Do y’all want to argue forever about this? Because I’m not going to bother. I bet I can find some tiny corner of the universe in which molasses based cornbread topped with ice cream and melted cheese with a side pile of succotash is called a “muffin,” but guess what? That’s not going to make vast inroads into the general understanding of what a muffin actually IS. I get my Mexican food out of trucks from people who don’t speak English, so pardon me if I follow their lead as to what’s a taco and what’s a quesadilla.
I don’t bitch about people thinking a real taco has ground beef in it, which it most emphatically does NOT, traditionally speaking, (because that’s a Taco Bell thing and not a Mexican thing, just like the deep fried U-shaped “taco” shell) because I can parse out what someone means when they say “taco.” Which is a different thing from a quesadilla, no matter what kind of fuckery they put in it where y’all live. And a Jimboy’s taco is a thing unto itself, which I clearly described as a regional item rather than a universal one, because I figured other people might find it interesting and tasty. What it isn’t is a thing that’s improved by bitchery. Like a lot of other things.
Just to be clear, I’m not arguing about what a Jimboy is. Just that a quesadilla very often made from corn, not flour. We even had a very informative discussion back here with a couple of people from Mexico who explained it all. I, too, was initially confused. Then I learned and noticed that, in fact, around here the Mexican places that advertise quesadillas do usually make them from masa, and they don’t even have to have cheese in them!
“Queso” means CHEESE. If you order a cheeseburger and it comes without cheese, how is it a cheeseburger? If you make a grilled cheese sammich and it has no cheese in it, how does that work? Is mac 'n cheese without cheese what you expect when you order mac 'n cheese? You’d be totes fine with a plate full of macaroni without any damned cheese in it? You’d just shrug and say “Okay then!” if the server explained to you that in THEIR restaurant “mac 'n cheese” actually means uncooked pasta with peanut butter all over the top? I’m thinking that’s a hard no.
So just to be completely clear, a Jimboy’s taco is a taco. Because that’s what Jimboy’s calls what they serve. It may not be what anyone else calls a taco, just like Gag in the Bag tacos really stretch the definition as well. They are not quesadillas. They are not muffins. Tacos.
It doesn’t make much sense to go on about the “real” way to make these things, because there’s so much variation throughout both Mexico and the the U.S. I don’t know why anyone would want to. It’s like saying there’s only one true way of preparing a sandwich, or only one way to cook potatoes.
My first job was in a (family-owned) Mexican restaurant, (close to the above-mentioned Old Town Mexican Cafe), and when the long-time head cook, from Tijuana, retired, to be replaced by one from DF, some of the traditional dishes changed a lot, with some ridiculing remarks from the Tijuana-based employees. But chilangos were fine with it.
Maybe Jimboy’s calls their dish a taco, and maybe it’s really good, but it’s not unique, because there are a lot of places that sell the same thing and call it a quesadilla. And regardless of what that one local place calls it, you’ll confuse a lot more people by calling it a taco.
That isn’t anything special; that’s a pretty standard way to fry tortillas for tacos. That’s what I was talking about upthread when I said it was something of an art.
And that thing on the Jimboys site is a taco. Full stop. Not sure how anyone thinks it might be anything else.
That’s a taco" A “U” shaped tortilla (fried or not) filled with meat, cheese and veggies.
A quesadilla is either two tortillas (or one folded in half) filled with cheese and occasionally has added meat (like a Caesar Salad…with chicken. The meat is an extra) and is grilled
I showed the Jimboy’s pic to ~10 people in my office and zero people–literally zero–thought it was anything but a taco. About half way through, I pulled up Bump’s pic of a quesadilla and again 100% of the people called it a quesadilla.
I don’t know where you’re eating Mexican food…but they’re doing it wrong.
OK, paging CBEscapee. Look, we had a whole fucking thread about this seven years ago where I learned that the word means a little bit different things on each side of the border and, since learning that, noticed that the places in my neighborhood actually do tend to follow the “folded corn tortilla” meaning of “quesadilla.” Don’t be so sure that “they’re doing it wrong.”
Look, I’m not going to call the Jimboy’s pic a “quesadilla” myself, but a quesadilla has a far more wide-ranging meaning than you seem to be giving it credit for. Once again, read the thread I linked to earlier and the opinions of actual people who live in the actual country from which the actual food comes from. Look, for example, at the steak quesadilla in the photo down here. This is what you get in my neighborhood when you ask for a quesadilla.
OK, that I wouldn’t agree with. I think most Americans think of the Jimboy’s dish as a taco. A quesadilla, in US English, does tend to mean a couple of flour tortillas with cheese in between, to most people. Do you live in a particularly Mexican neighborhood? Or maybe where you are is closer to the original meaning of quesadilla than the more popularized American meaning.
Now if that link isn’t confusing as hell; Matt’s El Rancho is in Austin on S. Lamar, not in Chicago.
I’m going to hazard a guess here and say that “quesadilla” probably means different things in different parts of Mexico and the US, much the same as other foods do. Look at what some parts of the country call “pizza” or “barbecue”, and figure that this is much the same thing.
My suspicion is that the quesadilla/taco divide really is dependent on the order of the filling and the cooking, and that a quesadilla is the object that’s generated when the fillings are put in the tortilla and THEN it’s all cooked together, while a taco is essentially kind of like a Mexican/Tex-Mex sandwich, and the fillings/toppings are put in after the tortilla is prepared.
Interestingly enough, Chicago Mexican food is more authentic than the Texas/California variants, because there have been Mexican communities in Texas and California for hundreds of years, and immigrants there tend to fall in line with those communities in terms of food, etc… while in Chicago, the communities are much more recent, and the food is derived from the immigrants’ Mexican roots.
What link are you talking about? Mine doesn’t go to anything in Austin. It’s a food truck in literally the next neighborhood over from mine here in Chicago. ETA: Oh, you mean the picture. I have no idea what that has to do with the story below it. It’s not at all about a place called Matt’s El Rancho. ETA2: It just appears to be the blog’s cover photo. See the bare URL: http://chibbqking.blogspot.com/. The lead story is about Eastern European food in Ohio, and yet that El Rancho photo is there.
Well, I’m certainly not arguing whether that is true or not. I’m guessing it probably is, for the reasons you ascertain. That said, I’m more arguing with the people who are saying these people are doing Mexican food wrong.
On the other hand, in Texas and California, you have a lot of people who never left Mexico. They didn’t cross the border; the border crossed them. It’s a different region of Mexico, to be sure, but I wouldn’t say that makes it “less authentic”. Rather, authentic Tex-Mex isn’t the same thing as authentic Mexical, and neither is the same as authentic some-other-region.
Corn tortillas are made with NO oil! They are made from masa de maíz nixtamalizado and water. Nixtamalización is the process of cooking ground corn with lime and water. Tortillas made from true nixtamal instead of masa harina possess more flexibility, called correa in Spanish, that allows them to fold or roll without breaking. For tortillas made with masa harina, the amount of water is the key to a soft and flexible tortilla. Some people seem to have an instinct on mixing the masa with just the proper amount of water to get a wonderful and soft tortilla.
Tortillas can be reheated in different ways but the most common is on a comal which is a dry heat. Day old or stiff tortillas can be slightly moistened before placing them on the comal. Using oil to heat them is usually reserved for making a certain type of taco such as carne de puerco adobada and there is a special comal for those where they can be dipped in the same oil the meat is prepared in. Also for heating the tortilla that is placed beneath the eggs in huevos rancheros. For tacos de cabeza, carne asada or differente guisados, the tortilla is usually kept warm using moist heat or directly on the comal. A tortilla that is toasted on the comal until it becomes dry and crunchy is usually called a tortilla dorada and one fried in oil or lard is called a tostada, which is used for the antojito of the same name. But they two names are basically synonymous.
