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.
While preparing for a Mexican Cookery Class I was giving last year I came across this lovely recipe and although this post has been long in the making (tweaking the method quite a lot), I knew when I found it that it was a definite winner. I wanted an easy to prepare dish that would use a Mexican ingredient from My Mexican Shop. It had to be quick, no more than 15 minutes preparation time, and about 30 to 35 minutes cooking time. I went through all of my Mexican Food books and a big fat NADA was all I got... until I found this little booklet my mam gave me last time I was in Mexico.
I recently blogged about barbacoa and how it is my one food connection with my dad. When I made the barbacoa for that post, I froze a small amount for this post as I knew once I had shared that recipe, I had to share this one too. These Tacos of Barbacoa en Salsa Roja are perfect for any leftover barbacoa you may have.
As those of you who know me, and those of you who've been patient enough to read previous ramblings in this blog, I absolutely hate food waste. I don't throw food away if I can help it; some of my Irish family find this odd and jokingly call me the queen of leftovers, so naturally, two weeks after Christmas I am still feeding my dearest and nearest turkey! Normally, Alan always asks - 'what's for dinner today?', nowadays, he asks: 'is the turkey finally all gone?' - the poor thing!
I don't know about you, but I seem to be incapable of ever judging what size turkey to buy so that I don't have a massive amount of it left after our traditionally Irish Christmas dinner. This year was no exception, the 14 pound bird was indeed too much, so I was left with about 5 pounds of cooked turkey! Now there's only so much turkey sandwiches you can eat and after two days, I have to fight the urge to choke it all in the bin.
It is no secret that I love avocados, most Mexicans do! Last time I blogged about them in my fruity guacamole recipe. This time, I want to share a more traditional way of making guacamole, the way my mam and grandma would have made it and how I grew up eating it: northern style made in a big molcajete. When I'm hungry and homesick, I make a big bowl of this and eat it with tacos or with a slice of toasted sour-dough bread. It always makes me feel better.
Barbacoa is one of those very few dishes that brings me food related memories of my dad. As a typical Mexican man of a certain vintage, dad is very traditional in his views of labour division at home: the man provides, the woman stays at home. A man in his early 70s, he was brought up in a traditional Mexican home, and like many men of his generation, he expected his four daughters to be well versed in the home arts...
Carne Asada (grilled or barbecued meat) is a very traditional dish in Monterrey, my native city. People eat carne asada every other day and, like the Irish Sunday Roast, it is a sort of given on the weekend. The climate in Monterrey is very dry and hot (up to 45 Celsius in the summer) and outdoor barbecues feature in every household. We use PROPER charcoal barbecues, none of that gas nonsense, so when I moved to Ireland, I insisted on getting a charcoal barbecue for the back garden.
This is another of those recipes that was born out of desperation in my Dublin kitchen. I've tasted courgette flower quesadillas and stuffed courgette flowers before, they're quite traditional in Mexico, but they are fresh, so when I was first faced with tinned courgette flowers I thought, great! I don't have to miss them any more, but then I realised you can't do many of the things we do to the fresh ones. So I put my thinking cap on and came up with this little recipe. It's simple and delicious and perfect to make tacos with.
There is one ingredient and one ingredient only that I miss the most living in Ireland, and that is fresh Tomatillos. They are also known as Tomate Verde (green tomatoes) or Mexican Tomatoes and they are widely used in most Latin American Countries. They are related to the cape gooseberry (that little orange colour fruit in a yellow husks that seems to top nearly every cake in the supermarkets?). They are the size of a large cherry tomato and grow in an inedible, paper-like brown husk. They are green in colour and are meatier and slightly more acidic than regular tomatoes.
