Lately, I have been obsessed with making high quality, authentic street tacos.

Salsa is key to a great taco. We grow tomatoes, tomatillos, cilantro, onion and key limes in our garden and abundant jalapenos in our green house. I am always striving to have an entirely homegrown salsa, but it is rare that everything is harvestable at the same time. Tomatoes and tomatillos love the heat, while cilantro will go straight to seed in warm weather. My solution is a mostly homegrown salsa. This means I am buying cilantro in the summer and tomatoes or tomatillos in the winter.

I make my go-to salsa by filling a standard food processor with four large tomatoes (or six medium sized ones), half a large onion, three cloves of garlic, two ripe jalapenos, the juice of 3 key limes, a bunch of cilantro (leaves and stems, about the size they sell in the grocery store), a half a teaspoon ground cumin and salt and pepper to taste. I rough chop the larger items before putting them in the food processor to blend. I like a chunky salsa, so I make sure not to over blend.

We are fortunate to have a prolific key lime tree. Limes are often sold at the store in their green, unripe state. Having a tree allows me to use them at the peak of ripeness.

The other key to authentic tacos is the tortilla. I am a huge fan of homemade tortillas. I quickly learned that store bought masa harina wasn’t going to result in the authentic flavor I was striving for. I tried buying corn from Amazon and then doing the nixtamalization and grinding myself. It took forever. A good compromise was a chef grade masa harina.

I mix 1 cup of this finally ground masa with 1 cup of hot (~100F) water and one half to one teaspoon of salt. I mix well by hand and then cover and let it sit for thirty minutes. I then make the dough into eight balls and recover to keep the moisture in. Bringing the pan up to a high temperature, I flatten the balls using a tortilla press or a flat bottomed heavy pan. One trick I use, is to flatten the tortilla between the two sides of a cut open zip lock bag. Peel the uncooked tortilla off of the plastic and cook in a hot pan.

For the pan, I use either seasoned cast iron or my new clay comal.

I usually fill my tacos with leftover meat. We often have whole smoked chicken or smoked tri tip for dinner and eat the leftover meat the next night. We make the filling by cooking bite sized pieces of the leftovers with some oil over a high heat. As the meat is already cooked from the night before, you are just trying to give it some color and warm it up.

I like to top my tacos with a homemade crema. If my salsa or filling is spicy, I will make a key lime crema, by combining the juice of two key limes with three heaping spoonfuls of sour cream. This helps to cut down the heat. If my salsa is mild, I will kick it up a notch by adding chipoltle powder to taste. Either way, a flavorful crema comes together in minutes and really makes the meal.

Are you hungry for tacos yet? The combinations are endless. Change out the tortilla, salsa, filling, veggies and crema for a quick, tasty and unique meal.