We press hundreds of tortillas a day and we waste almost none of them. Here is what the kitchen does with the leftovers. Chilaquiles for staff breakfast. Totopos fried for nachos. Tortilla soup, where the stale ones are actually better. Migas with scrambled eggs. Enfrijoladas dipped in black bean purée. Tostadas baked flat and crisp. Tortilla strips as a salad…
The word taco likely comes from the silver mines of 18th-century Mexico, where miners used paper wrapped around gunpowder, called tacos, to blast rock. The food version, a tortilla wrapped around a filling, is far older than that and goes back to the nixtamalized corn of pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica. Tacos al pastor arrived with Lebanese immigrants to Puebla and Mexico City…