("Cuban Nights" by Captain Qubz playing) ♪ ♪ - If you want the best regional Mexican tacos, just travel to East Los Angeles.

We're going on a taco crawl across the city.

That's coming up today on Milk Street.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ The streets of L.A. are a great place to find highly regional tacos, and so I asked a friend of mine, Javier Cabral-- he's editor-in-chief of L.A. Taco-- and Paola Briseño-González, she's a food writer, to give me a tour of street tacos, starting with the famous fried shrimp taco of Raul Ortega at Mariscos Jalisco to the oversized sobaquera tacos filled with chili colorado prepared by Walter Soto at El Ruso.

We finally finish up with a recipe for Oaxacan-style vegetables in chili garlic sauce.

Please stay tuned.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ - (stammering): Taco scouting is a, is a very demanding job because, you know, there's just no other part in the U.S. that matches the depth of regionalities of tacos here, you know.

Texas has good tacos, Arizona has good tacos, New York is starting to.

- But that's what you've always said about L.A.. is it's... you can get into very personal, specific regional areas and find your food.

- (conversing in Spanish) - So El Ruso's unique because he does Sonoran style.

It's a very arid region of Mexico and corn doesn't grow as easy when it's, like, 107 degrees or 120 degrees.

(siren blaring) And because of that, they actually made a custom of eating more flour tortillas there.

They have more in common with like a roti, or a paratha, or like a... an Indian flatbread.

But we're going to have actually a real treat today because El Ruso is the only taquero in L.A. they make a sobaquera.

Huge oversized flour tortillas.

♪ ♪ Gracias.

(speaking Spanish) ♪ ♪ - Oh... That is... yeah.

The tortilla is also very different.

It has a softness to it, you know.

Mm!

♪ ♪ We're in Boyle Heights.

We're at Mariscos Jalisco.

This is the original shrimp taco in L.A.

The style is from... from an area called San Juan de Los Lagos, and it's a, it's a super-secret mishmash shrimp mixture inside it that no one has been able to crack.

The surface ratio suggests of cheese, but just a handful of cheese, not like... maybe a couple of ounces, not, not too much.

Inside is some kind of chopped shrimp mixture.

It's a unique taco.

Raul makes this, this, uh, hot sauce that the salsa that he makes from scratch from árbol chilies from... from chiles de árbol.

So, be careful, it's very spicy.

Mm!

- Oh man... Yeah.

Crunch, the filling is really unusual.

- Thoughts?

What do you think?

- Mm... Mm...

I've never had a taco like this before.

Anything like this.

♪ ♪ - We are at Los Dorados L.A.

They're a trailer and these guys are special because, you know, L.A. is a city of tacos and this guy found the one taco that, like, no one had really modernized or specialized in called the flauta.

The flauta being the long, crispy taquitos that are, you know, filled with... yeah, it's usually, it's usually shredded chicken or potato.

Here my favorite is the lamb.

So let's, let's go, let's get them all, let's go eat somewhere like a little more peaceful.

Yeah, tacos taste better on the trunks of cars sometimes.

This is lamb.

- Oh, lamb.

So that the lamb one is the only one that deserves like the deeper flavor than salsa.

- Mm!

- You enjoying yourself?

- I'm not talking.

I guess so.

Crispy... Smoky... (chuckles) Slightly spicy, creamy... Unctuous...

He's so good, you know.

- Yeah, you know, and that's... (sighs) It doesn't get more L.A. than this.

We're using the car hood.

It's hot, right, 'cause we've been driving it.

Helicopters whirring by, there's airplanes, there's exhaust.

(loud engine passing by) Right on cue.

- Pretty full.

That was delicious.

Javier, thank you.

- All right, see you, Chris.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So if you want a really great and quick education, about tacos and lots of other styles of Mexican cooking, the place to go is Los Angeles, especially East Los Angeles.

Their taco trucks, their small eateries, and they have hyper-regional tacos like the flautas, which looks like a cigar and it's fried.

And the one that's maybe the most famous is the one we're going to make now.

It's tacos de camarones-- shrimp taco.

I met the owner of the truck, Raul Ortega, and his truck is called Mariscos Jalisco.

It means seafood from Jalisco, which is an area of Mexico on the Pacific coast.

This is a really interesting recipe and a lot of people have wondered what's in it because it's inexpensive, but it has shrimp.

So he's figured out a way to use less shrimp and get a lot of flavor out of it.

And so I want to thank him as well.

Also, Javier Cabral and Paola Briseño-González, with my guide.

They live in Los Angeles and they showed me around, which was great.

So I'm going to start with the salsa, the topping.

This would probably be done in a blender in most Mexican households, but we'll use the food processor here.

Tomatoes, of course.

Onion.

A little garlic.

Oregano.

And some salt as well.

And just puree that.

(food processor stops) Okay.

So reserve that in a bowl.

So we're going to leave this because we're gonna use that again with some of the other ingredients, like the shrimp.

And now we're going to take some cabbage that we're going to need to chop, not just slice.

So one way to do cabbage I like is cut in quarters and then you can see the core is right here.

Cut through the core like that.

The core is gone and then you can just cut across.

There's plenty.

Put that aside.

And we're gonna actually want to chop this up-- not just slice it, we're gonna chop it up because we're gonna add it to that salsa.

So we need about a cup.

Just eyeball that.

Maybe just a little more...

I think that's enough.

So we also have some chopped cilantro as well.

Okay.

Mm, that's pretty good.

Here we go.

Salted.

Okay, with the salsa prepared, now we'll move on to the shrimp.

Okay, so now we're going to work on the filling.

This is deja vu all over again.

(chuckling): We have tomatoes, looks familiar, onion, looks familiar.

Garlic and oregano.

We're gonna add a teaspoon of salt and a quarter of pepper.

So we're not going to puree this, we're gonna chop it, so it's still some pieces in it left.

Okay.

So you still want some pieces in here; not totally pureed.

Okay, now for the really interesting part of this recipe.

You know when I had the tacos, they're not big pieces of shrimp.

It has sort of chew to it, which is nice, but it's all blended together, and the question is how do they get that texture and that filling?

Well, the answer, we think-- we don't actually have his recipe-- is to use shrimp and pulse them just three or four times.

And that protein binds everything together, it helps bind together the filling, So we'll put that in.

Just three or four pulses.

♪ ♪ You know one of his goals in making the tacos de camarones is that it should be inexpensive street food so he can't pile it full of shrimp.

So he's using the shrimp as a binder and also for flavor and texture, and that's how he creates affordable and delicious street food.

So we're now going to cook down this version of the salsa to get rid of any excess liquid.

We're going to start with three tablespoons of oil, grapeseed or neutral oil is fine.

So we're just trying to get rid of the excess liquid, and then we're gonna add shrimp and one other ingredient.

So now we're gonna add another thickening agent.

The shrimp is going to thicken as well as the flour-- three tablespoons.

Going to cook that down for just a minute or two.

Okay, that's good.

And now the shrimp, which has been pulsed, put that in.

So when you think of a shrimp taco, you do not think about this.

This is why it's such an unusual recipe.

This will take just about a minute.

It's been pulsed, it's going to cook very quickly.

Just cook the shrimp until it's no longer translucent.

It just turns pink.

I'd say we're almost there.

Okay, this is our filling for the taco.

Oh, these are of course fried shrimp tacos, so we took some corn tortillas.

In order to make them more flexible because we have to fill them and fold them over, we heated them in a dry skillet, both sides just to get them so they're easier to work with.

We're going to do four at a time.

So we're going to divide the filling.

Okay.

Okay, now we're going to fold them over, but we're not going to seal the edges.

We're going to leave them slightly open.

Okay, a neutral oil.

We wanted to get this up to 350, pick up the handle of the skillet so you pool the oil away from you.

So that's at 350.

Here we are.

I mean, this looks absolutely phenomenal.

Now, I have to say, it's very hard if you eat food out of a taco truck, for example, and try to replicate that at home.

So we did have some help.

Paola Briseño-González, who works with Javier, married to Javier Cabral, actually developed this recipe initially, and she did a great job.

And the trick was to get that texture inside with the shrimp, and so it has a little bit of chew to it, but it has good shrimp flavor.

So put some sauce on it.

By the way, this is not easy to eat.

(chuckles): It's gonna be a little messy, but that's okay.

I gotta have two.

I can't just have one.

Sorry.

If you want it, by the way, you could put a little Mexican crema on this as well.

So that's our taco de camarones.

This is the one from Raul Ortega from his food truck in East L.A.-- Mariscos Jalisco.

It really is the most unusual taco I had in L.A., and it's one of the absolutely most celebrated.

So, thanks to Raul, thanks to Paola, thanks to Javier.

This is now one of our absolute favorites.

Mm... ♪ ♪ - Beef chili colorado is a Mexican classic and probably one of the most unique offerings on the menu at Walter Soto's El Ruso Taqueria truck in Los Angeles.

Colorado, it means "red-colored" in Spanish, and that perfectly describes the dish.

It's stewy meat tossed in a puree of dried red chilies.

It's bright, bright, bright red and it has so much richness from the meat.

So let's talk about the chilies first and that's the core of this dish.

We're going to use dried, either guajillo chilies or New Mexico chilies.

And then you want to make sure to stem them and remove the seeds.

And they're dried so they're kind of hard.

(chuckles) In order to soften them, you put them in a pan, cover it with some water, bring it to a boil, then cover it and let it sit for about 15 to 20 minutes.

That'll soften those up so that they'll be able to be pureed into the sauce.

So these I've already done.

You can see they're much softer than the ones we see here, also much brighter red colored.

And so I'm going to put these into the blender.

Along with some garlic... Mexican oregano... Cumin... Salt... And some water.

So we'll blend this up until it's nice and smooth.

(whirring) All right, this looks fantastic.

I mean, look at the color of this.

Just check to make sure it's all blended.

All right, we're going to set this aside for now and move on to the meat.

So commonly this is made with pork.

To honor the recipe that we had at El Ruso, we're going to use beef.

We're using boneless chuck roast.

It's the perfect cut here because it's going to cook for a long time, really get nice and rich and soft.

It has a lot of connective tissue and fat.

All of that is going to kind of melt off and really make this nice and tender.

So I'm gonna take these pieces of meat and you'll see I've cut these into pretty big chunks rather than like a stew, which you might cut into smaller pieces.

Larger pieces of meat lose less moisture when you sear them, which is what we're going to do next.

In the meantime, I'm going to coat this with flour.

We don't typically coat our meat with flour before we make a stew at Milk Street.

We're doing it here because we want a little bit of body.

This small amount of flour is going to slightly thicken that puree and just add a really velvety texture.

All right, the oil is nice and hot.

Add the meat.

So we'll get those nice and brown on that side and then flip them around, make sure they're brown all over.

All right, so I'm going to flip these over.

And then we're going to get those nice and brown on all sides.

That will take us about ten minutes, then we'll take those out and start to build the sauce.

♪ ♪ All right, so I took all of the meat out.

We drained the fat that was in the pot.

Now we can add that chili puree that we made earlier.

And then I'm going to turn this up.

So we're going to let this simmer.

I'm going to scrape up the bottom here so we make sure we get everything off the bottom of the pot, because that's where all of the flavor lies.

All right, that chili puree is simmering.

I'm just going to add a roughly chopped onion.

You don't need to cook this ahead of time, which is my favorite.

And then a couple of bay leaves.

Stir it in.

And then we can add the meat back in.

So, ultimately, we want this meat fully submerged in the chili puree, but don't be too concerned if it's not at this point.

This meat is going to release some juice as it cooks.

I'm going to bring this back up to a simmer, and then reduce the heat, cover it, and let it cook for about an hour.

At that point, though, if you check it, and it's not completely submerged, just add a little bit of water until it is, and then cook it for another hour.

All right, so I let this cook for two hours, then I let it sit off the heat for about 30 minutes so the meat can rest.

And now it's time to shred the meat.

Look at that.

The bright red color of this is like nothing I've seen before.

And it smells so great.

So I'm going to shred the meat and it should be pretty simple to do because this meat is so tender.

It's basically falling apart.

But I think we're ready to make a taco.

Now, this is always, always served with flour tortillas.

They make them fresh every day at El Ruso.

In fact, they make enormous, arm-sized flour tortillas.

and wrap this chili colorado up in that almost like a burrito.

We're going to downsize a little and make a taco.

Look at that.

Oh, this smells so good.

This is not one to have when you're wearing fancy clothes.

It's messy street food.

Put a little bit of onion... And some cilantro...

Here we go.

This is so good!

It is so rich.

That beef has so much flavor and the chili has fruitiness and earthiness.

But it's actually not spicy at all and that's why we chose the chilies that we chose.

So this is beef chili colorado, our ode to the taco truck version we had in L.A. ♪ ♪ - Today we're going to be making a amazing vegetarian dish-- a Oaxacan-style vegetables and chili garlic sauce, and it is just a lovely way to highlight the guajillo chilies.

So today we are using guajillo chilies in this recipe because they are sweet, they are fragrant, and they're delicious.

However, nine times out of ten you find them dehydrated.

So what I'm going to do is I'm going to toast them up and then use the oils that are released by my chilies to flavor the rest of my dish.

So to start it off I'm gonna add a little bit of oil to my pan and let that heat up to just about shimmering.

So as our oil heats, I made sure to take off the stems of my guajillo peppers, and I'm just going to rip them into the oil, and let them sizzle a bit.

So don't be intimidated by guajillo chilies.

They are mild, they are fruity, and they are delicious.

And it's actually a really good way to introduce yourself to a low, low level of spice just to amp up your taste buds.

So we're going to let these toast until they get a little bit brighter red in color.

That'll mean that our chili oils are releasing into the oil, flavoring it, and you wanna toss these around just a little bit.

This toasting phase should only take about three to four minutes.

If you can see, now the oil is starting to take on a little bit of a reddish hue as the oil is released from the dried chilies.

I have about two cups of water here.

(sizzling) So I'm going to let this come up to a boil, cover it, take it off the heat, and let them hang out in the hot water for a while.

So it's been about 15 minutes and my chilies have been soaking in that liquid.

You can see that they're nice and soft, a little bit brighter of a red.

So I'm going to go ahead and add them to my blender to start my sauce.

Also bringing in about half a cup of that soaking liquid because it's infused with the sweetness of the guajillo chili.

And so to finish off the flavors in our sauce, I'm going to add a bit of cumin, some fresh oregano, a little bit of garlic, a little bit of vinegar for acidity and brightness.

And then I also want to add about a quarter teaspoon of black pepper and about a half teaspoon of salt.

Now we blend it up.

(whirring) All righty, got my sauce ready hanging out, chilling out.

I'm going to add about two cups of potatoes to my saucepan.

And I'm going to put enough water to just cover it with maybe two inches or so.

All right, I'm going to bring this up to a boil, but first I'm going to add about a tablespoon of salt just to make sure that my vegetables are seasoned.

So for your potatoes, you're only going to want to cook them about three to five minutes, so they're just shy of tender.

Then we're going to add some more vegetables to the party.

So we're using potatoes, green beans, and cauliflower here.

And it's a combination that's worked really well for us.

However, if you have a favorite vegetable, or you want to throw some broccoli in there, sweet potatoes, just make sure to cook them until they're just about tender and add whatever you want into the mix.

All right, it's been about three or four minutes.

I'm going to add the rest of my vegetables in.

And I'm only going to cook these for another three to five minutes.

Make sure everything is covered in our water and we're going to let these cook for about three to five minutes.

All righty, so I'm going to transfer my vegetables directly into my bowl with my chili garlic sauce and I want them to stay warm and make sure that they are able to cool and absorb the flavors of my sauce at the same time.

Gonna give these a quick toss.

Look at that beautiful color, and it smells so good.

This beautiful red should be absorbing into your vegetables and turning it into a beautiful, beautiful color.

So now that my vegetables are nice and tossed up in this beautiful chili garlic sauce, I'm going to let them hang out for at least 15 minutes, but for up to two days, if you cover it and put it in the refrigerator.

As the vegetables sit in that sauce, the flavors are going to mellow, and the whole dish will become a little bit more harmonious.

So my vegetables have been mellowing out and cooling in this chili garlic sauce, and they smell divine, so I'm going to build myself a little torta.

So, Oaxacan-style vegetables are typically not served as a main, but if we put it on a torta or in a taco, or even on top of a tostada, it becomes a whole meal unto its own.

So I'm going to slice up a little bit of cabbage for my garnish here.

And you can use fresh herbs here.

It's really whatever you want to make your sandwich.

So slice this cabbage super, super thin.

All righty, and I'm going to build myself a lovely sandwich on this roll.

And I'm going to use a slotted spoon and get some of my vegetables.

And the roll is great because some of this awesome chili sauce will absorb into the roll and make it a little bit more flavorful.

I'm going to add a little bit of my shredded cabbage, and again, you can add herbs here, or even shredded carrots.

Whatever you'd like.

Thinly sliced onion... and a little bit of crumbled queso fresco.

And there we have it: a beautiful sandwich piled high with these well-seasoned vegetables.

A little bit of crunch, a little bit of crispness and freshness.

And so you've got a torta with Oaxacan-style vegetables in a chili garlic sauce.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season at MilkStreetTV.com.

- All episodes and recipes from this season of Milk Street Television are available for free at our website: MilkStreetTV.com.

Please access our content, including our step-by-step recipe videos, from your smartphone, your tablet, or your computer.

- The new Milk Street Cookbook is now available and includes every recipe from our TV show.

From fried shrimp tacos and Thai-style vegetable stir-fry, to Mexican chicken soup and Swedish cardamom buns, the Milk Street Cookbook offers bolder, fresher, simpler recipes.

Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price, and receive a Milk Street tote with your order at no additional charge.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - That meal.

You sautéed, you seared, and you served, cooking with All-Clad, bonded cookware designed, engineered, and assembled in the U.S.A. for over 50 years.

All-Clad: for all your kitchen adventures.

♪ ♪ - So here's the menu: churro first and then squid sandwich.

It's hot, it's crispy, it's delicious.

♪ ♪ Pretty good.

It's good.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪