Cooking

In Mexico fresh fruit is readily available, cheap and delicious. Consequently there are juice bars on just about every street corner selling fresh fruit juices, fruit waters and milkshakes. They are very easy to make but you do need one essential tool – a liquidiser (blender.) The process is pretty simple:

• Chop up your fruit of choice and put it in the liquidiser.
  
• Add water or milk (depending if you are making fruit water or a fruit shake.) Ice is also a great idea when it’s hot. You can also try adding ice cream.
  
• Add sugar to taste.
  
• Blend and serve.
  
• Fruit drinks are usually served in tall glasses, often with a cherry or part of the original fruit as a decoration.

Try some of the following fruit:
Single fruit ideas:
With water – pineapple, oranges, grapefruit, mandarins, watermelon, papaya, melon, kiwi fruit, strawberries.
With milk – bananas, melon, strawberries.
But feel free to mix and match. Bananas go great with chocolate milk too and with strawberries. Melon and papaya are good together. Citrus fruits mix together well. You can also do this with vegetable juices. Carrot and orange is pretty good and is beetroot and orange.

Mexican coffee is delicious. Not many people know that. The coffee that I like the best is the traditional form called café de olla. It's very easy to prepare. All you need is a large clay pot (or olla) to make it in. Heat the water in the clay pot. Add the ground coffee and most importantly some sticks of cinnamon. You should also add piloncillo instead of sugar. Make sure it doesn't boil but just simmers away nicely. Serve in clay cups or mugs for the most authentic experience. By the way, piloncillo is unrefined Mexican brown sugar.

I could have just included my many Mexican recipes in my normal "My Mexico" blog but I decided that it would be better to do a separate blog which would focus these entries together. But why cooking? Many of my older friends might think this is a little out of character - well, let me tell you that you're a little behind the times. Things have changed a lot since my school and university days. Yes, I realise the highlight of my cooking at university was cup-a-soup but things change. Over the years, starting with Amanda and her mum in my final year of university, I have learned to cook, and to cook well I must say. (Modesty never being a character trait of mine!) I have had lots of help from lots of people and credit will go where it's due as I add recipes. One thing I must mention is that as these are Mexican recipes there are going to be problems with ingredients and translation here and there. There are things that I know you can't get in the UK. However, when this happens I'll just explain what it is and how to substitute if possible though I'm afraid that you're only going to be able to cook some of these recipes if you're in Mexico. Sorry about that, but what can you do?

So, enjoy the read. Enjoy the recipes and mail me if you have any comments.

Karenx