Worst cookbook mistake ever?
Enrique Olvera's 'Sunny Days, Taco Nights' badly botches the most basic and important component of the dish: the tortilla. Plus: Vegans are people, too.
Half a year ago, I was super excited to read that this summer, Enrique Olvera — Mexico’s most famous chef — would be publishing a new book: Sunny Days, Taco Nights.
Olvera’s last effort, Tu Casa Mi Casa, is one of my favorite cookbooks. Now the brilliant chef (Pujol in Mexico City, Cosme and Atla in New York, etc.) would be sharing his recipes for tacos, one of my favorite foods in the universe. Such great news!
At long last, my review copy from Phaidon arrived (it will be published June 3). I couldn’t wait to crack it open. How, I wondered, would Olvera instruct us to make tortillas? Tu Casa Mi Casa, you see, was published in 2019, just a few months before Masienda introduced its groundbreaking, life-changing heirloom-corn masa harina onto the market. Before that, anyone wanting to enjoy handmade tortillas had to make and grind nixtamal, a tedious and difficult process for home cooks, or use awful commodity-corn masa harina such as Maseca. Ick.
I started flipping through Sunny Days’ 100 recipes for taco fillings. How odd, I thought, that there’s no introductory section whatsoever on how to make tortillas. Instead, each of the recipes that calls for corn tortillas — which is to say most of them — sends us to a recipe on page 200. There we go. Corn Tortillas. Prep time: 15 minutes. Cooking time: 5 minutes. Makes: 30. So far so good.
Next, the ingredients, beginning with 2 pounds, 4 ounces / 1 kilo — whaaaa??? — cornmeal!
You read that right. Cornmeal. Not masa harina, cornmeal.
Anyone who has ever made a corn tortilla knows that it is impossible to make one from cornmeal. Corn kernels require, in order to become masa (tortilla dough), nixtamalization, or cooking with culinary lime, to soften the pericarp surrounding each one. Only then can you grind them into a dough that will hold together. The discovery of that was the genius of Mesoamerican indigenous peoples.
If you mix regular cornmeal with warm water and knead that together, as Olvera’s new cookbook suggests, you cannot possibly get a dough. Instead you get a pile of something that looks and feels like wet sand.
How many people will buy this book and think there’s something wrong with them when their dough fails to come together? Was there no editor or copy editor on duty at Phaidon? Did no one on Olvera’s team bother to read the proofs? Not even the co-author, Alonso Ruvalcaba? How is it possible that no one caught this? Maybe I hallucinated it?
Nope — there it is. The cover price for this flexi-paperback, by the way, is $39.95.
So here, just so it’s crystal-clear: If you’re not making nixtamal and grinding it into masa, or purchasing masa at a tortilleria, the only other way to make masa is by mixing masa harina with water. Masa harina, yes. Cornmeal, no.
And another thing . . .
Maybe you’re thinking, why not just get past the big boo-boo, and dive into what must be some wonderful taco fillings? That was my plan.
If you caught this newsletter last week, you might remember I was preparing to welcome a vegan houseguest, Sophie. She and my son Wylie just arrived from California. As it happens, Wylie had the idea of making tacos for dinner last night, as masa-driven meals are perfect for vegans. I always have Masienda masa harina on hand to make tortillas. What fun, right?!
Hey — why not find some great vegan taco fillings from Olvera’s book?
As it turns out, there’s exactly two: Green Bean and Peanut Tacos and one called “Vegan Tacos.” The first one was out, as Wylie’s allergic to peanuts.
For the Vegan Tacos, the filling is something called “vegan cutlets.” It requires making a yeasted dough from bread flour, shaping that dough into “cutlets,” coating the cutlets with seasoned bread crumbs and deep-frying them. In other words, hard-to-achieve tacos filled with fried bread-covered bread. Sounds like a punishment.
In the book’s beautiful introductory essay, co-author Ruvalcaba wrote about how tacos are for everyone — people of every nationality, gender identity, social status, health condition and so forth:
“The taco is the opposite of exclusive: it is genuinely for the masses — not just in words or a damn sign, but for real. For everyone.”
Except vegans, I guess.
No matter — delicious vegan taco dinner was well within our powers. I put up a pot of mayocoba beans to simmer, while Wylie and Sophie ran to the market for green things. I had ripe avocados and tofu on hand.
Wylie whipped up a smooth, deep-flavored ancho salsa, and used that to dress up succulent sautéed oyster mushrooms. Sophie diced zucchini, tossed it in olive oil, salt, pepper and Mexican oregano, and roasted it to sweet meltiness. Wylie made guacamole; Sophie crumbled tofu into a sauté pan and turned it into something marvelous. I diced up a pico de gallo, cut wedges of lime.
The comal took its place on the stove, and I set up the tortilla press. Then mixed up a batch of masa, combining warm water with — no, not cornmeal. Masa harina.
With a dozen tortillas tucked in their pouch and an array of fabulous fillings, we ate royally.
Have a lovely long weekend. Throw a taco party!
Lots of love,
Leslie
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: “Insanely good shrimp and grits”
[Books purchased from links to Bookshop.com in the post above may earn me an affiliate commission.]
I just read through the book and noticed that too. I'm also suspicious of the nixtamalized corn tortilla recipe below that one. I make nixtamalized corn tortillas–I own a molinito for the purpose and sold fresh tortillas at my farmers market. Most corn varieties will require an overnight soak in calcium hydroxide not quicklime (calcium oxide). I'd argue that the recipe in this book is dangerous to attempt and I've never seen a recipe quite like it. Major oversight indeed.
And I thought forgetting cilantro in my guacamole recipe in my first book was a bad mistake! Phew! Great post Leslie.