Week 1 – Mexican Cuisine
This Week’s Dishes:
Pico de Gallo
Veggie Chili
Recipe
Recipe
Highlights from Cooking Classes at Indwell
Tuesday Class
Thursday Class
YouTube Cooking Tutorials!
Ingredients:
Four (4) Tomatoes
Half (½) Onion
Half (½) a bunch of Cilantro
Half (½) a Jalapeno
One (1) lime
Instructions:
Roughly dice the tomatoes and put in a bowl. Don’t forget to remove the steam scar (it can be used for stock).
Finely dice the onion and add to the bowl.
Roughly chop the cilantro and add to the bowl.
Remove the center white part of the jalapeno and remove the seeds. Finely dice the jalapeno. (Remember not to touch your face from now on because it is really spicy and it will burn.) Add to the bowl.
Squeeze the juice of one lime into the bowl, making sure that no lime seeds fall into the bowl by using your hand or a strainer.
Mix everything up in the bowl with your hands and place it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
It's ready to serve!
Ingredients:
One (1) Splash of olive oil
Half (½) Red onion
Half (½) Bell Pepper
One (1) Carrot
One (1) Celery Rib
Eighth (⅛) Teaspoon salt
Two (2) garlic cloves
Three (3) tomatoes
One (1) can black beans
Half (½) can pinto beans
One (1) cup of vegetable broth
One (1) bay leaf
Spice Blend:
One (1) tablespoon chili powder
One (1) teaspoon ground cumin
Half (½) teaspoon smoked paprika
Half (½) teaspoon dried oregano
Instructions:
Finely dice your red onion.
Dice your bell pepper, celery, and carrot.
Turn your stove top on and set the heat of the element to medium high. Place a frying pan on the element and add the olive oil. When the oil is hot, add the red onions (you should hear a sizzle at this point) and cook it in the oil for 1–2 minutes.
Then add the bell pepper, celery, and carrot to the pan and cook for 8 minutes.
Add the garlic and the spice blend to the pan and stir constantly for 1 minute.
Add the tomato and the drained and rinsed beans to the pan. Add the vegetable broth and the bay leaf. Bring it to a simmer and let it simmer for 20-30 minutes (stir every 5 minutes).
Turn the heat of the stove element off and now you can pour your chili into a bowl!
As one of the common food items found in Mexican cuisine, pico de gallo, also known as salsa fresca or salsa cruda is a type of liquid salsa. Salsas, are essentially a “condiment” that can be added to different dishes as fillings or an incorporation into soups or stews. So a liquid salsa is one that flows like a liquid, similar to the salsa condiment that be purchased in stores. However, interestingly enough, some don’t consider salsa dip to be an authentic salsa cruda (raw sauce in Spanish), so creating your own pico de gallo from scratch can give you more of what people would call a “genuine experience”! This liquid salsa is fairly simple to make: you only need chopped tomato, onion, serrano peppers (jalapeños or habaneros), lime juice, and cilantro for the traditional recipe! Because pico de gallo contains a lot less liquid than other liquid salsas, it makes for an amazing addition to a wrap! (See our Off The Board video below!)
As a little bit of trivia, pico de gallo means "rooster’s beak” in Spanish. There are a number of theories on how the name pico de gallo came about—for example, native residents in the Sonoran region of Mexico believe that because serrano peppers are shaped like rooster’s beaks the salsa is named as such and natives in California’s central valley believe the dish is named after the fiery bite/peck of a rooster, which is a metaphor for the kick of spice one gets in pico de gallo!
Chili con carne or chili, for short, is a dish that originated as we know it today from Northern Mexico and has prepared in a number of popular iterations in the past. For example, a traditional chili is contains meet (usually beef), which is what chili con carne actually means (chili with meat). However, because we’re teaching a plant-based meals in this program, we can’t add meat! That’s why vegetarian/veggie chili was our version of choice for this week! Interestingly, veggie chili was popularized during the 1960s and 1970s when vegetarianism was on the rise in the United States. Usually, people substitute the red meat included in chili with things like quinoa, tofu, or starchy vegetables like potatoes! So, veggie chili is known as chili sin carne in Spanish and literally translates to “chili without meat”.
Chili actually has ancient routes, being described as part of Aztec lifestyle. And funnily enough, it was only when Spanish colonizers arrived to Latin America that beef was added to chili, so chili sin carne may have been the original chili! As chili evolved over the centuries, it has become a staple dish in that region of the world, with Texas adopting it in their repertoire of meals. For example, before World War II, Texan chili parlors were opened where people go visit to have a meal of chili! These parlors were so influential, in fact, that they popped up in other places in the United States. Talk about a continental dish!
This Tuesday class kicked off the first of our Indwell cooking classes for the entire program! As I was watched Chef Lucca teach our participants how to cook the pico de gallo and veggie chili, I was amazed by how engaged they were in the class! We only had two participants show up, as it seemed the others were not able to make it; however, it was exciting to see that those who showed up were willing to partake in cooking with us! For example, we had a tenant help chop onions and tomatoes as Chef Lucca taught them the proper technique, and another helped squeeze a lime for the pico de gallo to add a wonderful zest and acidity to the dish!
We all had conversation here and there about our favourite type of music; some dishes the tenants would like to see in the last three cooking classes, such as alfredo sauce and a savoury pie; and had a lot of laughs! I even got to ask Chef Lucca about a few questions about why we do different things while cooking the meals, and I personally came away from the class more knowledgeable about cooking and food as a whole! It looks like our participants during this class were excited to have come out to join us, and seem eager to join us for the next class! I know Chef Lucca was quite proud of himself afterwards, so I’m glad to see his confidence in his work and in coordinating the class! The participants left with their food kits to prepare the dishes themselves at home, so I’m excited to see them next week and hear back from them! on how it all went!
Our second class of the program was a hit! Today, we have a full class of students arrive and it was truly and exciting time! We finally remember to put our Bluetooth speaker to good use and played some thematic music from Mexico (at the request of one of our participants) and had such a good time! While our last class was more on the quiet side, this class was a lot more lively. There was a great deal of excited chatter left, right, and centre, from people talking about their preferences with food, to discussing the different ways to approach plant-based meals, to asking about all kinds of cooking related things! We had one tenant that was so eager to learn that they helped chop tomatoes and rinse of the beans for the veggie chili! There was even an impromptu jalapeno taste testing which was a surprise but real good fun!
While the cut onions did make me cry because of the strong gas they release (I wouldn’t hold anything against an onion, don’t worry), I feel like Lucca and I are really getting into the groove of things. Hanging out with the tenants is really comfortable, even though they are complete strangers to us. They are friendly people and have so many exciting tales to tell you. I would say it’s worth it to help a tenant carry their food kit up to their apartment and hear them spin you a story about how they elevators are scary because you begin to build a connection with them. It’s from heart-to-heart, if I’m being honest - people open up to you when you show them care and hospitality. If this cooking program isn’t a lesson in humanity, I don’t know what is.