chocolate cherry banana muffins

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on exactly 14 cherries yesterday, which here in Mexico is a very hard thing to do. Cherries are only sold in 1 out of hundreds of stalls at the market I go to and they cost about 10 dollars a pound. My inlaws went yesterday and bought a pound and gave me ... well, 14. now i figured i could eat them all myself in 5 minutes, or i could bake them in something and share them and make them last longer. I went with the latter.
I decided on a muffin, using a recipe i have previously posted ( here ). All i did was pit and cut up the cherries and add them to the mix, no other changes. They were scrumptious!

pizza margherita

My fiance finshed a coaching class he was taking for the past few months, and his classmates organized a picnic to celebrate. He volunteered for me to make pizza, and forgot to tell me until we were in the car on the way home from a night club at 3:30 am the morning of the picnic.

Now when I make pizza for people other than myself and him, i like to make my dough ahead of time in case anything goes wrong the day of and i have to start over (i have problems with yeast...it doesnt like me). But on this day, I just had to hope for the best. LUckily my crust turned out and all was well with the world.

Pizza Margherita:

1 can whole tomatoes
oregano, salt, pepper
minced onion and garlic (however much you like)
oil
fresh basil
mozzarella
thinly sliced tomotaes

Sautee onion and garlic in oil. Meanwhile in a blender or food processor, blend tomatoes with their juice until you have chunks (or you could coarsely chop with a knife). Add to onions. Season with salt, pepper, and oregano. simmer a couple minutes.
put on top of your favorite pizza crust, and top with mozzarella nad thinly sliced tomatoes. Bake about 20 minutes or until crust is done (at the temp your crust recipe calls for). When you take the pizza out, put on the basil and...

taaa-daaa...you have pizza margherita!

(this yummy pancetta was for another pizza that i made...pancetta and portobello pizza!)

crema de setas y calabazas

My inlaws went out of town today for about a week and asked my fiance and me to stay at their house to take care of their dog while they are gone. When we stay at their place, obviously we make ourselves at home and eat whatever they have, and luckily two days before they left they went to the farmers market so I have kitchen full of fresh veggies to cook with this week!

While going through the veggies to get inspiration for meals for the week, I came across these setas, or wild mushrooms, and knew i had to make some kind of soup for my fiance with them. He adores them. Now a couple posts ago i talked about how i hate mold and i really dont like mushrooms, because they look like mold. But these setas are so white and clean and pure looking that i dont mind eating them...I actually liked them.



Crema de calabaza y setas (4 servings)

• 2 cups hot water
• 1 chicken stock
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 2-3 chopped zucchinis (I used round zucchinis that my FIL grows in his fields...YUM!)
• 1.5 c chopped mushrooms (use the mushrooms of your choice)
• salt and pepper to taste
• chopped onion and garlic (I never measure, put in as much as you want)

1. sautee onion and garlic in a tbsp of oil about five minutes. Add water, stock, zucchini, and mushrooms. Simmer until zucchini is tender.
2. Add evaporated milk, and puree.
3. return to stovetop and reheat until the soup thickens. Season to taste.
   

other mexican things

here are some other delicious mexican foods that i am lucky enough to get to eat on a regular basis.

First up we have enchiladas. These are NOT your run-of-the-mill TexMex enchiladas, nor are they the cream-topped enchiladas suizas. These come from the state of Hidalgo, where I live. They are basically a corn tortilla stuffed with some kind of egg-chile-tomato mixture and then fried in a thin layer of oil. I have not learned to make these in the 3 years i have been eating them (which is probably a good thing, because if i knew how i would make them every day.)

enchiladas

Next there is queso Oaxaca, a cheese that comes from, well, Oaxaca. Its got a consistency like that of...string cheese; its easy to pull apart and actually tastes similar to string cheese. I cant find any other way to describe it, really.

queso Oaxaca

These beauties are tamales wrapped in acelgas (swiss chard). My fiance's grandma makes them, and has offered to teach me, but i just havent made time. but as with the enchiladas, its probably good that i havent learned, or else i would be eating way to much of them. These are just one of many, many types of tamales. These particular ones are served with a salsa roja thats not spicy.

These are flor de calabaza, or zucchini flower. it has a very bitter taste, and i dont particularly like it, but my mother-in-law uses it a lot for soups or to fill quesadillas or empanadas.


And finally we have guacamole made in a molcajete. A molcajete is a stone mortar and pestle. Guacamole from a molcajete tastes soooo much better than guacamole from a blender or food processor.

sopes de huitlacoche

Today I was in a Mexican food mood. I wanted sopes. A sope is basically this:
Its like a corn tortilla, but thicker and oval shaped and topped with beans, meat, chicken, whatever you want, really. I told my boyfriend my idea and he agreed that sopes sounded good. But he had a special request...he wanted sopes de huitlacoche. BLECH!!!
For those of you who havent had the pleasure (insert sarcastic snarl here) of trying huitlacoche, I will enlighten you as to what it is.
Its basically corn mold. In the US its considered a plague, but here in Mexico its a really expensive delicacy. I tried one eensie weensie bite once that I couldnt even chew, and i will never try it again. Its not that it was bad, necessarily...it tastes pretty much like dirt or mushrooms. Its the fact that its mold. I have a mold phobia. it really disgusts me. I'm ok eating cheese, because it doesnt really look like gross disgusting mold that grows in damp bathrooms, but unfortunately huitlacoche does:
My mother-in-law had given us some a couple weeks ago, so I decided to oblige my boyfriend. I mean, its not like i was the one who had to pay upwards of $15 for the stuff.

So we went to the tortilleria and bought the handmade sope bases. When we got home I heated them on the comal (a cast iron plate...they come built in on stoves in Mexico), and filled them with huitlacoche for him, beans for me, queso oaxaca, and salsa. YUM!!

Brownies...

...not from a box!

Yesterday I decided to try my hand at homemade brownies. Thank goodness i did. these were amazing! My fiance, who had never before had brownies in his life, said they were one of the best things he had ever tasted.

Heres the recipe: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Best-Brownies/Detail.aspx

The only thing I didnt add was honey to the icing, because i dont have any at the moment, so i added another tsp of vanilla and a little milk.

Soba Noodles

yesterday was one of those days. You know, the kind where you have absolutely no inspiration, but you have to make something, because you have people depending on you to eat.


So, I got out my recipe folder and while waiting for something to jump out at me, I found a recipe for eggdrop soup i had been wanting to try. I had some soba noodles, so I thought I'd make a meal of it.


Im glad I did. The soup and the noodles were delicious!



eggdrop soup (for 2):

• 3-4 cups of water
• .5 tbsp bouillon
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• handful chopped chives
• 2 eggs
• salt to taste
  

1. Bring first 4 ingredients to a boil slowly
2. Add lightly beaten eggs in a slow stream and cook for one minute

Soba noodles:

1. Cook soba noodles according to package.
2. meanwhile, blanch some broccoli.
3. In a skillet, sautee onion, garlic, broccoli, and chicken cutlets (I cut mine in strips).
   
4. Add one cup chicken stock, 1 tsp cornstarch, 2 tbsp soy sauce and cook a few minutes until sauce begins to thicken.
   
5. Add the noodles to the sauce.