Recipe Round-up (May 2024)
In honor of the end of our 3-month Baja excursion, here are a handful of Mexican and Mexican-fusion recipes that I’ve put together in recent months.
Before crossing the border into Baja this past February, I was nervous that I might have trouble doing my recipe development job down there. For this job I’m given a list of ideas each week from which I select one and pitch a recipe. I then fine-tune and shoot the recipe, write the accompanying blog, and submit the final work. Sometimes there is a lot of room for creative license, and other times the recipe ideas are more specific to particular ingredients or techniques.
Our friends who had been to Baja before warned me that until we got down to the more touristy portion in the south (around La Paz and Los Cabos), the grocery options would often be very limited. No trouble finding plenty of wonderful things to eat, but certainly not the variety of ingredients that you expect to find back home. Asian specialty ingredients are particularly hard to find, as are many things which are considered staples in the US. Things like fresh basil, blue cheese, and rice vinegar are all unlikely to be found except at the gringo-centric stores down south.
In the end, it wasn’t so bad. It definitely required a bit more planning to make sure I could find all of the ingredients I needed, and a lot of the recipes I cooked while we were down there took on a bit of Mexican character, but I was able to keep up and produce some really excellent recipes. Below you will find a few of those, like the chicken and chorizo ravioli with poblano cream sauce. That’s a recipe that I might not have come up with were it not for the ubiquity of those particular ingredients in the local tiendas, but it is a real winner.
Chicken and Chorizo Ravioli with Poblano Cream Sauce
Homemade ravioli filled with minced chicken and Mexican chorizo, tossed in a creamy roasted poblano sauce.
Spicy Pineapple Shrub Margarita
Spicy, serrano-infused, Tajín-rimmed margaritas made with tequila, orange liqueur, fresh lime juice, and a pineapple shrub syrup.
Tostadas with raw tuna, cucumber, and jicama, all tossed in a Sichuan-inspired sauce spiked with chili crisp.
A classic Mexican breakfast of toasted bolillo rolls topped with chipotle-infused refried beans, melted cheese, and fresh pico de gallo.
Deliciously crisp beer-battered fish topped with chipotle crema, sitting on a bed of fluffy rice and citrus slaw.
I hope you enjoy all of these recipes. If you’re hungry for more, head on over to my profiles on Food Republic, Chowhound, and Mashed for lots of other delicious inspiration.