Recipes: Side Dishes

Guacamole is a wonderful simple feature at the Mexican dinner table. The best Guacamole is always fresh and home and also you can decide on the consistency you prefer. In Mexico Guacamole is usually served chunky.

This tangy and spicy side dish is popular in Arunachal Pradesh, North East India (Meaning "land of the dawn lit mountains") especially during the bamboo shoot season. This is served as an accompanying side dish that is a must during every meal time both lunch or dinner.

An Assamese meal can be considered incomplete without this mash potato dish. A very important side dish that is served along with many other dishes both for lunch and dinner.  While this is commonly prepared at home, you’ll find it is in restaurants around Nagaon districts in small steel bowls. Bhut Jolokia chillies are native to Assam and give this side dish a wonderful flavour and unmistakable heat.

Refried beans are a staple at meal times in Mexico and are great as an accompaniment or when incorporated into Burritos or Tostadas. The type of bean used varies from region to region and our version using the pinto bean is typical of what you would find in Northern Mexico. A great variation is to substitute half the pinto beans for black beans. This recipe makes use of Guajillo chillies for heat and extra depth of flavour.

Salsa Fresca is what most of us in the UK think of as "Salsa". Home made Salsa is always the best because all the flavours are fresh and you can choose the texture and your preferred level of heat - we always like it a little bit chunkier and hotter than you can buy in the shops and our Habanero chillies never disappoint on heat or flavour. A nice chunky salsa is easy to make and a perfect accompaniment for all of our meal recipes.

Tostadas are great party food. Tortillas are fried until golden brown and then used to layer different ingredients into a stack of 3 or 4 high. Usually made from corn tortillas though in some areas wheat tortillas are used instead. They look great on the table and are perfect for sharing!

Chimichangas are deep fried Burritos and are a very popular snack in the North Western Mexican regions of Sinaloa and Sonora. They are often a little smaller than a standard Burrito. Various restaurants in Arizona have laid claim to the Chimichanga though as they are essentially a deep fried Burrito we prefer to think of them as a Mexican invention!

Pozole is another traditional dish of Mexico and is eaten a lot around the Christmas period. In Mexico they use a special type of corn that isn't widely available in England so we have had to adapt this recipe to use normal sweetcorn instead. If you want your Pozole to be a little bit spicier simply add more of the Guajillo chilli based red chilli sauce.

This is a delicious Dosa filling recipe. Dosa is a popular South Indian pancake that is made from fermented batter of rice and skinned black lentils.

The rice and lentils are soaked separately in water overnight, then blended and combined. The mixture then ferments for another 10 hours. The bubbly batter is used to make thin and crispy pancakes, which are filled with all kinds of stuffings. One of the spicier fillings is this potato masala recipe. It's a great dish and if you don't have time to make the Dosa pancake mix can be enjoyed with naan bread or chapatis

This Shrimp soup is so good! It has a wonderful creamy texture with whole shrimp pieces and carrot chunks. Very tasty and the presence of chipotle chillies provides an embracing warmth and their characteristic deep smokey flavour. We've read a lot about Mexican shrimp soups and are thrilled to add this very easy to prepare version to our recipes list. If you can't find shrimp then try using prawns as a substitute.

There are various Mexican rice recipes used in Mexico and this is one that we find particularly exciting. It is brightly coloured owing to the annatto powder uses, with lovely contrasting flecks of green from the fresh peas. It's a great side dish to go with any one of our main Mexican dishes and can also be used for filling burritos.