Sopes

The messiest food there is. This is the food that everything just falls all over your hands and you are forced to link your fingers. I love sopes. My Nana use to make these for us in the summer after making Caldo de Res (which we will make as well). They are little fried pieces of heaven layered with goodness. I use to love getting all messy while eating these, my brother to this day will eat them with a fork and knife, the way my Tata use to eat them. It is funny to think that people would eat these with utensils. They are meant to be eaten with your hands. My Nana use to buy the masa and roll the dough up and make the little saucers, then she would cook them on the comal and then fry them. I encourage you to do that if you have a Mexican market that sells good masa or if you know how to make it yourself. I have a market that sells them already cooked and they are great. So here is how we do it.







Sopes
Beans
Meat (you can use beef or chicken, I use roast beef)
Lettuce (shred)
Cilantro
Monterrey Jack Cheese (grate)
Guacamole
Salsa

1. Make sure to have your meat and beans cooked ahead of time.
2. If you get the Sopes ready made you will need to fry them until they are golden brown. it will take about 3-4 minutes in hot oil.
3. Once the Sopes are fried you then layer with: beans, meat, cheese, lettuce, cilantro
4. Serve with Guacamole, Salsa and rice and beans.

Tonight we had some great friends come over to enjoy dinner with us. Sam & Ashley. Sam helped in the kitchen as we also made Rolled Tacos! Dinner was awesome!

Sam rolling Tacos!

Here's to some good food!

Helpful Hint:

This is how you eat a Sope!

Our Table:

Mole

One of my favorite dishes. My Nana use to make this in the summer time as a main dish to her Caldo de pollo (which we will make in the coming months). I can remember her always making fun of me because I like to eat this dish with flour tortillas. She always ate it with corn tortillas. To each his own! Tonight I made this dish for JM (my husband, John Mark). It is tradition that I make it on his birthday and so we celebrated him with his favorite Mexican dish, Mole. My Nana use to make the sauce thin and I can remember stealing a little piece of chocolaté every time she made it. Now I make the sauce thick. You can make it how ever you like as long as you keep the ratio right.






1 Jar of Mole (brand on photo)
10 cups of chicken broth
1 bar of chocolaté Ibarra (grated finely)
Chicken breast

1. Boil Chicken and make chicken broth

• To make chicken broth: How ever many pieces of chicken you will be servicing add water and chicken bullion ( use 1tsp of bullion/cup of water). Add half of a white onion, 2 sticks of celery & 1 clove garlic. Let cook for about 30 -40 minutes on medium. You are basically making chicken soup.

• Set chicken aside and keep broth
  

1. Mix Broth, Mole, and Chocolate together.
   
2. Keep heat on low and stir often (it burns easily if you do not watch it)
3. Once sauce is smooth add chicken pieces to sauce and let simmer

Serve with Rice and Beans and Tortillas!

Here's to some good food!

Extra Help:
Break the Mole up with a fork and grate the chocolate. It takes a long time for them to melt down to a sauce, about an hour.

The Chocolate

Our Table:

Look who is cooking with us...

We are so excited to have our friends cooking!!! Our little cousin Brianna (who by the way was the reason we started the blog in the first place.) has made rice and beans! She said: "successfully made legit Mexican rice and home made re-fried beans!...let build your own burrito night begin!" She is away at college and is in a place where homemade anything is not as easy as home.

Check it out. She nailed it! We are excited she is cooking and sharing her creations with her friends!

Here's to some good food!!!

Our cousin Brianna

Mexican Rice

Re-fried Beans

We want to know when you cook...

Hey friends a lot of you have been cooking up a storm. We are so excited you are cooking a long with us. Please email us pictures. We would love to see how you made our Nana's dishes. Along with the pictures send us a comment and we will pot you on the blog. Can't wait to hear from you!!!

Here's to some good food!

cmrobeck@ca.rr.com

El Taquero

This is how it is done! On the same Sunday my family was gathered in Calexico for a Carne Asada to celebrate my Tia Elsa's 65th birthday. My Tio Roberto, aka El Taquero, was the cook of the grill, as he usually is if we are having a Carne Asada. His daughter Brianna, is the reason we started the blog in the first place! Note the box that the meat is in. My Tia usually crosses the boarder to go and get the meat. This is how they packaged it for her!

Here's to some good food!

Carne Asada

I can not tell you how many times we have had a Carne Asada with our family. Typically if we have a family function we will BBQ Carne Asada. This dish is a dish that makes me happy because it always involved inviting friends and family over to eat. The house would be full of noise and laughter and the meat could be cooking outside while the rest was being done by the women inside. My husband usually grills the meat and it is the one thing that most of the men in our family actually know how to grill. I hope you enjoy this dish with friends and or family and have a great time eating and hanging out!






Steak:
2 pounds Ranchera (flank or skirt steak)

Marinade:
As seen in the picture: to taste
Salt
Black Pepper
Oregano
Garlic Powder
White Onion (sliced)
Oranges (or lemons if you like)

1. You are going to layer the steak down as you prepare it. About 12 hours.
   
2. Be generous with the salt as I did not and it needed more.
   
3. You are just going to dash the salt, pepper, garlic powder, and oregano to each side of every piece to flavor the meat, be generous.
   
4. Also squeeze the orange right out of the peel to each side of the meat as you layer it.
   
5. Grill to perfection!
   

You must serve this with the following:

• Salsa
• Guacamole
• Rice
• Beans
• Queso Fresco
  

Here's to some good food!

The Table:
I made this lunch for our friends who came down this past Sunday afternoon the hang out with our family. We had a great time!

Rebekah, Caleb, John Mark, Kenji & Liz. I was taking the picture!

Rolled Tacos

This has to be one of my most favorite dishes. Growing up my Nana would never make me rolled tacos only folded ones (which we will make with potatoes soon, her tacos de papa.) My passion for rolled tacos came from Lolitas Tacos shop in Chula Vista. How I love their tacos. So when I got married and moved away from San Diego I was left with no great taco shops in the OC. So here came my rolled tacos which is one of my family's favorite Friday night movie night dishes. They leave you wanting more and that is dangerous!






OK here is the secret. Roast beef with chili powder!!! yep. If you do not have fresh cooked roast beef buy cubed beef. Get use to using cubed beef, as my Nana used it all the time.

1 can Cubed beef or 16 oz roast beef
Chili powder (to coat)
16 Corn tortillas
Cooking oil to fry

Heat your beef and mix with a generous amount of chili powder. You are just adding enough for flavor. You are not cooking the meat (it's already cook) just heating it to shred it and add the chili flavor.

1. Warm corn tortillas so that they are flexible(I do this by taking a few paper towels, wetting them and sticking them in the microwave for 2 minutes.)
   
2. While tortillas are warm add beef and roll, close with tooth picks until you get a handle of them in the oil. (I still use tooth picks)
3. cook in hot oil until golden brown. I loive my tacos crispy but my sister likes them soft so cook them to your liking, just don't walk away from them as they can burn really fast in really hot oil.
   

• Make these with homemade Salsa and Guacamole and a side of beans. My advice is to make all the sides before you starting frying the tacos as you want to eat the tacos while they are still hot.

Here's to some good food!

Coming to you...

Ok Friends I wanted to give you time to start cooking. So when you do start, make sure to let us know how your food came out! Coming to you soon will be: tacos, sopes and MOLE!!! We are going to have some give-a-ways for the Mole post so make sure you stayed tuned!!!

Here's to some good food!

Chorizo

This was at the request of my sister. And today being my 8th wedding anniversary I woke up early to make it for JM. One of his favorite dishes. Typically you have this for breakfast but we have been known to eat it for lunch or dinner. My Nana use to make this on the weekends. She would have one batch of it with eggs for us kids and one without. She would typically eat the one with no eggs mixed in and have an over easy egg with it. Basically this is a spicy sausage. I have to give this one to my mom though, in my opinion this one is a dish she has mastered. She really does do a perfect job of making this dish. Make sure you use chorizo de res (beef). You can add as many eggs as you like. I usually use three for half of the link, my mom though only uses 2.


1/2 Beef Chorizo (you can also buy soy chorizo, which is very good)
2 Eggs
1 Green chile finely diced
1 Yellow chile finely diced
1/4 White onion finely diced
1 Tomato finely diced

1. Dice all veggies
2. Saute them in pan (no oil needed)
3. Add chorizo and break apart
   
4. Beat eggs and pure into chorizo (mix until it is all combined then cover and skimmer)
   
5. Cook until eggs are cooked. (do not over the mix the eggs and chorizo or the eggs will not come out fluffy)

• Great with a bolillo (as shown above), beans and slices of avocado.
• Wrap it up in a tortilla for a burrito to go!
  

Here's to some good food!

Extra Help:

This is Chorizo de Res

Huevos con Verduras

My Nana rarely ate scrabbled eggs. She liked her eggs over easy and ate them with mustard and ketchup with a bolillo. But when she did make scrambled eggs this is how she made them. I remember coming home from an early shift around 10am and her asking me if I was hungry. Yes! So she started to make me this dish, which I love! I was waiting and went to look over her shoulder so I could smell the verduas cooking. it looked a little odd. So I did what no one ever dare do, I questioned her cooking. The eggs looked weird and smelled a little off. So I said "did you put soap in that?" She turned to me with eyes of fire and said "eres loca, tu no sabes a cocinar!" Translation : "you are crazy, you don't know how to cook!" And so she dished it up with beans and flour tortillas. I laughed and then took a bite. Sure enough it tasted weird. I told her to take a bite. Yep there it is. She started laughing as she had used dish soap instead of oil to make the eggs. She never said sorry but she made the next batch extra good!!!

Funny thing this morning after breakfast and doing all the posts I called my mom and asked her what she as doing, it was around 11am. She said "making breakfast." I said "What are you making?" She said "huevos con salsa!" I laughed. I reminded her that my Nana called them Huevos con Verduras!!!

ps - my mom use to keep the dish soap and the oil under the sink next to each other. I keep the two far away from each other! :)



2 Eggs
1/2 Anaheim Green chile finely diced
1/2 Yellow chile finely diced
1/8 White onion finely diced
1/2 Tomato finely diced
Oil

I do not really have measurements for you on this one. You can see how much I used in the picture above. You can not really go wrong with how much of the veggies you put in.

1. Dice all veggies
2. Saute them in a little cooking oil until translucent, salt and pepper to taste
3. Scrabble 2 eggs, salt and pepper to taste
4. Cook until eggs are cooked.
   

• Serve with beans, queso fresco and corn or flour tortillas!
  

Here's to some good food!

Queso Fresco

I woke up this morning dropped my kids off at school and headed to the Mexican market to get this cheese for breakfast. Oh the cheese!!! Quesco fresco, this one is Queso Panela, Mexicano. I can remember being in the markets in TJ with my Nana and her trying all the different types of Quesos. It was crazy at all the cheese they had to pick from. I remember having hot corn tortillas with a slice of this cheese, oh so good. In fact just the other weekend I was at my mom's house and my sister, my and I with my two kids when to the Mexican market, there we got cheese hot tortillas and my kids ran around the market like I use to do when I was their age. We got home I opened the tortillas (still warm), grabbed the cheese, a slice of avocado and a little bit of salsa and make a little snack! So good! If you have a Mexican market with a butcher shop, there is where you will find this awesome cheese.



Here's to some good food!

Pan Dulce

These are my favorites and my kids favorites. Growing up my Nana did most of her grocery shopping in Tijuana, Mexico. We lived in Chula Vista my whole life until I moved away to college, but my mom and brother and the rest of the family still live in this now big city. My Nana was crazy, she would rather go across the border almost twice a week or three times a week to go get food. There we would go to all kinds of different markets to get everything from vegetables, meat, bread, and so on. My sister can attest to this, you could bring anything across as long as it did not have a pit in it. But my Nana would smuggle avocados in her bra every time. Yes in her bra! To my knowledge she never got caught. I can remember always laughing at the fact that she would do this and it was like a tradition, and because she did not think the USA had good avocados. I think this was just a place for her to go where she would shop and feel free to communicate in her own language. It was fun as a kid going with her because we ate pan dulce, ran around the markets and just had fun.



Here's hoping you have a good panadería by your place!

• Conchita de Chocolaté
• Conchita de Vainilla
• Quequitios (cupcake)

Serve with Mexican hot chocolate (coming soon) or coffee!
Here's to some good food!