SONORAN-STYLERECIPES INSPIRED BY THE RICH CULTURE OF SOUTHERN ARIZONA
JACKIE ALPERS
TASTEOF
TUCSON
Text and Photographs © 2020 by Jackie Alpers
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019952327
ISBN: 9781513262567 (hardbound)9781513262376 (ebook)
Proudly distributed by Ingram Publisher Services
Printed in China1 2 3 4 5
Editor: Charlotte Beal and Jennifer NewensProofreader: Jessica GouldIndexer:Elizabeth Parson
Additional image credits: Cover, pages 120 and 127 Jackie Alpers/Photo Courtesy of Food Network; pages 6, 11, 118 Jason Willis; page 117 Michael B. Hultquist/Lerua’s Fine Mexican Food
Published by West Margin Press
WestMarginPress.com
WEST MARGINPRESSPublishing Director: Jennifer NewensMarketing Manager:Angela ZbornikEditor: Olivia NgaiDesign & Production: Rachel Lopez MetzgerDesign Intern: Gloria Boadwee
Dedication
This book is dedicated to all the Tucson chefs, past and present, who have made this city the culinary powerhouse it is today. They have taught me so much, and I hope to share some of what I have learned with all of you.
Contents
My Story
When I was twenty-five, I decided that I needed to find a new place to live. I had graduated from art college the year before and had been biding time in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio, hanging out with my friends in the punk rock scene of the early 1990s.
I was getting a huge amount of parking tickets and took this as a sign that my time in that town was up, so I took a cross-country road trip with my schoolmate, Andy, to figure out where to live. We ended up at a dive motel called The Tiki in a slightly dodgy part of Tucson, Arizona. The Tiki had a tiny pool in the middle of its parking lot, so Andy and I bought a six-pack of Coronas at the Circle K next door and waded in. It was June and 106 degrees.
As I was sitting in that pool drinking my beer in the clear, bright sunlight with the blue, blue sky that went on forever overhead, I decided that this was the place to be.
The first thing I ate in Tucson that night was a big plate of guacamole and chips that Andy and I shared from the Mexican restaurant across the street. The place was oddly named “21.” Based on the sign and the dark exterior, I’d kind of thought that it was a strip club.
Within three months, I’d moved to Tucson, and I quickly landed two very different jobs. One was teaching art to kids in an after-school program, and the other, one that surprisingly ended up altering the course of my life, was busing tables and bartending at El Charro Café, the oldest family-owned Mexican restaurant in the U.S.
I was inspired by everything that I learned at El Charro and all the new food I experienced, whether it was a salsa made from a chile pepper that I’d never seen before, or a salad that looked like a volcano prepared in a way I’d never heard of. The Flores family treated me like one of their own. I was bumped up to regular waitstaff and eventually learned how to work cooking in the kitchen.
I began experimenting with Mexican cuisine and local ingredients. I played around with cooking techniques that were completely unfamiliar to me and photographed food and wrote recipes.
But I never forgot where I came from. I never forgot that I was raised a Jewish girl in Ohio who had never tasted much of this food for the first twenty-five years of my life. I like smoked fish and chopped liver and matzo balls. I like
