Crying Tiger Tacos – when Mexico and Thailand collide!
This is a snippet of a brief conversation I had with myself last week (one of many actually).
“Hey, Thai and Mexican food are really similar! They both love chilli and lime and coriander and…oh wait, that’s about it. I’ll get my coat…”
Joking aside, it’s still an interesting opportunity to look at two quite different cuisines that might seem a world apart but, on the surface at least, reflect surprising similarities. I’m sure that can be said about much of our food these days – our ability to access food on a global scale has led to all kinds of new discoveries and fashions as our food culture continues to evolve and integrate.
Nevertheless, the idea of a Thai/ Mexican creation reared its head again when I spotted a piece of skirt steak in the window of my butcher, and my immediate thought was “how about fajitas, or maybe some sort of carne asada-type tacos…”.
I then recalled my recent internal monologue, and the first thing that popped into my head was a Thai grilled beef dish called Crying Tiger. And it all went downhill from there…
The aim with this “creation” was to try and take some of these common elements and see whether they could in fact work together…
So I had as my basis a taco with skirt steak, but I really didn’t want to mess about with it too much. In keeping with the Thai theme, I tried to keep it simple with a marinade of the classic Thai trinity of garlic, coriander and pepper, with fish sauce and a touch of oyster sauce for umami and a smidge of sweetness.
So what about a sauce or salsa? I had an idea of taking a typical tomato salsa and combining with a smoky, spicy jaew (a dipping sauce that I believe originates in Northern Thailand), creating in the process a strange bastard dressing (jaewsa anyone?) that will no doubt make little old Mexican and Thai grandmothers cry in despair.
And to finish off the tacos, some sour cream to cool the heat, slivers of cucumber, a bit more fresh coriander and ground, roasted peanuts. Job done.
I then took it one step further and decided flour rather than corn tortillas were the way to go, but after deciding to make them myself I opted for coconut oil for the fat content (instead of lard, which is probably just as well), in an attempt to integrate another vaguely Thai element into the mix.
I started by exploring two different recipes for tortillas. The first by Rick Bayless, which is based on a hot water dough, and the second by Josh Bousel over at Serious Eats, which uses cold water instead. Having tested both, our preferred tortilla was the cold water version, which came out with a softer texture as opposed to the chewier texture of the hot water dough.
However, playing around with the Serious Eats recipe a couple of times, I found the amount of water added could make the dough a little too soft and harder to handle, so I’ve adjusted the ratio down a little. Of course, this will also depend on other factors, such as flour, humidity and temperature on the day etc.
[ Warning – very basic and probably very-badly-calculated math follows – skip to the end for the recipe! ]
If you’re a bit anal-retentive like me, you may be interested to know that both recipes use a ration of 17.5% fat to flour.
The amount of water varies, but if using hot water it’s between (approximately) 30 – 40% water to weight of flour and fat combined. Less water gives you a stiffer dough, and chewier tortilla (I went for middle ground at 35% just boiled water). The dough comes together very quickly and starts off quite rough and needs a bit more work to knead. It feels like a denser dough compared to cold water dough.
With the cold water dough, you’ll need to use more water – between 40 – 50%, though as above I personally had a bit of trouble handling the final tortillas with dough at a ratio of 50% water. It was noticeably a much softer and lighter dough. It can feel a bit grainy at first from the coconut oil, but kneads out very easily into more of a pillowy soft dough.
To sum up I used a dough hydrated using cold water, with 17.5% coconut oil by weight to flour, and a ratio of around 45% water to combined weight of flour and fat.
Now, I am by no means a baker by any stretch of the imagination, so take what I say with a pinch of salt!
Strangely, it all does kind of work. Even though we’re taking what are in theory quite disparate cuisines, in this case there are enough similarities to engage that sense of the familiar on both sides without it getting too weird – full-flavoured beef, good kick from the salsa/jaew, crunch and cooling freshness from the cucumber, coriander and peanuts, with some Tex-Mex sour cream to juxtapose the Thai fire, all wrapped in a soft flour tortilla.
Anyway, enough yammering, here’s the recipe 🙂
- 600 grams skirt steak
- 9 grams fine sea salt (Eeqivalent to 1.5% by weight of beef)
- 2 cloves garlic (about 8 grams)
- 3 large coriander roots (about 8 grams - see notes)
- 1/2 teaspoon white or black peppercorns
- 1 teaspoon fish sauce
- 1 teaspoon oyster sauce
- 1/2 teaspoon soy sauce
- 2 long red chillies (about 40 grams)
- 2 cloves garlic (about 8 grams)
- 1 large tomato (diced - about 140 grams)
- 2 tablespoons chopped coriander
- 1 medium shallot (finely sliced - about 50 grams)
- 2 teaspoons fish sauce
- 1 tablespoon lime juice
- 1 teaspoon toasted rice powder (see notes)
- 1/2 teaspoon dried chilli powder
- 1 teaspoon palm sugar or brown sugar
- 300 grams plain flour
- 52 grams coconut oil
- 158 mililitres cold water
- 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
- In a mortar and pestle, break up the peppercorns then add the coriander roots and bash them up a little. Add the garlic and salt and continue to bash till it becomes a smooth paste. Mix in the soy, oyster and fish sauce, and rub well all over the steak.
- Leave the steak to marinate for at least a couple of hours, overnight if possible. I put mine onto a wire rack and marinate overnight in the fridge, leaving it uncovered so it dries out a bit and forms a nice crust when cooking.
- While the steak is marinating, make the jaew salsa...
- On a barbecue or under the grill on high heat, roast the chillies and garlic until charred. Leave to cool, then peel and deseed the chillies and peel the garlic. Chop both finely.
- Combine the roasted chili and garlic with the remaining ingredients and refrigerate until ready to use.
- Place flour, salt and coconut oil in a food processor and pulse a few times till everything comes together like fine breadcrumbs. Tip into a bowl and add the water while stirring to form a rough dough, then turn out onto a work surface and knead for 2 - 3 minutes till smooth. Cover the dough and leave to rest for 30 minutes.
- After resting, divide the dough into 12 pieces, roll into balls, dust with flour, cover and leave to rest for a further 5 - 10 minutes.
- Roll each ball of dough into a circle about 7 inches in diameter, and then cook on each side for about 20 seconds or until browned on both sides.
- Place on a plate and cover with a tea towel and repeat till all tortillas are cooked.
- When you’re ready to cook the steak, preheat a large frying pan or barbecue to high. Cook for 10 minutes, flipping every couple of minutes to ensure even cooking, till the steak is well-browned. You’re looking to cook the steak to a nice medium - any more and it can be a bit tough, just due to the type of cut it is. Cover with foil and leave to rest for 5 minutes, then slice thinly across the grain (you may first need to slice it into two halves along the grain depending on how wide a piece you have).
- To serve, take a tortilla, smear over some sour cream and top with cucumber slivers, beef, salsa, coriander and peanuts. Wrap and eat!
If you can't get coriander roots, substitute an equal weight of coriander stems - the roots have a deeper, earthier flavour than the stems, but stems will be fine.
To make toasted rice powder, place raw, uncooked glutinous rice in a dry pan over medium heat and toast until golden grown, stirring or moving the pan to prevent burning. Leave the rice to cool, then grind to a powder using a spice grinder or mortar and pestle.
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