Granola

Yumm, I love granola. Especially when I can concoct my own mixes. I have been on the hunt for a good, basic, recipe that I can build off of. and I finally found one. Courtesy of Mrs. Arce from church.

So basically you just toast the oatmeal (maybe three or four cups) in the oven for ten minutes or so at 350*. If you are adding nuts, roast them with the granola. Then mix a tablespoon of oil with a quarter a cup of honey. When the granola is finished toasted toss three tablespoons of powdered milk, 2-8 Tb sugar (totally depending on how healthy you want this) and any other add-ins you like, but leave out any dried fruit! Some add-in possibilities could be cinnamon, amaranto, or any other type of grain or spice. After these dry materials are well mixed together, pour on the oil mixture. Make sure to toss this well, then spread the granola out evenly over a cookie sheet. Put the mixture back in the oven and cook for 30 minutes or so, or until your granola turns a golden color and becomes crunchy. Definitely pull the pan out and flip over the granola as best you can every ten minutes or so, in order for it to cook evenly.
When the granola is finished baking, let it cool until it reaches room temp or is warm, but not hot. Break up any clumpy pieces (I Personally like the granola nuggets and keep many of them together), and toss with any dried fruit (raisins, dried apples, dried apricots, etc). Voila.
This recipe is so great because it is so conducive to adjustments. Think of your fav granola and add in those spices and fruits, nuts, etc. If you aren't sure what your fav granolas all have, check the ingredient label at the back of you fav granola package next time you pass it at the supermarket. It will tell you if they add in any flavorings or spices.

I hope you enjoy!

Mexican Cuisine: Horchata and Flan

Well, I have six days left before I move away from Mexico and close this chapter of my life. What I will probably miss the most (besides the incredible weather), will be the food. I plan to eat tamales and tacos just about every day before we leave! The food here is just unbeatable. The tacos, namely! We Americans have no idea what a real taco is until we go to Mexico. Unfortunately, my tacos never quite turn out like the Mexican stands here. Mostly, because their grills are seasoned night after night with amazing meat juices and spices. Nevertheless, I have captured their amazing salsas, which is pretty much in every taco and almost every Mexican dish. I will save that post for another day though. I have also learned how to make Chile Enogadas, Tamales (Oaxaquena and the typical Queretano ones), Chilaquiles, Pollo Milanesa and tortas (Mexican cooked sandwhich, A-mazing). I mostly mention these, well, first to get your mouth watering, and also as a reminder to myself that I need to post these as well. 
Then there is the horchata and flan! oh, how I would have missed these dishes. Thankfully, I put up my radar out until I found two friends with excellent recipes that I just had to have. These are real treasures to me and I hope that you enjoy them as much as I do! 
Buen Provecho!


Horchata (courtesy of my friend, Gaby Martinez)

This will make almost two pitchers of horchata. Feel free to half the recipe for a smaller quantity

About 1 cup uncooked rice

1-4 cinnamon sticks (depending on how much you like, I think that I will do 2)

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 can evaporated milk

4-4 ½ cup milk

sugar (to taste)

2 teaspoons of vanilla ( or to taste)

Let your rice sit for 20 minutes in warm water. Rinse the rice. Next, cook the rice in 2 ½-3 c of water until the rice is overcooked and extremely soft.

In a separate saucepan boil the cinnamon in about 3-4 cups of water.  Reduce heat and simmer until the water turns a medium brown from the cinnamon.

In a blender add the cooked rice, the cinnamon water (not the cinnamon sticks!), 1 can evaporated milk, 1 can sweetened condensed milk, 4- 4 ½ cups of milk. Blend until it is incorporated and then add sugar by the spoonful until you have the desired sweetness. Finally, add the vanilla.

And voila!

A couple of adjustments, if you care to…

To make a creamier horchata, my friend suggested adding a little bit of cream to the mix. This is no low calorie drink, but it is SO good!

Also, consider adjusting the cinnamon quantity if you feel like the horchata is missing something. My friend put a little more than I care for, but too little, and it wont taste right. I am quite vague on the quantity cause my friend put in about 2, 12 inch sticks and it seemed a little cinnamony to me.

The sweetened condensed milk was optional, if you want to lessen the sweetness you can omit this.

The more water you add to the cinnamon, the more watery the Horchata will be. I would stick with the original recipe and then adjust this if you feel like its too thick. I feel like Horchata made in the US is much more watery. I don’t care for that at all, but it might be an acquired taste.

THE most AMAZING flan! (Courtesy of my friend, Haydee Campos)

1 sweetened condensed milk

1 can full of milk (or feel free to do ½ evaporated milk and ½ reg milk) (Sister Campos prefers reg milk)

5 eggs

1 cap-full vanilla

½ bar of cream cheese

sugar, to taste

In a blender first put in the condensed milk, then the reg milk, then the eggs and finally the cream cheese. Blend together

In your flan pan (a round pan that has a lid and a bar that goes across the top to keep it closed), put in about 1 -1 ½ cups of sugar. Heat the pan over a flame or electric burner, prob medium heat. This part is touchy… make sure to move the sugar around in the pan, simply by using a hot mit and turning the pan side to side. Your sugar will start to melt with the heat. You want all of the sugar to dissolve and turn a nice dark carmel color. If it gets too dark, you will have burned the sugar. So be careful.

After the sugar is melted add the milk mixture to the pan. Put a piece of aluminum between the pan and the lid. Close the pan tightly and curl the aluminum up and over the top of the lid.

Next is another tricky part. It requires a water bath, aka Bano Maria. What you do is fill a larger baking pan with water. Add the flan pan to the larger pan. The water should go up the side of the flan pan, halfway. No water should enter the flan pan!

Put the large pan with the flan pan in your oven and turn up the heat to about 300-350 degrees. Check on the water bath frequently. When the water starts to boil in the water bath, start the timer at 60 minutes. After the 60 minutes, your flan should be done!

Also, feel free to use a pressure cooker. Simply put some sort of flush lid at the bottom of the cooker, in order for your flan pan to be raised up and not touch the bottom of the pressure cooker. Add water. The water level should not come up far, not past the lid at the bottom. Carefully put your flan pan in the pressure cooker above that bottom lid. Close up your pressure cooker and turn up the heat. When some steam starts to escape the top lid, close the vent and start the timer at 50 minutes. It can take as little as 40 minutes though, too.