Street Tacos

About once a month, we have a dinner party with some friends of ours, usually employing a creative theme when selecting the menu, and always cooking together as a group. This past Sunday we had 2 couples over for a Mexican food themed dinner, featuring street tacos with home made tortillas. Other dishes included pico de gallo, guacamole, tortilla chips, black beans, Mexican-style rice, corn on the cob, bacon wrapped chorizo stuffed dates, flan, orange cake, and plantos fritos - all made from scratch. To drink we had a variety of Mexican sodas, home made horchata, and even some margaritas. A highlight was the al pastor our friends had marinated ahead of time, which although initially intimidating ended up having the perfect amount of heat.


There was, as usual lots of food leftover, so tonight Melissa heated up most of what was left, made some fresh tortillas, and we enjoyed some of the best leftovers I've ever had. We even ate some of the empanadas that Melissa had made in advance and we decided not to cook up on Sunday because everyone was fast entering a food coma and there were still a few courses to go.

My horchata experiments have been successful so far, and I think I will be making it more often now that I realized how simple it is to do.

Horchata Recipe

• 1 cup long grain white rice
• 3 cups water 
• 2 cinnamon sticks
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups coconut milk
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1. Pour rice and water into a pitcher and add cinnamon sticks
2. Leave in the refrigerator overnight
3. Pour pitcher into a bar blender and blend until smooth
4. Strain through 4 layers of cheesecloth to remove solids, squeeze solids thoroughly
5. Add coconut milk, sugar and half of the ground cinnamon (more or less of any of these ingredients may be used based on personal preference)
6. Serve over ice with a sprinkling of ground cinnamon

The result was very refreshing and tasty - I was quite pleased.