-How do you know something you eat is really good?

When you can't wait to get back to your kitchen to re-create it, like these saucy, cheesy, shrimp-packed, overloaded, layered, and folded, just-wait-until-you-try-it Taco Bravo.

Mm!

Que delicia.

This recipe comes courtesy of local legend of the State of Sonora, Toño Contreras, restaurant owner and host of his own web-series cooking show.

-[ Speaking Spanish] -Today, he's a guest on my show, and I'm a guest on his show.

-Suena crunchy.

Sí.

Mmm!

In my kitchen, I'll show you the secrets of his overloaded Tacos Bravos recipe.

This is your new favorite Sonoran-style shrimp taco.

And my trip to the beach also inspires another seafood favorite -- a piled-high shrimp-and-scallop tostada dressed with not one, but three salsas -- a sweet-and-spicy apple-chiltepin salsita, a multipurpose salsa negra, and a salsa bandera with jicama and pineapple.

There's no way for these not to be messy eating.

[ Crunches ] -♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame tu chocolate ♪ ♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame cafe caliente ♪ ♪ Dame, dame ♪ ♪ Dame tu corazon ♪ ♪ -"Pati's Mexican Table" is made possible by... ♪ -La Costeña.

♪ -♪ Avocados from Mexico ♪ -Fud brand cheese -- traditional Mexican flavor.

-Stand Together -- helping every person rise.

More information at StandTogether.org.

-BanCoppel -- your recipe for sending money to Mexico.

-Mahatma rice lets you unite ingredients and flavors.

Mahatma rice unites.

-Divine Flavor.

♪ -Norson.

♪ -I've met amazing people all up and down the coast of the Sea of Cortez doing insanely delicious things with seafood.

The sea here just gives and gives and gives.

One of the best seafood restaurants is right here, in Guaymas, Sonora.

♪ At Mariscos El Rey, well, you can see why it's one of the best.

Owner Toño Contreras has spent a lifetime serving fresh seafood to adoring customers, like me.

Toño, I'm seeing here an amazing array of seafood, all these crazy seafood creations.

Uh-huh.

Mariscos El Rey is one of those places where everything is good, but Toño wanted to treat me to a few of his favorites, like his best-selling Tacos Bravos, the enormous torre del rey, and, last but not least, the tostada princesa.

-Wow.

[ Chuckles ] -Every dish that I see here is like a dream.

Uh-huh.

Ah!

-Salud.

-His recipes are crowd-pleasers now, but Toño wanted to show me how it all started, at the beach, with a few simple ingredients... ...and a knife.

We're learning how to open a gigantic clam from Toño.

Wow!

-Mmm!

Mmm!

-Mmm!

It's so sweet.

Mmm!

It may not come as a surprise to you now, but Toño is a bit of a local legend here in Sonora.

A couple of years ago, he started posting videos on social media, and now he's a Sonoran viral sensation.

He asked me to be a special guest on his next episode, and, of course, I just couldn't say no.

With his wife filming, he wanted to share the secrets to one of his most celebrated recipes, Tacos Bravos.

-Ah, okay.

Perfect.

[ Both laugh ] -Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm!

Mm-hmm!

Mmm!

Mm-hmm.

I have your new favorite shrimp taco, and it is courtesy of Toño Contreras.

And they are called Tacos Bravos.

It just follows the Sonoran tradition of dealing with shrimp, where they're super-sauced, super-cheesed, and taken over the top.

And you know why they're called Tacos Bravos?

Because the sauce is very brava, and brava means "feisty, spicy, rich."

So, we're going to begin by making the brava sauce.

So, I have here a pot with water that's already almost about to boil.

And I'm going to add 2 pounds of very ripe Roma tomatoes, four garlic cloves, four chiles de arbol.

And you know your chiles de arbol.

They bring the heat and the smoke.

I'm not removing the seeds, because the seeds have a lot of the flavor.

You know, the things that we're making today are so much fun to eat, but what's most fun about them is the build before you eat them.

Tomatoes are ready, and you know that they're ready because, look at them.

They are super-plump.

See?

Ooh!

You can see all the taste that's going to come out of these tomatoes.

♪ Even though I have the 2 pounds of super-ripe tomatoes, I'm adding 2 tablespoons of tomato paste because I want this sauce to be really, really tomato-heavy.

2 teaspoons of dried oregano, and 1 teaspoon of salt.

So, I'm going to puree this sauce until completely smooth.

[ Whirring ] I'm heating my saucepan, as I always do when I'm going to season and thicken a sauce.

I'm adding about a tablespoon or two.

I haven't even opened the lid and I can feel the feistiness of the sauce.

So I am not going to breathe into this.

I can smell the oregano combined with the chile de arbol.

It, like, wants to be a little Italian, like a spiced-up pizza sauce.

So, we're going to cook this down for a few more minutes, until the color becomes richer and deeper and the sauce thickens.

So, 4 to 5 minutes while I cook my shrimp.

Here, I have my very large nonstick sauté pan, and I have it at the highest-possible heat, because I want my shrimp to sear super-fast and I don't want them to overcook.

So, I'm adding a tablespoon of oil, a tablespoon of butter.

I'm going to add enough shrimp to cover the skillet, but I don't want to overcrowd the pan, because I don't want the shrimp to steam and I don't want them to water.

I want them to sear and brown.

[ Sizzling ] I'm seasoning with salt and pepper.

Whenever you make tacos, you want to make sure that everything that goes inside and outside of the taco is seasoned.

It's really not a good idea to have a bland filling and then just pretend that you can cover it with some nice salsa or some nice guacamole.

Everything in the taco has to be seasoned and delicious.

Ooh!

Perfect.

So, you can see how they're beautifully browning.

So, you need to have the heat super-high.

Mmm!

The shrimp are ready.

This is exactly what we want -- not overcooked in the center.

See?

Hmm?

Mmm!

Mm-hmm!

Mmm!

Still juicy, plump, crisp, and slightly sweet.

This is when it gets really fun.

Look at the sauce.

See all the different colors of deep red and the little puddles of the fat that have risen to the top.

And we're going to add a little bit of oil to the comal.

We do a brush.

And then... You guys, I'm so excited, because these are so delicious and I'm so hungry.

You grab the tortilla and you dunk it in the sauce, like this.

[ Sizzling ] See?

You don't want the heat to be too hot, so like medium, medium-low, because we still need to build and we're going to add a ton of cheese.

This is doubly sauced, because we're saucing the tortillas and we're going to sauce the shrimp.

Doubly cheesed, because we're adding cheese on both layers.

More cheese, more cheese.

I mean, it's not me.

It's the Sonorans.

Blame it on them.

I'm just mimicking what they do.

They add a lot of cheese and a lot of sauce.

So more sauce.

So, we have to give it like a minute, and then that sauce that's in the tortilla -- it's going to create that seasoned salsa-brava crust.

You're going to see how beautiful it is.

See?

Oh!

Perfect!

So, this isn't burnt.

It's browned.

And it's like triple-seasoning the sauce, because we have the cooked sauce, then it thickened, and now the sauce is cooking again.

So, now we're stacking this one on top of this one.

We're adding the shrimp.

So, I'm just waiting for the cheese to crisp up a little bit more.

So, you can see how the cheese is oozing out and mixing even more with the salsa brava and the shrimp.

♪ It looks beautiful.

[ Laughs ] And, like, you can make it, too.

♪ Mmm-mmm-mmm!

♪ Mmm!

Mmm!

I'm going to cry.

It's so good.

You have everything.

You have the melted cheese, but you have the crusted cheese.

Then everything is super-sauced.

Mmm!

Mmm!

This is your new favorite Sonoran-style shrimp taco.

I love eating so much.

Continuing with the super-over-the-top seafood dishes, this is a crazy-delicious overloaded seafood tostada.

And it is so overloaded that even in Sonora, they gave it a really funny name.

They call it cachoreada.

It has layers of seafood, and it has not only one or two, but three sauces, but it's not that difficult to make.

I'm going to begin with an apple-chiltepin salsita.

I have water here that I'm already bringing to a boil, and I'm going to add three ripe Roma tomatoes, three garlic cloves that I already peeled.

As this cooks, I'm going to start a salsa negra.

And it's called a salsa negra because it's made with a ton of black sauces that have so much flavor.

So, I'm going to start by adding 1/4 cup of soy sauce.

And, you know, soy sauce is made by fermenting soybeans.

And then we have Maggi sauce.

And Maggi sauce is made by fermenting wheat protein.

And it is a little bit more meaty, a little bit more intense, and we use it for everything.

Worcestershire sauce is a little bit more tangy.

You may think, "What are these Sonorans doing by combining these powerful black sauces that have so much fermentation to it?"

Because they're adding three different kinds of umami and sazón into one.

And to balance it out, some fresh-squeezed lime juice.

And, here, I'm adding 2/3 of a cup.

And then chipotle in adobo sauce.

We are adding these because we're adding spice, we're adding heat, we're adding sweetness.

This is making it savory, acidic.

And then we're adding brine, or the pickling vinegar, from the jalapeños en vinagre, which has a lot of the heat from the jalapeños and the spices.

It's like this magical, multilayered sauce that people in Sonora love.

This is a big batch of the salsa negra.

You just throw it in the fridge, and it will keep there for a couple of weeks.

And you can use it when you make fajitas.

Just add a little bit of this sauce.

And we need a little bit of salt.

And I'm adding black pepper.

That's it.

That's the salsa negra.

When you go to restaurants in Sonora, seafood restaurants, at every table, you will see bowls of the salsa negra for you to drizzle on whatever you want to drizzle it on.

And this is amazing over potato chips, too.

Checking on my tomatoes.

And they are ready, so I'm going to continue to make my apple-chiltepin salsita.

This apple-chiltepin salsita -- I call it a salsita because you need a little of it to drizzle over things.

It's not a sauce that is going to be the base of a dish, like the salsa brava from the Tacos Bravos.

I have the three tomatoes, the three garlic cloves.

I'm going to add 2 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar.

A raw green apple.

Here, I'm using a Granny Smith.

This is like an apple salsa.

It's a very different salsa from anything that I've tried before.

And then we have chiltepin chile.

The apple goes really well with the chiltepin because it's sweet, it's tart.

I'm just going to add 3/4 teaspoons of salt, a teaspoon of dried oregano, 1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice, and 1/2 a teaspoon of black pepper.

1/2 a cup of the cooking liquid where the tomatoes cooked.

Now I'm going to puree the salsita and then I'm going to season it.

[ Whirring ] ♪ It smells like baked apple.

I love baked apples.

[ Sizzling ] We just want this to season for like two to three minutes.

That's it.

While this cooks, I'm going to show you how to make tostadas that are simply tostadas -- just toasted.

All you need to do is to have a preheated surface, like my comal over here, which is at medium-low heat.

You have to make sure it is preheated, because, if not, the tortillas will stick.

And then you just leave them there and let them toast, and whenever you remember, you flip them to the other side.

That was just a few minutes, and it looks like the salsita is ready.

And it smells sweet and it smells spicy and it smells like Posadas or Christmas.

It does.

[ Laughs ] Mmm!

It's so sweet, and then, three seconds later, you get the kick from the chiltepin.

That's why we call it a salsita.

Now I'm going to make a salsa bandera.

And the salsa bandera, in Sonora, is what they call the traditional pico de gallo, which has 1/2 a cup of finely chopped onion, 1/2 a pound of diced ripe Roma tomatoes, your choice of chile, if you want to add a serrano or a jalapeño.

But if it is my choice, I am adding both.

♪ And I like it with a lot of cilantro.

And I'm adding just a half of a lime, because we have so much going on there.

A little bit of olive oil, teaspoon of salt.

Now we're going to turn this pico de gallo into an embellished salsa bandera with jicama and pineapple.

♪ I'm eyeballing -- about a cup.

Let's talk about jicama.

Jicama is really good for you because it's mostly water.

And it's crunchy.

Think about jicama as a sweeter, fresher version of water chestnuts.

Listen.

[ Crunching ] Mmm!

So, we're adding about a cup.

This is looking so colorful and fresh and crunchy and juicy and crispy and everything.

Look.

Perfect.

We have our three salsas, and now we're going to build our tostadas.

I have 1/3 of a cup of mayo, and I'm going to add the zest of a lime.

Sonorans are crazy about their mayo on their seafood.

I was skeptical at first, but then I really enjoyed what it is like to eat a tostada with a creamy mayo base.

Salt and pepper.

And the last thing that remains is to quickly sear the shrimp and the scallops.

So, I have my pan over high heat, and I'm going to add a tablespoon of butter, oil, shrimp, which I shelled and butterflied.

[ Sizzling ] Salt and pepper.

Just until it's cooked, so brown on the outside, plump, juicy, crisp inside.

It really takes just like one or two minutes.

Bring it here.

Then I'm adding these large scallops.

And we're going to sear them on both sides for just a minute per side.

We want them really, really tender, like medium-raw inside.

Salt and pepper.

I love scallops.

I'm going to slice the scallops into thinner layers so that it makes for a sturdier scallop layer.

♪ Here comes the build.

I'm going to do the layer of mayo and then the layer of scallops.

So, now I'm going to add some of the salsa bandera.

I want to eat these so badly.

Mmm!

The shrimp.

You just have to make it stay until you can hold it.

Once you bite into it, then it's gone, but then you have to eat it fast.

We add a little bit more of the salsa bandera.

Bathe it with the salsa negra, the apple-chiltepin.

♪ The hot sauce of your choice.

And that is the cachoreada, or seafood tostada.

I'm already apologizing in advance, because there's no way for these not to be messy eating.

So, sorry, guys.

[ Crunching ] Mmm!

You have the tostada, which is trying to become this edible plate, and it's holding everything and it's earthy and crunchy.

The mayo at the bottom is so delicious.

The pico de gallo combined with the salsa negra, and you feel the kick of the chiltepin.

And then -- It's an incredible seafood experience and it is an entire meal.

And you should experience this at least once.

[ Laughs ] [ Crunching ] ♪ -For recipes and information from this episode and more, visit PatiJinich.com.

And connect!

Find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest @PatiJinich.

-"Pati's Mexican Table" is made possible by... ♪ -La Costeña.

♪ -♪ Avocados from Mexico ♪ -Fud brand meat -- traditional Mexican flavor.

-Stand Together -- helping every person rise.

More information at StandTogether.org.

-BanCoppel -- your recipe for sending money to Mexico.

-Mahatma rice lets you unite ingredients and flavors.

Mahatma rice unites.

-Divine Flavor.

♪ -Norson.

-Proud to support "Pati's Mexican Table" on public television.