New and improved Mexican food

Before we moved to Australia, the Scientist and I often ate out at local Mexican restaurants. They were mostly family run places with really delicious food and the best salsa ever. Then we came to Australia where Mexican food hadn’t really arrived. There were a few restaurants around although they were a bit too expensive in the early days for us to indulges ourselves. The local food halls (food courts) had something they called Mexican food but it was mostly curried meats and corn chips, salads, etc. and hardly resembled what I knew as Mexican food.  A few more restaurants popped up over the years and our budget grew enough to include a meal out more often. There was a place called Crazy Cactus relatively near us and we used to go there fairly often with the boys. I have forgotten the name but their most memorable dish was a fiery hot nachos appetiser (maybe something like diablo?) . It was really hot and Game Fanatic adored it. He has had a liking for very hot food from a very young age. The rest of their food wasn’t really all that great and they eventually closed down several years ago. We have tried a couple other places along the way,  some good and some bad. In the last year or two, a bunch of Mexican grill places have popped up in Australia and suddenly Mexican food is in fashion. It’s in a similar position to the sushi places a few years ago.

Meanwhile, making Mexican food at home has been even more limited. Ingredients can be a bit difficult to source here so most people have relied on Old El Paso. This is pretty much the lowest of the lowest in at home meal preparation as far as Mexican food goes. We had this back in North Carolina and I think that was about all that was available then. But we did have the lovely and inexpensive restaurants all around to keep us satisfied if required. My eyes were opened when we first visited my family (who moved to Texas soon after I moved to Australia) and discovered the wide range of Mexican style foods available. I don’t recall the names of all the brands but there were lots of choices and it was possible to find sources to make everything from scratch too.

When we eat Mexican food here at home, I usually make a meat dish and add my own spices. It’s a hit and miss sort of thing where one time it will be quite flavorful and other times it will be watery and/or bland. The packet mixes hardly get a look in these days. In the last year or so we started getting a few Mission brand products in the stores and Casa Fiesta has also appeared…although I don’t find them that different to Old El Paso. Today I discovered from another local American ex-pat that the Mission salsas are now available at her local store. I popped off to the shops this afternoon and found they were available there too…and bought a jar of each (rich tomatillo and black bean chipotle). We were already planning to have Mexican tonight so this fit in well for us. I also bought a jar of the hot salsa that Old El Paso makes, one of their only products that we really like. We also planned to have some fresh guacamole too. Game Fanatic found a recipe a few years ago that was good and is now our official family guacamole maker. We have a bunch of avocadoes in the fridge thanks to the Scientist’s mum (who has a tree). Game Fanatic got everything ready to make it and cut the first avocado and it was just too hard. He tried another one and it did break apart but the flesh was impossible to scoop out. We gave up that idea and will see if we can get the others to ripen by removing them from the fridge…Methinks they might not have been quite ripe enough when picked so I’m hoping we can salvage them.

The actual meal came out quite beautifully. I made some chicken and made sure to let it simmer a long time. It was enough that it broke apart into shreds…But there were enough chunks to satisfy Lego Lover who is only just starting to eat this part of the meal. (I made sure not to mention that I’d used onions in it and he never knew the difference as I think they melted into the sauce.) I managed to get a good balance of flavor with the paprika and cumin powder. And the tomatoes didn’t overpower it because I added them gradually. It came out really well and everyone liked it. As for the new salsas, the black bean was a hit with all of us (except LL who didn’t try it) and the tomatillo was okay. I imagine we might not buy that again since it’s a bit expensive to buy so much salsa. I always cut up tomato, lettuce and cucumber to add to a burrito or similar wrap.  Tonight I decided to skip the wrap and just use the corn chips and make a bit of a crunchy salad from it which was probably a bit more satisfactory than having the flour tortilla on top of everything else.

I’m hoping to see even more variety of food here in the near future. Even today I saw some Mexican style corn flour at a spice shop in some nearby markets. It would also be nice to get black beans into the supermarkets since they are so delicious. I make black bean stew and use dried ones for that most of the time but once tried a tin of black beans I found from the middle east. They were pretty awful….maybe mostly because they surely weren’t the type of beans I was seeking….Anyway, I’m hoping to find more variety in the foods we make at home with these few added ingredients. The new Mexican grills, meanwhile, seem to satisfy my taste for Mexican food.