The Taco - The Perfect Food

The taco is the perfect food. All nutritionist will tell you to eat a well balanced variety of foods and use the food pyramid as a guide. Even the United States Government agrees with that.


To refresh your memory, the food pyramid starts wide at the bottom with grains, then next is nearly equal parts of veggies and fruit, then meat and dairy and at the pointed top, a sparing amount of oil and sweets.

The taco is all of these.
-The shell is coarse ground corn taking care of your body’s need for grain products. Better still, it’s “whole grain”.
-Tomatoes are really a fruit and lettuce is the vegetable, and a good source of "ruffage" which everyone will tell you to have in your diet.
-Of course meat is meat and cheese is obviously dairy. Even if it's goat cheese.
-Tasty ground meat will always have a little fat or oil. With properly drained meat, a little fat is what you should get.


There you go, the perfect food. Except for the sweet, so you can complete your meal with a Mexican praline or one of those little green and white mints.

Next time you munching down a taco, feel good about yourself. You're living healthy!

The Taco Shack

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The Taco Shack
4412 Medical Parkway
Austin Texas

One of six family owned restaurants,
the Taco Shack, wedged into a corner on Medical Parkway with one picnic table outside, is truly a to-go only place. Six adults inside and the place is packed, but what tacos! Wrapped in foil to keep them warm and with two little containers of salsa, these are some of the best little tacos you’ll find. Not heavy on the veggies, they were stuffed with finely grated cheddar and Monterey Jack and well drained meat. By the time I got to my second taco, it was a little soggy. Being wrapped in foil, it was due to a little fat sweating out of the meat. Still good. No beer, that’s expected for a to-go place (TABC rules and all), but the service was friendly and my tacos were out in under two minutes. The stars say it all.

Texican - To go!

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Texican at Lakeline
11066 Pecan Park Blvd.
Cedar Park, TX 78613

The Texican at Lakeline was my first blog, but with this experience, I had to write another. I've been cooking a lot at home lately, so the other night my daughter surprised me with my favorite meal…..two tacos. She stopped by the Texican and picked up a take-out order. What a surprise and what a thoughtful daughter. The meal came neatly packed in the typical Styrofoam take-out container and unassembled! No worries about ending up with soggy tacos by the time you get home; I could put them together any way I liked. There was an abundance of lettuce, tomato, cheese, and beef. Enough that I could actually make three tacos! The convenient to-go bag was topped off with a large bag of their crispy chips and a huge container of Texican’s spicy salsa. A cold Pacifico out of the frig, and I was good-to-go. Texican has brought take-out to a higher plane and it was really a nice experience. Try it.

Santa Rita - Austin Texas

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Santa Rita
1206 W 38th St
Austin, TX 78705

Tucked away in a corner at 29 Doors shopping center, Santa Rita is a friendly enough of a restaurant, but if their tacos don’t get better, they’ll go the way of Tres Amigos, the restaurant they replaced. My usual order came out extremely quickly, unfortunately too quickly. Not much lettuce, I don’t recall any tomato, and I had to search for the cheese. But it was the meat that did it in. The texture was almost too creamy to be ground beef. It was like they ground it down into a flavorless mush. At least the beer was cold and the lime fresh. I heard the owner is a nice guy and does some great catering, but if these are his normal tacos it'll be no more Santa Rita for me. I miss Tres Amigos.

How to make a Taco – Part 1

Tired of Mexican restaurants, but still need you tacos? You can make them yourself and here's how (in several parts).

In order to make a taco, you need a taco shell, which is nothing more than a fried corn tortilla shaped like a "U". There are three options for taco shells:

• First, you can buy them pre-made in a grocery store, at least in Texas you can. I’m not sure if you can buy taco shells in Minnesota or New Jersey
• If you can’t find tortilla shells, you probably can’t find fresh corn tortillas, which is the second option for taco shells.
• Okay, can’t find fresh tortillas, then you’ll have to make your taco shells from scratch.

Here’s how to make your own tortillas.




Corn tortillas can be simple enough or very difficult. If you can find course ground Masa Harina (corn flour), you can make them the easy way. If Masa is not available, you will have to resort to the more difficult method, which due to it’s complexity will be covered in a later posting.

This is all you need:
2 cups corn flour
1 1/3 cups warm water
A pinch of salt
A teaspoon or so of lard is optional

Mix the flour, water, and salt together, forming a soft dough. Knead it a few minutes and let it rest under a damp towel for about an hour so the water is completely absorbed. Have a Pacifico while you're waiting.

Pinch off a bit dough the size of a pelota or a little larger than a golf ball.


Get your tortilla press….on second thought, if you have your own tortilla press, you wouldn’t be reading this. Get a heavy flat object (bottom of a cast iron pan) and press the ball of dough into a very flat circle. It should be about one-sixteenth of an inch thick and seven to eight inches in diameter.

Heat up a griddle or cast iron skillet, which is also known as a comal. If you call your cast iron skillet a comal, again you wouldn’t be reading this. Carefully place a couple tortillas on the dry hot skillet. Cook for about 30 seconds or until a few bits of corn burn. Flip over an cook the other side the same.

While you’re cooking up the rest, you can keep the cooked tortillas under a warm damp towel.

Next step (Part 2), frying the tortillas!

Mesa Rosa (Original)

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Mesa Rosa (Original)
10700 Anderson Mill Rd.
Austin, Texas 78750

Part of another trio of Mexican restaurants (why are Mexican restaurants coming in threes?), the original Mesa Rosa offers good food and good service. This is probably one of my most dined restaurants. The tacos come buried under a mix of Monterrey Jack and cheddar, with shredded lettuce and tomatoes. You almost can’t find your taco. The ground meat is finely ground and nearly drip free. Mesa Rosa’s salsa is outstanding. It’s not so spicy as to make you sweat, but had a good flavor and just the right amount of cilantro. The onions and tomatoes are chopped large enough to where their flavor isn’t lost in the sauce. Everything on thier menu is good. Another place where I've never had a bad meal or a cold dish that shouldn't be. Being a family run and owned restaurant the service is always prompt and attentive. Even though they are always busy, there’s nearly never a wait. Mesa Rosa is high on my list as a place to go back to.

Taquerias

This is a good time for a comment on taquerias. Small Mexican restaurants (taqueria = taco shop), usually in a small shopping strip or a converted Dairy Queen, that seem to be everywhere. If you Google “taqueria”, you’ll even find them in New York City!!

The menus range from tacos and tortas to cazeulas and fajitas. The décor is always the same, very basic, nothing fancy, maybe plastic flowers on the table, culturally Mexican. Univision is always on and there’s Spanish language newspapers in the rack. The wait staff seems to be the same too, they might have a problem understanding English, but they are always friendly and always accommodating…more chips, more limes, never a problem.

What puzzles me most about taquerias, is how they can serve as much food as they do for such a low price. Your plate might not be overwhelmed, but I’ve seen burritos the size of my forearm with an entire avocado in it. The food will range from Tex-Mex to Mexican street food (no “Southwest Fusion”) and is nearly always outstanding. I’ve only had one bad meal at a taqueria, but didn’t realize it until later. Next time you’re looking for some good Tex-Mex, find a taqueria, there’s likely one near by.

Taqueria Guadalajara

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Taqueria Guadalajara
12226 FM 620
Austin, TX 78750

If you didn’t look out the window, you’d think you’re in Mexico….Univision on the television, Julieta Venegas on the juke box. Taqueria’s are abound in Austin and Taqueria Guadalajara on RR620 is one of three Guadalajaras in the Austin area. Good Tex-Mex and Mexican food, and very low prices. The tacos nearly had it, a good helping of ground beef (they also have chicken fajita tacos), thickly shredded Monterey Jack cheese, a nice slice of fresh tomato, but the beef needed to be drained a little longer as juice dripped onto my plate. The salsa was a little too runny for me and about spicy enough for someone from California. Must had been a bad batch, because on previous visits the salsa was quite tasty and would nearly make you sweat. Regardless the food is good. A nearby table ordered fajitas and they smelled (and sounded) so good I almost scooted my chair over. The service is very good and friendly. The beer selection isn’t huge, but they carry nearly all the Mexican beers you’d want….and with a bowl of limes on the side.