Tacos Sudados de Canasta (Surtidos)

Tacos de canasta are Ciudad de Mexico. They belong to the canastero, the man on the bicycle with a woven basket strapped to the back, wrapped in oilcloth and a heavy cotton blanket, riding out from the colonias at dawn to feed office workers, market sellers, taxi drivers, and street sweepers their first meal of the day. By nine in the morning he is set up on a corner in Centro or Doctores or Colonia Obrera with his basket open, his bottles of salsa verde and chiles en escabeche lined up, and a stack of paper napkins. By noon the basket is empty and he is riding home.

The word sudados means sweated. The tacos are not fried or griddled. They are pre-filled, dipped in hot chile oil, and packed tightly into a cloth-lined basket where they steam against each other for hours. The tortilla absorbs the chile oil. The fillings settle. By the time the canastero opens the basket, the tacos are warm, soft, dense, slightly oily in the best way, and unified into something that is more than a folded tortilla with stuff inside. They are their own category.

Surtidos means assorted. The classic three are papa, frijol, and chicharron prensado. You can find adobo, mole verde, and tinga at some carts, but the trio of papa, frijoles, and chicharron is the foundation. These are not luxury fillings. They are working-class fillings, cheap, filling, and engineered to taste good after sitting in a basket for two hours. That is the genius of this taco. It is designed for the basket, not in spite of it.

My mother bought these from a canastero on Calle Durango every Wednesday when I walked home from school. Three pesos a taco in those days. She would unwrap them from the brown paper at the kitchen table and we would eat them standing up before they got cold. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and saber comer en la calle is the same thing. Recetas probadas y garantizadas.