Braised pork shoulder with chilies, Mexican style. The result is epic: tasty, juicy and so tender it falls apart when you look at it. Serve it sliced as if it was a roast, like below; for an ultimate pulled pork taco experience shred it with two forks when hot and toss in the strained sauce.
Carne asada, a Mexican dish of marinated, grilled and thinly sliced beef. The fact is, marinade cooks things. It imparts flavour all right but we sometimes forget that’s not its only role – it tenderises tougher cuts.
Chicken enchiladas with green tomato salsa verde. The salsa can be shop-bought, very well, but if you have some green tomatoes – one easy thing to grow in England – you can try from scratch.
Slow cooked chili con carne with beef and red and white beans. This is one hell of a contentious dish. First off, the name is wrong: purists call it just chili. Second, the provenience.
Korean beef tacos, probably the best street food fusion. Marinated and grilled steak in soft corn tortillas, with shredded salads and spiced mayo – that’s taste bliss.
Mexican rice, arroz rojo, with peas and carrots. Pilaf is a cooking method and Mexican rice is cooked that way. It’s basically giving the rice a head start in hot oil with aromatics of choice, before you deluge it with water, stock or milk and leave to its own devices for half an hour or so.
Corn tortilla chips nachos with homemade beef chilli, corn and cheese. Nachos are an obscenely cunning trick of how to turn eating crisps into a full meal.
Quick pickled jalapeño peppers, crunchy and sweet and hot. The best pickled jalapeños are homemade, and these are ready within about an hour. Make sure you wear gloves!
Prawn tacos with dried fruit salsa, something a bit different for a taco night. Fresh or frozen prawns cooked quickly in a spicy sauce just beg to be loaded into tortillas.
Breakfast quesadillas with avcado, mushrooms and bacon. Now quesadilla is my perfect toasted cheese sandwich as I’ve only just realised. It ticks all the above boxes plus one huge box on top of that: there’s no bread.
Vegetarian chili with pickled red onions. The recipe is dead simple beside that, and a good weekday supper if you put in canned beans. Soaking and boiling is as much worth the bother as it gives you the right crookedness – tinned beans might get mushy after half an hour in the company of tomatoes.