Preparing Christmas Dinner

We spent this Christmas in Mexico with Edgar's parents. Edgar's mother starts preparing dinner the 23rd by cleaning (by hand) the romeritos. They are a very small leafy vegetable. Then on the morning of the 24th the cooking begins. Kata cooks two main dishes plus a turkey. She cooks Revoltijo, which is the romeritos, mole, shrimp, nopales and potatoes. She also cooks cod in a tomato chile sauce with almond and shrimp.
This is the cook book the recipes come from. Kata has hand written recipes in it that she has learned over the years from other women in her family.


First she fries peeled potatoes. Both dishes are cooked on the grill to conserve gas since the dishes require so much cooking.


Then she cooks cut up nopales,

and quickly fries the romeritos.

Next she cleans the chile and leaves it soaking in water,


While she mixes spices,
and mixing them in a blender.

Then she separately mixes the chile in the blender and


The chile mixture is strained.
Meanwhile the spice mixture is cooked,

As is the chile mixture.

Then the potatoes, nopales, chiles, spices and romeritos are all mixed together.



While the Revoltijo is cooking the almonds are peeled and

cut is strips.

And the cod is boiled.


After the cod is cooked it is pulled apart into small chucks.
The spices for the cod are ground and

added to tomatoes, chiles, and onion and blended together.

Then the cod is added to the sauce and cooked some more.