Susan Jung’s recipes for simply delicious tacos
You don’t have to go to a Californian taqueria to satisfy your Mexican cravings. You can make some right at home in Hong Kong
Whenever I visit my parents in California, one of the first things I do is head for a taqueria. My mother knows me well; she once picked me up from the airport at 9.30am and asked me on the way home if I wanted tacos. By 10am, we were eating Ensenada fish tacos.
The tacos available in Hong Kong are usually complicated, with too much gloop. I like them simple – tortilla (corn, please) with meat or fish, raw vegetables for crunch and colour (depending on the filling, it can be shredded cabbage or lettuce, sliced radishes or just chopped white onion) and a little salsa.
Carne asada tacos with avocado and tomato salsa
The skirt steak used in this recipe isn’t easy to find: it’s a thin, long cut of meat with a strong, beefy flavour. It’s not very tender so for tacos it needs to be sliced against the grain and roughly chopped into small pieces. If you can’t find skirt steak, substitute flank steak, but cut it horizontally into two thin pieces before marinating the meat.
800 grams skirt steak
125ml soy sauce
60ml fresh orange juice
25ml fresh lime juice
20ml olive oil
40 grams garlic, roughly chopped
½ tsp oregano
Oil, for the skillet
For the salsa and to serve:
1 avocado
300 grams cherry tomatoes (use the small sweet oval or pear-shaped tomatoes sold by fruit vendors)
1 small garlic clove
1 shallot
1 red bird’s-eye chilli, or to taste
15ml fresh lime juice, or to taste
A few sprigs of fresh coriander
Fine sea salt
About a dozen corn tortillas, about 15cm in diameter
Fresh limes