Receta Arrachera al Carbon or Beef Fajitas for Cinco de Mayo
Get your party clothes on! It's Cinco de Mayo!I’ve
written at length previously about Cinco de Mayo, the May 5th salute to Mexico that’s more
American than it is Mexican. There it is
celebrated in the province of Puebla and almost nowhere else. So this year, I thought I’d introduce you to
the history of one of my favorite make-at-home Mexican dishes, the fajita.
And like Cinco de Mayo, it’s not really Mexican either. It hails from
the state that’s created Mexican cuisine all its own. That of course is Texas
where Tex-Mex cooking began. In sharing the history of the fajita I leaned
heavily on a ten year old article by Virginia B. Wood, who wrote it for the
Austin Chronicle. Thank you Virginia!
Sonny Falcon himself.Astonishing
to me, at least, is that the fajita only fairly recently burst onto to the Tex-Mex
Cooking scene. It arrived in 1969 when a
man named Sonny Falcon, a meat market manager in Austin, opened the first
commercial Fajita Taco concession stand in the tiny town of Kyle Texas. There was apparently a run on fajitas
because that same year, the dish made
its debut on the menu of the Round-Up Restaurant in the Rio Grande town of
Pharr, Texas. The restaurant was owned
by one Otilia Garza whose daughter Tila still owns the place. There, fajitas were served on sizzling
platters with warm flour tortillas and all kinds of condiments including
guacamole, pico de gallo (a mix of chopped fresh onions, tomatoes, peppers and
cilantro), and grated cheese. Otilia
never laid claim to having invented the fajita, giving credit to the tradition
of grilling skirt steak learned from her grandmother who owned a restaurant in
the border town of Reynosa, Mexico.
Three Vaqueros The
Garzas may have put it on their menu but a Texas A&M student named Homero
Recio researched the fajita and discovered that the cooking process, the skirt
steak that is used, even the Spanish word ‘fajita’ went back as far as the
1930s on ranches in South and West Texas.
During cattle roundups, beef was regularly butchered to feed the hired
hands. Throwaway items were turned over
to the Mexican cowboys or vaqueros as
part of their pay. Included among these
was the skirt steak that’s essential to the dish. It’s likely that the reason the fajita
remained highly regional and obscure for years was simply because there really
isn’t a lot of skirt steak per animal.
During the 1970s, the aforementioned Sonny Falcon
introduced fajitas to Anglos and
Hispanics alike at his concession stands at rodeos, outdoor fairs and festivals
all over the state. Then an unlikely
character spread the fajita’s fame far and wide. He was the German born chef George
Weidman. Weidman opened the Hyatt Regency
in Austin and quickly recognized the appeal of the ‘sizzling fajita’, which he
not only put on the Hotel’s La Vista Restaurant menu, but was quickly asked to
share with Hyatt Regency chefs all over the country. To this day, you’ll find
them on many a Hyatt hotel menu. There
was one other Weidmann contribution to the fajita: precisely because skirt
steak is in relatively short supply, he used the more tender and more readily
available sirloin for his. Chicken,
shrimp and vegetable versions were not far behind.
The
real thing however, is what this recipe is all about. Its roots are in Nuevo
León, which is the state right next door to where Otilia Garza’s grandmother
lived. The technique and the cut of
meat make a legitimate Arrachera al Carbon.
The addition of the red and green peppers, the scallions and the tomato
seem to be Tex-Mex additions. The colors, textures and tastes they add are
immeasurable even if they step away from the traditional recipe. They look simply beautiful. So make these and celebrate Cinco de Mayo
like it’s 1969 at Sonny Falcon’s. Serve them with sides of guacamole and salsa as a stand-in for pico de gallo. You can be forgiven for buying these last two ingredients already made up at your local supermarket. Here
is the recipe:
Recipe for
Arrachera al Carbon, Skirt Steak Fajitas from Saveur Magazine. Serves 4. Allow 8 hours for marinating skirt steak. Under 30 minutes cooking time.
- 3⁄4 cup plus 1 tbsp. vegetable oil
- 1 tbsp. worcestershire sauce
- 1⁄4 tsp. liquid smoke (Optional)
- 1 1⁄2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
- 1 2-lb. skirt steak, cut into
- 3" pieces
- 1 green bell pepper, stemmed, cored, and thickly sliced
- 1 red bell pepper, stemmed, cored, and thickly sliced
- 1 tomato, cored and quartered
- 6" store-bought Flour
- Tortillas
- 1. Finely
- chop 1 of the onion halves and put into a large deep glass or ceramic dish. Add
- 3⁄4 cup of the oil, worcestershire sauce, liquid smoke, bay leaf, black pepper,
- and salt to taste and mix well. Add meat to dish and turn in marinade until
- well coated. Cover dish with plastic wrap and marinate meat in the refrigerator
for at least 8 hours and up to 12 hours.
2. After
steak has marinated, heat a charcoal grill until coals are hot. Remove meat
from dish, discarding marinade. Grill meat over hot coals or hot griddle,
turning once, 4–6 minutes for medium rare. (You may also cook meat in a grill
pan on the stove over high heat.) Transfer meat to a cutting board and set
aside.
3. Thickly
slice the remaining 2 onions lengthwise and set aside. Heat the remaining 1
tbsp. oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat until hot but not smoking.
Add onions and bell peppers, season to taste with salt, and cook, stirring
often, until vegetables are lightly charred but still crunchy, 3–4 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, thinly slice meat against the grain, add to skillet with
vegetables, and stir until heated through, 1–2 minutes.
5. Divide fajitas
equally among four heated cast-iron fajitas platters or large heated
plates; garnish with scallions and tomato wedges. Serve with warm tortillas.