Pork Tongue Tacos, Jicama Salad

The Pork:

• Rinse the pork tongues.
• Place them in a large pot of boiling water with enough vinegar to make a noticeable vinegar aroma.  This is for the likelihood that you bought the tongues in a place that doesn’t sell much of them, and that they’re kind of stinky – which is no big deal.  But, fresher tongues don’t have any funky smell.
• Boil them for 15 minutes.
• Remove the tongues and dump out the water.
• Put the tongues back in the pot and cover them with salted water.
• Bring the water back to a boil.
• Simmer for a really long time, until the tongues seem relatively tender.
• Take the tongues out and allow them to cool to a temperature you can tolerate touching.
• Trim off the rough skin on top, especially at the back end, and remove the junk from the bottom.
• Cut the tongues into small cubes.
• Place in a bowl and marinate them with salsa, tasty salsa.

The Salsa:

• Go to a Latino market or into the “ethnic” section of your local big box grocery, assuming it carries Mexican items other than those by Ortega and Mission.
• Buy one small can, not jar, never jar, of salsa in a green can.
• Buy one small can, never a jar, of salsa in a red can.
• Stir the contents of those cans together.
• I promise you that it will taste better than any “white people’s” jar of salsa you’ve ever dipped Tostitos into.

Making Tacos:

• Dice a tomato.
• Finely chop some cilantro.
• Dice a little bit of onion.
• Crumble some hard, crumbly Mexican cheese, such as that which comes in a package labeled “queso duro”.
• Heat your tortillas thoroughly.  In case you’re from the Midwest and not Chicago, I’m here to tell you that burned tortillas are better than raw ones.  I don’t know why so many of my Caucasian peers seem to like doughy tasting tortillas.
• Oh, and if you buy Mission or remotely big brand looking tortillas in a non Hispanic market, they’re going to taste doughy no matter what you do.  Rule of thumb: buy tortillas in a store that caters to Central Americans.  If you live in an area with a lot of Hispanics, and there are tortillas in more than one section of your supermarket, the cheaper ones will be better.  Also, if you buy tortillas and they don’t go bad within a few days, even in the refrigerator, the kind you bought weren’t very good.
• By now, your tongue meat is probably cold.  Reheat it in a frying pan as if you were cooking raw beef stir fry.
• Put everything on top of the tortillas.  It looks better if you add the cheese last.

Jicama Salad:

• Put a some olive oil in a bowl.
• Add a moderate dose of finely chopped cilantro.
• Drizzle in some white wine vinegar.
• And a big spoonful of honey too.
• Plus some ground cumin.
• Salt.
• Pepper.
• Red pepper flakes.
• Stir.
• Peel and julienne some jicama.  Put it in the bowl.
• Slice up a few radishes and throw them in too.
• Mix in some greens.  I used the leaves from the radishes, which have a strong flavor that can fill up the blandness of jicama.
• Toast some crumbled up almond slices.  Mix them in with the salad.  Actually, you could use any nut or any kind of squash seed.  Almonds are what I had.