February update, lovely things to eat.

Ok, I might be getting quite lazy with this blog so I'm starting to change it by posting a selection of delicious looking food. Later on I'll post about the New Year's Eve cake adventure (at February, yeah... I know, I KNOW). Also I'll be uploading some pics that I took from homemade pizza. yum.
Also, I'm not sure what I'll be planning for Valentine's I've been very dissapointed for years so I might just NOT do a thing. Otherwise I might get depressed for the millionth time. But that doesn't mean I won't do an interesting meal. Even one for the month shall do it I believe.
Keep in touch!

This is okayu, the japanese version of porridge... Basically rice with lots of water so it's moisture and soggy and I actually found it really nice. It's said that okayu is generally made for sick people, so if you've got flu you get this and it's good for your health. Also people only eat this while sick and tend to go down in weight so when you get well people ask you "How many pounds did you loose?" instead of "are you feeling well now?" It's pretty funny.

This is mom's b-day fruit tart, we had it for late supper so she didn't want something heavy like cake. Sorry for the pic, the flash messed it up badly but hey, it was nine o'clock into the night. I couldn't help it. (u_u);

Here's one of my most favorite desserts, it's called 'pumpkin' thought it has nothing to do with real pumpkins, this is a delicious bread bun cut open and filled with custard, coverred with nice icing sugar. My mouth starts melting just thinking about it.


This is a lovely dessert I bought long time ago, strawberries and cream, all covered in chantilly cream. I admit I didn't like the chantilly since it was from those disgusting cans instead of fresh made, but the strawberries were absolutely delicious! Really worth the cost (about 2.7 dollars), i'm definately buying them again.

This is a project I did the other day, transparent noodles salad mixed with sweet chinese beans and grilled salmon covered with a nice sour ponzu sauce. Mom didn't really like it at first while looking but after tasting it she absolutely loved it. It has that oriental taste but is not overwhelming and the ingredients go really well toghether. You can have this as a whole dish but I like having many different dishes so I made some miso to go with it.

Azul y Oro

Ok, this time I'll rant about a really nice place called "Azul y Oro" this place is located inside CU and has some of the best and most economic dishes I've ever seen. The place's motto is "No dish has to be expensive in order to look well" and they really stick on the philosophy.
All of the dishes look amazing and taste delicious and the most expensive one cost 98 pesos. Desserts were a bit on the pricey side but they also are really good and the coffee beans they use come straight from Oaxaca.

Ok, first pic is a 'Chile en Nogada' which basically is a large chile, roasted and filled with prepared ground meat. Garnished with a tomato sauce and white chestnut sauce. This was my mom's dish, she loves this kind of chile.

This was my sister's dish, the Tikin-Xic fish is absolutely delicious, covered with adobo and filled with black beans, this fish has fried tortilla, tomatoes, avocado and fried banana wedges as garnish.

Going to my dad, here's a beautiful salmon, bathed in another type of adobo, this had steamed vegetables and creamed spinach, the plate also had a balsamic reduction. It also tasted niceeee, and the salmon was not over cooked, just delicious.

And here's my dish, fried ravioli filled with duck meat covered with mole. I have to admit that the duck lacked a bit of salt and the mole needed a tid-bit more chocolate, but then again, I like my mole on the sweet side so it was obvious that it wasn't just the way I like it. I had a glass of jamaica with my dish and it was great, very refreshing and cool.

Ok, now we'll head on to desserts, my all times favorite. I can tell you that I could fall in love with a guy who'd take me to a place just to have a nice dessert and tea... This cake here is filled with milk and it's soft and delicious. The raspberry sauce that garnished it was also really great and the right accent for the sweetness of the cake.

Ok, here's a guanabana mousse, the guanabana is a tropical fruit that looks rather odd for many people, it's green and covered with lumps, but it has a nice fresh and soft taste. It was a very light mousse so we found it really nice, plus it looks beautiful.

Aaaand, this is my dessert: soft centered chocolate torte, it was a really delicious and sinful warm chocolate cake with a smooth and velvet melting center. It was really strong! And don't be fooled by the ice-cream ball, that's no vanilla flavour, oh no, thats a gorgonzola cheese ice-cream!
To be honest, this is the first time I actually get to try the chocolate/strong cheese combo many gourmets and tv shows talk about as heavenly creations and I have to admit that it was a bit too much to my palate. I think that one of the main reasons is because I simply don't like strong cheese, and even though we're talking chocolate here... Anyway, I accepted the challenge and finished it all. The cake was of course the best part and many times I saw a spoon or two stealing bits of my cake. hehehe

Of vacations and leftover muffins

This year our family went on vacations to Puerto Vallarta and got the all inclusive so we had buffet breakfast meals and dinners all days. But it wasn't that bad, actually not at all. Everything was delicious and the meals restaurant was right beside the pool so we could go there when we started feeling hungry, from it all I believe that it's what I liked the most. They had everything! Pasta, pizza, salads, sushi, grilled meats and seafood, desserts, you name it. The only problem was that I couldn't eat it all unless I wanted to feel terribly guilty after. One day there was french food buffet for dinner and I thought it was ok, but then at the end of dinner I headed out for the desserts and there they were, profiteroles! Filled with whipped cream or chocolate cream! I had tons of them and couldn't help it, they're just so soft and light and sweet!
I could rant about them all day long but I didn't take a picture of them so I'll stop and rather show what I did take pics of.

This was my favorite breakfast buffet mix, chilaquiles, potatoes, mashed beans and sausages. Add to that fresh fruit with cottage cheese before and a glass of orange or carrot juice and it's the best thing ever. Besides I really, really REALLY love those small buffet sausages, I've never known where they get them from so I've only had them in buffets but if I could get them at the store I definately would.

One night we went to a really nice restaurant, it was great to dine there and the salad was awesome, it had two types of lettuce (though I don't really know their names in english) and portobello mushrooms grated with cheese, the dressing was sweet and delicious.

Although the trip was absolutely great, we went there by car and it was really tiring! Ten whole hours to get there and another ten on the way back. But we had a nice and sweet reward for the effort. They were selling strawberries half the way from there when we came back in cute weaved baskets at 4 bucks by kilo it was a great bargain!
They were truly delicious and we had strawberries the entire week. Alone, with cream and sugar and the last ones, the slightly less sweet ones were done in a milkshake. Yum!

Ok, and here's the leftover pic I had in storage. I've always wondered how cornbread tasted like so I went and had a look at some recipes in search for an easy start at the misterious thing. I found two different recipes and started to bake my own corn muffins.
Basically I did this Honey Cornbread Muffins recipe but instead of adding the cup of milk I added 1/4 and then 1 cup of sour cream which I had bought beforehand since I was planning on doing the Sour Cream and Lemon Corn Muffins instead. Why I changed my mind? Well, the first recipe looked easier (if that is even possible!).
The result is as delicious as it seems. The muffins were soft and sweet as honey (quite literally) and they were not dry at all so they lasted quite a bit. We don't eat much pastries or bread at home so I was afraid some of it would get old and dry. But I kept them in a sealed glass container and they lasted me the entire week! I don't know if they could last longer since that's when we finished the batch but I bet they could last longer.
Next time I'll add the lemon zest and see how it comes out.

The Apple Adventure

Yes yes... I know myself I'm not the best blogger around the block so please do spare my lazyness and lack of discipline to keep updating constantly on the blog. There are quite a few experiences I'd like to share stocked already at the incoming posts tray but making out an order from it is harder that I'd like to admit.
Anyway, here's the so promised post about my apple adventure and lo' an' see! It's nothing less than a Fake Strudel!
It all began the moment here at home we began to get fed up of apples all the time, so I decided it was a better bet to try and make a sweet out of it before the apples were (literally) gonna be left to rot. So next time we went to the supermarket I bought half a kilo of puff pastry and got myself to work.
Doing this dessert is awfully easy actually. You just chop around 4 apples (depending on size), season it with sugar and some cinnamon and stew it, add some raisins and nuts at the end.
Roll out the puff pastry long enough and around 1/4 inch thick. Place the cooled apples in the middle and close the puff pastry. Use some water to help it stick toghether and the brush it all over with an egg white.
Then place it into the over, around 375 ºF and 20 minutes or until the puff pastry has puffed and goldened enough.
Aaaand here's the result:


Not too bad for a fake one, right? The taste was great and remember not to use too much sufar at the beginning since raisins tend to be sweet and those are added in the middle of the preparation.

And here's the delicious inside. You can see my pastry didn't puff, well that was my fault, I tried to make as much space as needed... And there were a fairly big amount of apples. >.<;
It taste well, but I felt the lacking of puff in the puff pastry more than other's.
That aside, it was an absolute hit. Gone in a flash. ;3

Feeling Down

I've been feeling down lately, I'm not sure why though but it happens most times. Whenever I start to feel responsible or mature I back out from everything and run away. I believe I cannot handle anything and that I'll be crushed in the real world (if there is one). And I'm not proud of it but I hope I could stop myself before things go wrong.
I've got some pics to share that have been forgotten here and though I don't feel like saying a lot, I think this will help me a bit to get over the 'depression' I currently have.

Pasta with salmon sauce, it's always been a personal favorite. This was took on a trip to Cuernavaca.

In Cuernavaca as well, a plate with some cheese selection, grapes and small bits of bread covered with cream cheese and smoked salmon.

A croissant wannabe, it looks quite funny, doesn't it?

Espresso latte, mom loves this. I like how the swirls look, so I'd take any coffee shot as long as it's got swirls on it. XD

Sweet crépes, sprinkled with nuts and topped with an almond & vanilla ice cream.
This is from Neve Gelato, a very nice place to have a sweet delight. *o*

Neve Gelato as well, this was my dessert, cheese & raspberry pie; along with a delicious mint & chocolate ice cream. The tea is a ginger infusion, absolutely delicious as well!

And your classic moka chocolate cake, garnished with a cute music key made of wite chocolate.

Well... I'm not feeling specially fine but at least I'm less hysteric, hopefully I'll stop this stage soon.

My Boyfriend's B-day and Checkered Cookies

Last week was my boyfriend's birthday, he's 22 now.
My cooking adventure started when I realized I didn't have any spare money to buy him a present and then I thought, hey it doesn't have to be expensive in order for it to be a great present.
So I went and searched for my all-times butter cookies recipe. I had been surfing on the net and found a quite easy way to make them look great. Be warned, the next recipe make a large batch of cookies, the original was only half of what I use, but I love cookies so I always double proportions.

The close-up. :3

Ingredients are:
200 gr. butter
100 gr. sugar
300 gr. flour
1 tsp. vanilla essence
25gr. cocoa

Mix the sugar and butter until you have an even mixture, leave the butter ouside the fridge for some hours before. Then add the previously sifted flour and vanilla essence to the mixture and mix.
Now comes the fun part, separate the dough in two and mix one with the cocoa. Flaten each dough until they're 3/4 inch (1.5 cm.) thick and cut square straps, put them toghether and use egg whites as glue, these will make checkered cookies. Wrap them in plastic foil and place them at the fridge for at least 20 minutes, pre-heat the oven to 180 Cº and after the dough is cold, cut them in 1/2 inch (1 cm.) thick slices. These will double their size with the cooking so be sure to leave a fair amount of distance between them.

There was another tray full of these in the oven when I took the picture.

To make the rolled dought flatten both doughs and place the smaller one into the larger, to make the spot in the middle use a long cilinder of chocolate dough and start rolling.
To make cinnamon roll cookies flatten the dought and sprinkle cinnamon all over it, then roll.
All doughs shal be placed into the fridge before cutting.
Leave cookies in the oven for 15-20 minutes.
...Enjoy.

I had to put them in a platic bag as the recipient I used was a gift cardboard bag, in the end some broke during the journey. My boyfriend loved them anyway. <3

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...

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.

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.

Villa María

Some time ago we went to the Villa María restaurant to celebrate my aunt's birthday and we had a great meal, I had a delicious fish au gratin and in the end we ordered some desserts for all, they started to eat it so fast that I barely had time to take a pic.

Pescado de la noche del fandango.

Chocolate cake.

On a contrast I had my first go at roasting a chicken, seasoned with fine herbs and it came out awesomely well, the chicken was tender, juicy and flavorful. But the mold was too small and the potatoes that I had to put on the chicken were still raw and hard. XP

Just out of the oven... :3

Finally, the other day I had an AWESOME strudel that my cousin's friend brought, apparently he found out a great german bakery and had to share the discovery with us.