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Free tequila? It must be Day of the Dead

From Tuesday 2nd to Thursday 4th November, we’re celebrating Day Of The Dead at Wahaca, with a free glass of tequila for everyone. Not just any tequila either – It’s our brand spanking new, multi-award winning house pour, El Tesoro Reposado that’s on offer to anyone sensible enough to realise that tequila doesn’t have to mean a wincing face and a morning of regret. Oh no, this stuff is good. There will also be plenty of our home made sangrita available (That’s the nice spiced tomato and orange juice that’s every tequilas favourite sidekick).

If you’re not sure what Day Of The Dead is all about, it’s one of our favourite Mexican festivals and worth checking out. It coincides with all saints and all souls day and in Mexico it’s a way of celebrating the lives of friends and family who have died. It sounds like it would be quite a sombre affair, but not a bit of it. Any excuse for a party eh!

We’ll also be giving you the chance to win a signed copy of Tommi’s book each day of our celebrations – To enter you need to fold up one of our origami skulls (that you’ll find in the centrefold of our new Ola London) and upload a photo of yourself to our facebook page. We’ll pick our favourite each day who will be the happy recipients of a book so they can recreate those Mexican masterpieces themselves at home.

So if you fancy a bit of a knees up, and want to get your hands on some of the world’s best tequila, (yes we think it’s that good), then come along from Tuesday 2nd to Thursday 4th November.

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Let us help you grow your mo. 2010

There’s no denying it, Mexican’s have the best moustaches in the world, but after months of experimentation on the humble British upper lip, we’re delighted to announce that help is on hand for all those struggling to muster more lip-growth than a 16 year old boy. We can exclusively reveal that burritos make your mo grow.

That’s why, to show our support for those taking part in this year’s charity moustache growing campaign – Movember – we’re offering every fundraiser a free burrito from our Canary Wharf takeaway each Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in November 2010.

To claim your free burrito (and yes you can come back every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday if you want) you just need to come in to our takeaway in Wahaca Canary Wharf, showing us your hairy lip and a print out of your mo-space page to prove you’re a genuine mo-brother or mo-sister.

There are 4 burritos to choose from, all of them tasting like individually wrapped bundles of heaven. You can choose from a choice of fillings – British steak, slow cooked pork, free range chicken tinga and seasonal vegetables. These are lovingly combined with green rice, cheese, crunchy cabbage and salsas and then toasted for a few minutes on the grill to give them a great combo of crunch and melt in the mouth yumminess. You might have noticed we’re pretty keen on them.

So if you’re doing your bit and donating your face to Movember this year, then please do come on down to the Canary Wharf and let us give your lip a welcome boost. If you want to find out more about Movember and the great work they do to help raise money for The Prostate Cancer Charity, then check out their website.

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Events at Wahaca, Food & Drink, News, Our News, Recipes & Cooking Tips, Uncategorized, What's Happening

Wahaca goes tweet for Avocado week

We’re really excited to be taking part in the worlds first tweet-along to support Avocado week and all those wonderful people at the Avocado brotherhood.

On Tuesday evening Tommi will be taking part in a head-to-head cook off with Tom Parker Bowles outside our (soon to be open) site on Wardour Street in Soho. So if you’re in the area, come along and check it out. You might even be able to try the dishes if you’re very lucky.

But if you can’t come along, then don’t worry. The idea of a tweet-along is that you can follow their progress live on twitter and cook the recipes yourself from the comfort of your own kitchen. Just follow twitter.com/wahaca or twitter.com/avacadobrother from 7pm on Tuesday, we’ll both be tweeting the recipes as they are cooked, and you can get get stuck in. We’d love to find out how you get on.

You can try cooking either recipe, and the details of the ingredients you’ll need are shown below (No bias, of course, but surely you’ll be cooking Tommi’s recipe, won’t you?!). For full details about the tweetalong and avocado week, check out the avocado brotherhood blog

Thomasina’s chicken, avocado and basil salad with yoghurt and garlic dressing

2 Chicken breasts poached or roast chicken left from the weekend, torn into pieces
1 Hass avocado, sliced
8 baby tomatoes, halved or quartered
A small handful green beans, cooked to al dente
10 small jersey potatoes, steamed for 20 mins (optional)
1 small bunch of basil, leaves picked
2 handfuls of mixed salad leaves
Olive oil
Crostini bread
Juice of ½ lemon
200g Low fat Greek yoghurt
1tbsp Low fat crème fraiche
1 small clove garlic, crushed
½ tsp Dijon mustard
Pinch of sweet paprika
½ tbsp parsley, chopped (optional)
Small squeeze of lemon juice and extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper

Tom Parker Bowles’ Lime marinated prawn and avocado pittas

400 g small Atlantic prawns, peeled
4 Hass avocados, mashed
2 red onions, finely chopped
Pinch, sea salt
Small bunch of coriander, chopped
6 birds eye chillies, chopped/or half a Habenero if you want real heat/ or a couple of standard green chillies if you really can’t face heat/finely chopped
1 lime, juiced
Fresh black pepper
6 mini pittas
2 limes, juiced
Big glug Tabasco
Sprinkle sea salt
Pepper

If you’re going to get involved, we’d love to hear about it so please let us know by leaving your comments below. Don’t forget to buy your ingredients and have them well prepped so you don’t get left behind on the night.

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Tips from the chilli expert #3 Pollinating your chillies

So you’ve crossed everything that isn’t painful, and now your chilli plants have grown big and healthy, and have developed flowers.
 
Those flowers are crucial, as they turn into chillies when the flowers have been pollinated. However, don’t just rely on Mother Nature to pollinate your flowers – watch this video to see how you can give her a helping hand, and get lots of chillies as a result!

We’re always keen to hear how you’re getting on with your chilli growing, so please do let us know about your successes, failures and any other chilli related news by commenting below. If you have any pictures to share, then you can put them up onto our facebook page.

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The Cacao Margarita

There’s a lot going on around London this week. Not only is it The London Restaurant Festival (Don’t forget to come along and try out our award winning menu before Monday 18th), but it’s also London Cocktail Week – A Celebration of London’s mixology heritage and a tribute to the world’s capital of cocktail culture.

So to mark this momentous occasion in the discerning drinker’s calendar we thought we’d give you a sneak preview of one of the new cocktails that will be hitting our menus in the next couple of weeks – The sublime Cacao Margarita.

Seldom has such a wonderful match of flavours been left undiscovered for so long, than that of tequila and chocolate, and the Cacao Margarita is the perfect way to indulge in this mystical pairing. Think velvety spice, with undertones of agave alongside the subtle kick that this slow burn margarita gives.

And here’s how you make it:

Be sure to use a good quality 100% agave tequila, any cheaper imitations just won’t do it justice.  We’ve used a blanco tequila in this recipe, but it works very well with the slightly sweeter reposado and añejo too.

35ml measure of 100% Agave Blanco Tequila
10ml cinnamon syrup
35ml milk
60gr chilli chocolate

First make your cinnamon syrup by melting 100g of sugar with 100ml of water and a stick of cinnamon. Once the sugar has completely melted, bring to a boil and simmer for about 5 minutes until it becomes a syrup. You can use the remainder to sweeten hot chocolate, or in your coffee.
In a saucepan, warm the milk and add the chocolate. Stir and continue to heat gently until completely melted.
Add all of the ingredients to a shaker with cubed ice. Shake well and strain the liquid into a chilled glass. Serve with a sprinkle of chocolate and a cinnamon stick. 

If you have a go at making the Cacao Margarita for yourself, we’d love to hear about it. Post a comment below, or why not whack a photo up on our facebook page.

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We love the London Restaurant Festival

We’ve been loving the London Restaurant Festival this week. It’s such a great celebration of the amazing restaurants we are lucky enough to have on our doorstep in this fair city. Today we sent some of the team out to sample one of the highlights of the festival – The Street Kitchen caravan in Covent Garden.

They returned with glowing reports of the braised beef with carrot and celeriac, and the hot smoked salmon salmon with beetroot and horseradish, which looks amazing from the photos.  It’s so exciting to see such brilliantly turned out food, coming from an airstream caravan in the middle of Covent Garden. Our hats are well and truly doffed.

Last year we won the Discovery Award for the food we served at the festival and you might remember  we were delighted to be presented our award by Giles Coren. This year we are back with a menu offering a selection of our favourite street food for 2 people to share – That’s pork pibil and chicken mole tacos, broad bean quesadillas, black bean tostadas, and new potato taquitos all served with green rice and black beans.  And if all that’s making you thirsty, then at lunch there’s a Hibiscus agua fresca to go with it, and at dinner a choice of Hibiscus or Tamarind Margaritas. The special London Restaurant Festival price is £20 for 2 people for lunch, and £30 for 2 people at dinner. A total steal.

So if you fancy getting into the festival spirit, come along and discover our award winning selection for yourself. The London Restaurant Festival is running from Monday 4th October to Monday 18th October, please ask our staff for more details about our special menu.

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