A couple of days ago we finally hosted a party for the opening of our boutique Mexican grocer, Picado, in South Richmond Street in Dublin 2. This was attempt two after the first attempt had to be abandoned because of my churro related accient a month ago. The planning and executing of the party was a little rushed and cortailed from the original plans, but I did not want my parents going home without us having it.
A couple of weekends ago, we commemorated what would have been my dear friend John's 50th birthday, with a charity weekend, which included an amazing nature trail in Clonbur, in the beautiful Connemara region in Ireland, in and out of the border between County Galway and County Mayo. We left Dublin later than expected and then got lost on the way out from Dublin...
Mexicans love beans... that's a fact! You give any Mexican a bowl of beans, some chilies and some tortillas and dinner will be ready in a giffy! So it is no surprise at all that I have written several times about beans in the blog. One of the most popular and most commented posts in the blog is the one where I show you how to make black beans from scratch.
I love chili oil. It is such an easy way to add flavour and heat to a dish. My cupboard above the stove is full of different flavoured oils: white truffle oil, lemon oil, basil oil, garlic oil, rosemary oil and my favourite chili oil. I love to drizzle it over meaty portobello mushrooms and cherry tomatoes just before they go under the grill. Fabulous breakfast topped with a poached egg. A few weeks ago I ran out of my shop bought chili oil and it occurred to me that, while that oil was nice, it was very one dimensional.
Salsas are at the centre stage of Mexican Food. A taco is not a taco without a good salsa, so there are so many recipes for them it will make your head explode! One funny thing I discovered last year is that a lot of people seem to think that chopping fresh tomatoes and adding onion, chilli and other raw stuff makes a salsa... In Mexico, mostly all our salsas are cooked. What Irish people refer to as 'salsa' is really a salad for us, a sort of pico de gallo that we use to garnish or accompany a dish with.
One of the first things I learnt to make from scratch when I was little was mayonnaise. I loved making it, mam showed me how to do it and although it was nothing like what we would buy in the jars, the sheer fact that I could play with the flavour, made it special.
This is one of my all time favourite comfort foods... as a child I loved it so much I would eat it every day if mam made it; as an adult, I love it too and now my Irish family loves it. Like mam, I don't make it very often, partly because I'm concious there's quite a bit of REAL BUTTER in it and partly because I don't want it to become too common and to lose the wonderful joy of eating it when I make it. It combines three of my favourite things: rice, butter and corn... heavenly!
As you know, I'm trying to blog more regularly these days, at least once a week. Friday is usually the day I can get to do that, but when I have a busy week and there's little or no time to go food shopping, I try and come up with something I can blog about and which I have ingredients to make and photograph before all light is gone. Like many bloggers, this is a hobby for me, a passion and a pastime, this means that the day job, and in our case, the night job, have priority over everything else.
This post is the first in a series of 'how to' posts. I've been observing a few of our customers in the market and getting e-mails asking how to use some of the most basic Mexican ingredients. I guess I take for granted some of the knowledge that comes natural over the years by just eating, cooking or watching others handle Mexican ingredients and I now need to take a step back and answer things like...
