The advantage of living at the ocean is – among many others – that fresh fish can be found at anytime! For all the seafood lovers out there, especially you who like tuna, Capella Pedregal‘s Executive Chef Marco Bustamante has shared with us his recipe for one of our favorite tapas style starters: Tuna Carpaccio in Yellow Sauce (you will find it at the Don Manuel’s Dinner Menu under Tapas Style Starters, Cold: Ensenada Tuna Carpaccio, Red Onion, Citrus and Aji Amarillo.

AJI AMARILLO SAUCE
*6 servings
1,8 oz. Aji Amarillo Paste
50 ml Rice Vinegar
25 ml Grapeseed Oil
15 ml Soy Sauce
3 Limes (Juiced)
Place paste, vinegar, soy sauce and lime in juice in a bowl and
whisk vigorously while adding oil in slowly.

PLATING RECIPE
4 oz. Sliced Tuna
5 ea. Finely Sliced Red Onion
6 ea. Orange Segments
4 ea. Lime Segments
¼ tsp. Chives
1 oz. Aji Amarillo Sauce
Orange Salt

Slice Tuna and garnish with remainder of the ingredients and finish
with orange salt and aji amarillo sauce.

Buen provecho!

On the image: Capella Pedregal’s culinary team + Ensenada Tuna Carpaccio, Red Onion, Citrus and Aji Amarillo

Enjoy a taste of the Hilton Los Cabos dining experience in your very own kitchen. Hotel Hilton’s Executive Chef, Mauricio Lopez, has prepared custom recipes to help us home chefs to impress our friends and family with ease. Please enjoy this month’s recipe from one of Hotel Hilton Los Cabos restaurants.

Corn Jericalla
This rich custard dessert combines the best of a flan with a crème brulee and is flavored with fresh sweet corn. This authentic recipe hails from Jalisco, Mexico.

Ingredients for Corn Jericalla
14 oz. evaporated milk
11 oz. condensed milk
6 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
1 vanilla pod
½ tsp. cinnamon
1.5 lbs. sweet corn (fresh)
Brown sugar

Preparation for Corn Jericalla
In a blender, incorporate sweet corn, whole eggs, egg yolks and evaporated milk. Blend until liquid, and then pour into a bowl. Slowly add the condensed milk while whisking rapidly. Incorporate the cinnamon powder and the vanilla (just the beans) and keep whisking.

Pour the mixture into 3″ cooking molds and cook bain-marie* (water bath) for approximately 20 minutes until the texture resembles flan. Top the jericallas with brown sugar and bake on the top of the oven at high temperature until the sugar is caramelized. Serve with vanilla ice cream and enjoy!

Makes 15 custards using 3″ molds.

*Bain-Marie (Water Bath)
This cooking technique consists of placing a container (pan, bowl, soufflé, etc.) of food in a large, shallow pan of warm water, which serves to surround the food with gentle heat. The food may be cooked in this manner either in an oven or on top of a range. This technique is designed to cook delicate dishes such as custards, sauces and savory mousses without breaking or curdling them.

Buen provecho!

Elevate your Cinco de Mayo experience with the Partida Margarita, the world’s best Margarita. The signature margarita uses premium Tequila Partida Reposado or Blanco, Partida’s own 100% organic agave nectar, fresh lime juice and water. With no garnish, salt or secondary liqueur, the alcohol and sugar content are lower than traditional margaritas while delivering superior taste. Low in calories and deliciously refreshing, the Partida Margarita is the ideal cocktail to accompany America’s favorite south-of-the-border holiday. While purists may question the authenticity of Cinco de Mayo, the smooth and elegant taste of Partida is undeniably true.

The Partida Margarita

1.5 oz Partida Blanco Tequila
1 oz Fresh squeezed lime juice
3/4 oz Partida Organic Agave Nectar
3/4 oz Water

Shake all ingredients with ice in a shaker. Strain over fresh ice into a Margarita glass or Old-Fashioned glass. Taste for Balance.

For further details on fresh cocktails and how to make the Partida Margarita, check out Partida Brand Ambassador Jacques Bezuidenhout on Fox News in Houston. See the video here: http://www.tequilapartida.com/videos/cincodemayo_kriv_houston.html

Capella Pedregal team at this exclusive Cabo San Lucas Hotel & Resort will be glad to prepare you Partida Margarita, a classic Capella Margarita signature cocktail, or serve you with a shot of the finest tequila to celebrate Cinco de Mayo, or just any other day – as you know – every day is a fiesta day in Mexico!

Who doesn’t love pumpkin pie? It’s a shame that Thanksgiving is the one time of year that it gets any loving, because pumpkin pie is about as perfect as pie gets and is definitely one dessert that the kids and adults I know love equally.

I tested this recipe repeatedly over the course of a few days, trying each time to make the filling a bit lighter and less sugary than many of the other pumpkin pie recipes I’ve baked in the past. Finally, I got it just right. The last pie I made was airy and creamy and had a rich maple flavor that reminded me of all things fall. Just because Thanksgiving only happens once a year doesn’t mean you can’t keep the great taste of the holiday going the other 364 days of the year. You can make this sweet treat all year long. Now that’s something to be thankful for!

Maple Pumpkin Pie (Serves 8-10)

2 Eggs, whisked
1 15 Oz Can Pumpkin Puree
1/4 Cup Maple Syrup
1/2 Cup Brown Sugar, packed
1/2 Tsp Salt
2 Tsp Pumpkin Pie Spice
1 12 Oz Can Evaporated Milk

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.
2. Place all of the ingredients in a bowl and whisk to thoroughly combine.
3. Place the pie crust dough (recipe below) between two pieces of parchment paper and roll out to a 1/4 inch thickness. The diameter should be 2 inches wider than your pie dish.
4. Place the dough into a deep dish pie pan (dish) and mold into the shape of the dish (I like to fold the outer crust under itself to make a lip and then take a fork, gently pressing down around the pie crust, to make a pattern around the outer edge of the crust).
5. Take the tines of a fork and poke a few holes in the bottom of the pie crust several times, making sure not to go all the way through (this will keep bubbles from forming in the pie crust when you bake it).
6. Place a piece of parchment paper on top of the pie crust and fill it with dried beans or pie weights (you can reuse the dried beans afterwards).
7. Bake the dough for 15 minutes, remove the parchment paper and beans or weights.
8. Pour the pumpkin filling mixture into the par-baked deep dish pie crust.
9. Bake for 1 hour and 15 minutes or until the center of the pie is set.
10. Cool and refrigerate until cold.
11. Serve.

Pie Crust (Makes 1 Deep Dish Pie Crust)

1 1/3 Cups Flour
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/2 Tsp Sugar
1/2 Cup Butter, cubed & cold
2-3 Tbsp Water

1. Place the first 3 ingredients in a food processor and pulse.
2. Add cold butter and using on/off turns, process until coarse meals forms.
3. Add the water 1 tbsp at a time and process until moist clumps form, adding more water 1 tsp at a time if mixture is dry.
4. Form dough into a disk, wrap in parchment paper or plastic wrap and refrigerate 1 hour or until cold.

This blog post and recipe is brought to you today via delicious website weelicious

There is no real Mexican fiesta without juicy & delicious guacamole. Capella Pedregal’s Executive Chef Marco Bustamante shared with us his recipe for this favorite Mexican dip. It is simple, but irreplaceable. After you have done it once, you will never again want to buy it ready-made. There are just some things that have to be done fresh! Enjoy!

And – if you make your own version of guacamole, do let us know and send us photos of it. We will publish it on-line and share it with other readers of ESCAPES.

THE BEST GUACAMOLE RECIPE

INGREDIENTS

4 Avocados

1 Tomato

1 Red Onion

1 bunch Cilantro

½ Serrano Pepper

¼ clove Garlic

Juice of two limes

Panella cheese

Salt and Pepper

To begin dice tomatoes and onions. Mince Serrano pepper, garlic and cilantro. Place all ingredients on the side until ready to use. Cut avocado in half and remove seed and spoon out into a molcajete or medium size bowl.  Mash avocado until almost smooth leaving some lumps for texture.  Fold in other ingredients and season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve in favorite bowl or in molcajete with basket of tortilla chips. Grate or crumble panella cheese on top of the guacamole for an added touch.

We’ve just received an email with some information about a book Sea Fare: A Chef’s Journey Across the Ocean by Victoria Allman. The description is very convincing, and 5-star comments on Amazon just make us not only want to read the book but eat it as well! Hopefully we’ll get one our way soon, but until then, this book just might be a great New Year’s present for all travel, sea and cuisine lovers! Here is what the media information says:

Exotic recipes, true love, and astonishing cultural discoveries await a young Canadian chef on her odyssey around the world

Victoria Allman’s memoir, Sea Fare – A Chef’s Journey Across the Ocean, begins in Canada, where the young chef struggles to make ends meet while dreaming of the food in far-off places. When friends introduce her to the world of yachting, she agrees to travel as chef on board a yacht. Her subsequent experiences highlight the cuisine of the places she visits. Inevitably, they also highlight the cultures.

Her food-related adventures include buying fish from an “olive-skinned Italian wrinkle of a man,” traveling up a muddy river in Papua New Guinea past “wide-eyed, crusty-nosed children with bloated bellies to barter for bananas among women with breasts sagging to their bellies,” and snorkeling the Bombay-colored shallows of the South Pacific “in pursuit of one of the world’s deadliest creatures for dinner, led by a Tahitian man with dark tribal tattoos of tikis, turtles, and rays” running up and down his body.

“Sea Fare is filled with colorful characters and food-driven escapades,” notes Victoria. “I wanted to bring to life the glamorous and adventurous world of yachting from the perspective of a chef responsible for buying and storing food at sea, catching and preparing fresh fish right out of the ocean, and procuring food – and recipes – from the natives in the places we visited.”

Victoria uses the food culture in each port as the focus of Sea Fare, but her tales will interest anyone who loves to read about travel, yachts, adventure, and above all exotic cultures and cuisine.

Some of the reviews:

When she isn’t catching fish on hidden islands, immersing herself in fascinating cultures, like Papua, New Guinea, or hanging out with colorful characters, she is serving up the most amazing meals………. and sharing her recipes and secrets. Victoria Allman is as good a writer as she is a cook. I loved reading the book. I wish I could have eaten it.

–Rita Golden Gelman, author TALES OF A FEMALE NOMAD, Living at Large in the World.

Acting on wanderlust breeds fantastic discoveries. Making it a lifestyle puts dreams into reality.  In Sea Fare, Victoria presents a global collage of unscripted culinary experience that offers the reader an honest portrayal in the school of life.

– Chef David Shalleck, author of MEDITERANNEAN SUMMER

Chef Victoria Allman became hooked on travel following a trip to the Bahamas more than 10 years ago. Since that time she’s caught, sautéed, simmered and served her way through the Caribbean, Mediterranean, North America, Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific from Australia to Tahiti. Sea Fare – a Chef’s Journey Across the Ocean is her travel memoir of food, lust, finding true love and high seas adventure.

–Tina Koenig, MiamiARTzine

About the Author: Victoria Allman has been following her stomach as a yacht chef for ten years. Culinary trained at the Stratford Chef School in Canada and the Culinary Institute of America in New York, each new destination adds recipes, deepens her knowledge of world cuisine, and contributes to her ever-growing arsenal of fascinating food-related stories. She writes a monthly column for Dockwalk magazine and blogs about her travels at www.victoriaallman.com.

Her book “Sea Fare: A Chef’s Journey Across the Ocean” is available at: www.norlightspress.com and www.amazon.com and at independent bookstores for $12.95.

We are starting this holiday season with a new on-line category “Recipes“, as wished by you, and with our pleasure! First recipe is just here with a perfect timing for Xmas! Let us know how did you like it!

Incredible Mulled Cider

drinks | serves 15

It wouldn’t be Christmas without mulled something, whether I make wine or cider, its just one of those things that tells me I’m home and it’s Christmas. I know there are loads of packaged mulled wine and cider flavourings in the shops these days but honestly, it’s not hard to make this from scratch so please don’t cheat! Just pick up a few bottles of decent cider and give this a try. You’ll be simmering away most of the alcohol so if the kids want a taste, it’s ok to give them a little glass.

ingredients

• 2 litres good cider
• 6 cloves
• 3 or 4 star anise
• ¼ nutmeg, finely grated into the pan
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 vanilla pod, halved
• juice of 1 orange
• juice of 2 clementines
• juice and seeds from 1 pomegranate
• 4 or 5 tablespoons of caster sugar, to taste