Mexican Birthday

Sweet Potato Soup with Lime-Yogourt Garnish

My sister and I decided to make a special meal for a friend's birthday, and since she requested Mexican, Mexican it was! I have to say, it was very loose Mexican though. It was still delicious, however, and it seemed our friend appreciated it very much!

Firstly, we made a sweet potato soup with a yogourt-lime garnish. This soup is so delicious, yet so simple. You cook onions and add chili powder, then you add five cups of diced sweet potato and cover with water. Once the sweet potato is tender, the soup gets pureed and some yogourt gets stirred in. The garnish was simple as it was just a 1/4 cup yogourt with 1 tsp lime zest and 1 tsp lime juice stirred in. The addition of the juice makes the garnish easy to drizzle over top of the soup.

Nachos

Tomato-Mango Salsa

Next, we winged it on some nachos. We figured we purchased so many types of Mexican ingredients that we wouldn't use all of, so it made sense to use those to top our nachos. We used taco cheese, some homemade fajita seasoning, pickled sliced jalapenos, re-fried beans, and a homemade tomato-mango salsa, then baked them off. They were very pretty and tasty to eat!

Chicken with Fajita Seasoning for our homemade tortillas

For our main, we made homemade corn tortillas and chicken with fajita seasoning. You can buy bags of corn flour at the grocery store, which you simply add water and salt to, then form into tortillas, and fry. We topped our fajitas with the tomato-mango salsa.

Bean and Corn Salad

For a side dish, we made a bean and corn salad, as this was something specially requested by our friend. It was a mixture of beans, corn, avocado, red pepper, tomatoes, green onions, and cilantro, and then it had a tangy dressing of lime juice and olive oil. I cut back the olive oil to 3 or 4 tablespoons, as opposed to the 1/2 cup the recipe stated, and it worked really well.

Caramel Flan

Finally, for dessert we tried our hand at a caramel flan. Despite the lengthy time to allow for setting this dessert, this dessert had one of the fastest preparation times of any dessert I have made. It was light and custardy with the caramel finish on top.