Cooking

My favourites! Great for the cinema or just to nibble. These are prepare them yourself nachos. You open the plastic box. Take out and open the plastic bag full of nacho chips. Put them back into the box. Cover with liquid cheese and bits and pieces. We love to have onion, tomato and chillies (jalapeño) plus ketchup. Hey presto. Enjoy!

For lunch yesterday I had "queso fundido" which is basically melted cheese. It's done in the oven (in a little clay dish, if possible) and eaten with corn tortillas, which are more popular in the north of the country (rather than the maize ones common here.) As far as I know you cook the additional ingredients until they are nearly done, then put it all in the oven. I used Edam cheese yesterday as I happened to have some but any cheese that melts will do. I believe Oaxaca cheese is normally used here.

You can try "queso fundido" with just cheese or a variety of ingredients - the most common being mushrooms, "rajas de chile poblano" (slices of poblano chilli) or chorizo (spicey sausage.) This one has nopalitos (cactus) and chipotle chilli.

Sunday is often snack time, especially when Mexico are playing football on the tv.

So what is there?

Nopalitos salad:
diced nopales (cactus) mixed together with diced onion, tomates, "juanes" (like a runner bean that grows like a carrot!!) and coriander. Bought like this at the market.
Chilli and feta cheese added by me.

Cream cheese - this is just Philadelphia plus chopped spring onions.

Refried beans - just straight out of the tin and heated up. (Bit of chilli and salt added.)

Egg Mayo - Typical English recipe this is, no frills attached. Mash up boiled eggs with mayo, adding salt and pepper to taste. (No pepper here as Rafa doesn't like it much.)

Guacamole - Typical Mexcian recipe this one. Very very easy to do too: Mash up avocadoes with diced tomatoes, tiny diced onion and Jalapeño chilli. Add salt and garlic powder to taste. YUM YUM.

We ate this first with warm fresh tortillas and then with "totopos" (like Doritos.)

OK, not quite today's side salad as it was from last week.
I bascially mixed together bits and pieces I had left over before going to the market at the weekend and hey presto! (Very tasty it was too. We had it with pasta.)
Ingredients:
sliced red bell pepper
a tin of peas, carrots and sweetcorn
goat cheese
dash of olive oil
salt, pepper and powdered garlic