mexican food.

i'm a chinese guy..married a Taiwanese lady.

having said that; i tend to gravitate towards mexican cooking. i just made my first pot..no cauldron of Caldo De Res. it was easy and super delicious.

i got Posole down pat. which reminds me; i need to make way more red chili sauce to freeze.

i need to learn to make tamales!! and fresh flour tortillas! i tried tortillas once, but i used Bear Lard and it was weird tasting.

i just got back from visiting family in El Paso Tex..in my opinion the mexican food capital. i had some flautas that were life changing..had to stand in line for an hour to eat $6 worth of flautas. my wife was blown away.

back to flour tortillas..it seems easy and straight forward. anyone do it?

I have. It's easy in the same way making pie dough is easy. Hard as heck to get the right consistency unless you have hands on from someone else, or hit the right consistency. Cooking them is easy peasy. A tortilla press makes things super easy.

Also took a stab at tamales. Tasted great, half look like hot messes and fell apartish, and took me the better part of a day to make about, oh...60 or so?

I will do both again. The tortilla is so much better home made!

All you latinos go ahead and laugh! I own how pathetic I am. Boiled cabbage and potatoes have nothing on fresh mexican food!

i think corn tortillas are so much more tasty than flour tortillas...unless you're making burritos or fajitas.

Since you are in the Bay Area you should go to La Palma Mexicatessen on 24th ST in the Mission District of SF.
http://www.lapalmasf.com/home.html

It's a Latin market that makes fresh tortillas AND sells the masa to make your own.
They have pretty much everything you need including highly additive Chicharrón by the pound.

doing Caldo de Res tonight.

local joints charge $13 a bowl. i figured i better reverse engineer the stuff. crazy easy.

Oh I love me some Mexican food! Some of my favorite! Love fresh ingredients and the rich flavor. So good!

Being in the Bay Area you can pick up fresh made tortillas. I like corn tortillas & flour for Burrito's. Love Mexican food. We do have a few real places here, owned & run by Mexicans.

Buy most my vegetables in Chinatown. I get my noodles fresh from a small hole in the wall noodle shop. So much better than the package stuff. Fresh is best.

I offered to make Mexican food for a friend- he said he wasn't much of a fan. A statement I thought was odd- I could see not liking a maybe a couple different dishes.. but ALL Mexican food? His main reason was that it was "all too spicy".

Twenty minutes later of questions and prodding, it came out he doesn't like using ketchup for the same reason- too spicy.

...I just.. I can't imagine that.

Those flautas sound seriously intriguing though- if I ever make my way down south, I'll definitely have to ask you for directions to the restaurant!

Valkyrae said:

Twenty minutes later of questions and prodding, it came out he doesn't like using ketchup for the same reason- too spicy.


!

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poor dude. he cant visit damn near 50% of the planet..forget southeast asia..his head would catch on fire.

I sympathize with those who can't eat spicy foods for some medical reason like ulcers, but I've also met people who are just afraid of spicy food for no good reason. It's one of those things where it helps to build up a tolerance for heat over time, so if you never even TRY it, you'll never be able to appreciate it. Amazing.

Anyway... Mexican food. I don't cook it much at home because it's easy to find at local restaurants. At home it's just fajitas now and then to use up leftovers, or a quick quesadilla for lunch. I do a few Central American things, like Nicaraugan steak with jalapeno cream sauce and sauteed plantains, or a Costa Rican "casado" (black beans and rice with egg on top, and sides). At one time I did try an amazing recipe for a Mexican green Mole sauce. It was one of those all-day projects, grinding spices from scratch, slow cook. I should dig up that recipe again.

How spicy is actual mexican food, if you compare it with southern thai or south indian?

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

How spicy is actual mexican food, if you compare it with southern thai or south indian?

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Depends upon what you mean by spicy. If you mean simply hot I'd vote for Thai.

Obviously you can customise recipes to your own personal tastes but my experience is that Thai recipes celebrate heat while other cuisines include heat.

I'm generalising here but Thai recipes have chili, chili and more chili. Indian recipes have chili, ginger and black pepper, and Mexican recipes have chilli.

I love all of them.

+1

OliverNuther said:

I love all of them.

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IMO - In terms of pure heat / spice both Thai and Indian (southern) are hotter in general but only on average. Mexican food, like any other country cuisine, is regional and spicing goes the same way ... FWIW - Many of the classic Mexican (even Tex Mex) foods use a lot of dried North American chiles which once dried and seeded (something generally done) aren't that hot at all but do have amazing flavor profiles (if you've never had cascabel, mulato, ancho or guajillo, to name a few, peppers you need to not spicy very complex). I cook almost entirely Mexican, South West, Tex-Mex and Creole/Cajun and almost all of it can be tailored "heat-wise" without a big change to the original (IMO) flavor as my lovely Bride is South African and taken years of training on my part! Caveat - This does NOT APPLY if your pallet thinks Ketchup is hot! as I still can't get over someone's pallet thinking ketchup being "hot" ... :flame:

Also to the OP - have made hand made Tortillas many times but still find with access to locally produced (San Diego here) preferred as the local La Tiendita (if it is a good one) have great ones and tamales as well (but if are making them as a group they can be a lot of fun ... my $0.02).

Someone thinking ketchup being hot might actually be a limited tolerance to vinegary sourness? I mean... I would consider HP sauce reasonably spicy (from the vinegar bite) but would also call a stew with three habaneros to a pot spicy-but-no-need-to-swear ...

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

How spicy is actual mexican food, if you compare it with southern thai or south indian?

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I spent a couple of years working for months at a time in Mexico, based in Mexico City but traveling all over the country in rural and remote areas. What I remember of the local food, and I mean being invited into people's houses, is that most of it wasn't nearly as hot as authentic Thai or south Indian food. Spicy, but not burn your mouth and reach for a glass of milk. And much of it was actually fairly bland. Lots of regional differences as mentioned in a post above. Local food in Oaxaca different from the Yucatan, different from the North, etc.

One exception was a little town somewhere in Puebla south of Mexico City, can't remember the name. It was famous for local green chilis, and I had a breakfast of green chili scrambled eggs that was on fire. Burned on the way out, as well as the way in... if you know what I mean. I don't recall that sensation with any Thai food I've eaten. Maybe I haven't eaten enough real Thai though...

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

Someone thinking ketchup being hot might actually be a limited tolerance to vinegary sourness? I mean... I would consider HP sauce reasonably spicy (from the vinegar bite) but would also call a stew with three habaneros to a pot spicy-but-no-need-to-swear ...

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Yeah, I'm really not sure.. I think part of it was eating a largely potato, bread and meat diet.. Just liked the taste of things plain, and never really cared to try other cuisine.

Couldn't imagine being that sensitive to heat.

I always suspected a correlation of how much of the seeds (not the membranes where the heat is) you leave in and how much second time burn you get...

I hate food with Laotians yesterday. Tiny red peppers. I ate three. I’m scared now.

LifeByA1000Cuts said:

I always suspected a correlation of how much of the seeds (not the membranes where the heat is) you leave in and how much second time burn you get...

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Hot going in I can handle.

Hot going out... not as much.

C'mon Ice Cream!

Valkyrae, nobody needs people like that in their lives...nobody

Heh, I moved out of Southern California and have been dying for Carne Asada since then. I can't find a place to do preparada here and haven't been able to dial my own marinade recipe in. :mad3: