When Malcolm asked me if I would be interested in writing this column, I was a little nervous. I am not a cooking professional. I am an expat and I am interested in food. I have a cooking blog where I write about what I am doing in my kitchen. I don't update it as often as I do my regular blog.
I don't know what to write about, so I need some help.
So this week I am asking for questions in the comment section, but instead of answering them in the comment section, I am going to answer them in this column. I don't know how many people read the comments.If you don't,you should, there are great questions.
There was a discussion about butter, that lead to me standing at the cold case in Megabalcones reading the ingredients list on all the butters to find out why Mexican butter doesn't taste like American, Canadian or Danish butter.
When I wrote the jicama article, I thought it would be a ho-hum article, but I was surprised to find out that jicama isn't a common food everywhere.
I want to know if you have heard of the following foods available here, and if you use them. Or are they totally strange to you. In no particular order:
nopales, chayote, camote blanco, camote amarillo, yucca, platanos machos, platanos manzano, calabaza, epazote,guayaba
I may be naive in thinking that most people know how to eat mangoes, pineapples,coconut,pepino blanco (white cucumber), and chiles poblanos.
If there is someone out there that knows alot about chiles and would like to do a guest column that would be great. I mostly just use, poblanos, habaneros, serrenos, chile dulce and jalapeños then there is
Chile Cuaresmeño but according to my research that is another name for jalapeños. I also have a few recipe that use some dried chiles such as chipoltes, guajillo and pasillo. Those jalapeños sure get around because a chipolte is a smoke dried jalapeño. I have several vegetarian recipes which use a whole dried chipolte as a subsitute for a smoked ham bone, removing it of course.
Actually, if someone has a good food story about living in Mexico, I would certainly love to showcase it here. I have noticed that there are many people here with much more experience in the food industry than I ever will have. So if some of those people want to share their food experience, I invite you to be a guest columnist too.
Theresa is the author of ¿What do I do all day? and Theresa's Cooking Blog. Her weekly column, Comida Listo, can be found on Yolisto most Tuesdays (sometimes Wednesday, this is Mexico, afterall).
