Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

There's no better way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo than with chilly drinks and great carne asada. This traditional Mexican dish, whose name literally means "roasted meat, can be made on the grill or under the broiler. Inexpensive steaks, such as skirt steak and hanger steak, are traditionally used to prepare this great dish. However, you can step it by using a nicer cut of steak. The basic carne asada recipe below is used as the main dish and in several fun and bocadillos, entrees or appetizers.

Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

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Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

Basic Marinade

Juice of 2 limes
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 to 1/2 cup minced cilantro
2 diced serrano or jalapeno chiles, depending on personal preference
2 cloves minced garlic
1 1/2 teaspoons honey
Dash of ground coriander
Dash of cumin
Salt totaste
Pepper to taste
1/4 cup mango puree, optional

Whisk all ingredients together. Place with steak in a sealable plastic bag or bowl in the refrigerator overnight, or for at least five hours. Grill or broil until cooked to your personal preference. Let the steaks rest for approximately 10 minutes before cutting.

Traditionally, sliced strips of steak are served with fresh tortillas, cilantro and diced onions. Rice and beans generally accompany such dinners. You may wish to serve a fresh mango salsa sauce or a alongside the traditional rendition of the dish.

Double-Takes on Carne Asada

Using the meat prepared with the first recipe, you can make many tasty entrees and appetizers. Use the below ideas to give this traditional Mexican dish to makeover. These recipeswork particularly well "to cure a Cinco de Mayo hangover.

Festive Flautas

Roll chopped meat and cojita cheese crumbled or cheddar into flour tortillas. Be sure to roll with the sides of the tortilla chips tucked in. Fry in a cast iron skillet in an inch of oil until golden brown on all sides, or use a deep fryer to cook until golden brown. Allow flautas to cool for a few minutes before cutting in half. Flautas are best served with sour cream, pico de gallo and fresh avocado.

Tostones with Meat

Tostones, fried green plantains, are popular in Southern Mexico and throughout Central America. Purchase two or three green plantains for this easy recipe. Note that ripe plantains are usually yellow and, while providing a sweet touch to any meal, do not have the correctconsistency for tostones.

Peel plantains and cut into circles approximately one inch thick. Flatten rounds slightly with a hammer, heavy bottle or tortilla press. Fry rounds in an inch of canola oil in a deep fryer or until they just turn golden. Remove from the oil, drain and sprinkle with a bit of salt. Tostones topped with serves individual chunk of the roasted meat. Secure meat to tostones with a toothpick if desired.

Carne de Salada

Great Carne Asada Dishes for A Smashing Cinco De Mayo

Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

It was Prince who said "Tonight we're gonna Party like it's 1999!" He was right. Although the 90s seem like they were really just about yesterday (in the big universal time-line of things), 90s theme parties are still a hot and funky theme to consider when throwing parties. For one thing, all theme parties need to have plenty of good music and the 90s marked the beginning of new and different types of popular music. It is important to have lots of big name groups like Nirvana, Salt & Peppa, Snoop Dogg, Hootie and the BlowFish, Pearl Jam, and oh-so-many boy bands (i.e. 98 Degrees, Backstreet Boys, Boyz 2 Men, etc.), Smashing Pumpkins, Shania Twain, Billy Ray Cyrus, and Tom Petty on hand to mix it up a little.

Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

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Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

Use your 90s theme Party as a way toencourage people to Dress the way they remember the fashions of the 90s. You will be amazed at what some people remember the fashions being. Have a fashion show and a Miss 90s for the night award based upon audience participation.

If you have any access to musical instruMents, you may want to set up a garage band audition-grunge style! Divide your 90s theme party guests into bands and give them time to come up with a name and write some lyrics to a song. Then, give them the option of trying to create the background music with real instruMents or fit their words to a famous song, nursery rhyme campfire song or Christmas Carol. The results are guaranteed to be hilarious. Try to have the video recorder going for this.

Look To The 90 's For A Great Party Theme

Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry

This is my favourite vegetarian curry. It is absolutely amazing and works brilliantly as a side dish or as a main course. If you like broccoli, you are going to love this fantastic curry.

Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry

Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry

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Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry

Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry

It was taught to me by a radical militant warrior vegetarian. I thought she was going to kill me for enjoying meat but she ended up only wanting to show me how good vegetarian Food could be. She succeeded.

So here it is.

Ingredients

3 Tablespoons ghee or vegetable oil
70 grams grated coconut
3 Tablespoons roasted sesame seeds
1 finger sized piece of ginger peeled and grated
3 cloves garlic, smashed and finely chopped
70 grams roasted peanuts
1 teaspoon red chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 finely chopped onion
3 tomatoesroughly chopped
2 green chilli pepper finely chopped
500grams (1 pound) broccoli
Salt and pepper

Heat some water and steam the broccoli florets until just cooked. You should just be able to stick a fork into the side of the florets but there should be some resistance. Set aside.

Now heat a large frying pan over medium heat and add half the ghee or oil. Throw in the ginger, coconut, sesame seeds, peanuts, chilli powder and turmeric and cook for about three minutes stirring the ingredients about the pan with a spatula.

Set aside to cool.

In the same pan, add the rest of the ghee or oil and throw in the onions, tomatoes and chopped chilli peppers. Cook until the onion is transparent and just beginning to turn a light brown. Add the garlic and cook for afurther minute.

Throw in the broccoli florets and the spice mixture to heat through. The broccoli should be tender but you want to ensure there is a little resistance.
Add salt and pepper to taste and serve immediately.

This curry can be made in minutes. Teamed with a little saffron rice or naan bread chewy home made it is the perfect mid week family meal or side or main dish for an exotic dinner Party.

I would really like to know how you get on with this recipe. I have cooked it hundreds of times for hundreds of people. The important thing is that you try it as it really is amazing. Be sure to stop back and leave a comMent. Do you have any suggestions how this curry could be improved?

Very Simple Indian Broccoli Curry