Mexifeast: The Condiments

Sunday was mexifeast/mini-tacos for my birthday! Matt took care of the meats and tortillas and I made a bunch of condiments:

From left: Rancheros, Tomatillo Salsa, Guacamole, Molé

Note to self: Sauces do NOT photograph well. Especially Molé :(

1. Guacamole: I don't have a specific recipe for guacamole. My rule is to pretty much drown that tasteless avocado nonsense in as much lime juice and coriander (finely chopped stem, leaf, whatever you can use) and salt until it does not taste like gelatin. The avocado is really just a vehicle for the lime and coriander I guess. Yeah I really do not like avocado. I also added some very finely chopped up lime zest because the limes were depressingly not juicy, some spring onion and a finely sliced up deseeded chilli.

2. Rancheros Salsa: Is this even a real thing? Possibly not. Just the sauce we usually make to have with Huevos Rancheros. A pretty basic cooked up tomato salsa, the recipe is from Delicious magazine (April 2008) so probably not super authentic, but spicy enough and one of my favourite things to have leftovers of in the fridge for an easy and awesome breakfast with an egg on a tortilla. Huevos Rancheros!

3. Fresh Salsa: Real simple fresh salsa, made of diced up tomatoes, red capsicum, a deseeded chilli, coriander, red onion. Dressed with some lime juice and salt.

4. Molé! This is where it gets exciting and the first attempt recipes begin. This worked well! The recipe that is linked above seems to forget to mention when or how the chocolate should be added, so I just melted it and added it at the end when combining the chilli paste and other pureed ingredients. It wasn't at all spicy, I'm not sure if it should've been or not - pressing the soaked chillies through a fine mesh meant there wasn't much puree in the end so that could explain it. But it still was very tasty and worked well with the chicken tacos which is what it is meant to do!

5. Tomatillo salsa. Ohhhh Homesick Texan, I do love you. So many times in thinking about this night and through the full day of cooking, I checked HST for a recipe before anywhere else. In the end this was the only one I really used, but a lot of other posts were taken into consideration, such as for the making of tortillas and general menu ideas. I nearly tried her Texas Sheet Cake as well but thankfully was too tired to bake a cake. Really there was way too much regular food to even consider dessert in the end anyway. I forgot to fry up the salsa once blended but it still worked fine. Also due to the lack of fresh tomatillos in this town, I used tinned ones (from my birthday super pack of mexi-goods!). Who knows what fresh tomatillos would've made this salsa like, but it was really nice. It had a nice freshness and balanced well with the Carnitas especially.

Next stop: Tortillas.