Humongous Announcement! Biggest ever!

Hello, Mark here.  It has been a long time since we have posted and it has been a busy few months, and we are happy to announce that we are officially engaged!  Now I know that this comes to no surprise to most of you (mostly because this post comes nearly two months after the big day), but we have been busy and frankly, tough.

The Ring!

So there it is, the ring.  All big, shiny and sparkly and matching my Ruth perfectly.  

As for what happened and how I asked her, we decided to follow Peruvian traditions and that meant that our parents would meet for the first time and I would ask her in front of both of our families.  Scary.  So on the 3rd of August, everybody met, I got nervous, Ruth got a ring, and everybody was stuffed.  

The table setting

As the night began, my dad made a speech in Spanish asking Ruth's dad his permission to allow me to ask Ruth to marry me.  Complicated.  So I then got down on one knee and proposed.  Afterwards, we all had champagne and then we sat down to a fantastic dinner made by Ruth's Mom.  For the appetizer, we had Causa de Pollo which is sort of chicken salad, sandwiched between spicy mashed potatoes.  For the main course, we had salmon, served with bell peppers and onions.  Finally, dessert was flan with caramel sauce.  Most excellent!  After that, we talked, everybody got tired, Ruth had a sparkly ring, and everybody went home.  The end.

Barrio Cafe

 

Barrio Cafe

Barrio Cafe is a place I have visited before and it was so good, I had to come back, this time with Ruth. The last time I was here was for Mother's day and I found the place based on several rave reviews of their food, specifically of their guacamole and their churros, which were fantastic, but more on those later.    Since my first visit, the award winning restaurant has been featured in the Food channel show, "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives.    The restaurant is colorfully painted in mexican style graffiti that features low-rider classic cars, Dia de los Muertos style skeletons and other colorful aspects of mexican pop-art.  We entered via the back entrance, which enters into the main dining room.  After being seated, I ordered a Dos Equis Amber beer from a beer list that has the typical selection of mexican brewed beer.  Sadly, they have no craft beers available.  Though they apparently have a fantastic selection of tequila available, but I wasn't in the mood for a headache.  Ruth ordered a Diet Coke.

Appetizers

 

For appetizers we ordered guacamole and were provided with bread that had an olive spread.  The bread was a french bread and the spread contained olives, tomatoes and other vegetables.  Overall the spread was very tasty, but was completely overshadowed by the guacamole.

The server came to a table with a cart that had a freshly cut avocado, bowls of tomatos, onions, jalepenos and cranberries.  He then proceeded to cut the avocado up in front of us, squirted in what I presume to be a lime/lemon juice mixture.  He then mixed in the rest of the ingredients and it was served with fresh made tortilla chips.  The flavor of the guacamole was fantastic.  It was a perfect mix of salty, spicy, sour and sweet and probably one of the best guacamoles that we have ever eaten.

 Mojarra San Augustine

I ordered the Mojarra San Augustine which is a fillet of talapia coated in achiote sauce, wrapped in a banana leaf and grilled with onion, garlic and blood orange.  The tilapia was tender and flakey and the citrus and achiote sauce gave it a sour and spicy flavor.  The Tilapia was served with mashed potatoes and zucchini.  Not being a huge fan of zucchini, they were as expected, but the mashed potatoes were quite good.  According to the menu the mashed potatoes had shallots mixed in and the seasoning was not described.  Whatever it was, it was good.

 

Carne Asada Tacos

Ruth ordered the Carne Asada Tacos.  They were tacos with carne asada (duh), queso fresco, pico de gallo, avocado and shredded cabbage. They were served with a side of French fries and two salsas.  The first salsa was reminiscent of chili or coctail sauce and the other was a thin salsa that had a vinegary and spicy flavor.

Churros Rellenos de Cajeta de Cabra

Churros!  The star of the evening!  These churros are amazing!  They are stuffed with goat's milk caramel, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, drizzled in caramel sauce, candied pecans, and served with vanilla ice cream and fresh strawberry wedges.   I could go to Barrio Cafe just for these churros.  I can't praise these churros enough.

Small side note:

I apologize for the pictures being of half eaten plates.  We were so excited to eat, we totally forgot to take pictures of the untouched dishes.  Sorry!

Rollkuchen

For Sunday's culinary adventure, we made watermelon and rollkuchen.  Rollkuchen is a fritter of German Mennonite origin.  Mark would eat them as a kid because his family and extended family on his mom's side had Mennonite origins.  For those of you wondering, Mennonites are a sect of the christian church that used to be similar to the Amish.  The Mennonites modernized a while ago, but kept a lot of their traditions, especially their culinary traditions.  Culturally, the Mennonites pull primarily from Germany, but also from Russia, Ukraine and Sweden.  

Rollkuchen

Rollkuchen, as stated above, are deep fried fritters, but they are not sweet.  They are served with watermelon.  With this being our first attempt at making rollkuchen, we had some trial and error.  The first few batches we made, the dough was thicker which made the rollkuchen softer and more pillow-like.  Once we experimented a bit more, we determined that we preferred them thinner and crispier.  

We did end up sprinkling some of the rollkuchen with powdered sugar and it was a hit!  Additionally, we read online that some people eat them drizzled with a syrup called Rogers Golden Syrup.  We will try to find it  for the next time.

Rollkuchen is best enjoyed with family and friends on a warm to hot day during the summer.  Sweet Watermelon and rollkuchen is a perfect combination.

Homemade Peruvian Pork and Tostones

Today we made Tostones and Ruth's mom made pork for lunch.  We discovered the tostones a while ago and Ruth's mom decided to make the pork, normally a traditional holiday (new years day) meal in Peru.

Pork

The pork was seasoned with achiote pepper, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper. It was cooked in the oven for 6 hours, until it fell off the bone.  It was then served with steamed rice and applesauce.  The Pork was well seasoned and tasted awesome.

Tostones

First attempt at making tostones. Tostones are twice fried green plantains seasoned with salt. 

We discovered tostones at the Havana Cafe in Phoenix and fell in love with them.  They are a Latin American and Carribean speciality.  They can be slightly sweet to starchy, depending on the ripeness of the plantain.

When making the tostones, we came across two different methods for making them.  One method involved soaking them in salty water after the first fry session, while the other method skipped this step and required sprinkling salt on them as the final step.  We preferred the soaking method as this made them crunchier and saltier.  Tasty!

Conclusions

The pork turned out awesome because it is pork and Ruth's mom is a great cook.  The tostones, being our first attempt, were good to average.  We will definitely make another attempt.