Still Life: Tacos

Last night I made a lemon pepper-crusted pork tenderloin with smashed new potatoes and mint as well as a roasted kale salad. Tonight, the pork was sliced thinly and heated quickly with a touch of stock and tangerine juice and smoked paprika, then covered in radishes, cilantro, onions and homemade guacamole. We also couldn't help but grate a bit of Irish cheddar over the whole mess. Tacos! One of my favorite meals. Witness the still life we were loathe to clean up after stuffing ourselves.

My Baby Takes the Morning Train

Every Friday, I get on the L train at 8:45, hope it's not delayed, and arrive at 98th Street on the beach in Rockaway by 10:10, Coors Light in the cooler and styrofoam cups at the ready. If it's a good day, there's a barefoot run along the shore, envying the surfers and trying not to cut my toe open on a splintered shell. By 11am, one Coors Light is gone, and I'm falling asleep to the sun drying the salt water in my hair.

The cycle continues like this: Splash in waves; down Coors Light; nap. Repeat. Until 2:30, when I'm a bit sun-drunk and dazed and starving, and then I purchase refreshing and rehydrating jugos and as many tacos as I can afford at Rockaway Taco.

Stuffed and sleepy, I board the train back to reality and am home by 5... to find my baby waiting.

Tacos Without the Truck

I love me a taco. I love tacos sometimes more than I love pizza. And I love pizza a lot.

After living in Los Angeles for seven years, I got this taste for great tacos--preferably from trucks, preferably extra-greasy and absolutely smothered with cilantro and onions that came out of a plastic jug on the truck's side shelf. I can't find tacos like that here, so I have to make my own.

My refrigerator had a half a piece of steak leftover from the Farewell Winter meal, and I had a half a lime, some onion and fresh baby spinach in there, so all I had to buy was corn tortillas and cilantro... oh, and avocado, because I love those so much I could possibly live on them.

Pee Foods Key Foods has Chinantla tortillas which are made just literally down the street from me in Brooklyn, so I felt like a happy locavore buying them, and they're blue corn! These are pretty tasty when slightly charred over an open flame, but they're really tasty fried up in some vegetable oil until they're half-crisp, half-chewy-floppy.

I seasoned the steak with a bit of paprika, cumin, chili powder, cayenne and salt, sliced it really thinly so plenty of flavor coated each bite, and then really quickly heated it up in sauté pan.

All of the green ingredients and the onions were splashed with lime juice and some salt and black pepper before they were piled over the steak.

Add beer; the end.