Strawberry Margarita

Thirty-nine. I turned thirty-nine on Saturday, June 8th, and the day was split between the two kitchens that define my life — Rivera's and the altar. The morning at Rivera's: Tomás ran the kitchen while I stood at the pit and cooked briskets on my birthday because briskets do not care about birthdays and the smoker does not observe holidays and the fire burns whether you are thirty-eight or thirty-nine or a hundred. The staff sang "Happy Birthday" at the pre-service meeting, which was touching and slightly off-key and exactly what a firehouse birthday song sounds like, which makes sense because half the rituals at Rivera's are borrowed from Station 19.

The evening at the altar. Jessica organized a party — forty people, family and friends, the backyard at full capacity. Roberto at the charcoal grill, cooking carne asada, because my birthday is his cooking day, the one day a year where the son steps back and the father steps forward and the fire belongs entirely to Roberto. He is sixty-six and slower and the cane is beside him and the flips take longer but the carne asada is perfect, always perfect, the recipe unchanged since 1982.

Gifts. Jessica: a custom smoker thermometer with RIVERA'S engraved on it — professional grade, wireless, the kind of thermometer that sends alerts to your phone when the chamber temperature drifts. She knows what I need. She has always known what I need. Roberto: an index card. "39. The fire gets better. — Dad." The index card collection is its own archive now — years of Roberto's handwriting, each card a single line, each line a year of my life condensed into a few words. Diego: eight sticks. Eight. The boy has transcended mathematics entirely. The stick count follows a logic that exists only in Diego's mind and which no adult has yet decoded. The sticks are in a jar on the counter at Rivera's, growing yearly, a collection that will someday need its own shelf.

Sofia's gift: a handmade book. She wrote and illustrated it herself — a twelve-page book called "The Fire," about a boy who learns to cook from his father and grows up to build a restaurant. The boy in the book looks like me. The father looks like Roberto. The restaurant looks like Rivera's. The last page says: "The fire never goes out because the boy never stops cooking. The end." I read it at the party, standing at the altar, and I could not finish because my voice broke on the last sentence and Sofia took the book from my hands and read it for me and everyone clapped and I stood there, thirty-nine years old, crying because my ten-year-old daughter wrote a book about me and the book is better than anything I could ever write about myself.

Roberto had the fire. That was never my job on June 8th — it was his, the way it has been since before I knew what a grill was. So while he stood at the charcoal with his cane and his tongs and forty-four years of carne asada muscle memory, my job was to make sure everyone else had something cold and celebratory in their hand. Jessica had the party organized down to the last detail, Sofia had the book, Diego had his eight sticks — and I had a blender, a flat of strawberries, and forty people to keep happy until the carne asada came off the grill. This is the margarita I mixed that night, and it tasted exactly the way thirty-nine felt: a little sweet, a little sharp, and better than you expected.

Prep Time: 10 minutes | Cook Time: 0 minutes | Total Time: 10 minutes | Servings: 2

Ingredients

1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
2 oz silver tequila
1 oz triple sec or Cointreau
1 oz fresh lime juice (about 1 large lime)
1/2 oz simple syrup (adjust to taste)
1 cup ice
Coarse salt or Tajin, for rimming
Lime wheel and fresh strawberry, for garnish

Instructions

Rim the glasses. Run a lime wedge around the rim of two rocks glasses. Dip each rim into a shallow plate of coarse salt or Tajin to coat. Set aside.
Blend the strawberries. Add the fresh strawberries to a blender and pulse until smooth, about 20–30 seconds. You should have roughly 1/2 cup of strawberry puree.
Combine and blend. Add the tequila, triple sec, fresh lime juice, simple syrup, and ice to the blender with the strawberry puree. Blend on high until smooth and slushy, about 30 seconds.
Taste and adjust. Taste the mixture before pouring — add a touch more simple syrup if the strawberries are tart, or an extra squeeze of lime if you want more brightness.
Pour and garnish. Pour into the prepared glasses over fresh ice if you prefer it on the rocks, or serve blended straight from the blender. Garnish each glass with a lime wheel and a halved strawberry on the rim.
Scale for a crowd. For a backyard party of 40, multiply the recipe ×20 and blend in batches, or combine the puree, tequila, triple sec, and lime juice in a large pitcher and let guests pour over individual glasses of ice.

Nutrition (per serving)

Strawberry Margarita — The Drink We Raised While Roberto Held the Fire