One of my favourite foods down here is the poblano pepper. It’s a pepper with a lot of flavour and a lot less sweetness than a bell pepper (or capsicum if you will). It has a very little bit of kick to it, but hardly anything worth noting. And it’s a very popular pepper to cook with. You find it in lots of dishes. For example, the other night I had a taco from this house/cafe a few doors down from my house that was filled was a poblano pepper that had been stuffed with cheese and then deepfried. That was a pretty amazing taco (more like a quesadilla, really, but who am I to quibble?).
But my all time favourite is the rajas con crema, which is little strips of poblano pepper in a savoury cream sauce. There is an awesome bakery between my school and the park with the monarchs (see previous post) and they have really good empanadas filled with rajas con crema. Empanadas here are different than the ones I’m used to; it’s more of a flaky baked pastry stuffed with tuna, ham and cheese, rajas, or chicken mole. Not deep fried at all.
Today after work, one of my coworkers invited me to have lunch with her at her favourite taco stand. It’s a stand just off of a main road near our school and it’s really elaborate. They have a fairly large seating area and about 15 different fillings that you can put in your tacos. I chose one with mushrooms, one with carnitas (roast, pulled pork), and one with rajas con crema. Their rajas were amazing. They were so soft, flavoured perfectly, and I really felt more like I was eating dessert than a meal. There’s something that’s just so perfect about the roast poblano pepper with the savoury cream sauce. Yum.
