Abuelo's Mexican Food Embassy

Abuelo's Mexican Restaurant is a slightly upscale place with a lot of odd paintings on the walls and great dishes on the menus. If you are visiting Texas and stop at the Tourist Center pick up a Hurst Brochure for a Buy One Get One Free Coupon-though their prices at not bad for the high quality of the food.

They seem to be in a lot of places around the country, but I only found them a couple of years ago-and I almost always end up eating a Soup and Salad. Even though it is usually a taco salad I still ask for some of their Honey Lime dressing-great stuff that.

When they bring out the chips and salsa they also bring out a small portion of Habanero salsa-also very good. The chips, at least at the Hurst location, are not as good as the rest of the food. Standard cheap, thin, flavorless bits of business which should be replaced as soon as possible with Real Thick Mexican Corn Chips Heated and served with a sprinkling of Chili Powder. A couple of limes served with the chips and salsa would be nice as well.

But minor gripes about the free stuff aside-the food is pretty awesome. The Cream of Pablano Soup is really good as is the Shrimp Chowder. I seem to recall the Cilantro Lime Soup was above average as well. The food is really good.

The service has been good every time I have visited Abuelo's as well. My only other complaint would be the hard tiles and high ceilings that turn the place into an echo chamber so that you have to ask your server, or dining companions, to repeat everything they say. Abuelo's is the kind of place you want to concentrate on the food anyway.


A Soup like Abuelo's Cilantro Lime Soup

Time: 2-5 hrs
Serves: 8

Ingredients:

1 whole chicken, cut up
1 1/2 gallon water
1 tablespoon chicken base
1 tablespoon canola oil
3/4 cup diced onion
3/4 cup minced tomato
1/2 tablespoon minced garlic
1 teaspoon oregano
1/2 tablespoon chili powder
1/2 tablespoon salt
1/2 tablespoon finely chopped hot chilis
3/4 cup corn
1/2 gallon reserved chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon chicken base
7 ounces white hominy, drained
1 1/2 tablespoon fresh lime juice
1/2 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped into 1/4-inch pieces

Directions:

Remove skin and wings from chicken; cover with water and add chicken base. Cook chicken over medium heat for approximately 1 1/2 hours. Remove chicken and let cool; bone chicken and chop meat into small pieces. Save broth.

Place canola oil in pan and heat. Add onion, tomato, garlic, oregano, chile powder, salt and chiles and saute until onions are translucent.

Add corn, chicken, broth, chicken base and hominy. Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes. Add lime juice and remove from heat. Add chopped cilantro.

Nutritional analysis per serving:

151 calories, 4 grams fat, 8 grams carbohydrates, 23 grams protein, 30 milligrams cholesterol, 976 milligrams sodium, 21 percent of calories from fat

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Shrimp

Shrimp are the cockroaches of the sea.

Or so I was told my a tour guide at the Texas State Aqaruim. And if you give a shrimp a good looking over in it's natural state, it is not a pretty creature and does in fact make it living rooting about the ocean floor eating whatever crosses it's tiny little path. It is in turn eaten by larger sea creature, such as the also very tasty Red Drum. But really, the way a shrimp makes it's living is not all that important to the way they taste-which is pretty good.

Now I eat in restuarants pretty much all the time, but when I was young-it was another story. Mom would boil beans, fry potatoes, and open cans which contained, by and large, corn and green beans. The rare takeout meal was McDonalds or Jack in the Box and there was Mama's Pizza which we were very fond of. If did have something exotic, it was often Mexican food and did not, as a general rule, contain shrimp.

So as I was watching Hell's Kitchen the other day-the one with the Sweet Sixteen Party-I was not totally shocked when the sixteen year old birthday girl had never eaten a shrimp. Though clearly it was not through lack of finiancial means. Shrimp is good and when well breaded is a little slice of heaven here on earth. But it is also a mainstay of such fine dinning establishiments as Long John Silvers-Voted Best Seafood in Bartlesville, OK by the way. So the shrimp doesn't get as much credit as it derves on the foodie front.

Popcorn Shrimp ingredients list:

1 lb of small shrimp, shelled.2 eggs, beaten.Breadcrumbs.Dash of cayenne pepper.

Instructions for Popcorn Shrimp:

1. Combine the breadcrumbs and the cayenne pepper in a bowl.

2. With a slotted spoon, dip a spoonful of shrimp in the eggs, then drop them into the cayenne/breadcrumb mix.

3. Toss with a fork to coat thoroughly.

4. Deep fry until golden brown.

5. Drain and eat like popcorn.

Mushrooms-I like them on Pizza

Did you hear about the Mushroom that couldn't get a date-even though he was a Fungi?

Mushrooms have always been a foodie favorite. These fungi are interesting not only for their taste and texture but for the fact that eating the wrong mushrooms can kill you. Of course, most foodies are not eating random mushrooms we find growing along the side of the road. But it is possible to go out and hunt for mushrooms. Morels are a favorite of mushroom hunters and have had a starring role in the Travel Channel's Cash and Treasure show. As with all these shows it looks a lot easier than it really is-but there are mushrooms out there.

The Mushroom Council has all kinds of advice about mushrooms. But really, outside of the occasional salad the only time I do any serious mushroom eating is when they are on a mushroom pizza. So why not make a mushroom pizza of your own? It's easy to use a pre-made pizza crust- of course, a real foodie will make their own crust, won't they?

Best Mushroom Pizza-a simple mushroom pizza that can be altered to suit any taste.

INGREDIENTS
1 (12 inch) pre-baked pizza crust-or make your own
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon sesame oil
1 cup fresh spinach, rinsed and dried
8 ounces shredded mozzarella cheese
1 cup sliced fresh mushrooms

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Place pizza crust on baking sheet.

In a small bowl, mix together olive oil and sesame oil. Brush onto pre-baked pizza crust, covering entire surface. Stack the spinach leaves, then cut lengthwise into 1/2 inch strips; scatter evenly over crust. Cover pizza with shredded mozzarella, and top with sliced mushrooms.

Bake in preheated oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted and edges are crisp.

In Defense of Food

In Defense of Food can be summed up in seven words-Eat Food. Not Too Much. Mostly Plants. Author Michael Pollan says as much on the very first page. But there is more to the story of fake food and The Western Diet than a cute catchphrase.

It is the story of how the giant companies that manufacture food stuffs stopped making real food during the Nixon Administration. That is all seemed like a good idea at the time-break food down into something that be quantified-namely Nutrients. It was no longer good advice to say Eat An Apple A Day-this advice was now Eat The Recommended Daily Allowance of Vitamins and Minerals. In Defense of Food points out that an apple is more than a collection of nutriments, more than vitamins and minerals-and we don't know exactly an apple does to make us healthy. But it does more good for us than a daily vitamin does.

The facts are pretty grim and In Defense of Food makes the case that we should all be scared. The Western Diet is killing all of us who eat it. The advice to Eat Food sounds odd, as we all eat nothing but food, don't we? Well, no we don't. Much of the time we are eating manufactured chemical compounds cleverly disguised as food. These frankenfoods look like food, but they are not real food. Real food rots, for example, while a Twinkie has a half life.

There is hope. If you can follow In Defense of Food's advice to Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Pants-you can recover from many of the ills of the Western Diet-including diabetes, obesity, and many other eating related illnesses. It is common sense that a fat person got that way by eating too much, it is another level of thinking that what they eat is just as important as how much they eat.

Foodie have always been fans of Real Food, fresh food, good food. So a sort of foodie diet would be better than a total junk food diet. Though I do love my junk food. I also eat a lot of leafy vegetables and a lot of melons. I am not sure that I can follow the advice given in In Defense of Food. But I am thinking that I will give it try.

This is an important book-read it and get off the Western Diet.

Hmmm. . .Donuts

Fried dough of one sort or another has been around for a long while, but my personal experience with Donuts falls into three main types-Duncan's, Winchell's, and Krispy Kreme. Oh I have the occasional supermarket donut and I have dabbled with making my own donuts, but real donuts come from one of the Big Three.

Duncan Donuts is the brand I grew up with-there a Duncan Donuts on the corner of Lancaster and Little in Fort Worth, Texas and I fell in love with the cream filled donuts-both the chocolate and the vanilla, though the vanilla has won out over the years. Duncan donuts had a those famous commercials of weary little bald man with a mustache who met himself coming and going-I made the donuts. Like Krisy Kreme, Duncan Donuts expanded a bit too quickly and pulled out of the Fort Worth/Dallas market for a while. They are planning on making a come back, but it is hard to know if they will succeed or not. I will buy the odd dozen once in a while.

Winchell's also made a foray into the Metroplex and the donut of choice for me here was the over sized cruller and again a cream filled donut, though it was not as good as the ones I grew up with at Duncan Donuts. Winchell's was a good little place, but it seemed little was the optimum word. There are no more Winchell's Donuts around here and I have not heard any rumors that they are planning a return to my part of Texas. They seem to still be going strong on the West Coast and there is one Winchell's in Oklahoma City that I may have to check out.

Krispy Kreme first crossed my radar when I was working in Atlanta, Georgia and there was a factory story across the street from where I was working. The Now Hot sign was always on. And these donuts were HOT-like a mild searing of the taste buds when you ate them. Oh that was sooo good. The Hot Krispy Kremes in the stores around here are never as hot as the one I ate in Atlanta. The rest of the Krispy Kreme arsenal is ok, but not that great. Which is why many of the markets they blitzed, like truck stops and grocery stores, failed to win the hearts and dollars of most consumers. A slightly stall donut is a slightly stale donut, no matter what name is on the box.

I'm not a kid anymore and I don't eat as many donuts as I once did. But I still prefer the super sweet high fat content glazed donuts to cake donuts. Krispy Kreme, when hot off the line, is the best of that kind of donut. But I do like Duncan Donuts plain glazed as well. It has been too long since I had a Winchell's.

Which, of course, leaves one other donut giant-Southern Maid. These are traditional donuts just like the rest, only better, if you are fan of Southern Maid Donuts. They share a devote following, and their donuts are well worth eating.