This past week, I tried cooking dinner for my family for the first time and made Peruvian (roasted) chicken with green sauce, Mexican corn salad, and Mexican roasted squash. I purposely chose a non-Asian recipe to make sure my mom couldn’t power-arm/out-Asian me out of the kitchen like last time. I’ve learned. Can’t really judge me too harshly on how I cook if she doesn’t know the cuisine.

• Peruvian (roasted) chicken with green sauce: recipe from SeriousEats/J. Kenji Alt-Lopez’s The Food Lab
• Mexican corn salad: recipe from RecipeTinEats
• Mexican roasted squash: recipe from BowlOfDelicious

Peruvian (Roasted) Chicken:

I’ve made this recipe before with thighs; this time, I made it with drumsticks. The chicken was first washed then dried, a technique that my mom does when handling meat.

I eyeballed most of the measurements, for the marinade with the only change being that I used a Filipino vinegar(?), which smelled very different from white distilled vinegar (more alcoholic/fermented smell) and let the chicken marinate for the next 15 minutes before cooking.

I then baked it for 30 min at 400F. Overall, the taste was pretty good but I would have probably seasoned it a little more and dial back down on the vinegar, which was one of the more dominant tastes in the chicken. Luckily, my family still liked it.

As for the green sauce, knowing how much my family likes limes and cilantro, I doubled the amount. It was a relatively straightforward process of putting everything into a blender and blending it until smooth. The sauce was much thinner than I expected but it tasted good and elevated the taste of the chicken.

One thing noteworthy though, when I was shopping for ingredients, my mom mentioned that we already had mayo so I refrained from buying a new bottle, but there were two very interesting things about it:

1. The aforementioned mayo was Japanese Kewpie mayo.
2. The same mayo was also expired back in August 2021.

Upon bringing these two very important things to my mom’s attention and my concerns with it, particularly with the expiration date, my mom merely replied, “Just use it. Should still be good,” with the arbitrary confidence that only a parent can have when talking with their child.

Against my sound logic, which definitely told me that using a nine-month old expired condiment was probably not a good idea, I conceded to the authority of my mother, whose main credentials was in the fact that she was The Mom^TM. To her credit, the fact that the mayo did not smell off and the fact that I am currently not going through some bout of food poisoning as I’m writing this, are both testaments of motherly wisdom triumphing in the face of common sense.

Thanks, Mom.

Mexican Corn Salad

So, this corn salad isn’t actually a salad. I’m not even sure if this dish is actually “Mexican-Mexican”, or if it’s more “culture-appropriated Mexican” (dunno how likely V would actually read this far down on this post but feel free to verify). This is basically a deconstructed elote dish. With the exciting pizzazz of involving the expired mayo, this was also a relatively straightforward dish to make. I charred the frozen corn, along with the jalapeños and garlic until lightly browned, then mixed in the rest of the ingredients, again doubling the amount of lime and cilantro. In hindsight, I would have added less mayo. I ended up doubling up on some other ingredients like red onions and jalapenos, to off-set how drenched the dish looked in mayo.

Out of the three dishes made, this was probably my least favorite. Nothing wrong with it but it did make me realize that I don’t really care for mayo that much. Probably the knowledge that it was expired didn’t help.

Roasted Mexican Squash

My mom was very leery of Mexican squash so the compromise was to make it half Mexican squash and the other half yellow squash. I ended up liking this decision since it made the final dish look pretty with the green and yellow colors. With a generous seasoning of paprika, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, I roasted the veggies for about 15 min at 425F. I would have probably roasted it for the full 25 minutes, were it not for my mom complaining about some sort of burning smell at 15 minutes.

What I did not account for was that I sliced the veggies thinner than what the recipe called for, which is why it cooked quicker than expected. Huh, makes sense. After roasting the veggies, I topped it with even more lime juice, cilantro, and some grated Cotija cheese. It tasted good with extra limes and I successfully introduced a new vegetable to my mom.

Overall

I really like how colorful this meal ended up being. As someone who doesn’t really care for Latin/Mexican cuisine, something I’ve learned to appreciate is how bright and colorful their food is.

This was a fun experience to cook for my family and will probably be a meal I would make again (with hopefully not expired mayo). They ended up liking the meal. Even my dad, who usually doesn’t like non-Asian food, enjoyed it as well. More importantly, I think it allowed me to build up some street cred with my mom, who is usually very territorial with her kitchen, and to show her that yes, I can provide for myself because I am An Adult^TM.