Tacos de Papa with Salsa de Mesa (Potato Tacos with Salsa) Bring Me Right Back to My Childhood Table

As a young child, I had no idea that my family fit firmly into the lower-income class category. Nearly everyone in our neighborhood seemed the same—of Latin descent, jammed into rows of deteriorating 1950s Los Angeles courtyard apartments. Even my mostly secondhand wardrobe and weekly trips to the corner laundromat in a grocery cart served as no clue. All I knew was that I belonged. And that every night as the sun set—a collective call for dinner echoing out into the streets—I'd join all the other neighborhood kids as we scattered to our homes and found comfort in a hot meal waiting at the table, even if not much more than potatoes.

This core memory floods my mind every time I eat tacos de papa, or potato tacos. They're much what they sound like: corn tortillas stuffed with a mashed potato filling and fried until golden. I've eaten and made them more times than I can count. With my abuela, her spotted hands immune to the scorching heat of the comal as she flipped each tortilla—because she would never warm them in a microwave like I do. With my children, whose playful approach always brings laughter to our kitchen. And at various taquerias throughout my travels in Mexico, where the smell of freshly made tortillas and salsas permeates the air.

It wasn't until some point later in life that I figured out that feeding a family of five on a single income required creativity in the kitchen, and that my parents did the best with what they had and what they learned from their own upbringings. What never crossed my mind, though, was the question of the origins of this particular dish. Fascinated with history, including my own Mexican heritage, I set out to find an answer. Not surprisingly, my journey began with potatoes.

The Spanish first brought the starchy tubers to Europe after discovering them at the onset of their conquest of the Inca Empire in Peru in the 16th century. By that time, the Incans had already been cultivating them for thousands of years. While wild potato plants native to Mexico do exist, the conventional varieties are believed to have been introduced to Mexico by the Spanish not long after they began their rule.

But potatoes weren't the only thing the Spanish brought to Mexico. They imposed their Catholic religion upon the natives—as they did to those in Peru and elsewhere—accompanied by unwavering traditions, like the observance of Lent. The 40-day period leading up to Easter evolved to include abstention from meat on Fridays in recognition of the sacrifices of Jesus Christ. Some historians say that church clergy may have been responsible for this addendum to the observance, arguing that they stood to benefit monetarily from aligning themselves with the agendas of local government and the fish industries.

These foreign foods and religious beliefs ultimately transformed the native diet, giving birth to recipes that were an amalgam of cultures, while still relying on what was readily accessible. Mexico may be home to nearly 6,000 miles of coastline and hundreds of rivers and lakes, but for those unable to access fish, vegetarian versions of traditional dishes that typically featured some type of animal meat were likely the only option during observances like Lent. Still, they wouldn't be far from what indigenous peoples had already been eating for thousands of years—including maize tortillas stuffed with native plant foods like beans, squash and chiles.

In the end, this was as close to the origins of potato tacos that I could trace. Even after my travels throughout Mexico and picking the minds of my family—on both sides of the border—their exact birthplace remains unknown, to me, at least. But what I do know for certain is that when I'm eating them, I still feel like I belong to something. They hold not only my story, but also centuries of human history.