February 2010

27 FEBRUARY 2010
9:00 AM to 5:45 PM

Les Dames d'Escoffier is holding an Expo to salute women in gastronomy. It will feature culinary samples, products, cookbooks, and experts.

I am thrilled to join them in the Panel for the Ethnic Ingredients and Where to Find Them Session from 10:30 AM to 11:40 AM, along with Najmieh Batmanglij, Janet Yu, and Liesel Flashenberg, to discuss how to find and use the best ingredients from ethnic food stores.  I will stay along for the rest of the conference to listen to the rest of the fascinating panels too.  Join us if you can!

For more information and to register click here.

Story goes, that for centuries, a woman could find a mate in many Mexican regions if she was able to make a good and considerable amount of foam when making hot chocolate. Otherwise, suitors would not turn their heads to her direction regardless of any other virtue. What's more, it was the mother of the groom to be, who judged how good the foam was.

Thankfully, my mother in law (who loves to dip Conchas in hot chocolate) didn't abide by that tradition or I wouldn't have gotten married. When I met my husband, the best I could whip up were some descent scrambled eggs and an extremely sweet limeade. Forget about a worthy, frothy, delicate, silky foam to top a rich tasting chocolate. 

But it turns out that producing an admirable chocolate foam may be a sign of things to come: it may show how hardworking, dedicated, focused, energetic and skilled a person can be. Not only do you have to break a sweat, but also develop an effective technique and then there is also the matter of style...  

Continue reading Ancient Ways for Comfort on Cold Days: Mexican Hot Chocolate

Pastel de Tres Leches or Three Milk's Cake, is one of the most, if not the most popular and sold cake throughout Mexico. It is also amongst the most requested recipes I have been asked for after Pickled Jalapeños and Piggies cookies. So dear readers, I am sorry it has taken this long but here it goes! I promise to get to the other requests, which I love getting on your emails, as soon as possible.

Tres Leches is a sweet, practically wet, homey cake. Its base is a vanilla sponge cake, completely soaked in a sauce traditionally made with three kinds of milk: sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk and regular milk. Some versions substitute regular milk with heavy cream. The cake will sometimes have a topping like fresh whipped cream, which I seriously consider of utmost necessity (!). Sometimes the topping turns out to be meringue or even chocolate ganache.

Growing up in Mexico City, there was a bakery called La Gran Via, which sold such delicious Tres Leches that even though it was far from home, we used to drive many Sundays to get one. These days La Gran Via has become a large chain store of bakeries... it has been years since I have eaten one of  their cakes. This recipe, is as close as I get to my nostalgic memories. 

Continue reading Pastel de Tres Leches

If you are into the habit, like me, of making your own home made corn tortillas, a tortilla press comes in really handy.

It's true that tortillas can be made in many different ways such as simply flattening round corn masa or dough balls with your hands or rolling out the masa with a rolling pin. However, the tortilla press makes the process be a speedy, consistent, fun and even therapeutic one (it is!). 

Moreover, look at what a pretty tool it is (click here for more information and photo).

Continue reading Tortilla Press

"Avocados are, to me, amongst the most sensuous, luscious and luxurious of ingredients.  Add how delicious, soft and subtly flavored they are, and you get a clear winner for Valentine's Day.

Despite the many pounds of avocados we go through at home each week, regardless of the infinite number of cases I use for events at Washington, DC's Mexican Cultural Institute, and  notwithstanding that my sisters and I used them for hair and face treatments as we were growing up (all those nurturing natural oils and vitamins), I still find avocados to be wow-inducing.

If there's an avocado dish on a restaurant menu, it lands on my table.

So if I am planning a menu, especially with a hint of romance, avocados will be there..."

Article written for and published by National Public Radio's Kitchen Window.  To read entire article and to get recipes for Stuffed Avocados with Hearts of Palm and Artichoke Salad, Avocado, Pistachio and Watercress Mousse, Avocado Soup with Tortilla Crisps and Fresh Cheese, and Chopped Egg and Avocado Sandwich, click here in Kitchen Window.

Acitrón is one of the few ingredients used for Mexican cooking that is still very hard to find outside of Mexico. Acitrón is made with the pad or paddle -leaf- of a cactus plant called biznaga, which is similar to the prickly pear but rounder in shape and it also grows in dry land. To make acitrón, the leaves are peeled off the outer skin along with the little thorns, sometimes soaked in a lime solution, dried in the sun and finally simmered in a syrup made with water and sugar or honey, then left to dry again. 

In Mexico it is sold in stores and markets in square or rectangular small blocks along with other candied fruits or vegetables, of which my favorite is the candied sweet potato or camote (continue for more information and photo).

Continue reading Acitrón

Barbacoa is one of those iconic Mexican foods.

Juicy, tender meat that falls off the bone, infused with a rustic, smoky flavor and a jungle like fragrance. It uses a cooking technique that began in ancient times, long before the Spanish arrived, and it lives on to this day across Mexico in places that specialize in making it. Of course, there are now more accessible homestyle versions too.

Abroad, so many people have heard of barbacoa and want to have a taste. The people I've talked to that have tried it are dying to repeat the experience. In Mexico it has never ever gone out of fashion, and it is especially rooted in the central part of the country, where I grew up.

Though it is from a type of barbacoa that Americans got the idea to cook barbeque, it's not the Mexican kind, but the Native American found here in the US, which used to be outdoors. In Mexico we call ours barbacoa too (thanks to the Spanish!), but the Mexican way is completely different: the meat is wrapped tightly in banana leaves, cooked for many (many!) hours in an underground pit with an initial heating base of burning wood, walls of brick and smoldering rocks that are sealed with a kind of clay, and finally steamed and cooked overnight.

If you haven't tried it, this is your chance to make it! And no, you don't need an underground pit, there are ways to go about it and you can cook it away while you are tucked away in your bed...

Continue reading Lamb Barbacoa in Adobo

I am not one to prepare for disasters.

People can tell me a thousand times that severe thunderstorms are approaching, that a dry spell is forcasted or that a shortage of something essential like water (or coffee) will happen, and no, I will not be among the first to run for shelter nor stock up on provisions. I don't know if it is my continuous belief that despite humps and downs eventually things turn out OK or if I am lacking an alarm button...I just don't panic.

When I took it as a serious matter to go to the grocery store in the middle of my work day, at a rather inconvenient time, it wasn't because there is a strong snowstorm coming (though my boys did give me an absurdly long grocery list to prepare for it), it was because we ran out of avocados.

Continue reading Chipotle Guacamole for any Party (or Disaster)