Food, Friends and Family
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If you show me yours: Learning how to Mexican

A few months ago, one of our pals, Asdrubal, invited us to his place to eat Mexican. I don’t think I posted any photos back then- probably because the food disappeared so quickly that I didn’t have the chance.

It was so good, in fact, that we begged him to cook for us one more time- but this time, to show us the ways of the Old Country.


 

And so, a few weeks ago, one of our pals, Asdrubal, invited us his place to learn how to make, and then eat, Mexican food.

I was running a bit late, so by the time I arrived at the Mexican House, the kitchen was already all about the movement.

Andy was standing by, not quite sure what to do…

…but ready to get his hands dirty

.. and I was quickly allocated the job of potato slicing.

Luckily, someone else was delegated to ‘cutting onions into tiny pieces/crying’.

The plan for the evening was to make a variety of dishes that traditionally go with Mexican corn tortillas (the small soft ones, for those of you playing at home).

Given that, it’s fair to say that the lesson of the day was: ‘chop everything’…

… and then, ‘fry it in oil’

… after which you should probably do some more chopping.

mmm… chorizo!

Ok, the zucchini flowers were not chopped, or fried in oil, and were not in fact part of the Mexican meal. But they just looked so pretty sitting there, contrasting with the blue of the plate.

You know what else is not part of a Mexican dinner?

Tortilla of the egg kind!

But seeing as we were all in one place, our Spanish friend decided that she might as well correct our potato tortilla skills (my previous attempt came out as a rather pathetic and sloppy mess).

This involved taking mandolin-sliced potatoes (A Very Important Tegan Job!), boiling or better yet- microwave steaming them with a bit of oil, and then adding them to the egg mixture and mushing the whole thing up a bit.

Add it to a well greased pan, proceed like an omelette.

Two Mexicans: Asdru and his housemate and co-scientist Dalia. With identical looks of concentration.

Dalia was hard at work making a kind of green salsa, which contained a special kind of Mexican green goosberry.  (We were busy watching the tortilla at this point, so I might need to go back for another lesson for the Salsa Verde!)

One of the best parts of the meal is a kind of multi-fried meat. It’s quite simple to make, but rather time consuming.

You get thing slices of meat….

And you fry them.

Then you cut them into strips.

And you fry them some more.

And continue the cutting and the frying (making sure always that the pan is not to wet and you’re not broiling), until you’re done.

The end product looks like this, and tastes delicious.

But we’re not quite there yet! Keep on with the cutting and the frying Asdru!

Meanwhile, Mercedes made magic with the eggy tortilla.

And some deliciously fried potato was added to chorizo…

As I mentioned, all of these small chopped and fried deliciousnesses were to be eaten with tortillas. We cheated, and bought a huge pack of pre-mades at the Mexican store- which were then heated, or heated with cheese to make quesadillas.

At this point, people started arriving to eat, and my camera battery gave up.

So you’ll just have to trust me that it was delicious.

Ok?

 

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