Tacos ver. 1.4

My friend was asking me the other day about my camera lenses, specifically the one I use to shoot most of the pictures you see.  It's a 50mm f/1.4, but I seldom shoot it at that aperture. I've usually got it parked at f/2.8 to get a little more depth of field in the photos.  But this week I figured hey, let's open it wide up; everything you see is shot at f/1.4.  So dial that aperture ring all the way down, and make the jump for tacos ver. 1.4!

Vegetative State - Black Bean Burgers

So I'm totally over compensating for last post's lack of photo-punch.  So if you're into reading and not into pictures, you'll have to suck it up for a week. Ha!

Here are three vegetarian recipes that with a little work could even become vegan.  And since we spend our Monday to Friday schedule being vegetarians and part time vegans, we figured we'd see if we could craft a few Mexican dishes in that spirit.  So we grabbed Rick Bayless' Sweet Potato Salad with Caramelized Onions, Watercress and Guajillo Chile Dressing from Mexican Everyday.  And then from The Complete Vegan Kitchen we made Mango Salsa, and a modified version of the Black Bean Burgers.

Soup N' Salad 2: Forget Old Mexico

Because this week we're taking our recipes from New Mexico; Santa Fe to be more specific.  They still have the same feel and vibrancy as our other dishes and nothing came out of an Old El Paso box, so I figure we're still in the clear.

On the agenda we've got Corn Soup with Poblano Chiles, followed by Santa Fe Slaw with Caramelized Pecans.  These recipes come from Seasonal Southwest Cooking by Barbara Pool Fenzl which is an absolutely beautiful cookbook to look through.  It also contains some great contextual information about the recipes which I find really makes or breaks a cookbook.  Be warned: there are pictures missing this week, so you'll have to use your imaginations for some of this.

My eggs have style, Oaxacan style.

What happens when you keep pushing off Friday Night Mexican? You get Saturday Morning Mexican.  And if you push it off some more, you get Sunday Morning Mexican.  And if you push it off more than that, your reader gets angry. Yes, reader.  So these eggs are done Oaxacan style.  What makes them Oaxacan style? I'm not really sure.  Is it the cutting into ribbons? Is it the use of tomatoes?

This recipe came from "Everyday Mexican", which is not to be confused with Rick Bayless' "Mexican Everyday".  Seriously it's two different books.  One of the only things that this book has going for it is that it fits in your jacket pocket.  It has teeny tiny little print, no back story for the recipes, and completely lacks an author.  This is one of those books that companies crank out when they want to publish a book on topic X.  Regardless, it's where we got this week's recipe.  So strap in; it's over before you know it.

Shrimp Free Chipotle Shrimp

What happens when you take the shrimp out of chipotle shrimp? You get this tasty vegetarian dinner, that's what.  Next week we're going to try taking the chipotle out too, just to see what happens.   So this is Chipotle Shrimp from Mexican Everyday made with the Tofu instructions.

Beware, here be zucchini.

Huaraches! Gesundheit.

Back to Rick's this week for "Sandal-Shaped Corn Masa Cakes with Black Beans, Salsa and Aged Cheese" - or I guess as they're known in less verbose regions, 'Huaraches'.  We ended up making a few substitutions in this one as some of Rick's recipes are a little difficult to make north of the Mason-Dixon line, let alone, in Ontario.  I mean, you could probably come up with most of the ingredients given enough lead time and searching effort, but this is "Friday Night" Mexican, not "I spent a month on it" Mexican.   Enough editorializing, onto dinner!

I'm not a rancher but here is breakfast

So there is a little second hand store across the road whose interior looks like an episode of hoarders.  If you have a clear idea of what you want, you can probably find it in there somewhere, as long as you're persistent. That's where we got Norma MacMillan's Tex Mex Cooking. Which is a 24 year old cookbook written (according to the book jacket) by a woman from the mid-west who has spent 18 years living in England.

Credibility not withstanding, what this book does have is beautiful pictures, simple recipes, and a lot of those basic things that trendier cook books wouldn't bother covering.  You can find recipes for refried beans, corn and flour tortillas, and today's recipe for Huevos Rancheros.