Making Mexican in Milano: salsa and guacamole

I know that making Mexican food in Italy may sound like a bizarre idea. After all why would I bother coming all the way here to eat fajitas or tacos? You see, the truth is, Mexican food in Italy sucks. I kid you not. I've tried several restaurants throughout the years and they were all less than memorable. To be honest, some of them were horrible. Which is weird because, let's face it, Mexican food is so easy to make if you buy the right ingredients.

So here's the solution: if you want good Mexican fare while you are in Italy you have to make it yourself, which is what my friend Carolina and I did on Friday night. While she was in charge of making chicken and beef fajitas, my contribution was my famous guacamole and my famous salsa. Why famous, you might ask?

Because I'm the only one in town who knows how to make good ones. Great reason, right?

They are both super easy recipes and, although some people at the dinner table were concerned by the amount of crushed red pepper I poured in both recipes, later they admitted that both were really, really good, although they were really, really spicy. But that's the point of Mexican food —spiciness. Anyhow, the dinner was a success, everyone loved the food and we ended up drinking a little too much wine, something I paid for yesterday on the way to the lake. But that's another story, one that really doesn't belong on a food blog...


EASY GUACAMOLE
Serves 6

3 ripe haas avocados
1/2 red onion, finely chopped
1 tomato, chopped
Salt and crushed red pepper to taste
Juice of one lime

Mash avocados with a fork, mix with the other ingredients and dress with lime to avoid browning.

EASY SALSA

Serves 6

2 cups chopped fresh tomato
1/2 red onion, chopped
Juice of one lime
Salt and crushed red pepper to taste
One bunch of cilantro, minced

Mix all ingredients in a bowl, let stand for ten minutes before serving.

Snapper Veracruz style

Cooking dinner last night made me realize that there are certain ingredients that I will miss dearly once I'm in Europe. They are not what most people would miss, I tell you.

For instance, I won't miss the mind boggling variety of sodas you can buy in this country, mostly because the only two types of sodas I occasionally consume are club soda and tonic water, respectively as a mixer to vodka and gin.

Also, I won't miss the mesmerizing selection of breakfast cereal because, you guessed it, I never really enjoyed cereal. I tried, mind you, several times. As a kid, every time we stayed on vacation for longer than 5 days in any U.S. city, town or state I'd beg my parents to buy me Fruit Loops or Coco Pops or Frosted Flakes. My parents, I have to admit, knew better. They usually fed me those miniature cereal boxes that you find at breakfast buffets in mid-range hotels. What followed was comical. I very ceremoniously dumped half the content of the tiny box in my bowl and splash it with the equivalent of two and half tablespoons of milk. Then I would take two, maybe three bites, and declared I was full. Similar behavior, at home, would have developed into a full fledged family drama —I was never allowed to leave anything in my plate— but because we were on vacation and we we had an airplane/boat/bus tour to catch my parents, very forgivingly, muttered something about that back in their day they didn't even what cereal was and hauled me away from the breakfast tabel, so that we could "make good time", something my parents felt very strongly about in the mid 80s.

So what the hell are you goning to miss once your gone, you might ask? If you are thinking about fast food, you are wrong again. Although I was born in 1980, my mother had a very futuristic, very progressive, very 2010 if I may say that, approach to feeding her child. I'm proud to say she never spoon fed me that baby-food-out-of-a-jar-crap that I see so many infants swallow. She made my meals from scratch —each and one of them— and turned me into an incredibly happy and healthy baby. And as I grew older, while other kids at preschool were dreaming of drinking Coca Cola or Sprite, all I wanted was water. And fast food to me meant a meal my mom would cook from scratch in less than 30 minutes. So no, I'm not going to miss fast-food in the McDonalds-good-knows-what's-in-your burger way.

Enough with the guessing. I'm going to stop telling you what I'm not going to miss and tell you one thing I will miss dearly: freshly caught snapper from the Gulf of Mexico. Because I'm pretty positive no one will stop by my house in Milan, Italy, and drop off something that they have just caught nearby. And if they do, I'll run for my life.

SNAPPER VERACRUZ STYLE

 Adapeted from Cooking Light
Serves 4

1 1/2 pounds of snapper fillets
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cumin, to taste
Olive oil
1/4 cup chopped green olives
1/4 cup bottled salsa (I used hot, but you can use whatever you prefer)
1 15-ounce can good quality chopped tomatoes, such as Del Monte Organic
3 tablespoons minced cilantro
1/2 lime
Cayenne pepper

Season the fish on both sides with salt, pepper and cumin. Lightly grease a large baking dish with olive oil, place fish in baking pan and broil in preheated oven for 4 minutes, then flip and broil for another 4 minutes.

In the mean time mix remaining ingredients in a bowl. When fish is ready serve it smothered with prepared salsa.

Chicken enchiladas with green chile sauce

Every once in a while Tommy stops by our friend Jayne's house to have a beer with her and her husband Bruce before dinner. And because they tend to eat dinner way earlier than us —which is no surprise since we usually dine around 10 p.m.— he sometime comes home very excited about some recipe he has just tasted while at Jayne's house. Of course there is no way he can actually remember all the ingredients or even what the recipe was called, so our conversations go more or less like this:

Tommy: "I've just had a bite of the best Mexican dish at Jayne's."
Me: "Really? What was it?"
Tommy: "Some type of casserole... I think it had chicken in it."
Me: "You think?"
Tommy: "I'm pretty sure it had chicken in it. And it was spicy. It was really good."
Me: "What else did it have in it?"
Tommy: "I don't know, you'll have to ask Jayne."

So after a week or so we usually happen to be at her house and I remember that I'm supposed to ask her about the mysterious casserole. After five minutes of vague descriptions on Tommy's part and puzzled looks on Jayne's face we finally arrived at the conclusion that the mystery dish is these chicken enchiladas with green chile sauce. Tommy was right —it's possibly the best Mexican dish I've had along with my beloved pork tacos from yesterday's post. It's spicy and creamy, without being too heavy. So thank you Jayne for remembering which recipe Tommy was talking about and for giving it to me!

CHICKEN ENCHILADAS WITH GREEN CHILE SAUCE
Makes 4 enchiladas

For the sauce:
2 cups prepared green chile salsa (salsa jalapena)
1 cup chicken broth
1 cup half and half
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 tablespoon of flour

For the enchiladas:
1 small onion, sliced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 chicken breasts, chopped
Salt and pepper
1 tablespoon cumin
2 cups pepperjack cheese, grated
4 soft taco size flour tortillas
Chopped cilantro

Preheat oven to 350F.

Heat a little oil in a large skillet, add onions and garlic and cook for a couple of minutes, until fragrant. Add chicken, season with salt, pepper and cumin. Cook over medium high heat until chicken is browned. Remove from pan and set aside.

To make sauce add ingredients for sauce in the same pan you used for the chicken and stir until lightly thickened. Pout half of the sauce on the bottom of a 9x13 baking dish.

Place 1/4 of the chicken mixture in each tortilla, top with a tablespoon grated pepperjack, roll up and place each tortilla seam side down in the prepared baking dish. Pour remaining sauce over the tortillas and sprinkle with remaining cheese. Bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. Garnish with cilantro.

Pork tacos with pineapple salsa

A funny thing about living in Southwest Florida is that everyone, and I mean everyone, when they come visit they ask two things: to eat by the water and eat "good Mexican". I'm guessing that, ideally, they would like to eat good Mexican by the water —which isn't that much to ask for, I guess. The problem is, the Naples area lacks two things when it comes to restaurants: good Mexican ones and restaurants by the water. Throughout the years I have been looking everywhere for excellent tacos and finger licking tostadas, and I've only found two places that are worth mentioning, both little holes in the wall. Nothing against little family ran eateries, but sometimes you just aren't in the mood for mariachi music blaring from half broken speakers and hours of operation that change on a daily basis.

So what to do if you are in the mood to go out for Mexican? Simple. You make it at home. Thanks to Cooking Light and the abundance of small Mexican grocery stores I have become an expert at making very satisfying tacos, tostadas and enchiladas. Not bad for an Italian girl, uh?

PORK TACOS WITH PINEAPPLE SALSA
From Cooking Light

For salsa:
2  cups  minced pineapple
1  cup  minced apple
1/4  cup  minced shallots
2  tablespoons  chopped cilantro
1  tablespoon  fresh lime juice
1/2  teaspoon  ground cumin
1/4  teaspoon  salt 

For tacos:
 
1  tablespoon  canola oil
1  cup  thinly sliced yellow onion
2  garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2  pounds  pork tenderloin, cut lengthwise and thinly sliced crosswise
1/2  cup  fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1  tablespoon  cider vinegar
1  teaspoon  dried oregano
1  teaspoon  ground cumin
1/2  teaspoon  salt
1/2  teaspoon  freshly ground black pepper
2 tomatoes, chopped
3  chipotle chiles, canned in adobo sauce, chopped
Flour tortillas, warmed

 

To prepare salsa, combine the first 7 ingredients in a medium bowl; stir until well blended. Cover and chill.

To prepare tacos, heat oil in a large nonstick skillet over medium heat. Add onion to pan and cook 2 minutes or until tender. Add garlic and cook 30 seconds. Add pork to pan and cook 4 minutes or until pork loses its pink color, stirring occasionally. Stir in broth and next 7 ingredients (through chipotles). Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 10 minutes. Uncover and simmer 10 minutes or until liquid is nearly evaporated. Warm tortillas according to package directions. Serve pork mixture with tortillas and salsa.

Mahi with spicy salsa

So maybe I shouldn't have written a to-do list, especially not on a public blog where everyone could read it and then see what a failure I am at going through with my to-do lists. I don't really know what has gotten into me lately. As soon as I got laid off I had all this energy and these plans and I thought I was finally going to take care of things because "I had time". Well that didn't last long. After a couple of days I just got extremly lazy and haven't done anything constructive, except for working on my novel which is currently at page 128. So I guess that's a good thing.

Everything else, though, has been kind of put on hold and left behind. Including the cooking of epic recipes that I always wanted to cook but never had time to try. I was thinking about writing a list of those too, but we know what happens to stuff on my lists, so I'd rather not. Which brings me to this mahi recipe —the opposite of long and complicated. It's really a non-recipe, just something I threw together last night at 9 p.m. because —after writing all day— I realized that I hadn't made any plans for dinner. So I just kinda went with the good old idea that good + good = good and put this together. And guess what? It was good.

MAHI WITH SPICY SALSA
Serves 2

2 fillets of mahi mahi or other mild white fish
Salt and pepper
Half a lemon
3 plum tomatoes, cubed
1 avocado, cubed
Half a lemon
1/2 onion, chopped
1 jalapeno, minced
1 teaspoon ground cumin

Season fish with salt and pepper, place in a pyrex and dress with juice of one lemon half. preheat oven to 350 and cook fish in oven for 20 minutes.

In the mean time mix the chopped tomatoes, avocado, onion and jalapeno in a bowl. Season with salt, pepper and cumin and dress with lemon. Mix well.

When fish is ready serve topped with salsa.