Author: typepadtowordpress

Steaming hot café con leche (expresso coffee mixed with hot milk), served with a basket of Mexico's pan dulce (sweet bread).

When my mother, may she rest in peace, visited me here in Mexico, one of her dearest wishes was to visit a Mexican bakery. For more than 40 years, Mother baked every crumb of bread that she consumed: white, rye, whole wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough, French baguette, and esoteric ethnic loaves that she just had to try. Mother wanted to see how it was done in Mexico.  She even arrived with her baking apron, hoping to push her hands deep into some yeasty dough.

In those years, there was a tiny bakery just a block from my house. Shortly after Mom's arrival, I took her to meet Don Pedro, the master baker, and his helpers. For two hours, Don Pedro and my mother swapped bread stories—conversation about oven temperatures, yeast, flour densities, and tales of experiments, successes and failures.

Don Pedro spoke no English and my mother spoke no Spanish, but I interpreted between them and they discovered that they were soul mates. The day before Mother was to leave for home, she went to say goodbye to Don Pedro. They both cried and insisted that pictures be taken before they exchanged farewell hugs. Such is the bond of bread.

Bread fresh from the oven: the evocative aroma brings back timeworn memories of Mom's kitchen, filled with the yeasty perfume of twice-raised, golden-crusted hot bread. Here in Mexico, that redolent scent wafts through the air from bakeries scattered like hidden treasures through many neighborhoods. At certain hours of the early morning and mid-afternoon, barrio ovens disgorge mountains of pan dulce (sweet bread) destined for tiny corner mom-n-pop stores or for sale to individuals.

For a few pesos, an early breakfast of bread served with milk, juice, hot chocolate, or coffee gets Mexico up and off to work or school.  For a few pesos more, the same sort of late supper rocks Mexico to sleep.

In the history of the world, bread has its own record and development. The making of wheat bread has evolved with the progress of world civilization. Particularly in gastronomic Mexico, bread has deep roots in the evolution of the República. The Spanish brought the flavors and recipes of all Europe with them to the New World. The 1860s era of Emperor Maximilian and his French wife, Charlotte, imposed a giddy 19th Century French influence—with puff pastries, whipped cream fillings, and sticky glazes—on the already extensive assortment of Mexican breads.

Tasty sugar-swirled conchas are ubiquitous throughout Mexico.

During the Mexican Revolution, soldiers from every region of Mexico came to know the foods of states far from their homes. When they returned to their own areas after the fighting, they took the recipes and flavors of other regions home with them. The south of Mexico incorporated northern bread recipes into its repertoire, the west took from the east, the north from the south.

Today, most panaderías (bakeries) in Mexico prepare similar assortments of pan dulce, along with a sampling of their own regional specialties.

Puerquitos (little pigs, on the right) taste very much like gingerbread.

It's been said that Mexico, of all the countries in the world, has the broadest and most delicious selection of breads. As a result of the mixture of cultures and regional flavors, today in Mexico you will find more than 2000 varieties of breads, and all will tempt your palate.

Pan dulce is just one variety, but there are hundreds upon hundreds of different sub-varieties. The great mosaic of Mexican bread making, inventiveness, and creativity is such that every variety of pan dulce has a name, usually associated with its appearance. That's why you'll see names of animals, objects, and even people gracing the breads on bakery shelves. Puerquitos (little pigs), moños o corbatas (bowties or neckties), ojo de buey (ox eye), canastas (baskets), conchas (seashells), cuernos (horns), chinos (Chinese), polvorones (shortbread), hojaldres (puff paste), empanadas (turnovers), and espejos (mirrors): all are names of specific and very different sweet breads. My current favorite name for a pan dulce is niño envuelto (it means wrapped-up baby and it looks for all the world like a slice of jellyroll).

If you've never visited a Mexican bakery—a bakery where the breads are baked right on the premises—you have a real treat in store. One of my favorite bakeries is owned by the Rojas family. When the bolillos (crusty white rolls) come out of the oven in the early mornings and again when the roles (cinnamon rolls—they're addictive) are ready at about 12:30 PM, you'll find lines of locals waiting to carry home a bag of hot, fresh goodies.

At the Rojas bakery, the bakers will help you select the breads you want. There are no bakers' shelves at Rojas, and the selection of items is usually small. Most of the breads are delivered to shops and stores shortly after they're taken from the ovens. Larger Mexican bakeries can be a little intimidating when you first push that front door open and enter a warm, fragrant world of unfamiliar sights and smells.

Unsweetened biscochos are very similar to biscuits.

My most recent bakery excursion was to Panadería Pan Bueno, located at Avenida Vallarta #5295 in Guadalajara. The owner, Sr. Roberto Cárdenas González, graciously allowed me to take photographs with the assistance of his employee, Edith Hernández González.

When you go inside Pan Bueno, take a minute to look around first to orient yourself. Right there by the door are the big metal trays and the tongs you need to gather up the breads you want to buy. With tray and tongs in hand, let's take a tour of the racks of pan dulce.

Polvorones de Nuez are an old standard Mexican recipe that many of you know in the United States and Canada as Mexican Wedding Cookies. They're easy to make and are absolutely melt-in-your-mouth delicious. Somehow they always manage to disappear first from any tray of assorted homemade cookies.

Polvorones de Nuez
Mexican Wedding Cookies

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

1 1/2 cups (3/4 pound) butter (room temperature)
3/4 pound powdered sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup finely chopped almonds or pecans
3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

Beat the butter until it is light and fluffy. Then beat in 2 tablespoons of the powdered sugar, the egg yolk, vanilla, and your choice of nuts. Gradually add the flour, beating after each addition to blend thoroughly. Pinch off pieces of dough the size of large walnuts and roll between your palms into round balls. Place the dough balls 1 1/2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Flatten each ball very slightly.

Bake in a 275 degree oven until very lightly browned (about 45 minutes). Allow to cool on the baking sheets until lukewarm.

Sift half the remaining powdered sugar onto a large sheet of waxed paper. Roll each cookie gently but firmly in the sugar. Place cookies on wire racks over wax paper. Allow the cookies to cool completely and again dust generously with more powdered sugar.

If you make these cookies ahead of need, store them in airtight containers, layered between sheets of waxed paper, for up to three days.

Makes approximately three dozen cookies.

As Edith and I made the rounds of the bakery, I asked her if she knew the origin of any of the names for pan dulce. With a charming smile, she admitted that they were just traditional inventos—made up titles. When I asked her if she ever got tired of eating the sweet breads, she shook her head emphatically. "Oh no, señora, we always love the pan"

You will always love the pan as well. And now, if you'll excuse me, a slice of niño envuelto is calling to me from my kitchen. How could I have resisted buying a pan dulce or two as I made the bakery tour? All right, it was four—but who's counting?    

The Purhépecha woman in the foreground pats out tortillas while her companion sorts through a plate of golden, freshly cut flor de calabaza (squash blossoms).

The first two mornings of the huge annual artisans’ crafts fair in Michoacán begin with a food fair: la Muestra de Gastronomía.   Fifteen or so outdoor kitchens, set up around a charming plaza just a block from the crafts booths, offer cooking demonstrations and inexpensive meals of representative Purhépecha dishes.  The food, rustic and rarely seen outside a Purhépecha home kitchen, is, in a word, heavenly.  The Mexico Cooks! group trooped into the food fair just in time for Saturday breakfast.  They could have known who we were by the way our mouths were watering with anticipation.

Corn is the basis for the indigenous Mexican kitchen, and the tortilla is the lowest common denominator.  On the table in front of this woman, you can see the metate (three-legged rectangular grinding stone) and the mano (similar to a rolling pin) resting on it,  along with the prepared masa from which tortillas are made.  Both the metate and the mano are hand-carved from volcanic rock.

To your left of the table is the clay comal (similar to a griddle) that in this instance rests loosely on top of a metal drum in which the wood cook fire is built.  Prior to use, the comal is cured with cal (builders’ lime).  The cal serves two purposes: it gives the comal a non-stick surface and it adds nutrients to the masa as it toasts.

In the past, all of Mexico’s women prepared dried corn for masa by soaking and simmering it in a solution of water and cal.  The name of the prepared corn is nixtamal.  Once it’s processed, it’s ready to be ground into masa for tortillas, tamales, and other corn-dough preparations.  Some rural women still grind nixtamal-ized corn by hand using the metate and mano.  Some take the prepared corn to their neighborhood tortillería (tortilla vendor’s shop) for grinding, and some prepare their masa using commercial dried corn flour.  In urban areas, the majority of Mexican families buy tortillas hot off the tortilla baker at the tortillería and carry them home, wrapped in a special towel, just in time for a meal.

This woman prepares her stove, made of part of a metal drum with an opening cut away for firewood.  She’s spreading a paste made of wood ash and cal on and around the top of the the drum to hold the comal in place.  The white streaks on the red clay comal are cal.  The volcanic rock metate and mano are on the bench in the background.  Her well-used clay cooking pot is visible to your left.

This joyous woman is patting out blue corn tortillas.  The masa and mano are on the metate in front of her.  She’s toasting the tortillas and roasting tomatoes and chiles on her clay comal.  The comal is set into a clay stove fired by wood.  The haze that you see is woodsmoke.

The Purhépecha kitchen repertoire includes numerous atápakuas (literally, a type of thick, soup-like salsa served plentifully over prepared food).  The Purhépecha word atápakua has meaning deeper than its simple definition.  Its connotation is food that is picante (spicy), nutritious, and life-sustaining in a spiritual sense.  Mexican culinary historians agree that the preparation of atápakuas dates from as long as 400 years before the Spanish Conquest, around 1100 AD, when the Purhépecha were strong rulers in the area of Mexico that is now Michoacán. 

An atápakua can be made from the ingredients that are easily found in the region.  The specialty of one tiny village of the Meseta Purhépecha is atápakua del talpanal (wasp larvae).  Another town’s specialty is xururi atápakua, the principal ingredient of which is cotton seeds.  More commonly, indigenous cooks prepare their atápakuas of seasonal and readily available vegetables along with a bit of meat, poultry, or fish.

We of Mexico Cooks! didn’t eat wasp larvae or cotton seeds.  We inhaled bowls of atápakua de flor de calabaza (thick, soupy salsa served over squash flowers, fresh corn kernels, and chunks of corundas de ceniza (unfilled tamales made with masa and wood ash).

In the closeup of the atápakua you can clearly see the corn kernels (closest to the bowl of the spoon), small pieces of calabacita (similar to zucchini), orange squash flowers, and a piece of white corunda.   For flavor and color, chiles serrano and cilantro are blended into the cooking liquid.  The thin, soupy salsa is then thickened by blending a small ball of masa into the hot liquid.  This atápakua is deliciously spicy and tastes as fresh as the garden.  I finished my portion and wanted another bowl.

And here’s part of the Mexico Cooks! breakfast crew.  We had already gobbled our atápakua (witness the empty bowls) and had moved on to snarfing down the jahuácatas we’re holding. Jahuácatas are similar to gorditas.  Purhépecha women prepare the jahuácatas by folding freshly patted tortillas and refried beans into multiple thin layers, then toasting the finished product on the comal.

Photo by Steve Sando, www.ranchogordo.com

Churipo, shown above, is one of my favorite Purhépecha specialties.  Churipo is a hearty soup, the delicious broth flavored by long cooking with beef, cabbage, calabacitas, xoconostle (the sour fruit of a specific nopal cactus), onion, chile, and other ingredients.  Served with a squeeze of limón (Mexican lime), a sprinkle of coarse sea salt, tortillas hot off the comal and corundas de ceniza broken up in the bowl, it’s a wonderful meal in one dish.  If your palate will take the heat, eat some raw chiles serrano along with your bowl of churipo.  Remember that the tip of any chile is less picante than the stem end, where most of the seeds are.

Late in the afternoon, after we’d investigated as many of the crafts booths as we could, we were all in need of something very light and fresh for our comida (middday meal).  We ordered a fruit plate and a plate of guacamole with totopos (triangular fried tortilla chips) at a local restaurant.

For dessert we found limones, with the pulp scraped away, candied and stuffed with cocada (coconut candy).  Half of one of these is plenty!

This was such a sweet finish to a fascinating day in Michoacán.  If you’d like to travel to this event in 2008, be sure to email Mexico Cooks! in time to save your place for adventure.

Home cooking for you might be your mother's macaroni and cheese. For my
friend Shana it's her grandmother's potato latkes, for Danny it's the
fond memory of his Aunt Ethel's apple crumble. And for me? For the last
25 years, my taste buds and heart have been drawn by the smells and
flavors of the Michoacán home kitchen.
The first fragrance that fills my memory is that of pine wood
burning in the clay stove centered in the mountain kitchen. One note
behind the wood smoke is the scent of beans boiling in a clay pot, and
the fragrance chord is finished by a top note of tortillas toasting on
the clay comal (a
large flat clay griddle). The home kitchen closest to my heart belongs to Débora, my friend who lives at more than 9500 feet above sea
level on the highest mountain in Michoacán.

When I visited Débora at home for the first time, my entire notion of
how a house looks was turned upside down. My friend Celia (Débora's
sister) had invited me to travel home with her for two weeks:"Ven conmigo a mi tierra, a conocer a mi mamá,"
she said. ("Come with me to my hometown, to meet my mother.") Twenty-nine years ago, we
traveled for 52 hours, from Tijuana to what I often tease Débora as being el último rinconcito del mundo
(the last little corner of the world), by train and by three different classes of bus.  The last 27 kilometers of the
trip (approximately 15 miles) was a jolting three hour ride in a converted school bus. You read that
right. We were traveling on a washed-out dirt road that wound nearly
straight up the mountainside.

From the bus stop in front of the mayor's office we walked two blocks up another hill and opened a
small door in a long wall.  We walked up three wide slate steps into a dirt
patio—and the house? I looked around, wondering where the house was.

I could see one room with a door (the bedroom, I found out later, complete with three rope beds and their corn husk mattresses), and
a sitting-eating-sewing-talking room that had only three walls and
was open to the air.  The kitchen was a tiny room with an opening
but no door to close. That was the entire home.

Looking around, I saw chickens picking and scratching all over the dirt floor of the central patio, the pila

(a single-tap cold water concrete sink used for washing clothes and dishes), an
outdoor beehive clay oven, a path that I later discovered led to the
outhouse, and a tiny, elderly woman wrapped in a rebozo
(typical shawl) sweeping with a broom made of twigs: Celia's mother.
Flowering trees and shrubs surrounded the patio; enormous dahlias in
all colors blessed the wildness of the garden.

Tired from the long trip, I was soon put to bed at Aunt Delfina's house  next door.

Early, early the next morning, I stuck my head out the spare
bedroom door and saw mist hanging among the mountains. I sniffed
the clean scent of pine smoke in the chilly air. A hint of coffee fragrance
followed, and the toasty corn smell of freshly handmade tortillas
cooking. I dressed and went to see what Débora was doing next door in
that tiny kitchen.

Débora was outside, standing near an outdoor stove made of a vertical oil drum. She was grinding
nixtamal (dried
corn prepared for making dough) on a metate (grinding stand) and patting out tortilla
after tortilla, placing them onto the clay comal on top of the stove to cook. We smiled buenos días
to one another and she gestured to offer me a fresh hot tortilla. I ate
it eagerly and excused myself and went to peek into the kitchen.

What I saw astonished me. In the center of the dim windowless kitchen
was a rectangular stove made of clay, plastered over and colored deep
brick red.

The four burners were six-inch diameter holes on top of the stove.
Below each burner hole was a long horizontal compartment for inserting
and burning split pine wood. The center chimney took most of the smoke
out through the roof.

Wooden shelves holding dishes and clay cooking pots hung on the neatly
whitewashed walls. On a low
ledge, several kinds of fresh and dried
chiles were piled on reed mats. A few cobs of dried corn, a plate of
fresh pan dulce,and
some fruits I didn't recognize were arranged on a small wooden table.
Above my head, aged woven reed baskets filled with foodstuffs—dried
corn, flour, coffee, a bag of beans—hung from smoke-blackened beams.

A votive candle burned in the corner near a small print of Our Lady of
Guadalupe.  A jelly glass filled with garden dahlias graced the tiny altar.  A steaming clay pot of beans for the midday meal burbled on a
stove burner.

I gazed at this amazing kitchen with awe. There were no modern
conveniences at all, not even a sink or refrigerator. As I stared, Celia
stepped in and smiled at me. "This is the way the kitchen has been
since long before I was born," she said. "My great-grandmother cooked
here, my grandmother cooked here, my mother cooked here, and Débora and
I learned to cook here. All that we know of the kitchen is from here."
She gestured to encompass the tiny space.

"How does Débora keep food like milk and leftovers cold?" I asked.

Celia thought for a minute. "The milkman comes on his horse
every morning and sells her just what she thinks she'll need for the
day. He dips the milk out of his big metal milk can with a liter
measure and pours it into one of her clay pots. If there's a bit left
over at the end of the day, she gives it to the cat or she mixes it with really stale
tortillas for the pig.

"Débora only buys enough meat for today, and it's always meat that is recién matada
(butchered today). The meat that's killed and wrapped in plastic to be
sold in the big markets—who knows how old that is! It never tastes as
good as today's freshly cut meat.

"Then if there is food left over from la comida (the
midday meal), we eat it for supper later. If there's still a little
left, she gives it to the pig. Nothing goes to waste. And if she buys a
few limones (Mexican limes), she buries them in the ground to keep them fresh."

"What else will you teach me while I'm here?" I asked.

Celia shook her head. "This time you just watch and pay attention. Next time you can try your hand in the kitchen."

Many of the traditional recipes from Michoacán have their roots in the Purhépecha culture. Corundas, uchepos, minguiche, churipo—two types of tamales, a cheese dish and a soup—are pre-Hispanic Purhépecha recipes and make the cuisine of Michoacán extraordinary.

There are other Mexican recipes that, while not unique to Michoacán,
have strong ties to the state. There are some recipes which you may
want to try to duplicate in your home kitchen. If you're not able to
purchase all of the ingredients you need for these recipes, buy a
ticket instead and come to taste the cuisine of Michoacán in its
natural habitat. I'd be glad to take you on a food-tasting adventure.

Many recipes from Michoacán include both corn and cheese,
cornerstones of the daily diet. Corn is one of Mexico's native grains
and Mexico, especially the state of Michoacán, is famous for its
cheeses. Cotija
(coh-TEE-hah), a town in Michoacán, has given its name
to the aged cheese used for topping refried beans and other dishes. If
you can't find it in your grocer's cheese case, you can substitute
another aged, crumbly cheese.

Chiles are also an important part of the Michoacán diet. Nearly all of the
fresh and dried chiles available everywhere in Mexico are found in the
state, as well as at least one variety that grows almost exclusively in Michoacán,
the chile perón. Chile perón
is approximately the size of a golf ball and is bright yellow to orange
in color. It has black seeds, a fruity flavor, and is extremely hot. On
a scale of one to 10, it registers about an eleven!

The corunda is a traditional Michoacán tamal that can be made
either with or without a filling. These are made with a cheese and mild
chile filling and are served with cream and a spicy salsa.

Corundas Michoacanas (Michoacán Corn tamales)

For the corundas:
3 kilos masa (soft corn dough) (if there is a tortillería near you, buy it there)
2 cups water
1 kilo (2.2 pounds) pork lard or vegetable shortening
5 Tablespoons baking powder
Salt to taste
30 fresh green corn stalk leaves (NOT the dried corn husks sold for ordinary tamales)

      
For the filling:
1 kilo requesón (soft white cheese, similar to farmer or ricotta cheese) or ricotta cheese
1/2 kilo chile poblano, roasted, peeled, seeded, and cut into strips 2" long by 1/4" wide

Preparation:
With a large wooden spoon, beat the corn dough and the water together for approximately 30 minutes. Set aside.

With another large wooden spoon, beat the lard until it is spongy. Add
the beaten dough to the lard, together with the baking powder and the
salt. Continue beating until, when you put a very small amount of the masa in a cup of water, it floats.

Take a fresh corn stalk leaf and place three tablespoons of dough on
the thickest side of it. Make a small hollow in the dough and put a
tablespoon of the cheese and three or four strips of chile in the
hollow. Cover the cheese and chile with another three tablespoons of
the dough. Fold the corn stalk leaf over and over the dough until it
has the triangular shape of a pyramid.

Continue making corundas until all the dough is used.

Put three cups of water in the bottom of a large steamer pot or tamalera. Use the rack that comes with the steamer pot to hold the first layer of corundas. Place all the corundas
in the pot, cover, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat so that the
water is actively simmering but not boiling. Be careful during the
steaming process that the water does not entirely boil away; check this
from time to time.  Put a coin or two in the bottom of the tamalera; as the water boils, the coins will rattle.  When you no longer hear the rattle, add more water immediately.

Allow the corundas to steam for one hour and then
uncover to test for doneness by unwrapping one to see if the dough
still sticks to the corn stalk leaf. If it still sticks, steam for
another half hour. When the leaf comes away from the dough without
sticking, the corundas are done.

Salsa:
1/2 kilo (1 pound) tomates verdes (called tomatillos North of the Border), husks removed
6-8 chiles perón (substitute chiles serrano if necessary), washed
1 small bunch fresh cilantro, washed
Sea salt to taste

Wash the tomatillos until they are no longer sticky. Fill a large saucepan half full with water and bring to a boil. Add the tomatillos and the chiles and boil until the tomatillos begin to burst open. With a slotted spoon, remove each tomatillo

When all the tomatillos are in the blender, add the chiles
to the blender. Cover and blend at a low speed until the ingredients
begin to chop well, and then stop the blender. If your blender has a
removable center piece in the cover, add the cilantro little by little
through that hole as you turn the blender back on to 'liquefy'. If the
cover has no center hole, add some cilantro, blend, stop, and add more
cilantro until all is blended. Do not chop the cilantro too finely, as
you want flecks of it to help give the salsa both color and texture.
Add salt to taste and stir.

To serve the corundas:
Unwrap a corunda and place it in a shallow soup bowl. Spoon unsweetened heavy cream over the corunda and top with several spoonfuls of the salsa.

Making any sort of tamales (including corundas)
is hard work and is always more fun if you can plan to do it with a
friend or two. Let the kids help, too. Make a party of it, with the big
reward—the eating—at the end.

There will be plenty of corundas left over for everyone to take some
home for the next day. It's easy to reheat them. Just leave them
wrapped in their corn stalk leaves when you put them in a plastic bag
to refrigerate them. Then when you're ready to reheat, place as many as
your microwave will hold in a Pyrex dish. Cover them with paper
toweling and microwave on high until they are hot throughout. They're
just as good left over and they also freeze well.

After that long and complex recipe, let's try something a little faster and easier. The next regional dish is called minguiche,
a lightly fried combination of cheese, eggs, and chiles that you'll
enjoy. Served with fresh hot tortillas, fruit, and a beverage, it's
satisfying and simple to make for brunch–and it's a great change from
the usual brunch foods.

Minguiche (meen-GEE-cheh)
(The 'g' sounds like the 'g' in garden, the 'u' is silent)

1 kilo (2.2 pounds) requesón or ricotta cheese
6 eggs, beaten
Minced chiles serrano to taste, as few as two or as many as your palate tolerates
Salt to taste
3 Tablespoons vegetable oil
6-8 chiles húngaro (long yellow-orange chiles available in Latin markets) or banana chiles

On a griddle, roast the chiles húngaro until
well-toasted and deep golden brown. Place them in a plastic bag for
approximately 10 minutes to sweat; then peel them. Make a long slit
down one side of each chile and use your fingers to scoop out the
seeds. Fill each chile húngaro with one or more tablespoonfuls of the cheese. The chiles need not be filled to capacity.

With a wooden spoon, beat the remaining amount of the cheese until it
is soft and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs a little at a time and beat
until well incorporated into the cheese. Add the minced chiles serrano.

Heat the vegetable oil in a 10" heavy skillet. Allow the oil to become
as hot as possible without smoking. Add all the cheese, egg, and chile
mixture to the skillet and lower the heat to medium.

Cook the cheese mixture until it is slightly golden brown on
one side. With a spatula, flip it over and allow it to brown slightly
on the other side. The browning process is quick. For ease in flipping
the cheese mixture, you can do this step in several smaller batches.

To serve the minguiche:
Divide the minguiche among six or eight plates. The minguiche should be mounded slightly on each plate. Drape one stuffed chile húngaro over each mound of minguiche.

This dish looks beautiful served with fresh ripe papaya slices
arranged on the plate and garnished with a thin round slice of lime.

Be sure you have plenty of hot tortillas to serve with the minguiche. The hot tortillas and cool fresh fruit act as a delicious foil for the spicy cheese.

Buen provecho!
   

More and
more people who want to experience "real"Mexican food are asking about the
availability of authentic Mexican meals outside Mexico. Bloggers and posters on food-oriented websites have vociferously
definite opinions on what constitutes authenticity. Writers' claims range from the uninformed
(the fajitas at such-and-such a restaurant are totally authentic, just like in Mexico) to the ridiculous (Mexican cooks in Mexico can't get good ingredients, so
Mexican meals prepared in the United States are superior).

Much of
what I read about authentic Mexican cooking reminds me of that old story of the
blind men and the elephant. "Oh," says
the first, running his hands up and down the elephant's leg, "an elephant is
exactly like a tree."  "Aha," says the
second, stroking the elephant's trunk, "the elephant is precisely like a
hose."  And so forth. If you haven't experienced what most posters
persist in calling "authentic Mexican", then there's no way to compare any
restaurant in the United States with anything that is prepared or
served in Mexico. You're simply spinning your wheels.

It's my
considered opinion that there is no such thing as one definition of authentic
Mexican. Wait, before you start
hopping up and down to refute that, consider that "authentic" is generally what
you were raised to appreciate. Your
mother's pot roast is authentic, but so is my mother's. Your aunt's tuna salad is the real deal, but
so is my aunt's, and they're not the least bit similar.

The
descriptor I've come to use for many dishes is 'traditional'. We can even argue about  that adjective, but it serves to describe the
traditional dish of–oh, say carne de
puerco en chile verde–as served in the North of Mexico, in the Central
Highlands, or in the Yucatán. There may
be big variations among the preparations of this dish, but each preparation is
traditional and each is authentic in its region.

I think
that in order to understand the cuisines of Mexico, we have to give up arguing about
authenticity and concentrate on the reality of certain dishes.

Traditional
Mexican cooking is not a hit-or-miss let's-make-something-for-dinner
proposition based on "let's see what we have in the despensa (pantry)." Traditional Mexican cooking is as complicated and precise as traditional
French cooking, with just as many hide-bound conventions as French cuisine imposes. You can't just throw some chiles and a glob of chocolate into a
sauce and call it mole. You can't simply decide to call something Mexican salsa when it's not. There are specific recipes to follow,
specific flavors and textures to expect, and specific results to attain. Yes, some liberties are taken, particularly
in Mexico's new alta
cocina (haute cuisine) and fusion
restaurants, but even those liberties are based on specific traditional recipes.

In recent
readings of food-oriented websites, I've noticed questions about what
ingredients are available in Mexico. The posts have gone on to ask
whether or not those ingredients are up to snuff when compared with what's
available in what the writer surmises to be more sophisticated food sources
such as the United States.

Surprise,
surprise: most readily available fresh foods in Mexico's markets are even better than similar
ingredients you find outside Mexico. Foreign chefs who tour with me to visit Mexico's stunning produce markets are inevitably
astonished to see that what is grown for the ordinary home-cook user is
fresher, more flavorful, more attractive, and much less costly than similar ingredients
available in the United States.

It's the
same with most meats: pork and chicken are head and shoulders above what you
find in North of the Border meat markets. Fish and seafood are from-the-sea fresh and distributed within just a
few hours of any of Mexico's coasts.

Nevertheless,
Mexican restaurants in the United States make do with the less-than-superior
ingredients found outside Mexico. In fact, some downright delicious traditional Mexican meals can be had
in some North of the Border Mexican restaurants. Those restaurants are hard to find, though,
because in the States, most of what has come to be known as Mexican cooking is
actually Tex-Mex cooking. There's
nothing wrong with Tex-Mex cooking, nothing at all. It's just not traditional Mexican cooking.  Tex-Mex is great food
from a particular region of the United States. Some of it is adapted from Mexican cooking and some is the invention of
early Texas settlers. Some innovations are adapted from
both of those points of origin.  Fajitas, ubiquitous on Mexican restaurant menus all over the United States, are a typical Tex-Mex invention.  Now available in Mexico's restaurants, fajitas are offered to the tourist trade as prototypically authentic. 

You need to
know that the best of Mexico's cuisines is not found in
restaurants. It comes straight from
somebody's mama's kitchen. Clearly not
all Mexicans are good cooks, just as not all Chinese are good cooks, not all
Italians are good cooks, etc. But the
most traditional, the most (if you will) authentic Mexican meals are home
prepared.

That
reality is what made Diana Kennedy who she is today: she took the time to
travel Mexico, searching for the best of the best of the
traditional preparations. For the most
part, she didn't find them in fancy restaurants, homey comedores (small commercial dining rooms) or fondas (tiny working-class restaurants). She found them as she stood next to the stove in a home kitchen, watching Doña Fulana prepare comida (the midday main meal of the day) for her family.  She took the time to educate her palate,
understand the ingredients, taste what was offered to her, and learn, learn,
learn from home cooks before she started putting traditional recipes,
techniques, and stories on paper. If we
take the time to prepare recipes from any of Ms. Kennedy's many cookbooks, we
too can experience her wealth of experience and can come to understand what
traditional Mexican cooking can be.  Her books bring Mexico's kitchens to us when we're not able to go to Mexico.

In order to understand the cuisines of Mexico, we need to experience
their riches. Until that
time, we can argue till the cows come home and you'll still be just another blind
guy patting the beast's side and exclaiming how the elephant is mighty like a
wall.