The mexican Romeritos
A meal that is generally eaten during the Lent period, when Catholics worldwide refrain from eating as much meat as they want. In Mexican cuisine, the vegetable or plant known as Romeritos is relatively unknown outside Mexico; although it looks like rosemary its taste is different, if you can't find any you can substitute it with fresh baby spinach leaves whose taste comes pretty close.
Recipe for Romeritos
Ingredients
* 2 lb. raw Romeritos (Substitute with fresh baby spinach)
* 1 cup almonds
* 1/2 lb. of dried shrimp
* 6 nopal cactus pads, spines removed
* 1 teaspoon sesame
* 4 chiles guajillos
* 1 chile ancho
* 1 lb. potatoes
* 1 piece of dry bread roll, in crumbs
* oil and salt to taste
Preparation
2) Peel the potatoes then cook them in boiling water until tender; once cooked chop in small pieces, and reserve. Peel the shrimp and reserve separately the shrimp shells and the shrimps themselves.
3) After this, devein the chiles and discard their seeds to prevent our dish from becoming overly spicy. Fry the chiles in oil (which can be corn oil to follow the Mexican cuisine line of thought, but the recipe also benefits from using avocado oil), along with cactus (which we have previously chopped). Add almonds, bread crumbs to the pan, and the toasted sesame seeds. Cook a few minutes until the vegetables are tender.
4) Now we are ready to prepare the sauce which will be the basis for the romeritos dish. To begin, put chiles, shrimp shells, bread, almonds and sesame seeds in your blender's bowl, them blend until liquefied.
Pour the sauce we just blended and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer until you get a fairly thick consistency; finally add the romeritos, potatoes and nopal cactus. Heat up a little bit then mix and serve your romeritos...
