owes her earliest sense of adventure to the thrill of trying new cuisines. When she was a child in Mexico City, she'd eat out with her parents. It opened up a world of flavours and textures. This excitement stayed with Guevara Muñoz.
“My parents really liked to eat and try new foods – they took us to nice places to try Japanese food, Italian food, which wasn’t so easy in Mexico,” she says and laughs. “My mind went wild, so I think it stayed in my brain until now. It made me more interested in food. I remember being very happy.”
Guevara Muñoz briefly forgot this obsession. She trained as a marine biologist, serving as a director of the in the Yucatán Peninsula. Then she worked on the Great Barrier Reef after immigrating to Townsville, Queensland in 2009, with her husband Kor-jent van Dijk.
In 2012, the couple moved to Adelaide and she realised Mexican food was under-represented in her new home town, despite the city’s culinary diversity. This inspired her to host dinner parties under the banner , which she ran from 2013 to 2017.
“The first two or three years, I was still working as a marine biologist and washing dishes in restaurants,” she says. “In Mexico, you have to study something at uni and get a good job, so you don’t have to work so many hours."
Former marine biologist Daniella Guevara Muñoz now dedicates her life to making tacos. Source: Daniella Guevara Muñoz
Guevara Muñoz's choice to juggle two demanding roles didn't make sense to her mother initially. "It wasn’t easy to leave my career, but I thought that if I don’t make a decision now to cook professionally, I never would.”
As a child, Guevara Muñoz appreciated culinary novelty. But, on the other side of the world from her family, she missed traditional Mexican cuisine. So her next step after Mi Mero Mole was opening in 2017. A cheery Port Adelaide taqueria named for her childhood neighbourhood, it’s a shrine to what she calls a “holy trinity” of stuffing, salsa and tortillas. You can order – a fiery braised pork marinated with achiote paste and cooked with banana leaves. Pulled chicken, crowned with salsa verde. Or Baja-style fish tacos, topped with . Tortillas, says Guevara Muñoz who has just started using a new tortilla mill, are made from scratch.
“When we started the restaurant, I didn’t really want to modify it to Australian palates,” says the restaurateur, who'll teach diners how to make Mexican tacos at the South Australian food and wine festival, , on . “I decided that I wanted to have a taqueria and cook my traditional recipes – we haven’t done anything to compromise them. A good taqueria is about consistency. They do the same every time.”
For Guevara Muñoz, few Mexican dishes are as consistent – or satisfying – as flautas de papa, corn tortillas stuffed with potato and deep-fried until crunchy. Although flautas – Spanish for flute – can be found in Mexico City, they’re a fixture across the country. At La Popular, Muñoz’s flautas are crowned with iceberg lettuce, salsa roja, cream and dry ricotta cheese.
When we started the restaurant, I didn’t really want to modify it to Australian palates.
“I remember I loved to go with mum to buy crispy flautas de papa,” she says. “There was a place close to my grandma’s house that used to only sell flautas stuffed with beef, chicken and potato. There’s so much crunchiness from the potatoes, the rich flavours from the salsa. My mum used to roll them the day before, so they would hold their shape. That was always a good moment for me because I knew I was going to get to eat them the next day.”
Guevara Muñoz’s past life as a marine biologist required patience. Often, she says, you have to wait a lifetime to see the results of your labour. But, like when she was a child dining out with her parents, cooking has given her the gift of instant affinity with the people she feeds.
“At La Popular, it’s very nice that it's small because I can see everyone from my kitchen,” she smiles. “I can see who is coming in and what they like. I like to have that connection with people.”
Daniella Guevara Muñoz is part of the following Tasting Australia events in Adelaide: on 30 April at TAFE SA Regency, and the series at Town Square Kitchen.
Flautas de papa (crispy potato tacos)
Serves 4
Ingredients
Salsa roja
- 600 g whole tomatoes
- 50 g peeled onion
- 1 garlic clove
- 2 jalapeño chillies, to taste
- 1 tbsp chopped coriander
- Salt, to taste
Flautas
- 3 medium potatoes, peeled
- 16 corn tortillas
- Vegetable oil
- Salt, to taste
To serve
- ½ cup thickened cream
- ½ head iceberg lettuce, finely sliced
- ½ cup dry grated ricotta cheese or fresh cheese
- 1 avocado, thinly sliced
Method
- To make the salsa roja, place the tomatoes, onion, garlic and chilli in a medium pot over medium heat. Cover the ingredients with water and bring to a boil until tomatoes are soft, but not falling apart (around 15 minutes).
- Strain the ingredients and process them in the blender with coriander and salt, in batches, around 2 to 3 pulses at a time on high speed – you want the sauce to be slightly chunky. Set aside the salsa.
- To make the flautas, cut the potatoes into cubes, and place them in a medium pot with salted water over high heat. Cook the potatoes until they're tender. Drain the potatoes, making sure to save a few tbsp of the cooking water. Mash the potatoes, adding some of the cooking water if the mash feels dry. Add salt to taste, if necessary, and set aside.
- Working in batches, heat the tortillas in a hot comal (or large frying pan) on high heat. Cook them for a few seconds on each side and then flip over. This process will make the tortillas softer and easier to roll.
- To prepare a flauta, take 25 g (1½ tbsp) potato filling and place in the tortilla, slightly off centre. Roll the potato filling very tightly. Do not overfill each flauta and place it in an airtight container that's big enough to hold 16 flautas. Place the flautas very closely together, so they don’t unroll. You can do this up to a day ahead of serving the flautas.
- In a medium-sized frying pan over medium-high heat, add enough oil until there's a pool of oil about 1-2 cm high.
- Working in batches, fry the flautas in the pan until golden and crispy (about 3-5 minutes) and use a pair of tongs to turn them over while frying.
- To serve the flautas, put four crispy flautas on a plate, top with salsa roja, cream, lettuce and cheese. If you want, you can add thin slices of avocado. Repeat for the remaining flautas.
Note
• The easiest way to eat the flautas is with your hands, although you'll want to use a spoon to scoop up all the ingredients that spill out of the taco as you eat it.
• The easiest way to eat the flautas is with your hands, although you'll want to use a spoon to scoop up all the ingredients that spill out of the taco as you eat it.
