Yearly Archives: 2016

Spring Recipe: Jalapeño, Feta and Mango Salsa

Spring Recipe: Jalapeño, Feta and Mango Salsa

This salsa shows up on our spring specials board the first week the farmers market reopens outdoors. It is sweet, salty and a little hot, and it goes with fish tacos, grilled chicken or a bag of chips on the patio. Dice two ripe mangoes and half a red onion. Mince one jalapeño, seeds in if you like heat. Crumble…

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6 Small Upgrades That Will Change How You Eat Tacos

6 Small Upgrades That Will Change How You Eat Tacos

Small changes, big difference. Here are six things we do in the kitchen that work just as well at home. Warm the tortilla on a dry pan until it blisters. Double up corn tortillas for anything saucy. Salt the onion and cilantro, not just the meat. Add acid at the end, always lime, never bottled. Keep the salsa on the…

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Top 10 Dishes to Try on Our Menu Before Summer Ends

Top 10 Dishes to Try on Our Menu Before Summer Ends

Patio season in Edmonton is short, so here is the list to work through before the heaters come out. Birria tacos with consommé. Baja fish tacos with cabbage slaw. Street corn rolled in cotija and chili. The saskatoon margarita. Chicken tinga tostadas. The carnitas burrito, eaten on the patio with a view of the Avenue. Republic nachos for the table.…

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Pairing Alberta Craft Beer with Mexican Food

Pairing Alberta Craft Beer with Mexican Food

Mexican lagers are the obvious pairing and we keep plenty on ice, but Edmonton brews some beer that belongs next to a taco. A crisp pilsner from a local brewery cuts through carnitas fat. A hazy pale ale stands up to the chiles in birria. A gose, salty and sour, is the best thing we have found for fish tacos.…

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Strange But Good: 8 New Things to Do with Leftover Tortillas

Strange But Good: 8 New Things to Do with Leftover Tortillas

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…

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Where Did the Taco Come From? A Short History

Where Did the Taco Come From? A Short History

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…

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