Cooking with Friends: Sopes & Sangria
Sopes stuffed with local cheese and jalapeno jam
Part of feeling settled in a new community comes with making new friends. Having friends makes you feel more grounded in the place where you live and of course it is always nice to have people to share events, food and good times with! We have been lucky in this regard with our move to Vermont. We will have been living here for a year at the end of April, and we are lucky to have developed several groups of friends here in the local community. The common vein is that all of these friends were met by way of food. But I guess knowing me, that shouldn’t be too much of a surprise!
We met Corey and Kurt during a lamb butchering class we took with Cole Ward, The Gourmet Butcher , this past fall. It was an 8 hour class where we all learned how to butcher a lamb for our own consumption. Cole is a genius and a true artisan of the craft. I can’t wait to take more classes with him! Roberto and I were the only first-timers there. Of course during those many hours we all talked an awful lot about food and recipes. At the end of class, many of us exchanged email addresses. Several of us planned a lamb potluck for January, and for one reason or another, it ended up only being me, Roberto, Corey and Kurt at the dinner.
Since then we have been getting together regularly to enjoy good food, wine and each other’s company either at each other’s houses or out in the community. Sometimes we even cook together and are making plans to start a Supper Club and acquire more foodie friends!
Corey and Kurt are big foodies. Having lived all over the world they have experienced a lot of different food cultures. They have big plans to host gourmet getaways to Vermont. They already have a beautiful cabin in rural Vermont that they rent out to guests, and are working on having a kitchen put in where they can offer cooking classes and gourmet dinners to their guests.
The last time we got together, they hosted and made Mexican food. They had recently taken a class with Chef Courtney Contos (the chef on the Gourmet Butcher DVDs), and decided to keep practicing their new recipes by trying them out on us. I offered to bring drinks. I made nice winter sangria using a dark red zinfandel as the base. I added to it several shots of lavender scented vodka, a splash of vanilla extract and a variety of fruits we had preserved this fall, including, raspberries in syrup and plums in a vanilla-cardamom-rum syrup. I also added sliced blood oranges. I soaked the fruits in the vodka overnight and added a pinch of dried lavender. I meant to take a picture when we served it, but we were already a bottle of wine in, and it slipped my mind. The photo above is one of my favorite photos from this blog and a summer sangria recipe.
For appetizers, Corey made the coolest stuffed masa boats, called Sopes. Masa is Spanish for “dough” but it usually refers to dough made from reconstituted corn meal. My friend Ben from What’s Cooking Mexico has a great tutorial on making sopes and other tortillas .
Making the Sopes
The only thing we did different with our sopes is that we folded up the sides of the small tortillas to make “boats” before frying them to shape them. We stuffed our sopes with several different options – guacamole, Boucher blue cheese (Highgate, VT) and plain Chevre (Boston Post Dairy, Enosburg, VT). Both of the cheese options were topped with some of Corey’s homemade Jalapeno jam from peppers grown in Georgia, VT. They were all delicious, but I really loved the unique combination of the Boucher blue and jalapeno jam.
Dinner was Mexican rice, homemade beans, and a stewed chicken dish in a tomatillo sauce (via Corey and Kurt’s garden last year), served with freshly made tortillas. For dessert they had roasted pears and pineapple served with homemade caramel. Again, we forgot to take photos, but I promise it was good! We ended the evening with an impromptu Scotch tasting and tea. Definitely a great night!
Rosa - March 14, 2011 at 6:32 pm
A wonderful speciality! I’ve never had sopes, but I love corn flour-based dishes and mexican food…
Cheers,
Rosa
vanillasugarblog - March 14, 2011 at 8:47 pm
oh yes i have had these. i think i had a savory version. i love that you always have friends over and cook fun/funky things.
i would love to do this with you and rooooberrrtoooo! lol
and of course you know i have to see the baby goats!!!
bellini - March 14, 2011 at 9:57 pm
I had sopes at a new local Mexican restaurant just last week. I have tried to make my own but I just think the masa is all wrong. I can’t seem to get the real thing. It is always instant masa….but I know where I can get it!
Joan Nova - March 14, 2011 at 10:13 pm
It’s so great to find real live foodie friends. I love all mine!
Arlene - March 15, 2011 at 7:32 am
All sounds absolutely delicious and the experience shared with friends makes it even richer. Was the sangria from a recipe or did you was it your own-sounded amazing!!
5 Star Foodie - March 15, 2011 at 8:39 am
Those sopes look so good, a wonderful combination of local cheeses and homemade jalapeno jam, nice!
Arlene (MOM) - March 15, 2011 at 9:28 am
This was so interesting. Something I am not familiar with and was fun to read about. Looks yummy.
Angela@spinachtiger - March 15, 2011 at 8:24 pm
So glad you are making great friends who love food. You must feel so at home by now.
Peter G @ Souvlaki For The Soul - March 15, 2011 at 9:09 pm
Nice friendships, good food and alcohol! You can’t beat that! Sopes, sangria and scotch! Can I come to the next one? LOL!
ValleyWriter - March 16, 2011 at 11:57 am
It looks like you had a great time! Yay for new friends! I hope we have such luck with our upcoming move.
(BTW – I love the picture of the sangria – beautiful shot!)
The Leftover Queen - March 16, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Arlene, I made it up on the fly!
mayajo - March 18, 2011 at 6:16 am
Just terrific for my kids! they would love this! very nice!
kat - March 18, 2011 at 12:16 pm
Oh those sopes sound so good
Karen @ My Pantry Shelf - March 23, 2011 at 4:39 pm
These look great! What a tasty use of my many jars of pepper jelly!