Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

By Dana McMahan FoodConnect Louisville foodconnect.com@gmail.com Celebrate Cinco de Mayo Cinco de Mayo may be a celebration of Mexican heritage and culture, but if you ask me, it’s a great excuse to cook up a tasty dish from south of the border. We don’t cook a lot of Mexican food in our house and that’s a shame, because this ancient fusion cuisine offers so much flavor, color and just plain fun. Unfortunately we limit our Mexican cooking most of the time to humble cheese quesadillas, not even made with good Mexican cheese (though they do bring back fond memories of our Mexican honeymoon and my daily quesadilla on the beach). However we recently picked up a Mexican cookbook at the half price bookstore, the kind with lots of tantalizing photos. Perfect Mexican featured many tempting dishes, but the most appealing was the crab and avocado soft tacos. I loved the thought of crab, avocado and cilantro together so we feasted on this admittedly not very authentic Mexican dish recently. It’s a fairly expensive dish due to the cost of fresh crab, but hey, isn’t it a celebration? To serve four you’ll need: 4 corn tortillas 1 avocado Lime juice for tossing 4-6 Tbsp. sour cream 9-10 oz. cooked crab meat 1 lime ½ fresh green chili (jalapeño or Serrano) deseeded and finely chopped 1 medium ripe tomato ½ small onion, finely chopped 2 Tbsp. (at least) chopped fresh cilantro First heat the tortillas in a nonstick skillet. Sprinkle water as they heap. Keep warm. Cut avocado in half around the seed. Peel and slice into chinks and toss with lime juice in a small bowl. Spread each tortilla with sour cream. Top with a quarter of the crab meat, a squeeze of lime juice, and a sprinkling of chile, tomato, onion, cilantro, and avocado. Serve with margaritas!