I spend a lot of time reading about food. It's what I like doing the most; yet, when I sat down to write this particular post, I realised most of what I know about Tamales was from either the stories my mother and grandma had or from general common knowledge. I decided to research a little bit more about it, what I found out really surprised me! For example, did you know that the oldest records place tamales as far back as 1200 BC in Mayan paintings?!
When I first moved to Ireland, I found the lack of Mexican food ingredients really depressing; I had to make do with what was available and the one thing I could find with no problem was hard taco shells. They weren't precisely very Mexican, more of a Tex-Mex thing, but in time, I learned to like them and they became a regular super at home.
This is a very lazy post, so beware! I was cooking during the week for a party of friends who will come over for Sunday and sneaked a bit of the Cochinita Pibil I cooked for our lunch. I normally cook 2 kilos of cochinita, then portion it and freeze it. This time I took a bowl of it and made this delicious Pork Pibil Tostadas which served two purposes: it fed us and provided the recipe for this post.
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.
When we started My Mexican Shop, there were a number of products I wanted desperately to stock, chief in the list was Mexican drinking chocolate. I absolutely adore it, it's so different from drinking chocolate here and believe you me, you have not tasted a good hot chocolate until you have one made with Mexican Hot chocolate!
Until a couple of years ago, I was totally oblivious to the whole Cinco de Mayo festivities. In most parts of Mexico, it is a day like any other, no big deal. Children in Primary Schools mark the day with a ceremony and secondary schools across the country would have a mention of the day or an assembly, but all in all, it was to me a pretty obscure date on our civic calendar. A couple of years ago I started getting 'happy Cinco de Mayo' cards on the post from my American friends, and that got me thinking...
