Tac - O - Rama

Insomnia - a frequent guest in my house - brings with it some benefits to this site.  Often tossing and turning at night gives way to fruitful thoughts (especially on weekends) about what to make for dinner each night.  Something usual?  Something new?  Grill or cook indoors?

So Saturday morning about 4:30 or so that insomnia/tossing/thinking begins.

Tacos are great in that they are so versatile.... like Tim W.'s meatloaf, there are a MILLION twists and turns that keep tacos fresh.  We hadn't done Mexican at home in a while, so why not now?  Get as much grilling in before the winter hits and it finds itself covered more often than not.  I decided to do a variety of tacos with meat mostly grilled over charcoal.

If you haven't been to La Huerta, you haven't had a real south of the border shopping experience.  Authentic Mexican grocery with authentic salsas, tortilla chips home made, and every kind of delicious and vile meat you can imagine in the meat counter (whole beef tongue?  I'm clearly very American).

So I picked up a pound and a half of chirizo sausage, a bag of home made tortillas, some fresh home made salsa (the wife is gaga for), a couple large cans of Modelo for marinading, chihuahua cheese, and some Goya Onion and Garlic seasoning.

Normally I hate the whole "two stop thing" but I chose to get the rest of the meats from Blue Goose.  I called in and got a pound and a half of tenderized and trimmed skirt steak and an untrimmed pork shoulder (2lbs), authentic taco shells from La Tiara (looks like Wal Mart sells them, FYI.  La Tiara's are incredibly good), and a jar of Del Greco Giardinara.

The set up: Skirt Steak in a bowl, completely submerged in ten to 12 packets of the Goya and 32 ozs of Modelo.  Pork Shoulder: inject with about four full syringes of the Giardinara juice, rub heavily in Back of the Yards Garlic Pepper.  Refrigerate both to set up for about 5 hours.

Cooking time: no smoke, pour beer in the drip pan.  Indirect heat for about four hours on the small shoulder.  Skirt Steak on direct heat for about 10 to 15 minutes (cooks fast).  The chirizo just went on the stove top for expediency's sake.

Cut the skirt steak against the grain; chop the pork into small pieces and then mince all the meat with a slap chop mechanism.  Warm the shells on the grill over medium heat.  Enjoy with some of the salsa and some sauce of your choosing.

The biggest applause, however, came Sunday around game time with the copious amounts of leftovers where thrown over the home made nachos, smothered with Chihuahua cheese and into the oven for 20 minutes.... WOW, a meal in and of itself.  My first venture into fried chicken Sunday night was almost derailed - everyone was too full!

Jeff  H.