Just Cook!: Los Tacos Mexicanos

I woke up this morning at 4 o´clock wanting nothing else than to savour the mouthwatering taste of an authentic Mexican Taco (I guess I should have eaten a bit more yesterday :) ). To be more precise, I was longing for a "Taco de bistec", one of my favorites.
You wouldn´t believe the variety of tacos. One of my cookbooks - it´s called "Los Tacos de Mexico" (ISBN 978-970-770-707-8) offers a variety of 127 differnt Tacos. This shows, that the common belief, that all mexican dishes are more or less similar is quite a misbelief and tacos are only street food - there is a whole lot more to mexican cuisine.

Since we´re not living in Mexico City anymore where you can grab a Taco at every street corner - and yes, you definitely should if you have the chance - but in Stockholm/ Sweden (that´s about 9600 kilometers separating me from my beloved Tacos) you have two choices:

1. go to La Neta ( www.laneta.se ). A bustling little Taco Bar at the far end of
   Drottninggatan, run by real mexicans :D  and they even sell mexican corn tortillas
   "hechas en casa".
   This is the closest you can get to the real taste. Be sure to order some "Chiles Toreados"
   with your tacos, delicious!!

2. Get the essential ingredients to your house and start cooking yourself. You don´t know
   where to get them?
   One possibility is to order (talking about Stockholm now) at Ándale - Órale
   (www.andale.se).

But now to the recipe for "Tacos de Bistec"

Ingredients:

   vegetable oil
2 white onions cut into thin wedges
6 serrano chiles (jalapeno if you can´t find serrano), cut into quarters
   lengthwise (it´s up to you if you want to remove the seeds and veines or
   not)
1,5 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
   salt
500 g steak of a good quality (e.g. rib-eye or sirloin)
   fresh, soft corn tortillas (nothing to do with those hard taco-shells)
   or if you can´t find those, flour tortillas (medium sized)

heat a skillet over medium heat and add some vegetable oil and the chiles and let them fry for about 7 minutes stirring ocasionally. Then add the onion and fry for about four more minutes. Season with salt and lime juice. Set aside.
Season your steaks directly before broiling with salt and pepper. Heat some more oil in the same skillet - or use a grill pan - over high heat and broil your steaks on each side until browned. Let them rest in Aluminum foil a couple of minutes and then cut them into thin slices.
Add the meat to the onions and chiles in the skillet and reheat for one minute.
Heat the tortillas in a medium sized teflon coated frying pan and keep them warm in a dishcloth.
Divide the meat mixture evenly on your tortillas and
serve with pico de gallo (chop 4 tomatoes, 1 onion, 3 chiles serranos/ jalapenos and mix with 2 tablespoons lime juice, 2 tablespoons vegetable or olive oil and fresh cilantro (coriander) leaves),

salsa verde (bought or of course you can prepare it yourself: 500 g tomatillo, 8 chiles serranos, 1 garlic clove, salt, half an onion, 2 sprigs cilantro. Roast the tomatillos and chiles in a dry frying pan until dark brown. Then cook with some water on low temperature for 10 minutes. Fill everything into your jug blender, add the garlic, cilantro and onion and mix on high until well blended. Season with salt),

sour cream, guacamole, black refried beans and lime wedges as you like. (Sour cream, refried beans and guacamole might not be the authentic way of serving this particular taco in Mexico but I like it like this.)