Translating to "served cold," fiambre has an average of 50 ingredients, often including asparagus, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, corn, onions, fava beans, chicken, chorizo, hot dogs, salami, hard-boiled eggs and queso fresco.
At Las Campanas on the square, I was treated to traditional songs accompanied by two marimbas as I feasted on queso relleno, a chunk of hard aged cheese stuffed with pork, swimming in a white cream-based soup.
She mixes the pulp with sautéed mushrooms and onions, chopped parsley and queso fresco or Cotija (a hard cow's milk cheese) and mounds the filling into each boat-like half before wrapping them up for later.
Avocados are wonderful, but by the time you got through the June dinner, you may have discovered less about the multitude of local varieties than about your own innate loathing for the queso fresco bounciness of cooked avocados, the hard-rubber bite of intentionally underripe avocados or the weird airiness of avocados served as a fluffy purée instead of as a rough, luscious mash.
A traditional Mexican cheese, like Cotija or Queso Añejo, would work best, but you can replace these hard-to-find cheeses with more common options like Monterey Jack, Longhorn Cheddar, and Colby cheese.
(Olson prepared tacos with parboiled Moringa leaves, queso blanco, and salsa, which I found delicious, but the raw leaves, straight from the tree, were hard to swallow).
In the book's introduction, Fain explains that she grew up eating queso but didn't consider it deeply until she moved to New York, where she discovered that it was hard to find Velveeta and Ro-Tel in a store, let alone queso in a restaurant; if she wanted to eat the dip, she would need to get creative.
But the queso — the queso was divine.
