Mexican Cinco de Mayo tomorrow: a day for partying

Cinco de Mayo (May 5th) is tomorrow and the (mostly American) party people are lining up at the liquor stores down here in Mexico.  No doubt there will be a lot of authentic Mexican recipes prepared and beer bought to celebrate this country, but Mexicans actually don't seem to care that much about Cinco de Mayo.  Maybe it's because there are already so many other holidays throughout the year, many of them bigger and more significant, like the Holy Week that just ended a few days.  And maybe because it's more of an American party excuse than a Mexican celebration: check this out:

That is from 2005 obviously, but I see advertisements like this all over town, mostly in the gringo hot spots, for foreigners looking to get their fiesta-freak on! haha.  Now I'm all for a good party, but before you go to a 5 de Mayo party, at least get the facts straight: it is not Mexico's independence day!  Cinco de Mayo in was the day in 1862 when the Mexico defeated the French and ended the short-lived French occupation of the country and ended the last remaining French presence in North America, at the Battle of Puebla.  It isn't really a big deal to people living in Mexico, but it's celebrated abroad as a type of Mexican pride day and a good reason to drink tequila.  

To that end, I will be joining my fellow foreign compatriots and I wish you all a happy Cinco de Mayo, mañana.

Cheers,

Carlos Lima

Probably The Easiest Mexican Beans Recipe You Can Make: Black Bean Soup

It's very common to be served beans as a side dish when you go out for lunch in Mexico.  Whether you're stopping into a little street stall for lunch or you're going to a friend of a friend's house for comida, Mexican beans recipes like this recipe for black bean soup are very often made and served as a 1st course for the meal, to tide you over until the main course arrives.

If you like beans and you like authentic Mexican food, try the recipe out, let me know if you like it, and leave me a comment to let me know if you'd like to see more authentic Mexican bean recipes like this in the future.  This is a very easy recipe to try out, so it's a good one to experiment if you're new to authentic Mexican cuisine and you'd like to test the waters first (and wet your appetite!) before diving head first into a word of chiles, tortillas, and--yes--beans.  Speak to you again soon, -Carlos

Easy-to-make Mexican appetizers: Sincronizadas

Sincronizadas are essentially quesadillas' dressed up older sister: they look and taste almost identical, but the older sister has a bit more meat on her (ham, in this case, and get your head out of the gutter, hahaha.)

Authentic Mexican appetizers like this are very easy to make and are perfect for learning on a Sunday afternoon, great for warming up your taste buds for the oncoming Cinco de Mayo in just four more days!  It turns out sincronizadas are so popular in Mexico that they even have their own Facebook page with over 300 likes!--for a little Mexican appetizer like this!

If you make these delicious Mexican appetizer sincronizada snacks, this is how you finish them of with your garnish:

The full recipe is here:  http://eauthenticmexicanrecipes.com/mexican-appetizers/mexican-appetizers-sincronizadas-recipe

making your own Flour Tortillas!

Mexican cooking diva Zarela has a great writeup on how you can make your own flour tortillas, here.  Mexican cuisine is known to be chalk full of tortillas, and it's more than just a cheap stereotype: having lived with Mexicans for the past three years, I solemnly swear to tell you the whole truth, nothing but the truth--so help me Santa Maria--when I tell you that Mexicans do eat tortillas with everything.  If there's food being served, you can almost be certain that tortillas are involved.  It's just a given.

With that out of the way, why then would you wish to make your own tortillas?  If they're everywhere, why bother?  It's simple: freshly handmade tortillas taste better than older, packed and shipped ones that you pick up at the store.  So if you're serving an authentic Mexican recipe that features tortillas in some prominent way, I recommend making (or having someone make) tortillas from scratch for the recipe.  It will taste so much better!  

You may want to experiment with flours from small mills in this country that supply amateur bread bakers. For tortillas, however, you want all-purpose flour rather than the hard-wheat flours usually sold for bread-making. I get good results with Hecker’s or Pillsbury all-purpose unbleached flour.

Zarela's full recipe for making your own flour tortillas is here. 

I'll speak to you again soon. -Carlos Lima

 

Pescado Frito recipe - The Authentic Mexican version

I found a good pescado frito recipe from authentic Mexican cuisine on the coast over here and I've written it up to share with you.  Here's a little video to wet your appetite, first:

You can find the full authentic Mexican pescado frito recipe here.  I hope you enjoy the dish as I did.  I'm not the best a photographing food so please excuse the few photos I've taken--I know they're not the best, but don't let my lack of culinary photography prowess deter you from trying this great dish if you have some fish you want to cook and you're enjoy authentic Mexican food!

Until next time, keep experimenting in the kitchen! -Carlos L

Easter Sunday in Roman Catholic Mexico

The end to Semana Santa is here, and some families will be enjoying this day together.  I figure what better way to bond with your family than to work together in the kitchen and whip up a delicious authentic Mexican dessert recipe for one of the most delicious things you will ever taste in your life: flan!

The End of Semana Santa (Holy Week) Tomorrow: Thank God

Domingo de Gloria (Easter Sunday) is upon us tomorrow and will mark the end of Semana Santa (Holy week), by far the biggest holiday in Mexico.

"It should come as no surprise that in Mexico, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, Easter — Pascua — is the most widely celebrated and important religious holiday of the year."

I highly recommend reading the above article if you're interested in Mexican stories.  If you're interested what Mexico is actually like, I suggest reading this post.

I was going to post an authentic Mexican recipe for holy week, but it would be a hypocritical farce--a complete joke.  The official "recipe" of Semana Santa in modern Mexico is cheap beer, chips, and more cheap beer.  

Let me be fair: for some, holy week is a time of reflection.  Some of these souls do exist.  

But for many others, this holiday a time to party, get wasted, and act like an obnoxious dipshit.  I'm not angry or bitter here: I'm just being honest.  I'm not religious, I couldn't care about what Jesus may or may not have done, but I'm a person with eyes and ears who observes what goes on around him.

Right now, I live on the coast in Mexico and I have never seen so many ill behaved people crowding the beaches and treating each other so poorly in my life.  The significance of this holiday is lost on these people.  I understand that, living on the coast, I'm living in a place where the party people are going to pour out to when the holiday gates open and it's time to take a break and go to the beach!  But there are a lot of these people everywhere, and they're polluting, thieving, and getting in fights left, right, and center, here.  It's a fu*#ing mess.

I'll have a Mexican recipe for you next time: I'm a little too exhausted to post one at the moment.  I hope you enjoy a more peaceful Easter Sunday than it seems I will. ;)