Avocado y Guacamole

Avocado is something I never heard of before I came to Mexico. My first personal encounter with the fruit was quite amazing. Before I start describing that, I want you to know what exactly an Avocado is.

Avocado or more commonly known as aguacate in the Spanish speaking world is a pear shaped fruit with an egg shaped seed at the center. I have seen two variants of the fruit – one with a hard outer inedible coating which has to be removed before you eat it & another with a thin blackish-purple skin which can be eaten along with the fruit. This fruit has a buttery texture similar to how a banana feels if you peel it and hold it in your hand (that slippery greasy touch). It is light green in color from inside and has a mild taste. See here for more details.

I have been eating this fruit almost as early as 2 months after I arrived to Mexico. The main source of it was the Taco shop just outside my office. The guy at the shop used to put it in my tacos. Also, I ate it in the form of Guacamole at the local restaurants but that started only since a couple of months back when I started eating Mexican food frequently. While living with my Indian friends I never experimented much in terms of food and always stuck to basic Indian cooking. But now that I got an independent apartment with more freedom in terms of choice and variety of cooking I decided to explore the available options. Including Avocado in my cooking was the first thing which crossed my mind. I bought a couple of them during one of my visits to the local super.

It was the first time I was buying Avocados & hence I had no idea how to choose them. I just bought three good looking “firm” fruits and came back home. I had seen the man at the Taco shop peeling and putting them in the food and hence I knew that the fruit was expected to be soft and creamy. But the ones I bought were firm and raw. So I thought that maybe I have to boil them before I eat. I boiled the poor little fruits for more than hour before I came to know thru one of my friends that it is only the ripened fruits that you have to buy and if you buy raw ones, you have to wait for a couple of days for them to get ready. To give a parallel, just imagine something like boiling a raw mango to make it ripe and yellow :)

I am totally in love with the fruit and its taste. I make sandwiches, guacamole, put it in chutneys and even eat them with my salads. Check out the videos below to catch a live glimpse of the fruit.

Avocado the fruit




The delicious Guacamole

Innovative cooking

I went out with some friends in the morning and returned pretty much at lunch time. Tired from the whole roaming around and my stomach screaming for some food, I really wasn't in a mood to do some time consuming cooking. Being a Good Friday, the shops were closed for the holiday and I couldn't order something from the nearby Subway too. So all I had was hardly 10 minutes to figure out what edible can I make out of the things I have in the fridge. Given the limited resources which would qualify for a quick meal, I made up this - Steaming corn with scrambled eggs.

Recipe (Serves 2, if I'm not one of them)
Eggs - 2
American corn kernels - 200gms
Green chilies - 2
Lemon - 1
Black pepper powder
Butter - 1 spoon
Onions - 1

Boil the corn kernels and mix the butter & lemon juice in it. Fry the chopped onions and chopped chilies in a separate frying pan. When the onions are brown, break the eggs and pour them into the pan to make a mess. Once the scrambled eggs are ready, add the pre-prepared (sounds inappropriate, but who cares) corn to the pan. Cook for 10 minutes. Add some ketchup and salt to taste. Serve steaming hot along with some orange juice & pickle.

So, I did all this and had a heart warming meal. It came out really delicious I tell you. Hunger does lead to innovation.

P.S - By the time I took this photo, it went cold, so I had to heat it up again in the microwave :)

Loupe

There is a small Taco shop outside my erstwhile office in Volkswagen. Given its vicinity to the office and the nice quality of food that it provides, you can see long queues standing outside this roadside stall at lunch time. Though being a vegetarian, I wasn’t able to savor most of the things served at the place; I was a regular customer, having something he prepared exclusively for me; Tacos filled with rice potatoes, chilies & beans.

Coming back to the subject, “Loupe” is the guy who owns this shop. Majority of people in Mexico don’t know English. Even many people who are working for big banks & are at considerably high positions face much difficulty speaking in English. But to my surprise, Loupe was more fluent in English than any other Mexican I have met till date. My project manager in Mexico also speaks good English, but he too wasn’t any match to Loupe. This was the fact which made me so comfortable going and having food at the place. Because I was sure that he would understand what exactly I need. There was something in his appearance which made me have a sense of familiarity with him. Though I never talked much to him, given his busy work conditions, we knew each other well due to my daily visits at the place.

He was so prompt in his work, that you could actually see the difference when he was not around. While he took hardly 10 minutes to serve to a queue of 10+ people, his assistant who would fill up for him in his absence would make you wait for ages. Given the liking for the food and the server too, my last day in Volkswagen was not that pleasant. I knew I wont be coming here any longer to have this food or to meet this guy. So, after the peak business time, I went and talked to him. I asked him for a photograph for which he readily agreed. I wanted to give something to him, just as a memento. Giving money seemed very impersonal to me. After a lot of thinking, I took out a 50 rupee note from my pocket (An Indian currency note) and handed over to him. I told him. “This is for you & it is from India”. He gave me a nice smile and accepted my gift. I too was content in giving him something which will hold some value and will be peculiarly related to me.

Its been around 3 months since this happened. I wanted to post this for a long time but never got enough time. Now that I am back in Mexico, I am planning to go to Puebla and meet him again and of course taste those Tacos once again.

You can see him at this post on my image blog.

Quesadilla

From this post onwards, I am planning to write one post each for some of my favorite Mexican dishes. These dishes may be known to most of the people and maybe unknown to many. You may know a different form or the version of the same thing. What I am trying to present here, is the form of the dish in which I tasted it on the streets of Mexico. For any city, as far as I have experienced, street food gives you the authentic taste and flavor, be it the mutta-parota of road side vendor in T Ngr, Chennai or the delicious pav bhaji of the road side stall in Model Town, Delhi or my present favorite Mexican delicacies of the roadside stall outside Puerta Tres, Puebla, Mexico.

To start with, I will take up one of my personal favorites in Mexican cuisine, “Quesadilla”. This dish is basically made out of Corn tortillas (tortillas are Mexican equivalents of Indian Chappati/Roti, only a little thicker), Queso Chihuahua (a special kind of cheese which melts into soft cream like substance when heated), mushrooms, green chilies, red & green salsas (sauces).

The tortilla is first baked and cooked properly from both sides, without any oil. This is a plain Chappati/Roti like preparation with a bit of salt added for flavor. Once cooked, the filling is spread over the tortilla, which in my case, being a vegetarian, used to be chilies, cut mushrooms and pumpkin flowers. The cheese is then torn into shreds and spread over the rest of the filling to form a layer. The tortilla is then folded and left for some 5-7 minutes so that the cheese gets melted and sticks the two oppsite folded sides of the tortillas and keeping the filling inside the quesadilla. Once fully cooked, it is opened again to put the salsas inside. Depending on your choice you can have any salsa added to your quesadilla.

When served hot, it just melts into your mouth, leaving behind the splendid combined flavor of cheese & mushrooms. For me, it is the best thing you can get for around 13 Mexican pesos, which will leave your stomach full and your taste buds quenched. But for eating quesadilla, I have a rule. I eat it only if I have attended my gym workout the previous evening. This is because it is high in calories and excessive eating may leave you worrying about your bulging tummy :)

So this was my version of the Mexican Quesadilla. There are many other varieties and variations depending on the fillings and on the way it is cooked. You can find more about quesadillas here.

Of Paneer-Tikka, Idlys & Tacos

I really wonder how we can be nostalgic about different things in different situations. Just for example, take the case of the author of this blog.
Around 4 months back, when he was living in Chennai, away from his native state Delhi, he used to miss “authentic” north Indian food like hell. Its not the case that South India doesn’t offer you decent north Indian food, but as you cannot enjoy the real taste of “nariyal chutney & Idly” in a south Indian restaurant in Delhi, the same way the “shahi paneer” wont taste the ‘delicious’ same in a dhaba in Chennai. Anyways, coming back to the point, he always used to crave for good north-Indian-trade-mark-paneer curries and used to wait for the time he would go back to Delhi and savor the food he is missing for long. Every six months or so, he used to satisfy his taste buds during his trips back to north India.

As the fate had in store for him, he was further thrown away to Mexico. He used to tell me how good the Mexican food is and how happily he is enjoying the spicy Mexican delicacies. I heard from him that there’s nothing in this world which tastes better than Tacos & absolutely nothing which can match a hot quesadilla. But it was not long before he started feeling nostalgic again. In a recent conversation I had with him, he admitted that now he is missing the food back in “India” (North or South not applicable) more than ever before. Doesn’t matter whether is Paneer Tikka or Sambhar wada, whether it is Gobhi naan or Onion Utthapam, he just wants some Indian food to eat.

Being a witness for long, to his changing preferences and nostalgias, he makes me think again and again, about the changing preferences of human psyche. I wonder if this is the case only with a weird psycho like him or others too experience the same phenomenon.