Navajo Taco Monday

Last Monday I had a sudden, overwhelming desire for a Navajo Taco. For those of you that haven't lived or traveled in the Southwest, a Navajo taco is an amazing delight that starts with Indian Fry Bread and is topped with meat, beans, lettuce, cheese, etc.. The key to the whole dish is the Indian Fry Bread. I haven't made them in years, so I started with a fry bread recipe from "The Feast of Santa Fe" by Huntley Dent. In his book, Mr. Dent states that he feels Indian Fry bread is inferior to sopapillas, but I have to disagree. I will say they are more difficult to make, the dough is soft and hard to form, but in the end, it was totally worth the effort.

Here's how I proceeded:

Meat filling:
You can use any ground meat, beef, buffalo, turkey, etc.. All I had on hand was ground chicken and some frozen pureed red chilis made by Bueno, I figured that would work and make a nice saucy filling, but you can use your favorite taco filling recipe.
2 # ground chicken
1 onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
1 container Bueno red chili (green would be good too!)
salt, oregano, cumin, black pepper to taste

Saute chicken, onions and garlic together until chicken is cooked. Dump the thawed container of red chili puree into pan. Season to taste with salt, cumin, oregano. I also added a pinch of sugar to take the edge off of the chilis. cook until reduced and saucy.

Beans:
I used Anazasi beans, cooked until tender with a little salt and cumin. Anazasi's are my favorite bean for any mexican / southwest dish. If you haven't tried them, they are worth searching out. They are generally available in the Southwest at any natural foods store. If you can't find them use pinto beans or god forbid, even canned beans. You can also just leave them out.

Indian Fry Bread recipe:

2 cups unbleached flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons powdered milk
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 cup water
Vegetable oil for frying

Sift together the flour, salt, powdered milk, and baking powder into a large bowl. Pour the water over the flour mixture all at once and stir the dough with a fork until it starts to form one big clump.

Flour your hands. Using your hands, begin to mix the dough, trying to get all the flour into the mixture to form a ball. NOTE: You want to mix this well, but you do NOT want to knead it. Kneading it will make for a heavy Fry Bread when cooked. The inside of the dough ball should still be sticky after it is formed, while the outside will be well floured.

Cut the dough into eight pieces. Using your floured hands, shape, stretch, pat, and form a disk of about 5 to 7 inches in diameter. This is the hard part, the dough is fussy and I found I needed to use a lot of flour on my hands. Don’t worry too much about the shape, just get them vaguely round and they’ll taste delicious.

Heat the vegetable oil to about 350 degrees F. NOTE: You can check by either dropping a small piece of dough in the hot oil and seeing if it begins to fry, or by dipping the end of a wooden spoon in and seeing if that bubbles. Your oil should be about 1-inch deep in a large cast-iron skillet or other large fryer.

Take the formed dough and gently place it into the oil, being careful not to splatter the hot oil. Press down on the dough as it fries so the top is submersed into the hot oil. Fry until brown, and then flip to fry the other side. Each side will take about 3 to 4 minutes.

Keep warm in a 200 degree oven until you’re done frying the rest of them and call your family and guests to build their Navajo tacos immediately.

Toppings:

Grated cheese

Chopped romaine lettuce

Chopped tomatoes

Sour cream

Guacamole

Salsa

To assemble:

Place Indian Fry bread on your plate. Top with meat filling, beans and toppings. Eat immediately!