Gluten Free

When you want a chile with distinctive flavor and a blast of heat for a salsa with Caribbean roots, the habanero is an obvious choice. It is native to the Caribbean basin, which includes the Yucatán region of Mexico. The flavor of habaneros has tropical overtones that perfectly complement fruit like mangoes and bananas. A little goes a long way—despite its diminutive size, it is the hottest of all chiles available in the United States and Mexico. This salsa makes a great condiment for pork, chicken, or fish.

Here is the recipe used at the Coyote Café. Along with chopped onions, fresh cilantro, salsa tomatillo, and red chile sauce, it’s always offered as a basic condiment with tacos, regardless of whatever special salsa is paired with a particular taco filling. Salsa fresca is used in Mexico like we use ketchup—to wake up plain foods. But salsa fresca is better than ketchup because it is made fresh—ripe tomatoes, a bit of onion for crunch, the heat of green chile, the tang of fresh lime juice, and the refreshing lift of aromatic cilantro.

This recipe highlights the wonderful flavor of the fresh green chiles widely abundant at roadside stands throughout New Mexico during the late summer and all through the fall. Often the chiles are roasted on the spot in hand-turned, butane-fired drums. You can smell the roasting chiles long before you can see them. Just follow your nose to find a vendor, as the air is thick with fiery oils that can clear your head. I look forward to fall in Santa Fe every year mainly because of that nostalgic, pungent and spicy aroma I have come to love.

Shake the small, dried medium-hot cascabel chile, and its seeds rattle (in Spanish, cascabel means rattle). Woodsy and smoky, it is a wonderful choice for this richly flavored salsa made with roasted tomatoes and garlic, toasted pumpkin seeds, and caramelized onion. Good with hearty meats from grilled beef to dark-fleshed game like buffalo.

Why make this versatile sauce yourself instead of buying it already prepared? You’ll get a smokier, more interesting result that’s free of additives and excess amounts of salt and vinegar of the commercial versions. It’s also a great base for other ingredients—tomatillos would be a flavorful addition. Use it in marinades, soups, as part of other sauces, or as a spicy table condiment at a taco party.

Tacos are served at all the Mexican markets for workers and shoppers who want a quick bite, including breakfast, as the markets usually open at sunrise. In the Southwest, small restaurants offer whole menus of breakfast tacos (my favorite, Taco Taco, in San Antonio, Texas, offers fifteen morning choices). And breakfast tacos and burritos have become an increasing familiar option along with bagels and pastries at most major airports in the United States and at the drive-throughs of many national fast-food chains. Not only are these vegetarian tacos a fiery morning wake-up, they’re good anytime as part of a larger meal, particularly alongside grilled or roasted meats or fish.

These potatoes are buttery, golden, and crisp with a wonderful flavor. Yukon golds are waxy and fry well, finishing with a beautiful golden flesh with browned edges. It’s important to pan-fry them in clarified butter and a little vegetable oil, a mix that can withstand the high heat required to get the potatoes crisp and browned without burning.

The green tomatillo has a bright sharp flavor akin to that of green plums or rhubarbs. In the winter months, when it’s sometimes hard to get fresh red tomatoes, I use tomatillos, which are available all year. This sauce makes the ideal cool counterpart to spicy salsas. The unusual addition of ice keeps the cilantro green when pureed with the other ingredients.

Bacon, red chile, and honey are a heavenly combination that I first tried in Santa Fe. I had found a really delectable red chile honey made in the Taos area of northern New Mexico. The combination of sweet, aromatic honey and earthy piquant red chile is a wonderful marriage that enhances both. You can make your own version: add a good fresh red chile powder or puree of fresh red chiles to a wild honey that isn’t too sweet. For these tacos, buy the best quality bacon you can find—it will make a huge difference in taste. For a more authentic Mexican flavor, you can substitute guava jam for the honey.

Spicy breakfast foods are the norm in Latin America or Asia, but not in the United States. I have always liked a spicy breakfast, finding that bland, starchy choices like bagels, toast, or pastries with sugar tend to make me sort of sleepy in the morning. This taco filling is another simple version of spicy scrambled eggs and would also make a great omelet when you don’t want tacos. Dry-roasting the jalapeños gives the dish a heady, smoky quality and cuts the richness of the eggs. A natural cream cheese would be another tasty accompaniment, with smoked salmon slices for garnish.

Chorizo was one of the first dishes that I learned to cook at home, prompted by a longing for it after visiting Mexico as a youth, where it was usually served for breakfast with eggs. No more dried, tough, salty bacon for me. I was a chorizo convert, and I was determined to have it for breakfast. While there were good local Mexican markets at the time, I found a simple recipe for chorizo in a Mexican cookbook of my mother’s (which I still have almost fifty years later). That homemade chorizo became our Sunday morning ritual. I measured out all the spices—the chile powders, the canela, the cumin, and other seasonings—and added them to the pan along with fresh ground pork. I stirred the mixture slowly, keeping it moist, until it was ready. Breakfast had become exciting again! For this filling, I prefer chorizo that has not been ground too fine and with plenty of fat. You can add additional spices and seasonings like red chile powder or roasted fresh green jalapeños to it while cooking to enhance or alter flavors.

These knife-and-fork (not grab-and-go) egg tacos can be found on almost every breakfast menu in New Mexico and the southwestern United States, and throughout Mexico. They’re called huevos divorciados—“divorced eggs”—because the eggs are “separated” by their chile sauces, green spooned on one, red on the other. Chorizo or bacon is a nice addition. Two tortillas and two eggs make one serving.

In Mexico, slow-cooked meats like this are sometimes first wrapped in maguey leaves (from the maguey cactus), which are not available here. In this recipe, the rabbit is braised in aluminum foil with the fresh green aromatics of cilantro and mint, the earthiness of garlic, the tartness of tomatillos, and the heat of jalapeños. The recipe also works well with chicken thighs. Buy the same amount as rabbit and cook as directed here, but remove the skin from the thighs and check sooner for doneness, as they might finish in less time.

If you are in a rush and don’t want to make the Ranchero Sauce, buy a jar of roasted red chile salsa, drain off the liquid, and use what remains. Scramble the eggs over low heat, turning them gently with a wooden spatula or spoon. If the eggs turn white while cooking, the pan is too hot. The chopped cilantro adds bursts of fresh green, herbaceous flavors. For a more robust and traditional finish, squeeze fresh lime juice on the eggs when they are almost finished cooking.

This is a very simple taco, common throughout Mexico, that I ate at whatever local market was nearby on almost all of my mornings there. It was always accompanied by copious amounts of orange juice freshly squeezed with a portable juicer at a neighboring street cart. They are a great way to start a day and one of my longtime favorites. Consider this recipe a tasty base for ingredients—whatever sounds good to you. Green chile powder is a nice addition, as is chipotle powder.

The meat from the shank is the tastiest part of the lamb. As lamb is a grazing animal and stands probably 90 percent of the time, the leg muscles get more developed and flavorful. Braised meats take a little more time to cook, but not much time to prepare. They’re really very simple and almost foolproof, and the end result is really luscious, flavorful meat. It takes a little longer, but you get the best results if you cook them at as low an oven temperature as possible—around 200°F. Serve these tacos with this richly flavored filling during the colder months, when appetites yearn for something earthy and substantial. Shredding the meat along the grain produces pieces that better retain both moisture and flavor. The meat is best eaten the day it is cooked. Place the meat back in the sauce to reheat.

The “aha!” moment when I thought to combine porcini and grilled beef with chiles came to me in Argentina, home of the world’s best grilled beef. Specifically, I was in Mendoza, the capital of Argentina’s wine country and settled by Italian immigrants in the nineteenth century—probably why beef with porcinis is such a common pairing there. This dish is delicious prepared outdoors over a wood-fired grill, but you can also cook it stovetop on a cast-iron griddle or ridged grill pan. Look for porcini powder at specialty food stores or buy dried porcinis and grind them yourself in a spice grinder.

I lived in Morocco for a time in the mid-1970s studying textiles as part of my anthropology training. While there, I learned to cook with the full array of the expressive, aromatic spices of the Moroccan kitchen. Cumin is one of the most important and widely used of these spices, and I find that its pungent, woodsy aroma gives most meat dishes a “meatier” or “gamier” flavor that I like. Cumin is also widely used in Tex-Mex cooking for the same effect. This brine will work for up to double the amount of meat called for here. When making a brine, use a five-to-one ratio of sugar to salt, which works well for twenty-four-hour brines such as this one. For a North African accent, garnish the tacos with grated carrots, chopped fresh mint leaves, and quartered cherry tomatoes. Look for cinnamon oil in the baking and candy-making sections of well-stocked specialty food stores or online.

These smoky, wonderfully juicy tacos mix two great culinary traditions—Mexican and Texas barbecue, both notable for their intense, but subtle seasoning. In the United States, the cooking of the Old West was heavily influenced by the charros (Mexican cowboys) who cooked over open fires that infused meat with a smoky essence that so many of us find addictive. In Texas, the wood both of choice and necessity is mesquite, usually mixed with oak to soften the hard green tones of the mesquite. This recipe is easy to do, but requires some advance planning, as the brisket must sit in its rub overnight, and a little patience during the slow cooking. But the results are some of the best tasting barbecue that you have ever eaten. Buy fresh, not prepackaged, brisket that isn’t overly fatty—the fat should cover no more than one-third of its surface. Or, you can buy the leaner, thinner end, if you prefer. A piquant cabbage slaw makes a good accompaniment.

Tongue—la lengua, in Spanish—is a very popular food in Mexico, especially in the central and northern parts of the country, where good grazing land supported a large ranching culture. On ranches, most prime cuts are sold to markets, and the lesser cuts, like tongue, are cooked for the ranch hands. The use of tongue and other secondary cuts of meat, often overlooked, is at the core of peasant cooking. Made rich with brines, marinades, chiles, complex spice mixtures, and rich accompanying sauces, these preparations are some of the most flavorful in all of Latin American cuisine. Tongue is naturally succulent, but needs slow cooking to become really tender and luscious. The flavor is pretty neutral, so this filling has lots of additions to spice it up. A bright salsa is the finishing touch, much like the hot spicy-sweet mustard that was slathered on the tongue sandwiches that I used to eat at my old neighborhood delicatessens.