Home
Mexican Buñuelos...
Thursday, 1 December 2011
Christmas is my favourite time of the year. It's such a magical, festive time and the other half and I love it! We both grew up in Christmas loving houses, although it is fair to say Mexicans are a bit mad for Christmas. My mam likes her Christmas decorations up for her birthday, which is in November 22nd, and traditionally, we do not take Christmas decorations down until Dia de la Candelaria (Candlemas Day) in February the 2nd, so we do get some wear out of our Christmas decorations, so when I moved to Ireland, I found all this lark of waiting till December the 8th to put the Christmas Tree really shocking! Eventually we came to a compromise and now we decorate the house on the last Sunday of November and turn the lights up on the first day of December.
Christmas is huge in the social & religious calendar of a Mexican: we have posadas (9 days of street parties leading up to Christmas Eve). We hold our big Christmas family dinner on Christmas Eve and, in the North part of Mexico, Santa arrives sometime in the early hours of Christmas Day, so kids go to bed on Christmas Eve all excited! January the 6th sees toys arriving in many parts of central Mexico, but for us in the North, we welcome The Three Kings (Wise men), with incredibly stretched socks that we hang at the bottom of our beds the night before and that magically appear full of sweets in the morning!
We then cut our Rosca de Reyes (King's bread) which is a deliciously sweet, ring-shaped bread with crystalised & candied fruit that has little monos (dolls) hiding inside. Each person chooses to cut a piece from the rosca to eat, if inside the slice you cut you find a doll, you and your fellow doll finders will have to throw a party on Candlemas Day for everybody, which should include tamales and hot chocolate. So as you can see, Christmas and its consequent celebrations are food heavy. Throughout all this partying and eating there is one particular sweet dish that creeps up into every Christmas related celebration in Mexico: Buñuelos.
Buñuelos are a sweet tortilla traditionally made by hand and eaten during Christmas and new year celebrations. They are delicious and every time I have them, they bring me back to those Christmases long gone as a child. Making Buñuelos is an art by itself and quite laborious, but I found a cheat way to make them and when my Mexican friends have them, very few can tell the difference, I think it is because we haven't had them in such a long time that just to hold one in your hand gives you goosebumps! Enjoy my lazy take on the traditional Buñuelos!
Speedy Lunch: Molletes
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
After 48 hours of rain, half of Dublin stuck on cars or under water and pretty rotten weather conditions, today I had to work from home. Normally I bring a packed lunch and eat it at my desk, today I had the luxury of making a quick lunch and eat it hot. Molletes are the Mexican version of cheese on toast. Traditionally they're made with freshly baked rolls, but since I'm lazy and after all working from home, gotta be quick, so here's my lazy version of the Mexican classic. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!
For this recipe I went the lazy way and I used tinned refried beans, hence the 'lazy' on the tittle, I love La Sierra Refried Beans with a hint of Chipotle, but if you happen to have the time, try my home made version! (recipe here). I opted for two slices of home made bread I had in the freezer, but any bread you have at home should do, remember this is to be quick!
Mexican Refried Beans...
Thursday, 15 September 2011
I love beans: they're full of iron, they are healthy and fill you up. They're delicious in soups, boiled, with rice, in tostadas or tacos and of course in the classic Mexican style: refried! They are part of the staple diet of Mexican people just as much as tortillas and chillies are. I don't have any hang ups about their colour or texture, or in deed the fact that just piled on a plate, they look highly unattractive! I just like them too much for that. I try to make my refried beans as healthy as possible. I know, I know: refried and healthy in the same sentence sounds like a total contradiction, but believe me, this refried beans are, so enjoy them with the knowledge that the term 'refried' only means 'cooked twice'.
Note: I prefer pinto beans as they're readily available in supermarkets in Ireland, but if you come across the black bean variety (also known as 'Turtle Beans', they're black and have a tiny white dot where the sprout was) use them, they're incredible tasty and have a higher content of iron.
Aunt Irma's Mole Paste
Monday, 22 August 2011
It is always wonderful to be back home, even if it is for a few weeks only. The weather is always sunny, you can see and smell the heat of the day from the moment you open your eyes in the morning till you close them at night, the house is filled with all my relatives and friends and mam's kitchen and her lovely and talented hands are always at my disposal, granting every single culinary wish and craving I may have. A case of the prodigal daughter is back. It's the best part of being back home.
This time, I decided to expand my horizons a little and I have asked a few of my relatives and friends to share some of their family recipes with me and my readers... I was a little nervous at first, but I must say, everybody has been wonderfully generous and truly accommodating and I have worked in some amazing kitchens during the past few weeks, gathering exceptional recipes, great tips and learning new tricks to make my own cooking better! Today, I want to share with you what I learned when I spent the morning working with my Aunt Irma in her 1970's kitchen making her family recipe for mole paste. As you will notice by the pictures I took, we made an industrial amount of mole paste; my aunt freezes the paste in individual family size portions so that she has it handy every time she wants to make mole. Mexican families are big, mine is the smallest with now 15 members, so the recipe I've given you is enough for you to make mole paste for about 15 people, you can decide to half it or make it all and freeze it.
Mexican Hibiscus Iced Tea...
Friday, 15 July 2011
Mexicans love their 'aguas frescas' (which literally means fresh waters); they are teas or diluted juices from local fruits, sweetened with sugar and loaded with ice. They can be found everywhere: freshly made at homes, in restaurants, pre-made in the form of syrup or powder in the supermarkets and everywhere you go you'll see zillions of merchants with wooden carts on the streets selling truly appetizing, iced cold aguas frescas in big glass barrels that call you in under the scorching sun. Now, if you're a Mexican (and you want to preserve your intestinal flora and stomach lining) you know they're a big no-no to drink from the street vendors as you don't know where the water or ice comes from, if you're a tourist STEP AWAY FROM THE GLASS NOW and start praying.
Joking aside (and I'm not sure you should ignore the advise of not buying these on the streets) Aguas Frescas are incredibly delicious and they quench your thirst a lot better than anything else. There are loads of flavours: limonada (made of lime juice), naranjada (made of orange juice), agua de sandia (made with watermelon), agua de mango (made with mango juice), agua de melon (made with melon), agua de horchata (made with rice and cinnamon) and loads and loads of others, but my favourite by far is agua de jamaica, which is a tea made with dried hibiscus flowers.
Hibiscus flower tea has a lovely cranberry flavour to it, it has a lot of vitamin C and minerals. A lot of people believe it has medicinal qualities (just do a google search and see for yourself). Some believe it is good for losing weight (don't see how unless you skip the sugar in the recipe), but I believe that regardless of all this, it is delicious and that's why I love it! We always have a jar full of it in the fridge during the summer time. On hot days is incredibly tasty and I've been told that if you add some rum to it, it makes a great cocktail. Either way, it is incredibly easy to make and yummy. Give it a try and see for yourself!
