Fiesta time with the October box from Kitchen Nomad

One of the places in the world I had always wanted to visit is Mexico. I'm fascinated by its history and culture, and earlier this year I was fortunate enough to spend two weeks in Mexico on Yucatán. We had an amazing time exploring the mayan temples of Chichén Itzá and Tulum, taking in the sun, doing some latin dancing, and of course enjoying the fantastic food. So when I opened the October box from Kitchen Nomad and discovered that the theme was Mexico I was absolutely thrilled.

At the beginning of the month I shared with you the first box I received from Kitchen Nomad, which focused on Pakistan It was a slightly delayed review since the box arrived when I was in Sweden but if you haven't read that post, I'll just remind you of the fabulous concept of getting a selection of ingredients from a different country each month, together with a suggestion for a menu and you also get some interesting facts about the culture and food from the particular country. So vámonos, let's see what Mexican delicacies Kitchen Nomad has in store for me this month:

 Ingredients

Chilli de Árbol - deep rep chilli fruits used for chilli sauce

Chipotle Sauce - medium hot chilli sauce with smoked paprika, garlic and cocoa

Anchos Chillies - mild, dried chilli with a slightly smokey fruity flavor

Jalapenos Chillies - pickled snacks

 Ingredients 

 Masa Harina - maize flour used for making soft corn tortilla

Mexican Oregano - aromatic but spicier and stronger than your usual oregano

Bay leaves

Black Beans - as a dip with tortilla chips or to put in tacos

Pumpkin Seeds

Chilli Honey - honey with a smokey chilli flavor

 

 

With all these wonderful ingredients, this is the feast you can make:

Starters:

Soft-baked feta - feta cheesed backed in the oven with garlic, chillies de árbol, thyme, and lime. Eaten with soft tortilla

Stuffed Chillies - Chillies stuffed with cream cheese, parmesan, chives and fried. Served in soft tortillas and sour cream, but since none of us like sour cream we'll swap this for a cooling tomato salsa.

 

Mains:

Rajas tacos - soft tortillas filled with a sauce made from ancho chillies, garlic, creme fresh, cheese, onions and since I don't eat meat, we'll make this a prawn taco

Black bean soup - soup with black beans, chillies, chipotle sauce, oregano, bay leaves, tomato, garlic, onion, stock and lime. Served with crumbled feta cheese and coriander

Autumn stew with pipián - vegetarian stew with pumpkin, apples, cinnamon, cumin, ancho chillies, pumpkin seeds, chiles de árbol, garlic, onion, coriander and basil

 

Dessert:

Chilli honey crumble - made from apples and blueberries

I don't know about you, but after this I'm already ravenous! So I have a cunning plan for this weekend; we'll turn up the heat in the living room, we'll post pictures from our holiday all over the walls, play some mariachi music, have a big jug of frozen strawberry daquiri, eat this amazing food, and it'll be just like being back in Mexico - well not quite, but we can dream...