Tacolicious, a Cookbook Review

September 10, 2014Katie

I received my copy of Tacolicious, Festive Recipes for Tacos, Snacks, Cocktails, and More last week.

Saturday I sat on my patio in some truly gorgeous weather and read it from cover to cover, marking pages I wanted to try as went.

After about thirty marked pages, I just decided to give up and cook my way through the entire book.

To date, i’ve made three of the salsas, the Tacos Al Pastor, the Not Really Refried Beans, the Glove Box Recado and the Guajillo Braised Beef Short Rib tacos, which were absolutely spot on fabulous!

The only issue I can see with this cookbook would be trying to find the authentic ingredients used in many of the marinades and salsas, but if you have access to a Latin/Mexican market and a variety of dried chiles, you will be n love with these recipes.

They have awakened a whole new spicy fiesta for me, that while knew it existed, had not been spurred into action by me.

The authors started out by doing some extensive Mexico traveling and after a chance encounter with Rick Bayless and visiting restaurants ranging from fancy to taqueria fare in Mexico City, decided to bring the flavors to San Francisco and opened their first taco stand at Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market.

Their food became so wildly popular, that they now have four mortar and brick locations, three in San Francisco, and one in Palo Alto.

I love the way the book is separated into salsas and pickles, snacks, tacos, beans and drinks. The taco section boasts at least 20 recipes for tacos ranging from Al Pastor to a vegerian version made with butternut squash, kale and pepitas. There is even a small chapter on hosting a taco party and suggestions, which, after reading the book, making my first set of recipes,is most definately on my agenda SOON. The drink sections is like a Tequila 101 mixing it up with salts and drink mixes and even several horchata and agua fresco recipes.

Whatever you do, make the orange sauce (Hint: there are no oranges involved).