Lucky Taco Time

A succulent scent drifts up the road
homemade Mexican spicy mix mingles with tomatillo relish
and all the neighbours open windows wide.
Crispy red cabbage and crunchy pink pickle
pops on the tongue like sweet poetry tingles
because it is lucky taco time.
Time to juice limes and roll out the dough
time to mash avocado and pepper the mayo.
Even the birds are singing in spicy keys.

The Lucky Taco Cookbook, Sarah and Otis Frizzell, Penguin, 2023

The Lucky Taco Cookbook is exactly like poetry – you gather some ingredients, and then start cooking, not knowing exactly where you’ll end up, but carrying a sense of flavour on your tastebuds. I have never eaten at Sarah and Otis Frizzell‘s Mexican food truck but it has always been on my to-do list. So to have the cookbook and a daughter who loves cooking and Mexican food as much as me was the perfect excuse to create a feast for three.

The recipes are easy to follow, the ingredients easy to find, and the photographs extremely tempting. We cooked spiced fish tacos with Lucky Taco Pink Pickle, Lucky Taco Salsa Verde, Lucky Taco Chilli salt, some lime mayo, sliced red cabbage and blue flour tortillas. Yum tastebud bridges transport us between piquant and peppery, soft and crunchy, heat and coolness.

Cookbooks are always a launchpad into making recipes your own – and the Lucky Taco cookbook is perfect for this. So Georgia added some tuna, some tomatillo salsa verde to the lime juice aioli. One week later and she is doing a marathon kitchen cook with slow cooked pulled pork tacos, a feast of sides, and a stack of homemade tortillas – using the press her friend had picked up in a market for us! I added in the tasty caulifower vegetarian option for me!

Fresh, fragrant, flavoursome Lucky Taco taste bombs. Oh yum! This a cookbook to treasure.

Sarah and Otis Frizzell are the dynamic duo behind The Lucky Taco. The pair fell in love with tacos and the iconic Californian taco trucks while traveling in Mexico and LA. The passionate cooks trained with one of the best chefs in Mexico and returned to establish one of Aotearoa’s very first gourmet food trucks. Since 2013 they have been treating Kiwis to tasty and authentic tacos from their truck, Lucky. Their product range is stocked at food retailers throughout Aotearoa. They have won over 30 awards, including Winner of the Lewisham Most Outstanding Street Food Award (2016, 2018, 2021), Supreme Champion at the Outstanding Food Producers NZ Awards, and World Champion at the World Hot Sauce Awards. Sarah hails from the UK and was an award-winning art director in Aotearoa’s top advertising agencies. Otis is a former hip-hop performer and tattoo artist. He has worked in TV and radio broadcasting, and is a well-known practising artist.

Penguin page