Nud Dudhia - breddos Tacos: The Cookbook

Publishing director Sarah Lavelle Creative director Helen Lewis Junior commissioning editor Romilly Morgan Art direction & design Alexander Green Design assistant Emily Lapworth Food & reportage photographer Kris Kirkham Documentary photographer Ronni Campana (gloss insert section) Production Tom Moore, Vincent Smith First published in 2016 by Quadrille Publishing Pentagon House 5254 Southwark Street London SE1 1UN www.quadrille.co.uk www.quadrille.com Quadrille is an imprint of Hardie Grant www.hardiegrant.com.au Text Nud Dudhia & Chris Whitney 2016 All photography Kris Kirkham 2016 with the following exceptions: and gloss insert section Ronni Campana 2016 The rights of Nud Dudhia & Chris Whitney have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. Cataloguing in Publication Data: a catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. eISBN: 978 1 84949 923 1 CONTENTS 2 BREDDOS, 1 SHACK, 1 DREAM After many years of living in London together, being disillusioned with our professions and having food ideas that never came to fruition, we got talking about tacos, or rather the lack of good ones in our area. Ideas were discussed, but this time, for whatever reason, it seemed to be more than idle chat.

The decision was made in the pub after six pints (as all the best ones are), we were going to start a taco stall. First things first, we needed a name Breddos is a bastardized, slang word that originates from the term brethren. Its an expression we coined whilst we were at university to refer to our friends. Fifteen years later, when we decided to build a makeshift taco shack in an abandoned car park in Hackney, East London, we couldnt think of a better name, and so breddos Tacos was born. We started with no real understanding of what we were getting ourselves into nor what we wanted to achieve. Little did we know what lay in store over the next couple of years The ritual before we started breddos Tacos was to leave our respective jobs as early as humanly possible on Friday evening (much like the rest of the right-thinking world) and we would settle into some pints at The Cat & Mutton on Broadway Market in Hackney.

Wed sit there until closing, setting the world to rights with our friends. Broadway Market is famous for its Saturday market but its also home to several others. Netil market was based in a derelict car park with a couple of food traders and assorted stalls of oddments. After a short email application we were granted permission to build a shack, and before we knew it, we had a 2 x 3 metres (6 x 10 feet) taco shack. This is when things began to take shape. Recipe tests were carried out, funny moments ensued, arguments were had; a particularly memorable one was when we realized a week before opening that neither of us had the faintest idea of how to roll a burrito.

When the first day of trading snuck up on us, we had written list upon list to ensure that nothing was overlooked, every eventuality planned for, and that nothing could faze us. We opened the hatch, ready for business. Our first customer arrived, it was really happening! Until we realized that wed overlooked a tiny detail. Wed forgotten to buy tortillas We soon developed a Friday night schedule for our slow-cooked short-rib tacos. Whoever arrived home from work first would go to the Ginger Pig Butcher in Victoria Park and buy the ribs, then on to the shack, in order to marinate them. This done, we would head to the pub.

At about 10 p.m., the time came to prepare the ribs and start cooking them, so that theyd be perfectly ready for midday on Saturday. Access to our little shack at this time of night was slightly precarious. The gates were always locked and so wed have to jump over a 2-metre (6 foot) wall. Now, due to the fact we had been sitting in the pub most of the evening, there was the added element of drunken ineptitude to contend with. Once wed scaled the wall, wed fumble our way to the shack and prepare the ribs. One of us would prep the broth and the other would sear the ribs and get them into the slow cookers.

Wed always have an argument or three during this time of the night, normally about overcooking the onions or failing to adhere to a recipe. Once the slow cookers were set up we would retire and get a good nights sleep before getting up at the crack of dawn to begin preparing for an afternoon of trading.

During these first few weeks we only had one slow cooker, which was enough to cook 2-3kg (4-6lb) of short-rib. But, as we started to gain loyal customers who visited us week in, week out, we noticed that we started to sell out earlier each time. This was great as it meant we could adjourn to the pub early. On the other hand, with the hope that this might turn into an actual business, it was pretty stupid to be turning people away.

We needed to expand First off, we bought a couple more slow cookers, an extra burner and a new fridge. All this extra kit meant that we could let our creative juices flow and offer a larger menu. However, the only issue with all of this new kit was that we no longer had room to move around in our tiny shack. So we tracked down a guy to build us an extension. He also built us new work surfaces and a sink area comprised of an entire shelf under the counter for the slow cookers to sit on (we had amassed 10 by this stage); they were the workhorses of the breddos Tacos kitchen. Alongside the kit, we also realized that the local vegetable suppliers were not proving to be cost-effective, nor was their produce up to scratch.

Thankfully, we lived pretty close to one of Londons two giant wholesale fruit and vegetable markets. There was the avo guy, the herbs guy, several tomato guys, and once they got to know us, they started to set aside the best produce they had for when we came to visit early in the morning.

A few short months after we began trading, we had our first encounter with Jonathan Downey (aka JD), owner of the Rushmore Group and partner in Street Feast (now London Union), namely, a man who knew his stuff. Word had spread about our little shack and one morning in the middle of service we were mentioned in a tweet by JD saying that our tacos were his favourite in London. Its hard to describe how happy this made us. We had been speaking with JD for a couple of weeks when he invited us to compete in Taco Wars, the competition to find the UKs best taco.

To say we were stoked would be an understatement! Taco Wars was a big deal for us and we wanted to make our mark. The decision was made to create the worlds most complicated taco, so much so that it required one of us to stay up all night filling pipettes with hot sauce for one of the umpteen elements. The challenge was then for the three of us (one vegetarian girlfriend with a water bath full of short ribs, one breddo with RSI from pipette filling and the other with temporary anger management issues) to serve a hungry and discerning crowd of 550 people in a little over two hours. Added to this the shack was broken into two days before the event and someone made off with our over-aged short-ribs that we were going to braise down. What else could possibly go wrong? Unsurprisingly, we didnt win. Surprisingly, we came second, but people seemed to love the craziness of that taco, affirming the path we were starting to take.