我孫子市国際交流協会

Date: Thursday August 27, 2009 10:00am to 1:00pm
Venue: Cooking Room, Abista
Instructor: Mr. Eddy Diaz Alvarado (Psychologist, 3 years in Japan)
Participants: 27 people

This cooking class was held as part of the AIRA Culture Course.
The participants learned how to cook Tacos, a popular Mexican dish.
Tacos is a corn tortilla of about 15cm diameter folded over and stuffed with seasoned ground meat, vegetables and cheese.
In the class they learned three kinds of fillings of tacos, and soup as their accompaniment.
(1) Guacamole (Avocado dip)
Ingredients/Seasoning: Onion, coriander, tomato, avocado, sour cream, lemon juice, salt and pepper
Recipe:
1. Chop onion and tomato and mix with lemon juice.
2. Mix with crushed avocado and sour cream.
3. Season with salt and pepper.
Point: Don't throw away the seeds of the avocado, but leave them in the dip to keep the green color.
(2) Rajas Con Crema (Green pepper with cream)
Ingredients/Seasoning: Green pepper, onion, butter, fresh cream, salt, cottage cheese
Recipe:
1. Stir-fry chopped green pepper and onion with butter.
2. Add fresh cream and season with salt and pepper.
3. Sprinkle cottage cheese.
(3) Tinga (Grilled chicken with chili sauce)
Ingredients/Seasoning: Chicken (breast), onion, garlic, tomato, dried oregano, bay leaves, coriander, red pepper, oil, salt, pepper
Recipe:
1. Boil chicken in water with garlic and bay leaves. Season with salt.
2. After cooled down, take out the chicken and shred it.
3. Simmer the chicken, onion and garlic (chopped), tomato and oregano until the juice has boiled down.
4. Season with salt and red pepper.
(4) Sopa de Hongos (Mushroom soup)
Ingredients/Seasoning: Garlic, onion, mushrooms, spazote (a herb native to Mexico, of pungent flavor), chicken soup (from above mentioned Tinga), butter, lemon juice, salt and pepper
Recipe:
1. Stir-fry all the ingredients (chopped) with butter.
2. Add soup and season with salt and pepper.

All the learners enjoyed cooking and eating tacos very much. The teacher explained that lunch is considered to be the most important meal for Mexicans and that most families usually have a light meal like tacos for supper.
He also said that a family of four people takes about 1kg of tacos a day.
Another way to eat tortillas: Deep-fry and cut them. You can enjoy them as snack food.

One of the participants' comment: I was interested by the teacher's speech that he was surprised at the size of seeds of avocados in Japan. He said they were much bigger than those in Mexico.
Someone said, "Tacos is just like Temaki-sushi (hand-rolled sushi)." I quite agree with her.
It's hard to get "epazote" arund here. I like to try to find one in Tokyo or Tsukuba.
I was impressed that we were able to cook four kinds of dishes using all the ingredients in such a short time. All the dishes tasted very good and I had a wonderful lunch.
I'd like to offer many thanks to the teacher and the AIRA staff who had prepared for the class.

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