Toluu : What's cooking?

What's cooking?

Thoughts and recipes of a kitchen adventurer

We bought a huge pumpkin, I am talking 30 pounds or so here, at the pumpkin show last month. We were going to carve it for Halloween, but we never got around to doing it, so I was left to deal with this huge thing. I hate to waste food, that is one of the things that my parents taught me very well, to always eat all my food.

That’s why I spent one entire day cleaning, roasting and pureeing the monster pumpkin. I ended up with 2 gallons of yellowish pumpkin puree that I put in plastic bags and froze. Now I have enough pumpkin for the rest of the year, which is not a bad thing because we love pumpkin here. That also means that you will be seeing a lot of pumpkin recipes in the coming months. I hope you don’t get tired of it because I am pretty sure I won’t

Anyway, I have been e

CapirotadaNovember 20

I just realized that I owe my readers one recipe from my Foodbuzz dinner. Some readers asked me what capirotada was and I promised I was going to post the recipe and finally, here it is. Capirotada is a classic Mexican bread pudding that it is usually eaten during Lent. There are several recipes out there for this dessert, but I used the one my mom gave me when she was giving me instructions for the chiles en nogada. Please keep in mind that the bread for this recipe needs to be dried for at least 2 days before using. My mom told me that that way it won’t absorb as much oil when frying it.

Capirotada
Serves 14-16 portions but can be easily halved.

For this recipe you will need:

5-6 bolillos or 2 large

Pomegranate and almond riceNovember 18

Even though I love pomegranates I rarely prepare anything with them. I had some left over from my Foodbuzz dinner that I needed to use before they went bad so I look around online for pomegranate recipes. What a surprise to find so many uses for this deliciuos fruit. Besides a great list of recipes I found a lot of information about pomegranates. I will put a post together dedicated only to them soon, but for now I leave you with what I decided to make with them, a very simple rice with pomegranates and almonds.

I really don’t have a recipe for this. What I did was very simple. I boiled 1 cup of rice in 2 cups of chicken stock. When it started boiling I reduced the heat to low, added salt and pepper, covered and let it simmer until the liquid was absorbed and the rice tender. I then added 2 TBSP o

Making it with Darren - Killer pumpkin seedsNovember 17

Click here to view the embedded video.

A few weeks ago I found a very entertaining video blog with great recipes. I especially like this one because I have a bunch of pumpkin seeds from a 30 lb pumpkin I cleaned and roasted last week. Check out Darren’s blog and enjoy his delicious videos.

Buen provecho!

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Cookbook: Mi Chita’s Mexican Chocolate RecipesNovember 12

Today I am going to skip Wash it down Wednesday because I want to talk about a gem that I found online last week. It is a cookbook written by my friend Teresa of Mexican Chocolate Lore and More. And why do I think this cookbook is a gem? Just take a look at the title and you tell me: Mi Chita’s Mexican Chocolate Recipes. Yes, that’s right, a whole book of chocolate recipes.

Teresa explains that Chita is how she and her brothers called her abuelita (grandma) when they were little. The aromas and flavors that came out of her abuelita’s kitchen are still in Teresa’s mind and she share them with us, along with other recipes she has created and found, in this delicious cookbook. Teresa included a short, but very informative, history of the origins of chocolate. Now it is believed that chocolate has been around since 2600 B.C.!

From the traditional Mexican champurrado to Chocolate Martini and from Mexican chocolate brownies to Mexican chocolate Kalhua cake every dri