Tacos de Lengua

This year Cinco de Mayo sort of snuck up on me.  I'd planning on doing a party, not because I feel any special affinity for Cinco de Mayo but more just I like to take any excuse I can to eat Mexican food.  My party plans kind of fell by the way as winter dragged on and I just couldn't muster the enthusiasm to cook for other people, and so before you knew it May 5th was here and I had nothing exciting planned for dinner.  It was as I was pulling steak out to defrost that I realized I had a tongue in my freezer.  Last year when we had the cow slaughtered the butcher asked if we wanted any of the extra bits.  At first I said no but then as sort of a joke I asked for the tongue.  When Dr. J and I first got married we went to this taco stand where he ordered tongue tacos.  He told me they were delicious.  I absolutely refused to try them.  But for some reason I decided it would be kind of fun to try and make them.  So that's what I did.  I read about six ways to prepare tongue as ours was defrosting in the microwave, most of them involved cooking it all day on the stove or the crook pot.  I just did not have that kind of time.  I decided to use my pressure cooker but as I pulled the tongue out of the microwave I almost lost it and started gagging.  I thought, "There is no way I can do this."  I took a moment to compose myself and sort of lobbed it into the pressure cooker.  It took about forty minutes and then I pulled it out.  The next step was to remove the black spotted skin covering.  You have to pull it off while the meat is still hot.  The kids thought this part was the best.  They kept running over and touching the rough bumps, then running away screaming.  Next I chopped it up to saute it.  Chopping it small and sauteing it is suppose to help disguise the rubbery feel it has, because hey guess what, it is a tongue.  Then I threw the meat on some corn tortillas with Spanish rice and black beans.  Dr. J loved them.  I even tried one, and I have to say the meat had really great flavor (even better than the steak) and  was exceptionally soft but there was also this chewy texture that I just couldn't get over so in the end regardless of how delicious they were, I could only eat one.  Definitely interesting and it did make the holiday memorable.  The kids refused to eat any tongue and stuck with steak instead, but they did have a good time drinking the mango, pineapple, and orange smoothie I made.  Hello delicious!