Forget about your everyday tortillas. It’s time for the real treasures of the Mexican cuisine!
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Cinco de Mayo is more of an American holiday than a Mexican celebration, even more reason to step out of your food comfort zone and try something new; maybe even something you didn’t know existed in the cultural heritage of Mexico.
Not to say that tortillas aren’t good, but let’s step it up a bit with some authentic meals of the traditional Mexican cuisine, shall we, because if there is ever a time for it, then it’s now when ingredients for what you’d need to make dishes at home are widely available in grocery stores.
Or maybe your local restaurant will serve some of these foods in honor of the Cinco de Mayo celebration. It’s worth checking out restaurant menus because you might be in for a real treat this May 5th.
So here are some treasures of the Mexican cuisine for you to enjoy during this year’s holiday.
- Almendrados or almond sauces – not to be confused with almendrados traditional Spanish cookies.
The almendrados we are referring to here are sauces composed of almonds, although they can also be made from other types of nuts and/or seeds.
One of the most popular recipes that use almendrado is almendrado de pollo or chicken in almond sauce, an authentic Mexican recipe.
Peanut sauces or encacahuatados is another Mexican iconic sauce made from peanuts and used for chicken in peanut sauce recipe or pollo encacahuatado.
Almendrado can be used to compliment any roasted bird or meat recipe and is a sauce with a dominant nutty flavor, although you can get some sweetness in it with pureed raisins. Almond-raisin sauce is traditionally from Oaxaca.
- Bay Scallop Ceviche – proof that Mexican food isn’t all greasy, all fatty, or all cheap.
People who only get to eat Mexican food like the one found outside Mexico believe that Mexican cuisine is not healthy, when in fact authentic dishes are anything but unhealthy.
What is unfortunate when it comes to traditional Mexican cuisine is that a lot of it contains indigenous ingredients that don’t travel well, so it’s difficult to reproduce the dishes here in America.
But you can’t fail with bay scallop ceviche, a recipe that uses marinated raw fish, in this version with a mix of orange, grapefruit and mandarin juice (to bring to a boil and reduce to half) plus lime juice to marinate the scallops.
Bay scallop ceviche is a wonderful appetizer for parties.
- Chalupas Poblanas – are served in Mexico and particularly in Puebla as street food.
But, chalupas are also on the menu of elegant restaurants in the country, this type of tortilla dish going as far back as the ancient times.
Chalupas poblanas are thick tortillas with a crispy exterior but soft on the inside. What makes them so delicious is that they’re bathed in two types of salsa sauce (salsa roja and salsa verde).
The recipe includes shredded meat (chicken, beef or pork), chopped onion, and queso fresco or fresh cheese.
In certain Mexican cities, you serve them without meat, topped only with sauces, cheese and shredded lettuce.
In the state of Puebla, in Mexico they are shaped in the form of boats, the canoe-like boats that the Aztecs used to navigate canals. It’s actually where their name comes from.
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In San Francisco, you will find chalupas as small as the silver dollar.