This year has been so bloody awful, that August & September saw me making tons of flavoured booze. It gives me something to look forward to as in two or three months time, the liqueurs will be ready and I can sit down on a Friday evening and have a nice home made cocktail and drawn my sorrows in it. This is my third liqueur so far and I'm delighted with the results.
Growing up in the North part of Mexico, we had maybe a day or two a year with proper cold weather and our house, like most houses, had no central heating! This means that in those couple of days when it is actually cold, you use extra blankets on your bed and you wear the heavy jumpers inside your house. If the cold spell goes on for a week, you dig out the aul gas heater to warm up the room you're most in and you indulge in a fit of baking, which is rarely attempted the rest of the year as temperatures go as high 45 Celsius and that's before you turn on the oven!
I am currently obsessed with Mexican Atoles. They are perfect for this time of the year as they are warm and nutritious. Giving that Christmas is nearly here, I decided to post what it is perhaps the most traditional and Christmassy of all known Atoles: Champurrado.
With summer fast approaching (or so we keep hoping) I was delighted to find fresh pineapples at the food market I regularly shop. I've been devising loads of ways to use this now gorgeously ripe pineapple, like this unorthodox fruity guacamole or eating it sliced with sprinkled chili & lime powder, yet my all time favourite way of eating pineapple is in the form of an Agua Fresca (fresh water).
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.
This is the first time I've ever told anyone other than my close family this story, risking losing my legend status as THE master drinker of pina coladas, but then, it is a story worth telling, so hear me out. A little over ten years ago, only a few weeks after moving to Ireland, I got invited to a hen party.
