Tacos: Recipes and Provocations: A Cookbook Hardcover – October 20, 2015

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.

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.

Part diary, part technique manual, part recipe book all delivered up with a whole lot of love and open honestly. A genuine delight to read, brimming with creative concepts and cooking ideas that will take me far far past any place I’ve previously been.This is the most precious book I’ve discovered in a very long time and I’ll be devouring its pages of lovingly shared knowledge, humor and reverence for the art and Culture if the taco (and beyond) for a very long time. Savored, like a delicios meal, one inexplicably delicious bite at a time.This beautifully illustrated tome is a collection of “how to” and why’s that are exactly the kind of information that I was looking for. Beyond a “cook book”. More than pages of recipes. It’s a gorgeous meaty collection of story, shared experience and invaluable how to delivered in a lively style that belies the authors reverence for the culture that gave birth to this food.I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s an incredible “top shelf” book that belongs in the library of every gringo searching for authentic understanding.Thank you Alex. What a gift.