Sure, it is easy to eat a jar of cateja using only a spoon. It is just as easy to put it on anything else you can think of. Here in upstate New York, food does not generally come cheap, with the very strange exception of plantains which are frequently cheaper than regular bananas. As…
Category: Mexican Food
Cajeta – Goat Milk Caramel
The first time I sold a jar of cajeta I had the kind of cultural disconnect I hadn’t experienced in some time. The customer, after sampling every one of the products I had made and had for sale at the farmers market, discussing their history within Mexican cuisine and their exact ingredients, asked a very…
Serpentinas de Tamarindo – Tamarind Leather
The wealth of tamarindo sweets in Mexico speaks volumes of the Mexican love for complicated flavors. Tart, sour, sweet, it tastes of citrus, apricots, dates and a tannins heavy wine all at once. My favorite tamarindo sweet as a kid were cachetadas de tamarindo, literally tamarind face slaps, large flat round lollypops of slightly spicy tamarindo…
Tortillas de Manteca
There was a time in Mexico’s northern states when the use of rendered lamb and beef fat to make flour tortillas was as common as the use of pork lard. The fat of one animal is just as good as another, even if the taste may be slightly different. Tortillas made with tallow, manteca de…
Sebo y Manteca de Res – Suet and Tallow
While lard has enjoyed a revival in the last few years in this country (Praise the Lard t-shirt, anyone?), rendered beef fat, or tallow, remains mostly in obscurity. Unless you’re really into grass fed lip and body balms. I blame poor marketing. Suet, or sebo in Spanish, the large fat deposits near the kidneys, is…
Lenten Recipes: Capirotada
To say there is a definitive version of the dish capirotada would be to blatantly lie. There are as many variations of this lenten sweet bread pudding as there are ingredients in it. Ingredients such as buttered toasted bread, brown sugar syrup, dried fruits, garlic, onions, cilantro and tomato…. Wait, what? Yes, and all topped with grated…
Camotes Poblanos – Puebla Style Sweet Potato Candy
There is a rule in caramel making. Against all logic, at least once or maybe twice, the caramel maker will stick their finger into a molten batch of caramel. Caramel, I am convinced, is much like standing at the edge of a precipice. The longer you stare at it, the more tempting it is. When…
Atole de Pinole con Vainilla
It is not difficult to become hooked on pinole. It is not a food for those fearful of carbohydrates, but thankfully, I have never been one of those people. If its food group can be forgiven, it is an energy dense food used for centuries by in the American continent not just for survival in…
How To: Pinole from Scratch
Ready made pinole isn’t difficult to find, but making it from scratch is a rather enjoyable experience. Though blue corn is most popular for pinole, any dried corn suitable for popping can be used, no matter what the color. The steps for pinole are simple: toast and pop the corn, and grind to a fine powder. Sweeten…
Video How To: Coricos Sonorenses
Some of us are visual learners. Watch the recipe video for coricos Sonorenses. Doesn’t everything look better in slow mo?
Coricos Sonorenses – Sonoran Corn Cookies
Mexican pastry recipes are typically written in comically large quantities. A kilo of flour for everything. Half a kilo of lard. 100 empanadas or 500 cookies later, you’re done. The size of these recipes speak volumes of the Mexican love for baked goods. Thankfully, through the magic of the metric system, these recipes are easy…
More Sick Day Food: Atole de Camote
Phlegm and porridge are two of the most unfortunate words in the English language, yet such is my life at the moment. Spanish, in comparison, has such gentle sounding words as camote, for sweet potatoes. As soft as the tuber before it is cooked.
