Easter Mexicana

Hev and I went round Bill's for a Mexican-themed Easter celebration last night. We've been plotting an attempt at a Mexican feast, as it slowly dawned on us that most of the ingredients for a passable attempt at Mexican food are available in Buea. The exceptions to this are sour cream (no chance) and coriander, which is strangely absent from Cameroon's vast array of herbs and spices. The final piece of the jigsaw came when Bill mentioned that he had a recipe for making tortillas! Game on! So on Sunday afternoon, we rocked up to Bill's and we all got busy in the kitchen. I ended up cutting the peppers, (they call them pepe here, though it's still spelt 'pepper', I think they're actually habeneros) and got some quite severe chili burn on my hands. I even followed my own advice on how to avoid chili burn. I washed my hands with oil but I think it was a little late for that; I tried to relief the burn with lime juice, but our limes weren't very juicy, so didn't provide much relief. My hands were more hot than painful, but they're still glowing ths morning... Hand-burning aside, we managed to rustle up an excellent Mexican feast: spict salsa, guacemole, gorgeously tender beef fajiitas and tortillas, lime slices squeezed down the necks of Export bottles doing a good impression of a Corona, mmmm..... To finesse the whole thing, we brought round Hint's data projector (donated by some Pastors from the US last summer) and watched Once Upon a Time in Mexico on the big screen (well, wall...) There's even a DVD extra of Robert Rodrigues talking you through his favourite slow-cooked Mexican Pork recipe. We'll have to wait until our return to England to try that one, as none of us have an oven... Later our Cameroonian friends Simon and Hans turned up, and we got them to try some of our Mexican delicacies. I think Simon was a little unsure about our 'Whiteman chop', but I think we got a thumbs up from Hans (which isn't surprising, Mexican food has enough chili in it to gain the approval of the average Cameroonian). So, a very successful evening indeed, must do it again sometime...