the "Tacos"Oct 23, 2011
|
|
| Today was 'Foreign Exchange Student Foreign Cuisine Day", meaning each exchange student made one dish, traditional to their country, and brought it for everyone to try. Since, there are 10 exchange students in my district from the USA (each of which had already called dibs on the American classics like PB&j's and s'mores) and non from any Mexican countries; my best friend from America and I decided to make some good old fashion tacos. To make a long story short... I don't think any one will ever let us make food for them again. ha side note: (First I need to clarify that my friend and I were going to make something a little more American like apple pie, chocolate chip cookies, or something like that. The only problem is Taiwan doesn't have ovens... so we had to think of something to make that didn't require an oven!) Taco Problem #1: The tortilla recipe required lard... Well we didn't have any lard. So, we read that you could replace lard with butter. This however brought about another problem. We didn't have any butter either! ha so after a mad scavenger hunt around my house the only thing we could find was olive oil... so we used it. Taco Problem #2: The tortillas needed to be cooked in a flat pan on a stove. We had the stove, thank goodness, but we didn't have a flat pan... so we were forced to use the only thing Taiwan had. A wok. This made our olive oil based tortillas cook very unevenly. ha Taco Problem #3: We luckily had found plain pure steak meat!! But as any true master chef knows.. haha... you need to marinate meat for it to even slightly have some sort of flavor. SO after ANOTHER hunt through my house they only thing that slightly resembled a marinade was, you probably guessed it, soy sauce. So we used it. Taco Problem #4: After we made the meat and tortillas we realized we had no salsa!! Luckily, my wonderful American mother had sent me guacamole packets in the mail :) So what was the problem?? Well we made the guacamole... but we hadn't had guacamole in so long... and it just tasted SOO good... that by the time we realized how much guac we had eaten, it was too late. Our once amazing guac (and only redemption for our tacos) was now an empty white bowl sitting in front of us. Taco Problem #5: We weren't to worried about our failed attempt at tacos, first because we knew all the other exchange students probably went through the same struggle we did for finding supplies and would not be to critical on the overall taste. This however turned out to be a problem when we arrived at the venue and Rotary told us that not only will the exchange students be eating our food BUT the exchange students families, past Taiwan exchange students and Rotary members!! Oh boy... not only were our tacos an oily, salty, non-guac filled mess.... haha but there was also not nearly enough to feed that many people!! Our famous "tacos" have now become a big inside joke between all the exchange students and now the next time Rotary asks us, well IF they ever ask us again haha, to make a cuisine traditional to our country... we will stick to something more simple like a good ol' fashion bowl of American cereal. |
Advertisement 
|
