“Tanto el más rico, cómo el más pobre, nos enchilamos con la misma salsa.” — quote from The Taco Chonicles (Netflix) "Both the richest and the poorest get spiced from the same sauce."
In a non-reactive bowl, soak the toasted guajillo and mulato chillies in warm water for 10 minutes or until softened. Drain and blend with the tomato, cloves, garlic, and bay leaves until fine.
Heat a 30 cm heavy-based saucepan over medium. Add the vegetable oil. Season the beef shin with salt. Cook each piece for 4 minutes or until nicely browned on both sides. (Cook only 1 or 2 pieces at a time to ensure the pan stays hot.) Reserve each piece as it is ready.
Add the diced onion and cook for 5 minutes or until softened. Return beef to the pan, and then add the chilli puree. Bring to the boil. Add the water. Bring to a simmer and cook gently, topping up the water as needed, for 3 hours or until beef is tender and the sauce is thick and the consistency of a curry sauce.
Meanwhile, make the accompaniments.
To make the salsa roja, remove the stems from the chillies. Cut open and remove seeds. Using a comal or frying pan, roast the tomato, onion and garlic for 5–8 minutes or until the tomatoes are cooked though and the onion is soft and translucent.
In the same pan, quickly toast the chillies, pressing flat with tongs to ensure even toasting, for 20 seconds each side, or until puffed up slightly. Combine all ingredients and add the water and salt in a blender. Process until smooth. Adjust seasoning and set aside.
To make the guacamole, place the lime juice in a large mixing bowl and add salt. Toast the tomatoes, garlic, chilli and spring onions on a comal or dry frying pan over medium heat for 5–10 minutes, turning as they soften, until blackened. Transfer to a chopping board. Roughly chop the tomato. Finely chop the garlic, chilli and shallots. Place all ingredients into the bowl with the lime juice and mix thoroughly. Roughly dice the avocado and mix through. Add the chopped coriander, then check for seasoning.
To prepare the chiles toreados, heat a comal or dry frying pan over medium. Cook chillies for 3–4 minutes, turning, until charred. Set aside. Heat a 25 cm frying pan over medium and add the oil. Cook the onion gently, without colouring, for 4 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to the boil. Add the chillies and let cool.
When the beef is tender, remove the bones from the stew and check the consistency and seasoning. Place the finished stew in a clean serving dish and keep warm.
To prepare the mushroom garnish, heat a 20 cm frying pan over medium. Add the oil and mushroom and garlic and cook for 3–4 minutes. Season and add the tendrils, and cook for a further 1 minute as they soften. Place in a warmed bowl and serve immediately with the beef, warmed tortillas, lime cheeks, salsas and chillies for each person to make their own to taste.
Note
• Mulato and guajillo chillies are available from speciality food stores and Mexican grocers. If mulato chilli is unavailable, the more common ancho chilli is a good substitute.
Carne asada lovers, fried-fish aficionados, al pastor addicts—go ahead and fight me on this one, but I will argue to my death that there is one taco that transcends all: the taco de guisado. The taco’s stewed fillings can be made with everything from pork shoulder spiked with ancho chiles and cinnamon to dark and leafy greens like amaranth and purslane with tomatoes. Everything is thrown into a pot together, softened over heat for a long time, and embedded with flavor. Spooned onto a toasty, aromatic corn tortilla, the guisado and tortilla become one.
It’s the kind of taco that makes you ache the moment before you bite into it and melancholic the minute it’s gone.
For me and my husband, Joe, tacos de guisados were a reprieve during a time in 2009 when the recession was kicking the life out of a restaurant Joe owned in San Francisco. To recalibrate, or maybe to hide, we escaped to Mexico, stopping for a few nights in Mexico City. It turned out to be a trip of taco kismet.
All over Mexico City—and Mexico for that matter—tacos de guisados can be found on the streets, at taquerias, and in markets. They’re served out of charred, brick-orange cazuelas or pragmatic steam tables that contain any number of humble stews whose swampy appearance belies their deliciousness. There’s something for everyone: spicy conchinita pibil, gelatinous pigs’ feet in salsa verde, earthy blood sausage, picadillo studded with peas, huitlachoche, smoky rajas with crema, soft squash and sweet corn, gizzards in salsa roja, chicken tinga. Sometimes there’s also rice and beans on offer as well as hard-boiled eggs, fritters, and pancakes. But I’m searching for the kind of stuff that bubbles on the stove of the abuela I’ve never had. I’m looking for the juice.
Cazuelas full of guisados at Tacos Gus in Mexico City
Because soulful food isn’t neat and tidy. A taco de guisado should drip down your wrist and onto your plate. At the recently closed Tacos Gus—a spot formerly located in the tranquil neighborhood of Condesa—a plastic plate is prudently covered with a plastic bag, which is promptly removed and tossed when you’re done so the plate can be reused for the next customer. Joe and I ate there on that first trip to Mexico City and have returned ever since. With over a dozen selections of guisados, the little spot offered vegetarian options that were as satisfying as the chorizo con papas. Once you selected your filling, it was quickly popped into a sturdy little corn tortilla, and then it was up to you to upgrade by adding wilted, paper-thin slices of raw onion in habanero or choosing a salsa. The first time we ate here, it was a revelation—it was like the ultimate fast food. If your mom made it.
Upon our return to San Francisco that fateful summer, Joe was asked by Lulu Meyer, the director of the iconic Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, if he wanted open a Spanish stand at the new Thursday market. Invigorated by our trip to Mexico City, he asked on a whim if he could serve tacos instead. Eyebrows were raised, but approval was granted. We landed on the frivolous name Tacolicious and Joe got to braising.
The guisado recipes Joe developed when we launched still anchor our menu. Though the shot-and-a-beer chicken (chicken thighs simmered with habaneros, tomatoes, tequila, and beer) is beloved, my favorite is made with beef cooked down with fruity guajillo chiles, smoky chipotles, earthy cumin, and Mexican oregano. It has heat without being spicy, and it passes the juice test.
The tacos guisados at Tacos Gus
The next year, shortly after we had opened the first brick-and-mortar Tacolicious location, Armando De La Torre, Sr., opened a little place in Boyle Heights simply called Guisados. The restaurant is an homage to the food his Mexican-American mother made him when he was growing up in Los Angeles. There he serves up everything from chicken braised in mole poblano to his personal favorite, chicharron simmered in chile verde. Fugly puddles are spooned onto perfect tortillas made from scratch and topped with, at most, a slice of avocado. They are exquisite.
In a city used to carne asada topped with cilantro and onions, it was hard to get people into the idea of this soupier, less photogenic type of taco, De La Torre says. But the late Jonathan Gold’s review of Guisados turned the tides. Of their chiles torreados, Gold wrote, “It is a taco that will sneak out of the house in the middle of the night to do things that no taco should ever do, but you will always take it back, because you have tasted the complexity that lies three layers down.” Today, De La Torre has five Guisados locations.
When I ask De La Torre about the best compliment he’s ever received, he recalls a day a man came in and sat down to eat. After one bite of a taco, he started crying. “I went over to ask him if everything was OK,” says De La Torre. “He said his mom had just died and he’d been down the street cleaning out her house. My calabacitas reminded him of her cooking.” You can hear the pain in De La Torre’s voice as he recalls this story. He lost his own mother just last year. “That’s when I knew I was doing something right,” he continues. And he is.