Katherine Cobbs - Tequila & Tacos: A Guide to Spirited Pairings

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First Tiller Press hardcover edition April 2020

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Concept and copy by Katherine Cobbs

Interior Design by Matt Ryan

Photography by Becky Luigart-Stayner

Food Styling by Torie Cox

Prop Styling by Mindi Shapiro

Recipe Development and Testing by Katherine Cobbs, Lyda Burnette, and Ferrell Carter

Book Trailer by Ellie Stayner

Cover design and art by Patrick Sullivan

Front cover paper cut art by Nadya_Art/Shut Terstock

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cobbs, Katherine, author.

Title: Tequila & tacos : a guide to spirited pairings / Katherine Cobbs.

Description: New York : Tiller Press, 2020. | Series: Spirited pairings; book 2 | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019046229 (print) | LCCN 2019046230 (ebook) | ISBN

9781982137595 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781982137601 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Cocktails. | Cooking, Mexican. | RestaurantsUnited

StatesDirectories. | LCGFT: Cookbooks.

Classification: LCC TX951 .C614 2020 (print) | LCC TX951 (ebook) | DDC

641.87/4dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046229

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019046230

ISBN 978-1-9821-3759-5

ISBN 978-1-9821-3760-1 (ebook)

I am grateful to Mexico for its innumerable culinary giftschiles, tortillas, agave spirits, chocolate, vanilla, and so much more deliciousnessbut mostly for its beautiful people. May these gifts keep coming.

To my husband, John, a curator of Mexican hot sauces. After twenty-five years, I am learning not to take personally the spicy blanket you cover every dish with before youve even taken a bite. You keep life spicy and always fun. Xo

M y maiden tequila experience is too typical: Late 80s, high school spring break. Cancun. Tourist hole-in-the-wall. No ID required. Catering to the clientele, bartenders served tequila in Day-Glo toilet bowlsize margaritas, or as shots to be slammed in one cringe-worthy gulp after a lick of salt or a sweaty neck, with the requisite lime-wedge pacifier to quell any potential heave. Thank God there were no cell phones back then. The experience had zero to do with taste, any way you define it. It was a means to an end. In those days, tequila (if what was poured even was tequila) was maligned or misused by bar goer and bartender alike, and north of the border it was mostly misunderstood.

My introduction to tacos was considerably tamer. I cant say when I first sampled one, but as the child of proud Texans who summered at a family cabin in the mountains of northeastern New Mexico, Id like to say it was something authentic and special. Instead, what I remember is that whether I was at home, the school cafeteria, a fast-food drive-thru or a mom-and-pop Mexican restaurant, tacos all came the same waya canoe of crisp corn cradling taco-seasoned meat, shredded cheese, a nest of lettuce, cubes of tomato, sour cream, and the redundant spicy picante sauce that was rarely that. I considered it fancy if a few sliced black olives appeared. Now, I wont lie. I really liked those tacos as I did sloppy Joes and Frito pie. They were greasy, savory, simple, and satisfying in a way I can still appreciate. My parents raised their eyebrows when I ordered tacos at restaurants like Santa Fes Pink Adobe or Lamberts of Taos, so I would demur and order the green chile stew or blue corn enchiladas instead. If we were at Mexican Inn Cafe or Joe T. Garcias in Dads hometown of Fort Worth, I was urged to be more adventurous than a taco. Catering to American tastes then, these gringo tacos (anglicized versions of Mexicos rolled and fried tacos dorados) were like chicken fingers mostly all the same.

After college in Texas and a handful of years in DC, I spent the rest of the 90s living in San Francisco attending culinary school, working for a cookbook publisher, and helping launch one of the first major cooking websites. My decade there revolved around food and too much fun. Burritos were the thing big fat daddies from favorite spots like Gordos on Clement, Zona Rosa on Haight, or Taqueria Cancun in the Mission. They were easily two full-size meals rolled in a manhole-size flour tortilla, but so delicious and dangerously easy to devour before their immense size registered in your stomach. It was just too much, so I started ordering tacos. These werent the tacos of my childhood, they were classic Mexican street tacos: small corn tortillas griddled on a smoking comal, topped with meat, queso fresco, nuggets of raw white onion, and a scattering of cilantro leaves. Have one or three. Order as you go. After my years mastering the art of French cooking at Tante Maries Cooking School and working on a stream of fancy cookbooks, these tacos were a necessary reminder of how the thoughtful combination of just a few ingredients can be quite deliciously enough. To me the taco is meal perfection.

Skip ahead to the new century, my friend and former colleague was regularly teaching cooking classes at Rancho La Puerta, a chic spa on the Baja Peninsula. She tagged me as her free plus-one a couple of times, which was like winning the luxe lotto. One trip, a few of us ventured off the ranch and into the town of Tecate for an authentic Mexican meal at the restaurant Asao. It was there I experienced my first tequila flighta sampling of one makers blanco, reposado, and aejo tequilas. Wait, THIS was tequila?! Sensing my enthusiasm, I suppose, the waiter delivered a shallow clay copita brimming with mezcalmostly ordered by locals then. With one resinous, woodsy sip, a portal to a spirited new frontier had been opened for me to explore.

Chalk it up to star chefs, food television, farm-to-table, or eat-out culture, but today tequila and tacos are riding a tsunami. Agave spirits are sipped, savored, sought, and collected. Flights are poured and flavor notes pondered. Distillers tinker with technique and taste and keep methods top secret. Tequilerias and mezcalerias are becoming as common as whiskey and wine bars. And like never before, bartenders are building inventive cocktails using both familiar and lesser known agave spiritstequila, mezcal, raicilla, bacanora, sotol, and pulquethat highlight rather than mask agaves distinctive flavors.