cooking, really (two days ago, to be exact). I prepared some "crème fraîche" by mixing just a smidge of buttermilk into heavy cream and letting it sit out at room temperature for a day. I cooked my black beans. For goodness sake, if you don't know how to cook black beans, learn. It's terribly easy and far cheaper and more ecological than buying them canned.

This made cooking day rather easy. Into the cultured crème fraîche I added some fresh lime juice and zest and stuck it in the fridge. Nobody wants to use room temperature crème fraîche. I then boiled and drained some russet potatoes, and mashed them up good with a little butter and salt. This time, I had a potato masher. Why, you ask? I didn't have one last time, right? Well, it's because partway through cooking the potatoes I realized I had no toothpicks. And I need toothpicks to hold the tacos together when they cook. So, naturally I had to huff and puff over to the store and get some. I figured I'd be clever and also pick up a potato masher. See what I did there? That's called breaking the cycle.



Following the potato mashing, I preheated my oven to 400. Back onto the stove went my cooked black beans, into which I tossed some frozen corn, chopped cilantro, garlic, and a few spices and an herb. Which ones? Oh, figure it out. Learn to season your black beans.



I simmered that for a little while (not that long) to let it make itself happy, and prepped my other taco ingredients. My favorite part was a 50/50 mix of shredded cheddar and smoked mozarella, with some red pepper flakes added for interest. I also briefly fried (a few seconds on both sides) 8 corn tortillas in vegetable oil. The goal was to get them to get hot, and soak up some oil. They need to be pliable so you can roll them (hence the heat), but you want them to get crispy and delicious and hold their shape after baking in the oven (hence the oil). You need to keep them warm while you're working, so stick something like foil over them. Not pictured is some minced up red bell pepper. Next time I'll use green and yellow, or green and red.



If you make these, shred a little more cheese than I did. And, prior to filling your tacos, divide your fillings (potato, pepper, and cheese) each into 8 equal piles. None left over, none run out. Fill in that order: potato, pepper, then cheese. Actually, fill in whatever order you want. I guess it doesn't matter. I'd probably put the potato on the bottom either way, though. And it helps to spread it out in a strip from one side of the tortilla to the other, so you don't get a really fat tortilla that splits open in the oven and has tough edges from lack of filling on the sides.



Put little toothpicks in them to hold them closed. Line them up on a baking sheet. You don't need to grease it, as the tortillas should be oily enough all by themselves.



Bake them in the oven for... I don't know if that's copyrighted. Bake them in the oven until they get crispy and melty. It should take roughly the amount of time that a sitcom episode without commercials takes.



You can take out the toothpicks now; they will hold their shape. Righteous, no? Serve with a ladle of your black beans, drizzle of your lime crème fraîche, some salsa or pico de gallo on the side, and a wee bit of cilantro.



--- --- ---

I wonder what I'd change? I'd use more cheese, for one, I think. I'd like to try it with a mix of sweet potato and yucca, with some kind of braised bitter greens and some kind of smokey cheese.

Seriously. Get some of that mozzarella.