National treat, International delight

One of the reasons I barely achieve to go into a diet must be my love for sweet. It's one of my passions in life, tasting delicious food specially sweet food. And today was no exception.
We happened to go out to a small town called Tepotzotlán very near to the city. This is a very cute town, it has a huge monastery and Mexico's greatest collection of sacred art within it's walls. That however is not my favorite part of the town.
Each sunday, like in most towns, there is a market in the center of the town and loads of different things to buy, hand-made bags, blouses, carpets, paintings, accesories and many more. Also as you might have guessed, there is plenty of food, natural ice shaves, corn, fried potatoes, fried bananas... and a whole lot of traditional treats, tamarindos, cocadas, pepitorias, alegrías and many more.

Always colourful in Mexico!

From all of these variations and delicious treats, there has always been a personal favorite. This is a sweet I find so tempting and delicious that I must have it anytime I see it. That sweet is called muégano.
Muéganos are made by deep frying small bits of a paste, stack them in a small mount and then covering them in hot syrup made with piloncillo and water which is our version of common sugar syrup. After pouring it, the syrup will eventually cool and harden. Thus making very nice mounts of a hard crusted soft insided sweet.

Left's my mom's unopened one, right's mine... being eaten *¬*

Later on the evening, when we came back from our trip, dad wanted to have some pasties for dinner and stopped by a very well know pattiserié of Mexico, El Globo. And again I delighted myself with a delicious sweet called Napoleon made of layers. First and base level is a very thin layer of phyllo paste, second is a sponge cake, third is a deliciously (and sinfully fat filled) whipped cream layer that then is topped with another thin layer of phyllo. All covered in icing sugar.

Ah, such a delicious pastry...

Meat Cake Nostalgia

It's been days since I started feeling like I needed something different than the usual. And I definitely knew what it was that I missed.
My godmother used to make this particular meat cake when I was a child and I loved it, it was on my top favorites list, right next to the bread crumbles deep fried chicken (ah, how I yearn youth, not having to worry at all of oversaturated oils...).
I kept talking and talking about the meat cake for a whole week until we went to the market and bought some grounded meat. So I called my godmother and asked her for the recipe. I'm so excited that I'm posting the recipe and the results. By the way, I'm not sure whether it's a real meat cake or has any other name, but that's the way I've know it for my entire life.
With no more a-do, here's the easiest meat cake recipe in the world (or at least I think so):


600 gr. grounded meat.
1 diced carrot (into really small dices)
1 diced potatoe (into really small dices)
1/4 finely chopped onion
1 smashed garlic clove, be sure to have it like a paste or else the taste will be unbearable.
1/4 tsp. cumin (or less if you don't really like cumin)
1 tbsp. concentrated chicken broth
salt
pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and place them in a cake mold (20 cm with or larger). Cook it over boiling water for 40 minutes. To check it's done insert a knife in the middle, if it comes out dry then it's done.

Now, I'll give you some hints for this one, first of all, don't tell your family what the cake's got in until they taste it, my mother hates cumin but as I never told her the cake had cumin she loved it.
Second is... never ever of your life use a 2 pieces cake mold, I used one and after the cooking I realized that a lot of the boiling water had leeked into the cake. It was still very tasty but the water was definately not expected. XP

And here's my meat cake, ready to be eaten.

Bon Appétite!

Of cookies and sickness

My dad always gets some x-mas gifts at work, and most times they're edible stuff like a huge ball of cheese (which hasn't been opened yet) or a box of dried fruits.
This time he got something else, he got some x-mas cookies! They had these cute x-mas related shapes like bears, gingerbread men, socks and x-mas trees. But what I really really loved of them was the glazing they had, I promised myself I'd have to go searching for the recipe of that glazing because it's delicious, it's sweet and lemony.
I still wonder how is it that they lasted so many days, a whole week, no less! With so many food lovers in the house it was some sort of holiday miracle... But maybe the fact that we tried to not get carried away with the holidays dishes and end up fatter helped the cookies too. =P

The yummyness *w*

And so here I was having some nice winter days when I fell sick. I can tell you, falling sick is definately not the happiest thing in life when your boyfriend's bedroom is as cold as a fridge. I have somehow managed to get used to it but it still is awful somedays, specially when he leaves me to sleep alone in order to keep on with his websurfing affair. It's not like I hate him doing it, I actually like being in front of the pc with him a lot. But when it begins to get cold I resent it a lot. T_T
So this day I practically didn't even want to get off the bed and slept... and slept... and slept a lot. Of course my boyfriend was pretty worried but I was so sick I just could bother with trying to go and sleep once more. Apparently I even had a fever without noticing it.
The good thing of this all was during supper, because my mother in law made a delicious chicken broth, even looking at it made me wanna have some. And that's saying a lot when you're sick and want to do nothing but sleep.
So I heated some broth and had the most delicious supper I could ever have.

One of the most delicious broths ever <3

I felt better after that, still sick but livelier. My boyfriend was happy of that too. =P

It's cheesecake time!

I wanted cheesecake so badly... It all started with a tv show I saw where a low calorie raspberry cheesecake was being made. A couple of weeks later I saw a magazine with a double crust cheesecake recipe. I love cheesecake and having such temptations right in front of was too much.
And so I started to work.

These are actually all the needed ingredients for the cake, except raspberries, looks easy even from start, right?

At first I wanted to prepare the double crust cheesecake but after reading the amount of ingredients, time consuming and calories I remembered seeing the low calorie one and searched for the recipe on the web. I made several changes, like having whole cream cheese rather than light and using sugar instead of artificial sweetener. The only thing that went "wrong" was the sugar part because I didn't use enough for the whole cake. But serving it with raspberry marmalade made the trick and helped sweetening it.
I liked the experience by itself, my child finished her homework really fast in order to help me do the cake, which was an unexpected plus, and I learned to work with some ingredients I had been wanting to use. I believe that the best part of this preparation was that it took me a fairly small amount of time compared to what a normal cheese cake does.

The cheesecake ready to go into the fridge.

I think some of my final notes about this recipe are: First, I definitely have to buy some Grand Marnier to do this kind of stuff, I used Curaçao which was what I had and the crust ended up green... it doesn't taste bad at all and I love the green/pink colour combinations (see blog here =P) but it's definately too much to have this kind of colour in a cake. Second, next time I must use more sugar, at least doubling this time's amount. And third; to be honest, the cheesecake has more of a mousse consistency rather than the thick creamy cheesecake I'm used to. However, I really liked the flavor.

Ready for the yum?

I shall put the recipe later, because I have to translate it to English first, the original is in Spanish.

Japanese again =3

I like japanese food, I think everyone notices that by now. Last day I decided to prepare a japanese breakfast and made some misoshiro. I lacked some ingredients but it was absolutely delicious. A great start for the day. On the other hand, I could never be full with just a bowl of soup for breakfast so I also made some tamagoyaki (egg omelette) to go with it.

I cut an avocado for presentation. Also because I like it =P

Now, my true problem here is that my tamagoyaki never EVER looks right, of course the taste is great, I have managed to find the exact point of salty and sweet that I like. Presentation on the other side is awful. I believe one of my biggest problems there is the fact that in the whole family only I eat tamagoyaki, mom and dad don't like the taste of it and my daughter generally makes a fuzz of eating egg before going to school (I'm not sure why though... because she does like it.). Also I don't like to eat more that one egg because I believe two are far too much cholesterol in my organism. Oh well... let's hope I make it right one of these days.
Keeping on with the subject, last time I went to mikasa I bought a bag of Kabaya's Muscat Candy and I just LOVE the taste. If you have tasted Kasugai's muscat gummies then you already understand the amazing taste of this candy. And what's the big plus of it? That it lasts far more than a gummy. ;3

Sandwiches and Day of the Dead

So here I am back again with new cooking adventures!
The first thing I'd like to talk about is how wonderfully chaotic children can be. Because here I was one day, minding my own busness, hurting no one; when my chid came to me and said: "Guess what! Tomorrow we'll be having a halloween celebrationg at school and they were asking who could help bringing sandwiches, and I remembered how great your sandwiches are so I took up my hand and now you'll have to do 15 sandwiches for tomorrow! Ain't that AWESOME?? :D"
I was of course struggling internally between being praised by my child and realizing I had to rush to the grocery store at six o'clock evening and make 15 sandwiches for the next day. So I went out, got what I needed and started to work.

Mayo and mustard ready for the action.

I have to admit that these are by far the better sandwiches I've made in a large amount. Mostly due to the ingredients, I bouth a flaxseed bread and other tasty stuff. I covered one slice of bread with paté and put a slice of ham, manchego cheese, salami, pepperoni and ended it with another slice of bread covered with mayonnaise and mustard.

The whole lot, waiting for the final step... and two below already done ;P
I left a couple of bread slices to try making coffin shaped snacks but decided that it was too complicated. Maybe with some more planning next year.

On the whole they didn't look astonishingly yummy, but they did taste that way. Also, my child told me that her friends liked them a lot and all my sandwhiches were eaten so I'm satisfied with the outcome.

All sandwiches ready to go! I cut them by half so the kids could eat what they wanted. And also used the same bags of the bread so I didn't have to worry for the package later. A cool thing of this brand is that their bags are biodegradable so I don't feel so guilty towards mother nature.

The other topic of this is Day of the Dead, or how we call it here, Día de Muertos. I believe it's my favorite holiday from all and one of the big reasons for it is the absolutely delicious bread that is made during these days. My boyfriend loves it as well. X3
I would actually go into more details on this but I know myself and I don't know where to start and when I did it I would never end. So I'll better leave you with a nice and tasty look of my dessert for a whole week. hehehe

It is actually a very light orange tasted bread covered in sugar, the decorations on it are designed to resemble bones and thus the name of Pan de Muerto or Bread of the Dead. Most have also another bun on top at the center, that one should be the head. This one however didn't have it. I bought it at a very well known bakery in Mexico and trust me, there's a reason for them to be so famous. yum! ;P

Aki Matsuri

So this is it! The so much expected aki matsuri had come.
As we live in Mexico the festival is held on the mexican-japanese asociation and is like some sort of kermesse. There are booths where you can play and maybe win a price, food sellers, a stage and also a karaoke.
Needless to say, I went there with the single and purposeful intention of having a go at the food. As we have the Mikasa I can always taste some nice food but at the Aki Matsuri you can have some other things that are more difficult to find on a daily base, or at least ready to be eaten.

Here are the culprits of my current guilt. =P

One of those things were the odango. You know, those cute rice balls that are covered with different dressings. Mine were three, two of them had a shiromiso dressing that tasted salty yet sweet and was really good, I'm not sure of the dressing name so I think I'll have to go and make some research. The last one was of course a sweet anko covered dango. This anko was not entirely crushed and so you could bite some of the beans which was good. Thinking on how soft and deliciously sticky the odango are. I had them with some o-cha, though I'm pretty sure it was actually houji-cha and it was all good. The day was pretty cloudy and cold but everyone was having a lot of fun.
My daughter bought a bun filled with anko for herself and I got myself a daifuku, wich is currently in the fridge, because I had a lot of dangos and I'm afraid of gaining a lot of extra weight. =P

The close up. X3

We also got ourselves some candies and I already tasted the lichee one, it tastes great actually, it's a fresh flavor and the sweetnes is ok. I was afraid of it because Kasugai tends to put a lot of sugar... but it depends on the sweet I guess.

A sample of the bunch we bought.