Fajitas

A true Tex-Mex dish from the days of the vaqueros, who made the most of the skirt steaks they got from butchered cows, fajitas now are available made with chicken, shrimp, and only vegetables. It is standard practice to serve them sizzling on hot metal and accompanied by guacamole, salsa, cheese, and sour cream. They were a little-known regional specialty until 1969, when a man calling himself The Fajita King began selling skirt-steak tacos at county fairs and rodeos between Austin and San Antonio. It wasn’t long before fajitas soon outgrew the taco category. In 1982 George Weidmann, chef at the Austin Hyatt Regency hotel introduced “sizzling fajitas” – a razzle-dazzle touch that has become a vital part of the presentation. Fajitas Chef Weidmann used sirloin in his breakthrough fajitas, but to the culinary classicist, if it isn’t skirt steak, it isn’t truly a fajita. The logic is etymological: The word fajita is a form of faja, the Spanish word for belt, which describes exactly where skirt steak comes from on a cow carcass.