Tacos Our Way - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1/2 cup chopped onion
2 teaspoons olive oil
1 clove garlic, smashed and minced
1 teaspoon recaito (optional)
1 lb lean ground beef
1 teaspoon ground dried ancho chile powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, to taste
8 -12 taco-size corn tortillas or 1 package hard taco shell
butter (if using corn tortillas)
For garnish
shredded cheddar cheese
chopped tomato
chopped or shredded lettuce
sour cream
guacamole or chopped avocado
hot sauce or catsup

Preparation

Saute the onion in the olive oil over medium-high heat until just soft, then add the garlic and recaito and stir well.
Add the ground beef, then the ancho and cumin, and cook until meat is well-browned, using a spatula to break up the cooked meat into smaller pieces (some folks call this \"hamburger gravel\"), about 10 minutes.
Julie's method of putting together her taco: take a corn tortilla and thinly spread butter on both sides, then fry in a hot skillet for about 15 to 20 seconds per side to soften the tortilla; fill with cooked meat and desired garnishes (for me that's just cheese, meat mixture, and - yes- catsup because that's how I grew up eating them and yes I know it's weird).
Steingrim's method: fill hard taco shell with cooked meat, all garnishes, and hot sauce so spicy you'd swear it would eat its way through the bottle.
Note: recaito is a kind of prepared herb mixture containing onion, garlic, peppers, recao leaves, and cilantro; we get it in the jar in the Mexican section of the grocery store.