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Nice looking tacos, Bruce! Mushroom and rajas is a combo I've never tried, but now I want to...

I like the presentation with the rice in the middle - I'll have to give that a try. What kind of lamb curry was it?

Jeff - great overview of a very diverse subject. I'm definitely no expert, but I thought I'd add a few comments based on my experiences: Al Pastor is a Mexico City specialty and is, as you say similar in preparation to a gyro. The pineapple sits on the top of the meat and is carved off in little hunks to garnish the tacos. You can see pictures and a video here from El Tizoncito in D.F. It doesn't need to be beef - I had some awesome conejo (rabbit) al carbon a few months ago in Xochimilco. In my experience with carne asada, which is admittedly more SoCal than Mexican, carne asada is grilled on a griddle, not over coals - hence the difference from "al carbon". I think that "small meats", generally pork is the key. I'd always thought of as carnitas as a discrete thing - as in "I'll have the carnitas tacos, please", until in Oaxaca when I encountered carnitas taco stands where that would be distinctly ambiguous. The most popular were "de todo", which were a mixture of all of the spare bits - mostly head with a bit of offal. Very tasty.

Beautiful! What cut of pork did you use?

What a coincidence - I was about to post some taco pics in the dinner thread! We really like the various seafood tacos we get at South Beach Bar & Grille here in San Diego, so we have re-created them at home. Here is a grilled fish taco: and a shrimp taco: The key for me is the fresh salsa - tomato, onion and red cabbage with a nice vinegar bite to it. I'm not a big fan of the traditional white sauce - particularly on grilled (rather than battered and fried) tacos, so we leave it off when we make them at home. We use "snack size" flour tortillas. For other kinds of tacos I generally prefer corn, but I really like flour in this case.

Hi Percyn - nice looking Rancheros! The recipe we used is from Crust and Crumb, by Peter Reinhart. I think it is also in another book of his called The Bread Baker's Apprentice.

Thanks Domestic Goddess and NancyH! The bagels were surprisingly easy to make, and ended up much nicer than what we can buy here in bagel-challenged San Diego.

Homemade bagel (Crust and Crumb recipe) with cream cheese and smoked sockeye salmon:

Wow! Nice looking spread.

Really nice pictures - they make me want to whip up a batch right now!

Appetizer the other night - Testa on toast, with some pickled shallots:

Really nice looking picadillo and guac, Bruce. We had picadillo a number of times on our recent trip to Oaxaca - always as a filling for chiles rellenos (often with a rehydrated pasilla as the chile being stuffed - very different than the version we get here in San Diego).

Enfrijoladas (corn tortillas in a bean sauce) with scrambled eggs and fried plantains:

I think the addition of vinegar is key - the chorizo I like definitely has a vinegar bite to it. We really loved the chorizo we got when we were vacationing in Oaxaca. I haven't been able to find anything comparable back home, so we're gong to try making our own as well.

Chorizo crusted cod definitely seems like a fun combination. It looks fantastic.

Wow - that looks fantastic! Great photo.

I'm no food historian, but I can search wikipedia with the best of them, and it agrees with what you said.

Enmoladas de Pollo - shredded chicken folded in corn tortillas and covered in Mole. The Mole is Mole Coloradito, made using mole paste purchased at our local Oaxaca mercado. While the mole wasn't made from scratch, the stock we added to it was - using a chicken purchased at the same market. Feet and all.

We've been traveling in Mexico and this past week we've been staying in Oaxaca in a place that has a kitchen, so we've been able to do some cooking. Here is a chorizo and vegetable hash topped with a huevo estrellado. The chorizo here is fantastic, and we've been using a lot of it. We recently had a new (to us) Mexican breakfast dish in a restaurant - Huevos al Albañil, which loosely translates as "homebuilder" or "bricklayer" eggs. It has eggs scrambled in big chunks mixed with salsa (usually green, but sometimes red) and served on top of corn tortillas. This is our version, with some chorizo on the side:

I bought this book recently and have been enjoying reading through it as I prepare for 2 months in and around Mexico City. I'm looking forward to putting it good use once I get there (only 1 week to go!)

Thanks, Bruce. Yes on the limes. The chiles were fried anchos (the Bayless recipe calls for either pasilla or ancho). The chiles were definitely crumbly, and could have been broken up into smaller pieces. We also use some of the toasted ancho pureed up in the soup base.

Thank you very much! How do you make your tortilla soup? ← It is still very much a work in progress. We started with a Bayless recipe, but have been modifying it. Here's last night's attempt:

Fantastic looking dishes, Bruce. We're also fans of Bayless’ cookbooks. We've got a tortilla soup in preparation as we speak, and your pictures are making me hungry!

Recently, we had some left-over gelatinous stock from making coppa di testa. Since it has a somewhat similar flavor profile to Pho' stock (hints of cinnamon, clove and allspice), we used it to make this "Faux" Pho': We added a few slices of the testa into the mix to provide some "meaty bits".

Spaghetti with Clam Sauce: