La Zorra

Teaching Patrick how to make my veggie Chilli

We decided another veggie chilli was in order, primarily as it's so versatile, but also because Patrick wanted to learn how to make it. He doesn't cook a whole lot, and especially not veggie food, but he loved the chilli so much before that he was keen to learn something without meat.

I've also decided that I'm going to make my own version of Tostielotes- it's going to have the veggie Chilli, as well as cucumber and jicama (per the tostilocos at Balandra), corn, sour cream, a variety of hot sauces, a squeeze of lime, and some queso fresco. I imagine feeding this to friends at home, using Doritos, I guess. I think it would go down a real treat. I can't wait to cook all this stuff for friends along the road and at home.

On the hot sauce front, I'm needing to ask what they add to tostielotes. I'm sure it's just bottles of stuff off a shelf, which is fine- no need to mess with it- I just need to know what ones. The tostilocos had three sauces in there, our tostielotes only had one. I think maybe there's a bit sauce, a chipotle one, and a tamarind one, just judging by the colours. It's impossible to tell when it's all just thrown in there.

I see tamarind pods in the supermarkets, so I need to explore how they process it and use it. I'm used to using it in Asian cookery, but in the paste form which will avoid what I'm sure will be a fairly footery process.

As well as the Tostito dish- which I think I may badge Tostidavitos or Locodavitos or something suitable, we've some poblano peppers to be stuffed, too.

Yesterday, we also made some more pickled Jalapeños, Green Tomato Sauce and Pico de Gallo. All decent. We have stuff left to make some Red Sauce, Guac, and a few other bits n bobs. I think the goal here is to likely always have a bunch of these items as store cupboard/fridge stocked items as it's all so interchangeable, and it's so easy and cheap to find the ingredients. I imagine I'll be able to cook almost all Mexican dishes. I like this idea of having a base set of easily sourced things which I can pivot to do anything- the opportunity here is that shopping will be less dependent on pte-meditating what we're going to eat, and more a case of just stocking up on the same set of ingredients, and then deciding as we go. What a great way to live, and I'm sure once I get in the swing of other dishes, we'll be eating close to as good as restaurant food for even cheaper.

We found lemons yesterday in Cabo- you never see yellow lemons here. That means we can use the Asadero cheese to try to make a take on a lemon/oregano halloumi dish we used to make at home- marinated then grilled. Looking forward to that, maybe in a Vanini (a name we gave to a tortilla stuffed with whatever and cooked in the van)- think wrapped quesadilla.

I'm also wanting to explore doing a veggie Pastor, using the marinade I have on the same Asadero cheese.

So lots of ideas in the pot...

Oh, and we christened the HP sauce we bought in California yesterday, thanks to Jen making some scrambled eggs and toast. Perfection.Read more