Letter 11: Dishes

Dear Tim:
It's pretty late now, the Mexican dishes you shared make me feel hungry, my stomach is growling, but if I eat now, I would need to exercise for an hour to digestion, so I'm not doing this.😂


Mexicans use the word "chili" when speaking about any one of about 100 different types of peppers. But in the US it's a dish. Masa is a much finer grind, like a regular flour. Corn meal is coarser, and may not be suitable for many of these recipes. A tortilla is a flat bread, and tortilla press is a simple machine used to take a round ball of dough and make it into a flat tortilla. They are common in Mexican family just like rice cookers are in Taiwan.

Our family is a non-cooking family, because my parents work every day, they come back late and need to relax. In my impression, my mother only cook twice, and they're all mushrooms chicken soup, so I have a deep feeling of this. Mushroom chicken soup is very cherished for me, I do not know what time I’ll eat it next time, I also didn’t remember the last time I ate, but the smell of it I can remember clearly.

Here's the recipe!

Ingredients:

Chicken legs, mushrooms, gingers, salt

Tools:

An steam cooker

Method:

Step 1: Put the mushrooms in cold water, make them soft, (keep the water), then cut off the head. Chicken legs peeled (if you buy in traditional market, the vendors could help you do it), put in boiled water, to make the blood out. Cut the gingers in slices.

Step 2: Filled the pot with seven full water, the water which make the mushrooms soft can add in, this would make the soup smell better. Put gingers, mushrooms, chicken in it, and add 2 cups of water outside the pot, in the steam cooker, press the switch. Remember to add salt before taking it out from the steam cooker.

Because the mother doesn’t like heavy taste, so she won’t add too much seasoning. She’s not good at cooking, so she developed the most simple, convenient and streamlined recipe. We don’t have cool cooking tools, there’s only one knife, we don’t even have oil. The recipe used basic tools, people who do not cook can also learn it easily, because this recipe does not need any skills or experience.

Even my lazy mother can do it, I believe you can do it, too. Remember to control the amount of salt, or it will be salty! LOL