Taco Tuesday: Duck skin tacos
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If you are in the habit of roasting ducks, or of rendering duck fat for confit, you know that the tastiest bits are often those scraps of crunchy skin left behind on the cutting board — brown, shriveled, squiggly bits of what are essentially pure duck fat and pure duck flavor. You know that you could probably toss them into a salad, use them to garnish mashed potatoes or sprinkle them over whatever soup you may make the next day from the ruined bones of the carcass, but you won’t. That skin is never leaving the kitchen. This is why you’re The Cook.
So you may be interested to know that the estimable Cacao Mexicatessen, which goes through an awful lot of duck in the course of making its notorious duck carnitas, also happens to sell tacos stuffed with fried duck cracklings, which it calls chicharron de pato. There’s not much to see here — a tiny, hand-patted tortilla; a drop or two of tomatillo salsa; a few slivers of julienned radish — but there doesn’t have to be, not when what we’re talking about is one or two bites of pure duck evil. You will find the tacos de chicharron de pato on the Taqueria de Maya menu, and if you think there may be some credence to that calendar thing, you may as well have two.
1576 Colorado Blvd., Eagle Rock, (323) 478-2791, cacaodeli.com.
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— Jonathan Gold
