Last night we wanted a fun, easy dinner. I thought of a thing we hadn’t had in years — fajitas, like I cooked them when I was first playing around with Mexican (ish) food.
If you grew up in the 1970’s in South Carolina, like I did, you didn’t get much chance to have real Mexican cooking. A staple of dinnertime in my family, like a lot of ’70’s families, was ground beef tacos seasoned with Old El Paso taco mix, hard shells, iceberg lettuce and shredded cheddar cheese. They’re really good when that’s all the Mexican or Tex-Mex you know about, and there’s still a ton of nostalgia in that dish.
So I didn’t start from any good place learning how to cook Mexican dishes, and probably started at a disadvantage even, considering what we had to go with.
But once I did taste real Tex-Mex in El Paso (the city, not the box), and had real Mexican food at several good restaurants, the race was on. As usual for me, once I had a good taste of something, I wanted to know how I could cook it at home. So some cookbooks and some TV watching primed me to start making this wonderful food myself.
One of the first meals we made together when we started dating was fajitas. There was a solid Mexican place in Chapel Hill, the late great El Rodeo, and one of our favorites there was their fajitas. Just like every other Mexican restaurant on most of the US — sizzler plate full of chicken and/or beef, and all the sides on a separate plate, and your own little tortilla warmer with your flour tortillas in it. SO good!
Over the years, I slowly stopped making this dish as I wandered into more traditional tacos and enchiladas, and kind of forgot about the old standby fajitas.
Well, reader — they’re back. I started the beans after lunch, in a big pot with half an onion and a handful of bay leaves. I had a nice skirt steak and marinated it in cumin, salt, pepper, Mexican oregano, some olive oil and lime juice. I also doused some chicken tenders in olive oil and a hefty hit of Badia Sazon Fajita. While the meats marinated, I made a side of guacamole, some pickled onions, and I shredded some Jack cheese and some cabbage.
I thinly sliced another onion and a pile of peppers, and sauteed them in a medium pan with olive oil and some salt. I sauteed some more onion (diced small) and some garlic in a lot of olive oil and tossed the beans in there after I drained them. I added cumin, cinnamon, salt and pepper, and then mashed them into refritos.
When the onions and peppers were done, I broiled the meats on a tray with a rack in it for about nine minutes at 500 degrees. Then as they rested, I played all the sides in various bowls and carried everything to the table. I put a pile of flour tortillas in our tortilla sleeve and nuked them to get them warm, and poured a little crema mexicana in another week bowl.
We stuffed them all in our faces and it was great — and a reminder that even truly inauthentic food can be delicious. Especially when it is a reminder of old meals together, and how much I have learned over the past thirty years in the kitchen.
Sometimes, ain’t no school like the old school. What will you have?