Entomatadas

Yes I took that picture and Yes I made those (with my mom's help) And Yes they tasted as delicious as they look.

Today was an unusual rainy day. It sucked. Big time... At least for me, because I don't like rainy days. Specially on Spring time.  The only thing that pulled me through was my coffee and this deliciously amazing Entomatadas I helped my mom make. While my dad ate some disgusting Machaca Burritos (Which is like, dry beef jerky with tomatos and other stuff...) my mom made me this healthy very mexican tranditional dish.  

As you can very well see, I did my weekend assigment and bought my pretty white dishes. YAY.  So from now on expect styled dishes. And pretty pics like this one, as well.

Good news!! Today, since, "La Seleccion" had a game with "Someotherteam" I had the entire morning for myself. And I spent it researching new easy recipes. And I have a pretty good idea of what I'll be making this week... So hopefully there will be more posts and more recipes soon.
Let's get to the recipe already!

VERY MEXICAN ENTOMATADAS.

As it is obvious... you need tomatos.

(Now since we had run out of tomatos, my mom and I had to use all the tomatos we had left

meaning, this recipe has: cherry tomato, Saladet Tomato, and the round normal one)

Basil.

Tortillas

(depending on how much entomatadas you want, the quantity you'll use)

Sour Cream.

Cheese (I use oaxaca cheese)

Chicken broth (again handydandy knor suiza)

Salt && Pepper.

Olive Oil.

This is how you do it:


1. Boil the tomatos and wait for them to get soft and wrinkled. About 15 minutes.
2. Place the tomatos in the blender and blend. If the sauce ends us too thick, feel free to add some water.
3. Add the chicken broth to the tomato mixture and add the Salt && Pepper to your taste.
4.  Meanwhile in a skillet pour some Olive oil and wait for it to heat up before placing the tortillas. Leaving them 1 minute on each side before serving.
5. Once the tortillas are served pour the sauce, the cheese and the sour cream on top.

AS EASY AS THAT!

Let me know what you think.

Learning Food Photography and Styling.

It has come to my attention, that, sad as t may be... my food photos, well, suck. Big time. Still, I think that one of the main reasons that my photos suck is because I am still a rookie. Hell I started this blog what? two-three days ago?
It might feel longer, because I had been wanting to do this for a long time... but, as I have learned, this takes a lot of practice. I am now crossing my fingers so I can get a better camara and also buy pretty white dishes. Because all of my dishes are horrid, well, they're not MY dishes actually, they're my mom's...so her dishes suck big time!
So my homework for this weekend will be: buy aleast ONE pretty white dish in order to make my photos more stylish. EVERYONE uses white dishes!! So I should get al least one, maybe two...

Argh! Another thing that's been bugging me to no end is that I had the brilliant idea to make a Sapodilla (saaay whaaaat?! I know right, I just found out that's English for Chicozapote)  forzen yogurt/ice cream for my dad, because I was feeling awesome and thought maybe that way, he would let me see my night tv program, but he didn't. And I wasted 30 powerful minutes making an icecream that got me NOTHING-NADA and ended up screwing the icecream maker, uh, thing that goes round and round? You know which one right?
Okay so maybe it wasn't screwed up entirely... apparently the Sapodilla comes from the tree that makes bubblegum a possibility (saaay whaaaat?) so the fruit has this evil resin molecule (idk) that attacks all your  platic kitchen appliances that try to mix it!! Leaving an orange-brown bubblegum-ish thing stuck without any possible way of getting it out!! And I mean no way of getting it out, like, ZERO-NADA!! I've spent the last three days in the sink washing, scratching, peeling with or with no water, with or with no super cleaning soap!
AND IT WONT COME OUT...entirely... some of it has (and my hands have payed the prize) but my icecream maker turnish thing looks as if it was a 1000 years older! Like if it was a hand-me-down appliance from my greatgreatgrandma! Or maybe just belonged to my mother who has no care for the appliances! And that is driving me CRAAAZYLOKAAA beyond relieve!!

But!! Every cloud has a silver lightning!! And so I come to tell you (my two followers who are probably the only ones that read my blog u.u) I am learning the art of photoshop! It's like I hadn't realize just how photoshoped some foodpics are! It's like today my eyes opened up to meat the LENS BLUR who has become my best friend!
I mean, at first I thought that whoever took the pics had to be like this uncanningly awesomely skilled mom that had the best photographic gear like ever, and I was so sad because I only take pictures with my cellphone camara which has 2 sorry pixels! And I was all "Foodgawker is never going to accept my submissions u.u" It was facing literary agent rejection all over again!! (Ah!! Because, great news, Paul has finally called himself MY Agent and Editor, which is like really really good news, but more on that later) but then... Ready to give up and cry when... out of the blue, out of nowhere, as if it was meant to be...
I googled "learn good food photography" and BAM!! The Gods showed me the answer in a blog (learnfoodphotography.com) and then I was illuminated and also learned that photoshop pays this like unhumanly huge role in this food photography deal. And up until today I thought I was doomed to take so-so pictures and never see myself in foodgawker.com BUT now that I know and I am learning not only about the essencials and elemental stuff about photography but have this superpowerful ally (PS) maybe MAYBE I got a chance... with some (alot) of practice one day I shall post something that goes like FOODGWAKER ACCEPTED ONE OF MY POSTS!! or I'M GOING TO BE IN FOODGAWKER.COM!! or something like that. Which is awesome.

 This is a photoshoped picture I posted on one of my recent posts called CAKEBALLS. Looks so pro this way right?

This picture was also recently posted in the Soursop icecream recipe. Looks a hell of alot better, right?

 

Compared to the first pictures YES they do look better and DO NOT DARE to tell me otherwise because I swear I'll stop foodblogging FOREVER! And hey! I still got alot of recipes to show you and a lot of kitchen mess to create, so don't make me stop doing it!! Because my boyfriend will like kill you! He loves my cooking habilities...

Yes, compared to other food photographs mine still suck... but they are getting better and I need practice so in time (I hope not too much time) my pics will make your mouth water and will get me into foodgawker.com.

Leave a comment!

Cake Balls.

This recipe was inspired by one of Bakerella's recipes. Now of course hers look absolutely gorgeous mine are just pathetic but taste incredibly good. I made them for this past Easter and they were quite a hit (even though they didn't resemble a bunny's head at all...)  my baby sister fell for them completely and has been asking me do redo them since then.
So since she's having a terrible PMS this month I decided to ease her life a bit by indulging her with the cake balls she liked so much n.n
The recipe for the cake is actually a modified version of The Hummingbird Bakery cookbook. (All hail The Hummingbird Bakery!! my obsession with the kitchen wouldn't have started if it hadn't been for that blessed vanilla cupcake I tried last summer in South Ken n.n) As well as for the recipe for the frosting.

Now baking has always presented itself as a problem in my kitchen, since, when I was just a baby girl and me and my parents and my new born baby sister moved here, my mother thought it would be a pleasant idea to make the oven a pantry where she could store all of her skillets... needless to say I can't actually bake within that oven... So how do I manage to bake cakes, you ask?
Ah! Well my mom bought this cookware set, that's supposed to work as an oven as well... sometimes it works others... it doesn't.
But hey!! I told you to expect failures!!
The good awesome thing about this particular recipe is that the cake isn't supposed to be perfect because its shredded down into little pieces with a fork in order to make the balls n.n sooo this is an instant  SUCCESS for me as well as for all you people who haven't done a cake in their lives (I am talking to you Alf) And well here it goes.

                                 VANILLA CUPCAKE RECIPE

                        modified from The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook.

(Since I wasn't making cupcakes to pour into small paper cases I doubled the recipe quantites so I would get a cake)

   240 g plain flour. 

  280 g caster sugar 

3 teaspoons baking power (to be honest I add more)

A pinch of Salt

80 g of unsalted butter, at room temperature.

240 ml whole milk

2 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla extract

1 quantity Vanilla Frosting.

This is how you do it:

1. it says in the book you preheat the oven first. But I dont have an oven so I skip this step. However to you fancy people who can actually use an oven. Preheat it to 170°C (325°F) Gas 3.

         2. Put the flour, sugar, baking power, salt and butter in a freestanding electric mixer with a paddle attachment (or use a handheld electric whisk)

 and beat on slow speed until you get  sandy consistency and everything and everything is combined.

Gradually pour in HALF the milk and beat until the milk is just incorporated. 

 3. Whisk the egg, vanilla extract and remaining milk together in a separate bowl for a few seconds, then pour it into the flour mixture and continue beating until just incorporated (scape any unmixed ingredients with a rubber spatula). Continue mixing for a couple more minutes until the mixture is smooth. DO NOT OVERMIX. 

4. This is the part where you are supposed to spoon the mixture into a paper cases, since we have none, we pour the mixture into the ultra-special-wanna-be-oven pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until light and golden and the sponge bounces back when touched.

For me that means keep a keen nose and freak when it starts smelling like burn popcorn.

Now when the cake is done, you pretty people with the oven, will take it out and admire it's golden beautiful cake like structured cake. For me... well... they say a picture is worth a thousand words so:                                              

So mine came out slightly burnt and shapeless...not to mention it broke... but hey!! Good news was that I was going to wreck the cake anyway. Like so:

So that day it was really really REALLY hot, so while I made the frosting it was sort of melting at the same time, so I decided to freeze both of them for a while...but then... the tv monster caught me and it kinda made me forget about the pending recipe inside my fridge. So the next day, when I opened up to see what I could have for breakfast TA-DA I remembered I had lots of work to do still...

At first I thought freezing the cake and the frosting had been an awful idea, because they were both sooo cold that the frosting and the cake didn't seem to be mixing well. But then I realized that it had been a very good decision after all n.n since we've been having some crazily hot days lately, and the mixture was already cold it wasn't sticking to my warm-ish hands, so the cakeballs were done pretty quickly AND without as much mess as I was expecting!! Which is good. 

Later though, there was the whole deal involving the white chocolate... and that only meant one thing... 

I am awesome, and I get my zazon from my grandmother, but I am still a rookie, so melting chocolate is a big deal in my kitchen. It's really messy and stressing cause I don't really know how to do it properly... the Easter bunnies were a moment of enlightment...but today... I wasn't feeling all that enlighted.

One of the things that worried me was that my boyfriend, and my sister, and my mom were on the scene and, they say, I can get a little bossy and evil because I like things done a certain way... which could possibly be true... it's not my fault they are slow, right?

Anyway, as I started melting off the ONE WHITE CHOCOLATE BAR my mom bought I realized it wouldn't be enough to cover all the balls completely... soooo... as a randomly thought backup plan I decided to just cover the top of the balls with the chocolate, which, was easier that doing the bunnies aaand not as messy.

In the end, it all came out alright, my sister's PMSing lowered down a few knotches because she was thrilled I had done the cakeballs she had been craving for so long and well, I felt great, and creative so I decided to take some photos outside, but then, my phone camara went CRAZYLOKA so I ended up with just 2... both of them are nice and well lit so hopefully they'll accept them on foodgawker (I tried to submit the Guanabana post and they declined it because there were lightning problems... so hey fingers cross for this pics to be okay) 

 Someone leave a comment already!!