Mexican Night

Once a month, we invite my family over for a potluck dinner.  We usually pick a theme and everyone must make a dish from scratch.  It's a lot of fun to see what everyone ends up bringing and the best part is eating them!  So last night was Mexican night.  Not many of us eat out at Mexican restaurants or cook Mexican food at home so we decided to give this a try.  We had a lot of food for just the five of us - Mexican rice, black beans, pork carnitas, and spicy pork soft tacos.  I also made guacamole and fresh tomato salsa to compliment the dishes.  

My brother's spicy pork soft tacos was pretty popular.  He actually used a Korean recipe for the pork which required marinating overnight.  I would've liked it even spicier.

After dinner, everyone played a competitive game of Naruto on Xbox.  I'm not a big fan of video games so I just watched them play.  Then it was time for dessert.  My sister made tres leches which means "three milk" in Spanish (I forgot to take a picture).  She made a butter cake soaked in three kinds of milk - evaporated, condensed and regular milk, and topped it with whipped cream.   I could hardly move after dessert was over. 

My sister really liked the guacamole I made one time so she requested I make it again.  She asked me to use less onions this time so I decreased it by half.

Perfect Guacamole
Recipe Adapted from Simply Recipes 

Ingredients

• 2 ripe avocados
• 1/4 red onion, minced
• 2 serrano chiles, minced (stems and seeds removed)
• 2 T cilantro leaves, finely chopped
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 T lime juice
• 1/2 tsp coarse salt
• A dash of freshly grated black pepper
• 1/2 ripe tomato, chopped (seeds and pulp removed)

Directions

1. Cut avocados in half and remove seed.  Scoop out avocado from the peel and put in a mixing bowl.
2. Mash the avocado with a fork.  Add the chopped onion, chiles, cilantro, garlic, lime juice, salt and pepper and mash some more.  Adjust to taste.
3. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve.  Right before serving, add tomatoes and mix.