Mexican Food Monday: Tres Leches cake

For today's Mexican Food Monday I made a traditional Mexican cake called Pastel de Tres Leches. It is made with an egg based cake where you beat the egg whites and yokes separately and then add them carefully together including flour and vanilla. The sauce is where the cake got it's name "three milks cake" because it has evaporated, sweetened condensed and whole milk ( I used skim because that is what I had available). You poke holes in the baked, cooled cake and add the sauce mixture and the cake literally sucks the milks up like a sponge. Then you let it sit for at least 2 hours. This is like the Tiramisu of Italy for Mexico.

I've only had this cake 2 times in my life. Once in college at a Spanish language department party and once after I got married at a Mexican Festival in Lincoln. The first try I really didn't like it. It just seemed like soggy cake but I had it again later and the cake seemed so moist and delicious. This cake did have a bit of a soggy texture which is normal but it still was very good and held a cake form.  It wasn't too soggy but it did lack a bit of soft cake texture that I like in a cake, but usually homemade cakes are not as moist as bought boxed cakes because they usually don't have as much fat. I told my husband that Pati has never let me down and I was right. This cake did turn out well and it was yummy. I really did enjoy adding fruit to the top which was optional in the recipe. All I had was blueberries but I think some raspberries or strawberries would have made it really good also!
I was extremely pleased when my husband took a bite and said "Mmm this is really good!" because I was really worried it wasn't going to turn out that great. I didn't think my egg whites got as stiff after beating them for longer than it said in the recipe. I kept beating them with my hand mixer but no change to the texture! I decided after about 15 min of extra beating after adding the sugar that my soft peaks were just going to have to do...and this made me decide I really need a Kitchen Aide mixer!!! It really put a smile to my face because those eggs really made my arm tired haha! I would definitely make this cake again and I think my next desert to try making is flan, I bought 2 molds because I know my husband like flan so hopefully I will have a chance to make it soon...maybe for our anniversary this week???
 

 

I again used my Patis Mexican Table cookbook for the recipe but you can also find the recipe on her blog. You can find it here: http://www.patismexicantable.com/2010/02/tres_leches_cake/
The only thing I see that is a bit different is that in her cookbook it says to set the oven at 350 degrees rather than 360 as in her blog.

Mexican Food Monday: Mango Salsa

For today's Mexican Food Monday I made grilled chicken with mango salsa. I didn't use a recipe this time, I just eyeballed it. My husband and I eat a lot of chicken breast so I am always looking for something to spice it up. Here is what I put in the salsa but you are welcome to add more or less of any of the ingredients, some people even put cucumber in a mango salsa:

2 diced Manila Mangos (small yellow mangos) or any type of mango

3 diced Roma Tomatoes

1/2 finely chopped onion (I've used red onion in the past but I used yellow onion today)

3/4 minced jalapeño pepper (if you like extra spicy add 1 full pepper)

1 squeezed lime

chopped cilantro

salt and pepper to taste

Mexican Food Monday

Last Monday I missed my Mexican Food Monday. I was back home for a short trip to celebrate my mom's 50th birthday and wasn't able to make something new. Everyone that I tell that I went to celebrate my mom's birthday are amazed how young my mom is! I guess most people in this area that are my age have parents already in their 60s? I was so happy to be home to celebrate the 4th and 5th of July with family and see some extended family (Uncle, Aunt and Cousins) that I haven't seen for probably about 3 years. I will post some pictures in the next few days of my quick trip but first I am going to share with you the recipe for my Mexican Food Monday. This week I made chipotle mint meatballs. I really want to use my chipotles once I open a new can so I decided to make a few things that use chipotles in the recipe to not waste anything. I didn't follow this recipe to a T but I think it still came out pretty good. These meatballs are in a tomato based broth and you add mint, garlic, salt, pepper, egg and rice with ground chicken or turkey meat. I used ground beef because that is what I had and I added bits of onion to the balls which wasn't in the recipe. I also used brown short grain rice because that is what we eat in my house. I think this needs some sort of side or maybe could be poured on top of a bed of rice or pasta to make it a full meal. The flavor was good and the mint was an interesting combination twist.
I am not sure how Mexican it is to have mint in the meatballs...I'd have to do more research to see how they are usually prepared but I think the overall concept of a tomato broth with meatballs are common for a mexican meatball recipe.
http://www.patismexicantable.com/2009/09/dreaming_of_julios_albondigas/

Mexican Food Monday!

Here we are again at Mexican Food Monday. I can believe it's Monday already, I enjoy my weekend's too much that I'm always sad to find that we are back to another full week of work. We will get to the food in a moment...

Today I have some bad and also exciting news. To start with the exciting, I had an interview at a bilingual private school today. I think it went fairly well but I always think back of all the answers I should have worded differently or how I should have thought of more questions for me to practice in my head. It never fails, I always practice a few common questions but they always seem to choose ones I haven't thought too much about and I get nervous and blank out. So I am really hoping this job is in God's plan, that I impressed my interviewers enough for them to offer the job, and I that I can move out of the position I am at right now. The bad news is that my source of transportation, BART, is on strike and will probably cause me some trouble throughout the week. Look up BART strike if you want to see what's going on around here. CRAZY!

Yesterday afternoon I was walking to meet up with my husband to watch him play soccer and found a Mexican market across the street. I started to think about what I should make for today and stumbled upon these dried flowers to make the very common drink that I love "Agua de Jamaica." I love Jamaica flavor so I thought I should try this week making it. I am going to again use the recipe from Pati's Mexican Table. We'll see how I like the recipe because I haven't actually made the drink yet. http://www.patismexicantable.com/2011/05/jamaica_water/Oh and by the way I finally got Pati's cookbook in the mail so more recipes I hope from her :)

We actually had her creamy shrimp again tonight and chipotle mashed sweet potatoes for dinner! I am glad so far my Mexican Mondays have worked out, except as I mentioned before we were going to try Rockfish last week and that was not a good choice...I won't probably buy rockfish again, Too Fishy! But, that was not Pati's fault, this was just an experiment to try to like fish so I can make seafood dishes for my seafood loving hubby.

Hope you guys have a great week ahead! I am visiting back home for a short visit the end of this week to celebrate my Mom's birthday. As a bonus it will be July 4th and I get to see some family that I haven't seen for 3 years. I'm also pretty excited to spend a few days with my immediate family who I miss. I'm just sad my husband couldn't take time off to go with me. :(

Mexican food Monday

If you know me well you know that I am not a huge fan on seafood. I didn't eat fish very often growing up. I never liked the fishy taste or the "spongy" texture of almost all seafood I tried. After moving to somewhere where fish and seafood is fresh, everyone told me that the reason I probably didn't like fish was because the fish I tried wasn't fresh and that is why I didn't like it.

We went to a friends house last weekend and had grilled shrimp. I didn't want to be rude and say that i don't like seafood so i ate it. I actually liked the taste! It still was a little bit spongy but the taste was good so that I could forget about the strange texture. I decided to make it for for us on our own. I found a recipe for shrimp and decided to use it for my new recipe of the week. I also bought "Rockfish" which is supposed to be like tilapia but since they didn't have tilapia they recommended Rockfish. It's supposed to be a less fishy tasting fish and takes on the flavor of what you're cooking it with.

This is before you add cream, when you set flame to the tequila

My new recipe is again from Pati's Mexican Table. I just bought her cookbook so hopefully the recipes in the book are as good as her blog recipes. I tried the tequila, chipotle cream shrimp. I didn't have the Mexican cream so I used Cowgirl Creamery creme fraiche which was recommended online if you didn't have mexican Rio Grande crema. I know next time I will try to buy the shrimp deveined and the shells to be already removed because it takes quite a while for an inexperienced shrimp eater to remove. It was quite a job! I had my husband stand by as I lit the flame to take the alcohol away from the tequila. I was afraid that I would light the house on fire... Or my eyebrows!!!! But no accidents happened, thank goodness haha! Overall we both again liked the recipe and I like that I am learning to use my can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce since I would buy a can for making Tinga and then it would just sit forever in the fridge. I have found some other recipes using it so those recipes are to come in the future :)(http://www.patismexicantable.com/2012/10/tequila_mexican_cre/)

Mexican food Monday

I've been wanting to learn how to make more Mexican food, not only for my husband but also to learn more about the cuisine and to spice up my regular meals up a bit during the week. I tend to make a lot of the same meals with an occasional new recipe but I don't try new dishes weekly. I would like to have a goal to make something new once a week. So I decided to start this week with "Pumpkin and Ancho Chile Mole"
 (http://www.patismexicantable.com/2011/10/pumpkin_and_ancho_chile_mole/) and to have an appetizer of pumpkin flower quesadillas (http://www.mexicoinmykitchen.com/2012/06/squash-blossoms-quesadillasquesadillas.html) I only changed a few things from each recipe. In the chicken recipe  I didn't have dried ancho chile in the market I went to but they did have ancho chile powder. I used 3T per chile in recipe then I sprinkle maybe about 1/2 tsp more later on. We both really enjoyed this meal so I think this recipe will be repeated again in the future. It makes quite a bit of sauce for just the 2 of us so we will have sauce for a few days to but on our chicken for lunch or dinner. The other change was I didn't make my own tortillas as they do on the website and I did not have Oaxaca cheese as the recipe asks for. I asked my husband if they tasted like they should and he said that they were pretty good but they didn't have the true flavor of what they usually taste like because I used a different cheese. (I used mozzarella cheese because that is what I already had in my fridge.) Overall, I think last night's meal was a success, and you get a glimpse of one of the plates my husband bought me in Mexico.

End product!



Chile powder used rather than dried chile

a few blossoms

inside of the quesadilla