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Cracking Crackling

Pork scratchings with guacamole are probably the most popular snack in Mexico, especially when accompanied with an ice-cold beer and they’ve been a feature of our menu ever since we opened. Tommi’s a massive fan, as you might have noticed…

Tommi tucking into a Meixcan Scratching

In the last few months we decided our recipe was up for a refresh. We use specially selected cuts of back rind from outdoor reared British pigs which are slow cooked for four hours, then cooked twice more for that soft, but lighter crunch. Our new scratchings are finished off with a fennel seed dusting which we LOVE! It gives a subtle and earthy anise flavour. The saltiness of the pork is a wonderful foil for the creamy avocado, whilst the vibrant flavours of guacamole (fresh lime, chilli, fresh coriander) adds a delicious seasoning to the pork. All in all, it’s winning flavour combo.

Fennel dusted scratchings with guacamole

Mexican style pork scratchings are on the up these days. So good are they that Rene Redzepi of Noma fame put a rendition of the pork scratching on his world beating tasting menu after he’d done a month cooking in Mexico. He’s clearly onto something that guy.

So, next time you’re in and thinking of starting things off with your regular guac and chips, ring the changes and give our new fennel dusted pork scratchings a try. You may never look back.

If you’ve given them a try, we’d love to know what you think – you can let us know by leaving a comment below.

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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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Cocktails, Events at Wahaca, Food & Drink, Recipes & Cooking Tips, What's Happening

A few of our favourite Day of the Dead recipes

Day of the Dead Cocktail

For Day of the Dead, we got Sami our barman to dream up a delicious Day of the Dead cocktail which is so good we’ve given it a permanent place on the menu.

In a cocktail shaker add:

35ml of aged 100% agave tequila

80ml of fresh pineapple juice

and the juice of half a lime

Shake vigorously and pour into a tall glass filled with ice.

Carefully top with a good splash of red wine and garnish with mint. (To get an eerie effect pour the wine in over the back of a table spoon so it sits on top).

Chorizo, pumpkin and thyme quesadillas

Quesadillas, crispy and oozing with melted cheese and anything else you fancy is always a winner.  The sweet flavour of pumpkin seems to go incredibly well with chorizo.  This very easy recipe will take very little time to put together and makes a delicious, relaxed dinner.  I like to eat it with a crisp Cos lettuce, sesame seed and avocado salad.

Enough for 4 large quesadillas

500g slice of pumpkin, peeled and cut into rough chunks

½ onion, finely chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

200g chopped chorizo sausage meat

A small bunch of thyme, shredded

Olive oil

200g extra mature cheddar cheese, grated

200g grated mozzarella

4 large corn tortillas

Steam the pumpkin until tender, about 15-20 minutes.  Allow to cool, before dicing up into small pieces.  Cook the onion in a heavy-bottomed pan with the chorizo until the onion is soft and translucent and the chorizo has started to release its oil.  Add the garlic and cook for a further five minutes before adding the diced pumpkin and thyme.  Season to taste.

Spread the chorizo mix on one half of the tortilla and sprinkle with the cheese mix.  Fold the tortilla over so that you have a half moon. Brush it with a little olive oil (so the tortilla doesn’t stick to the pan) and place in hot, dry frying pan or griddle and cook until golden and crisp.

Cut into wedges and serve with a roast jalapeno salsa or fresh tomato salsa and sour cream.

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Contributor Competitions, Recipes & Cooking Tips, What's Happening

Tommi wants you*

*to send her your recipes…

I have been learning so much about chillies from Mexicans, fellow food lovers and general chilli nuts that I thought it would be a fun, if slightly mad-capped idea to publish someone’s best ever Mexican recipe which uses chilli in my cookbook, ‘Mexican Food Made Simple’ , due out next April.

The idea is that anyone out there in cyberspace sends me their favourite Mexican recipe using chilli.  The recipe has to be easy to follow, not too complicated and use ingredients that you can get in the UK (even if that means sending off for a Mexican chilli by mail order).  If the recipe is good enough, the winning recipe goes into my book (as judged by Hodder, my publisher, some mystery chefs and me), whilst if there is a runner-up, they will be published in Wahaca’s “Ola London”, which we hand out to 10,000 people a week at Wahaca and several hundred journalists.

For all the cynics out there, I have now written most of my book which has to be handed in by the beginning of September, so time is of the essence!  If you are keen, send recipes to loswahacos@wahaca.co.uk before 4th September.

I am waiting with baited breath to see recipes!  Let’s start the British Chilli Revolution here!

Happy cooking….

Tommi xxx

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Food & Drink, Food Topics & Trends

Eat for a Fiver

Image from Paul Hudson via Flickr Creative Commons

The Guardian caused a bit of a stir by publishing a range of dishes from some well known cooks that could apparently all be made for £5. But readers complained that many of them would cost well over a fiver once you’d accounted for all the extras such as olive oil and salt. Zappa2007 wrote:

“Dinner for under a fiver? We don’t think so. We visited Sainsbury’s online and costed up the ingredients for these recipes. To buy all of the items would cost £22.16 (and thats without salt or olive oil!) though it does include a generous portion of cheese. As yet Sainsbury’s does not sell items by the teaspoon or the sprinkle. Even if we then worked out the pro rata cost per sprinkle and teaspoon we could only get the cost down to £5.39.

We are all in favour of cooking on a budget in these straightened times but slap my thighs and call me nancy if we could knock up Delia’s food as cheaply as she can. Are we missing something?”

Thanks to the comments of Zappa2007 and many others, the Guardian opened up the £5 recipe challenge to its readers and the published the best recipes from the likes of:

Into the Pot – Crostini followed by tomato rigatonefor £3.64
Eat the Right Stuff – Spinach, lemon and peppered mackerel pilaf followed by berry ice cream for £4.63
Football and a Baby – Cabbage bhajis followed by chanamasala for just under a fiver
Dinner Diary – Courgette soup followed by crab spaghetti for £4.98

We love the fact that the Guardian is embracing the online food world so wholeheartedly and wish we’d picked up on this sooner so we could have entered a few of our Mexican street food dishes. In fact, that’s a great idea. We’ll write a post that explains how to make Mexican food at home for a fiver. Watch this space.

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