We were kindly lent Thomasina Miers’ Mexican Food made simple by our friend Jenny and this is our first recipe. Very tasty! Serve with some warm flour tortillas and a green salad.
Queso fundido – serves 4-5 as a starter
- 3 ripe tomatoes
- 1 tsp olive oil
- 120g chorizo cooking sausage, casings removed
- 1/2 a white onion, finely diced
- 1/4 tsp ground cumin
- 150g mozzarella, grated
- 150g mature cheddar, grated
Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and brown the chorizo over a medium heat, breaking it up with a spoon as you go. Add the onion and cumin and cook for 5-10 minutes or until the onion is translucent. Add the tomatoes and cook until most of the moisture has evaporated from the pan and you have a mince-like texture. Season.
Spread the mixture on to the bottom of a gratin dish so that is just covers the bottom. Cover with the grated cheeses and put in the oven for about 10 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Or you can stick it under the grill.
Warm your tortillas in a hot dry frying pan for a few seconds on each side. Spoon some Queso fundido and salad on your tortilla and roll them up to eat.
Wine Suggestion: You could try a Mexican Zinfandel like LA Cetto from Baja California or it might be easier to pick up a Spanish Garnacha which should be medium-bodied – don’t go for something too complex or concentrated here. A beer would work too!
(Original recipe from Thomasina Miers Mexican Food Made Simple, Hodder & Stoughton, 2010)
This looks fantastic guys. I’ve actually had the pleasure of meeting and working for Thomasina Miers as an interior design consultant developing designs and materials for her Mexican restauant chain Wahaca. Having tasted the yummy fodder in Wahaca, we were thinking of getting the Mexican Food Made Simple book you reference above. Would you recommend highly it? Or any other Mexican influenced cook books?
We definitely would recommend it but with a proviso: a lot of the recipe’s have multiple components. They look really simple until you realise you need to make a sauce or salsa first. The flavours and combinations are dead on, but it just isn’t as quick to cook as it first looks. We don’t mind this but don’t try to attempt it late on a Tuesday night without being forewarned. Let us know how you go with Thomasina’s book, we can’t recommend any other Mexican books as we don’t have any but do let us know if you find something interesting! J&J