Category: Food and Drink

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.

If you’ve shopped at any of Mexico’s thousands of tianguis (street markets), you may have wondered what certain vendors were ladling out of their frosty garafas (stainless steel containers). That’s tejuino.  Along many highways and byways, you’ll regularly see someone selling aguamiel and pulque, the ancient drink of the Aztecs, from large jars positioned on a tiny table.

If you’ve wandered along the magical beaches bordering Mexico’s western coastlines,
you may have noticed a man with a yoke-like pole across his shoulders,
a red painted gourd suspended from the pole by a rope. His cry is
"Tuba! Tubaaaaaaaaaaa!" and his hands are full of plastic cups. At
various hole-in-the-wall supper restaurants, pineapple tepache
is the order of the day, served fizzing with a pinch of bicarbonate of
soda.  And on the outskirts of one small town as I head for Guadalajara and home, a sign hangs from a guamúchil tree. It reads "Aquí Se Vende Pajarete" (Pajarete Sold Here) and advertises yet another unusual beverage.

I don’t expect you to whip up most of these six popular drinks in your
home kitchen, but I thought you’d love knowing about some of Mexico’s really unusual cold drinks.

Tejuino

Since ancient times, cooling tejuino has refreshed Mexico. It’s made from the same corn masa (dough) that’s used for tortillas and tamales. The prepared masa is mixed with water and piloncillo
(cone-shaped Mexican brown sugar) and boiled until the liquid is quite
thick. It’s then allowed to ferment slightly—but just slightly. I’ve
never known anyone to get so much as a buzz from sipping a cupful of
cold tejuino.

Once the tejuino is thickened and fermented, it’s mixed as needed with freshly squeezed jugo de limón
(key lime juice), a pinch of salt, water, ice, and a big scoop of lemon
sherbet. Just about everywhere in Mexico, it’s sold in plastic glasses—small,
medium, and large—or in a plastic bag with the top knotted around a
drinking straw.

Some people say that tejuino is an acquired taste. I
acquired the taste for it the very first time I tried it and often
crave it on hot afternoons. There is nothing more
refreshing. Fortunately, there is a tejuino vendor just a block from my house,  so I can buy a glassful when the spirit moves me. Cup after cup of freshly prepared tejuino is ladled out to customers every day.  Although tejuino is only a slightly sweet
drink, the masa base makes tejuino very filling. A small glass is usually very satisfying.

Pulque
In the early 1980s while I was living in Mexico City, a friend took me
to meet some of her friends in a tiny town in the State of Mexico, which surrounds Mexico City. I
ate and drank things that I’d never seen before, including blue corn quesadillas washed down with pulque. The quesadillas were delicious. I was a bit uncertain about trying the pulque—I’d heard certain things about it.

Pulque is harvested from mature maguey plants that have reached heights of over eight feet by the time they’re seven to ten years old. Once a plant is mature, a pulque
harvester prunes off the top, carves out a reservoir in the center of
the plant, and then covers the opening. Juice from the plants’ leaves
drains into the reservoir and the liquid, called aguamiel, is harvested twice a day by the farmers. A typical maguey plant yields more than a gallon of aguamiel twice a day for several months. There are tales of legendary magueyes which have produced nectar for a year.

Harvesters store the juice in vats, where naturally occurring bacteria
from the plant cause it to ferment. Within the course of a day or two,
it reaches six percent alcohol. It’s often cured with pineapple,
strawberries, guavas, or other fresh seasonal fruit to give it
delicious flavor. It has more alcohol than beer, but less than wine.
It’s rich in vitamins, minerals, and amino acids—in fact, it’s said to
be almost as good for you as chicken soup!

Indigenous peoples in this country discovered the heady
beverage over 2,000 years ago. It became the elixir of choice for Aztec
leaders, who occasionally shared it with their subjects. About-to-be
human sacrifices were given pulque before they were killed. Aztec legend tells of a leader who got drunk on pulque
and removed his clothes in public. The shamed man was banished to a
remote area, where he and his followers enjoyed a lifestyle rich in pulque parties and frequent nudity.

That tale may shed light on the certain things that I’d heard: the most celebrated characteristic of pulque is that it’s alleged to have an aphrodisiac property. Ask any Mexican male, and he’ll say, ‘Ooh, pulque makes you very strong!’   

Over the centuries, pulque morphed from royal nectar to a blue-collar beverage enjoyed mainly in pulquerías: gritty, working-class, men-only establishments. When my friends in the State of Mexico saw a pulque
vendor outside a produce market, they insisted, with much laughing and
poking each other with elbows, that I try it. Remember that I’d heard things about it. Tasting the pulque made me nervous, since what I’d heard was that decent women didn’t drink pulque, that it was slimy and bad-tasting and that it quickly made one very drunk.

Peer pressure got to me and I took a sip and discovered that I liked it
very much, perhaps because it was cured and flavored with fresh
strawberries. I downed the small cup my friends gave me and asked for
another. It reminded me of hard cider, with that same kind of light
bubbly feel in the mouth. I quickly discovered that it affected me the
same way hard cider does—with that same kind of light bubbly feel in
the head, the feeling that makes it hard to walk straight. My friends
laughed all the harder as I acted sillier and proclaimed that I really,
really liked the pulque—the very same beverage I had protested against just a few minutes earlier.

Aguamiel
Aguamiel is the fresh, uncured juice of the maguey. At the time the mature maguey is topped, some of the juice is taken out of the plant’s center reservoir and drunk as is. A single maguey plant can produce as much as 2,500 liters of aguamiel over the course of several months. Aguamiel is non-alcoholic, fresh-tasting, and very thirst-quenching. It has the same medicinal properties as pulque.

Old traditions called for growers to plant and later top the maguey
with religiously fervent reverence. The farmer begged the plant to grow
well, to weep, and to fill up with aguamiel. The practice was considered to be idolatrous, because the farmer was treating a simple plant as if it were a god.

In today’s fields all across Mexico, there are farmers who continue to
practice the old rituals. When the mature plant begins to grow its
flower spike, the spike is cut away from the heart of the maguey,
leaving an opening 20 to 30 centimeters in diameter (approximately one
foot). The opening in the top of the plant is covered by several of the
plant’s own leaves, which are folded over and pinned down with the
long, sharp needles that grow along the leaves’ edges. In that way, the
plant protects itself from insects and dirt and can be opened twice a
day to remove the aguamiel.

Tuba
In Mexico, tuba is primarily a coastal drink. Several years ago I was surprised to see a tuba vendor at a tianguis in Guadalajara. Now I’ve been seeing the same man selling tuba in Tlaquepaque and at the Thursday and Sunday artisans’ tianguis in Tonalá. If you happen to be in this area, look for him—he’s easy to spot, with his bright-red gourd of tuba suspended from a pole across his shoulders.

Coconut palm sap is fermented to make the clear, white, sweet wine called tuba.
To collect the sap, workers climb the palm tree in the morning and
evening and bruise the coconut flower stalk until it starts to ooze its
liquid. The stalk is tied with bamboo strips into a special bamboo
container to catch the sap. Crushed tanbark from the mangrove tree is
dropped into the container to give the sap a reddish color and to
hasten its fermentation. As many as three flowers from one coconut tree
can be made to yield sap. Each flower produces tuba for two months, after which it dries out and is cut from the tree.

The liquid actually begins to ferment while still in the bamboo
container on the tree, but the alcohol content increases considerably
with longer fermentation. Tuba quenches the thirst, is good for indigestion, and makes conversation flow easily.

Tepache

I’ve found tepache in several cenadurías
(restaurants open for supper only, usually from 7:30 PM until midnight)
in Mexico, as well as at street stands. Tepache is simple to make and the ingredients are readily available whether
you live North or South of the Border. You might like to try this at
home.

 

Tepache (teh-PAH-cheh)
1 whole pineapple (about 3 pounds)
3 quarts water
1 pound piloncillo or brown sugar
1 cinnamon stick, approximately 3" long
3 cloves

Wash the pineapple well. Cut off the stem end and discard. Leave the
skin on the pineapple and cut the entire fruit into large pieces.

Place the pieces of pineapple in a large container and add two quarts of water, the piloncillo
or brown sugar, the cinnamon, and the cloves. Cover and allow to rest
in a warm place for approximately 48 hours. The longer you allow the
liquid and fruit to rest, the more it will ferment. If you let it sit
for longer than 48 hours, taste it periodically to make sure it is not
overly fermented, as it will go bad.

Strain the liquid—the tepache—and add the last quart of water.

If you prefer, do not add the last quart of water. Instead, add one cup of beer and allow to rest for another 12 hours.

Strain again and, if you have used the beer, add three cups of water.

Serve cold with ice cubes.

At any cenaduría, you can ask for your tepache
with a pinch of bicarbonate of soda. You can also add it at home, just
before you’re ready to drink a glassful. The addition makes the tepache
fizz and bubble, and it’s said to be extremely good for the digestion.
An elderly neighbor of mine swears by it as a heartburn remedy.

Pajarete
In the Mexican countryside, tequila drinking
starts as soon as the sun comes up. If you drive Mexican highways early any
morning—early, please, when the air is still chilly and cool gray mist
clings to the flanks of the mountains of the Central Highlands—look for a small hand painted
sign. "Aquí Se Vende Pajarete" (pah-hah-REH-teh)
is all it says. The sign may hang from a tree, it may be tacked to a fencepost, and you won’t see any indication of a cart or stand.

Back from the road, behind the trees, past the bushes, just over there by those old wrecked cars, a dairy farmer milks his cows.  As he milks the patient cows and they snuffle their hot breath into the misty morning, groups of men (sombrero-wearing men who are real men) gather around the cow lot, each man with his large clay mug.  Into each mug go a stiff shot of either charanda (a kind of grain alcohol) or tequila, a bit of sugar and some cinnamon-laden Mexican chocolate grated from a round tablet.  The mug is then filled with warm milk, freshly squeezed directly into the mug from the cow.  More a body-temperature drink than a cold drink, that’s pajarete: breakfast of champions.

There are many more interesting and unusual drinks South of the Border, everything from A (acachú, a drink made near Puebla from the wild cherry) to Z (zotol,
made in Chihuahua from the sap of wild yucca). Wherever you are in
Mexico, you’ll find something fascinating to quench your thirst, make
you feel more at home in the culture, and give you a story to tell.

A toast to each of you: Salud, dinero, y amor, y tiempo para gozarlos. Health, money, and love, and time to enjoy them. 

  I often note that Mexico is a country full of contradictions and
paradoxes. As a case in point, the Mexican kitchen of the 21st Century
lives cheek by jowl with the Mexican kitchen that predates the 16th Century arrival of the Spanish, and
we’re all the richer for it. Ancient utensils and techniques are put to
daily use in modern kitchens so beautiful they could be in any of
today’s slick kitchen design magazines. In today’s Mexican kitchen, a molcajete and tejolote (volcanic stone mortar and pestle) often sit on the counter next to a Kitchen-Aid mixer, and kiln-fired bean pots made of barro (clay) may well share cupboard space with a Le Creuset Dutch oven.

The Mexican kitchen of colonial times was typified by the kitchens of
the women’s religious orders. Early nuns had very poor diets except on
the many feast days: the reception of a novice into the convent, the
feast day of the order’s patron saint, Christmas, and many other
special days provided reason for especial and elaborate meals. During the annual posadas
(nine-day celebrations prior to Christmas), the ruling Spanish lords,
the local archbishop and other dignitaries were invited to dine with
the nuns, along with their family members and the sponsors of the
convent.

It was in the convents that many of the most wonderful Mexican foods
were invented to take advantage of local products, mixing and matching
them in old European recipes. Today, those recipes that mix of Europe
and the New World are among the most traditional of the Mexican
kitchen.

The cooking utensils that were in daily use in Europe were
almost nonexistent in the New World. Because metal utensils like those used in Spain
were prohibitively expensive in the New World, they were replaced by
utensils made of indigenous clay. Clay pots were gradually perfected,
in large part due to the incorporation of new glazing techniques and
new designs. Other utensils were made from native volcanic stone found predominantly in Mexico’s central highlands.  Prehispanic
utensils such as the molcajete, the comal (clay griddle), and the metate
(flat rectangular grinding stone) were common. Most cooks in the days
of the Spanish colonial period were indigenous women who brought their
utensils with them into Spanish New World kitchens.

The volcanic stone metate, along with its mano de metate
(similar to a rolling pin made of stone) was the principal cooking
utensil in the prehispanic kitchen, and it’s still used today in rural
areas to grind corn for making tortilla masa (dough). Volcanic
stone is porous and microscopic pieces of it break off into the corn as
it is ground, becoming an essential part of the dough. It’s so
essential to the texture and flavor of the masa that even in enormous commercial processing plants, the corn-grinding stones are made of volcanic rock.
   

The metate is also used to grind dried chiles and other
grains used to prepare moles and other complex dishes, and to prepare
the highly prized home made chocolate used for cooking.

The second most important piece in the indigenous kitchen is the three-legged molcajete, a
kind of volcanic stone grinding mortar. It’s still widely used,
especially for grinding soft ingredients such as tomatoes, green
chiles, green onions, herbs, and other condiments. A well seasoned salsa de molcajete (sauce to be used at table, made in a molcajete) is the mark of a wonderful cook.

Family-operated
workshops in certain Mexican villages carve locally mined volcanic stone into the
familiar shape of the molcajete and the less frequently seen metate.  It can be difficult to find molcajetes and metates at the source, unless you know where to look.  The first time I ventured to one of these small villages, I expected to see molcajetes and metates for sale in stores. I discovered that I
had to knock on the doors at private homes in the towns and ask if
anyone there made molcajetes.

Fortunately there is an easier way for most of us to find a traditional molcajete or metate.
Next time you’re on a shopping expedition to one of Mexico’s regional mercados, ask the merchants where to find a vendor who sells them.  They usually range in price from $65 pesos for a tiny molcajete just big enough to use for serving salsa at the table to the mother of all molcajetes
priced at $125 pesos. The vendors may also sell even bigger ones carved
with the head of a pig. Those are priced at approximately $600 pesos.

The basis and essence of the earliest and most current cuisines of Mexico is what is called the corn kitchen. Corn and corn masa have been used to prepare an infinite variety of staple foods in this country since before written history. The word masa
comes from a Nauhatl word that means ‘our flesh’. It’s said that the
Nauhatls believed that their gods created man and woman from corn
dough. That equation of corn with the flesh of the human being is more
telling than any long description of prehispanic, colonial, or
present-day eating habits could be. Corn was all, and in many Mexican
homes today, corn is still all.

The corn tortilla has always been the single most important
staple food of Mexico. Tortillas with a serving of beans are a perfect
protein. In many impoverished Mexican homes, corn tortillas and a pot
of beans are even today the only daily fare. At all levels of society,
a meal eaten at home is not complete without a large stack of
tortillas, carefully wrapped in a special napkin. A family of five can
easily eat a kilo of tortillas as many as eighteen tortillas per
person or more along with the comida (main meal of the day). 

From the time tortillas originated, women have patted balls of damp masa by hand to form it into perfect circles. It’s still a mark of pride for a restaurant to offer tortillas "hechas a mano" (hand
made). In some homes, especially in very rural areas, the rhythmic
pat-pat-patting of hands making tortillas marks the dinner hour.

In many cases ‘hand made’ now means tortillas prepared using a tortilla press made of either wood or metal. Masa can either be purchased ready-made at a nearby tortillerí­a or cooks can prepare it from dried corn. Either way, once the masa is ready the tortillas must be made quickly or the masa
will be too dry to work. A piece of waxed paper or one half of a
plastic storage bag is placed on the bottom half of the tortilla press.
A ball of dough the size of a golf ball or slightly larger is pulled
from the bulk of masa; then the dough is flattened slightly by
hand and placed on the plastic. A second plastic or waxed paper sheet
is placed on top of the dough and the press is squeezed shut.

Open the press and there’s a perfectly round tortilla, ready to have
the plastic peeled off. Now do it again. And again. And again, and
remember, there are five of you in the family and at least some of you
will eat eighteen tortillas each at this meal! Even using the modern
convenience of a tortilla press, it’s still backbreaking work to
prepare enough tortillas for a family’s needs.

Of course Mexico is not only about rural tradition and the indigenous
corn kitchen. I recently talked about recent trends in the Mexican
kitchen with Licenciada Virginia Jurado Thierry, owner of  Arquitectura en Cocinas in Guadalajara. Walking into her design
center in fashionable Colonia Providencia is like walking into a high
end kitchen designer’s showroom anywhere in the world.

Sleekly modern wood cabinets are shown with stainless steel
refrigerators and restaurant quality stoves; glass-front cupboards
reflect top-of-the-line small appliances crouching on quartz polymer
resin counters. When I explained the nature of this article, Lic.
Jurado nodded and invited me into her private office to chat.

"So many people think the design of the Mexican kitchen is only done with talavera
tiles. New kitchens are constantly evolving, and new design here is
similar to new design everywhere. As you noticed as you walked through
our showrooms, we offer nothing but the finest in kitchens. Everything
is designed with convenience and efficiency and performance in mind."
She paused to reach behind her and take down a thick notebook. "These
are some of the products we offer to our clients."

We flipped through the book. Familiar names in kitchen design jumped
out at me: European lines like Miele and Smeg, United States
manufacturers such as SubZero, Wolf, Viking, and Dacor, and the
noteworthy Italian Valcucina line were just a few important
manufacturers’ names I noticed.

Lic. Jurado smiled. "Our clients really want a bright,
clean look. That translates into light woods such as oak for cabinets,
lots of whites and tones of gray, stainless steel and glass. People
also want aluminum accessories and opaque glass, especially for
cupboard doors. Paint colors are light. For counter tops, we’re getting
many requests for melamine in new, stain-free colors, and polymer resin
quartz in light colors. And some people want granite, or colored
concrete. It’s a whole range of effects, but with a very clean European
look.

"We can,
for example, offer the client a stove for $5000 pesos or we can offer
the client a stove for $15,000 U.S. Usually we find a meeting place
somewhere in between those figures."

What a revelation! I felt as if I’d jumped 500 years, from
Colonial Spanish days to the 21st Century in the course of an
afternoon. The contradictions of Mexico, even in as small a detail as
the utensils and design of a kitchen, still amaze me.

A first trip to the local tianguis can be mind-boggling—there are so
many sights and smells of so many unfamiliar foods. For now, let’s take a tour
of some of the tropical fruits that you’ll want to try.

I saw so many marvelous tropical fruits on Wednesday at the tianguis
(street market) where I usually shop: cherimoya, guanábana, mamey, and carambola.
Papaya, mango, sapote, maracuyá, and bananas nearly the size
of your forearm—and other tiny bananas, the ones that are the size of your
thumb.

And then there were the tunas. Since when is a tuna a fruit
and not a fish?

The fruits available in season in Mexico can be confusing when we’re used to
the ordinary apples, peaches, oranges, pears and plums in North of the Border
supermarkets. We have those "normal" fruits here too, but wait till
you try the exotic produce that awaits you in Mexican markets.

The cherimoya ranges from tennis ball size to a fruit the size of
your head. The guanábana can have a size range equally wide. Either
fruit should be eaten when the fruit is very soft but not mushy. At home, I
often cut a small ripe cherimoya in half and eat it with a spoon right
from the skin. It makes a wonderful light dessert. The seeds are big, black,
shiny, and easily discarded.

Guanábana (soursop) flesh is eaten with a spoon or is used to make
drinks and paletas (popsicles). Try this easy, delicious, and refreshing
drink.

Agua Fresca de Guanábana
(Fresh Guanábana Juice Drink)
1 pound ripe guanábana
3/4 cup white sugar
8 cups water
1 cup milk (optional)

Cut the guanábana in half and scoop
out the tender white flesh. Discard the bitter peel. Put the fruit flesh in a
large bowl and reduce to a pulpy liquid, using a potato masher or the back of a
large spoon. Discard the large black seeds as they appear.

When the fruit pulp is mostly liquefied, add the sugar and stir together
with the fruit pulp and its juices. Put the fruit and sugar mixture in a
3-quart pitcher. Add the eight cups of water and the milk, if you wish. Stir
well and chill for an hour or more.

The carambola (star fruit) is primarily used for decoration. Cut
cross sections of the fruit, as you see them in the photo above, to use on the
rim of a glass of your fresh guanábana fruit drink.

The papaya and the mango are two of the more familiar tropical
fruits available in Mexican shops and stalls.

The deep orange-red flesh of the Mexican papaya
is much richer and sweeter than its small yellow Hawaiian relative. The papaya
is best eaten when very ripe; the flavor and sweetness have developed
beautifully just when you think the fruit might need to be thrown in the trash
can.

When the papaya is super ripe—even
a little moldy in spots—peel it and cut away any small sections that might be
overly soft (the overly ripe spots will be darker in color, translucent and
softer than the rest of the fruit). It’s delicious cut into chunks for
breakfast, with a squeeze of limón criollo (the tiny round Mexican
lime), a sprinkle of salt, and a dash of powdered chile if you like a
little heat with your tropical fruit. For dinner, papaya slices combine
with thinly sliced red onion, toasted pecans, and fresh watercress to make an
exotic and refreshing salad. Try the salad with a raspberry vinaigrette
dressing, either your own concoction or a bottled variety.

There are nearly 2,000 varieties of mango grown worldwide.  India produces more mangos than all other fruits produced in that country combined.
The mango, king of fruits, is related—believe it or not—to poison ivy.
Cultivated in Asia for more than 4,000 years, the
growing of mangos has now spread to most parts of the tropical and
sub-tropical world. The mango could well be the national fruit of Mexico.

A mango tree can grow 75 to 100
feet high and bears thousands of fruits each year. During mango season
(June-August) here in the Guadalajara area, we use caution when walking under enormous mango trees; one of the
heavy fruits could inflict a mighty thump to the top of an unsuspecting head.

Mangos are so wonderfully versatile that it’s difficult to choose one
particular mango recipe for you to try. Eaten fresh for breakfast,
lunch, or dinner, the mango is unbeatable. One friend substitutes mango
slices for fresh peaches when making cobbler, pie, or Brown Betty. Another
makes a fantastic mango mousse, and yet another is renowned for her mango
sorbet.

Cook’s Tip:
Cutting up a mango can leave you with juice up to your elbows, stains on
your clothing, and stringy shreds of fruit in your mixing bowl. Here’s the simplest
way to cut a mango with minimal mess, loss of fruit, and frustration.
You’ll be pleased that your mango, cut this way, will not be the least
bit stringy.

Lay the mango on your cutting board with the narrowest side facing
up. With a very sharp knife, cut completely through the mango along one
side of the broad, flat seed. Then cut through the mango along the other
side of the seed, leaving a narrow strip of skin and flesh around the perimeter
of the seed. Set the seed portion aside.

Lay the two halves of the mango skin-side down on the cutting board.
Cut through the mango flesh (but not through the skin) to make
approximately nine diamond-shaped pieces in each mango half. Then gently
flip each half of the mango inside out, so that the diamond-shaped pieces
pop up. Use your knife to cut each piece free of the skin.

Next, cut the skin from the strip of mango
surrounding the seed. Cut the flesh in pieces as large and as close to the seed
as you can.  Cut all the mango flesh into pieces the size you need.

Voilà, no strings, no shreds, and no lost juice.

My inviolable household rule is that the one who cuts up the mango
gets to slurp any remaining fruit from the seed. Try to suck the seed until
it’s bone-white–that’s how we do it South of the Border.

The banana is a familiar North of the Border favorite. Babies eat it as
their first mashed fruit; older folks can eat one a day for an easy daily dose
of potassium. Here in the subtropics, we have a huge variety of bananas that are just
beginning to make their way north to Latin markets in the United
  States and Canada.

The guineo (similar to the ordinary banana), the dominico (a tiny
banana also known as the ladyfinger), the manzano (the ‘apple’ banana),
and the plátano macho (the ‘macho’ banana) are only four of the many
types of this fruit that we see regularly in our markets.

The tiny ladyfinger banana, three to four inches long, is delicious eaten as
a snack. The peel is almost paper-thin and the firm flesh is sweeter than most
full-size bananas. The manzano banana has reddish peel and a marked
apple-banana flavor.

The plátano macho is my particular favorite, however. While it’s
still green and hard, it can be sliced into and fried into savory, salty chips
called tostones. Fully ripened—the skin at this stage is dark brown or
black—the plátano macho is called the maduro (mature or ripe). I
don’t get nervous even when I see that my maduros have a spot or two of
mold on the skins. That’s when they’re the best, and this way to prepare them
is my favorite. Be careful, they’re addictive.

Plátanos Machos Fritos
Fried Sweet Plantains

2 very ripe plátanos machos (plantains)
vegetable oil

Peel the plaintains. Cut each plantain on the diagonal into pieces 1/4"
thick.

Heat approximately 1/4" vegetable oil in a large non-stick or cast iron
skillet. The oil should be quite hot but not smoking. If the oil starts to
smoke, remove the skillet from the heat until the oil cools down slightly.

Put as many of the plaintain slices in the frying pan as will fit without
touching one another. Fry on one side until golden brown. Flip each slice over
and fry until golden on the other side. Add oil to the skillet if necessary and
continue frying the plantain slices until all are done.

Drain thoroughly on paper toweling.

Serve for breakfast with fried or scrambled eggs, refried beans, and hot
tortillas. The fried plantains are particularly delicious when topped with a
dollop of Mexican crema (or sour cream).

The tuna (prickly pear cactus fruit) is an unlikely-looking addition
to the table. The thick pale green
or deep red skin is covered with spines, the
fruit is filled with BB-size hard seeds, and the flesh is normally either
pallid grayish-green or red. Nevertheless, the tuna is one of the most
refreshing and delicious fruits of Mexico.  Chilled, peeled, and eaten either out of hand or (in a more refined style) from
a plate, with a knife and fork, the tuna cools you from the inside, the
way a cold slice of watermelon brings brief respite to a hot afternoon. Swallow
the seeds along with the flesh; they cause no harm unless your doctor has
suggested that you not eat seedy foods.

The maracuyá (passion fruit) is unusual even for the subtropics. It
looks like a large greenish-yellow egg with a stem attached. The skin of the
passion fruit is thin but hard. You will need a sharp or serrated knife to cut
through the top third of the ‘shell’. The pulp of the passion fruit is cradled
in the bottom of the remaining shell. Pale green and filled with small seeds,
the pulp honestly doesn’t look like anything you would want to eat, but it has
a sweetly tart flavor that’s quite agreeable. Some people scoop the pulp and
seeds out of the shell and stir them into a glass of orange juice to drink;
others simply eat the pulp with a spoon, directly from the shell—seeds and all.

The mamey is a love-it-or-leave-it sort of fruit with a hairy brown
shell and rich peachy-red flesh.
Some folks crave its sweet, soft, candied
yam-like flavor while others can’t stand the thought of it. I’m in the latter
category, but a California friend
has to buy a ripe mamey or two immediately each time she visits me.

Here in Mexico,
the flesh of the mamey is also used medicinally, as a cream to cure
certain skin conditions. The inside part of the large seed can be toasted,
ground, and rubbed on the eyelashes and eyebrows to prevent them from falling
out.

This series of photographs, recipes, and descriptions is just the beginning
of your knowledge of the tropical fruits available season by season here in Mexico.
Each harvest time brings new and different produce to our markets. We learn as
we live here to anticipate certain local fruits at certain times of the year: fresas (strawberries) starting in
February; tiny orange-red ciruelas (plums)
late in the summer; the tejocote (similar to a small crabapple) early in
winter. There are other fruits gathered locally in the wild: the capulín
(a kind of wild cherry) and the guamúchil (a small whitish, crisp fruit
that grows on trees, in a twisted pod).

In addition, of course, we have oranges, grapefruit, pineapple, watermelon,
cantaloupe, peaches, apricots, apples, pears, grapes, and tangerines in their
seasons.
All of these well-known fruits are generally picked in season and at the peak of
ripeness here in Mexico and will cause you to lick your fingers, reach for seconds, and exclaim,
"You know, I don’t think I’ve ever really tasted one of these
before!"

The  cuisines of Mexico–and there are many–are a fantastic amalgam of indigenous corn-based
food preparations with a heavy overlay of Spanish ingredients, a strong
influence of Moorish flavors, and a lagniappe of French artifice from
the mid-19th Century. There is no one cuisine in this big country,
although some popular dishes are found in every region. Not every cook
prepares enchiladas with the same list of ingredients; tacos, although
ubiquitous in Mexico, can be different at every crowded taco stand.

Many of the herbs and spices that you use in your own North of the
Border kitchen are also used in the Mexican kitchen. Garlic, cinnamon,
oregano, and thyme are in widespread use here. Cumin, cloves, tarragon,
and mint show up frequently. Lemon grass, which we usually think of as
an ingredient in Thai or Vietnamese dishes, is commonly grown in many
parts of Mexico and is used to make tea.

A good part of the differences in the regional cuisines of
Mexico is each region’s use of herbs. Some of those herbs are
completely unknown to those of us whose familiarity with Mexican food
stops with Pepe’s Taco Hut on Main Street, USA. Pepe, whose mother’s
family emigrated to the USA from the Mexican state of Hidalgo, prepares
the restaurant’s platillos fuertes (main dishes) from recipes passed down from his abuelita
(grandmother), who lived for 97 years in the same Hidalgo village. He’s
adapted those recipes to include the ingredients he can find in the
States and to the palates of his customers.

Oregano is quite common in Mexican cooking. It can be used either fresh
or dried. A small pot of oregano in a sunny spot of your kitchen garden
will usually be plenty for all your cooking needs. If you live in a
place where the growing season is short, harvest oregano periodically
through the summer, tie the stems in small bunches, and hang upside
down in a dark place to dry. It dries very fast and retains most of its
aroma and flavor. Discard the stems and store the crisp leaves in an
airtight, lightproof containers.

Because the growing season in most parts of Mexico is almost year-round, I can always cut a fresh sprig of oregano or two to use when making spaghetti sauce, pescado a la veracruzana,
(fish prepared in the style of Veracruz) or other tomato-based sauces.
I wash the sprigs and either strip off the leaves into the pot or put
the entire sprig into the sauce for seasoning.

The Mexican kitchen uses a wide range of other herbs. The Spanish names read like a mysterious litany: albahaca, epazote, estragón, hoja santa, hierbabuena; comino, clavo, and romero. In English, they are (in order) basil, wormweed, tarragon, holy leaf, mint, cumin, cloves, and rosemary.

Epazote grows wild all over Mexico and in parts of the United States. Several months ago I paid ten pesos at the tianguis
(street market) in Ajijic for a pot of it to plant in my garden. As I
was carrying the pot home, my neighbor, Doña Mago, saw me and
exclaimed, "Porque compraste eso?" ("Why did you buy that?").

"Well, you know" I answered, "I like it to cook in my beans, to make quesadillas, for the flavor—"

"No, no, no, amiga!" she cried, and pointed a finger
toward the corner. "It grows up through the cracks in the sidewalk just
down the street. You should have asked me to show you where to find it.
You could have saved your money. When I want some, I just go over there
and cut a piece." It’s true. When I was out for a walk the next day, I
noticed for the first time the epazote plant she had mentioned.

Regardless of my profligate waste of ten pesos, I do like to cook a big sprig of epazote in a pot of beans. The herb is originally from Mexico and Central America. The indigenous language name that was given to epazote
is derived from the Nahuatl words ‘epti’ and ‘zotle’: the combined word
means ‘skunk sweat’. As you can imagine, the herb has a very strong and
distinctive flavor. According to Mexican kitchen lore, epazote also has anti-flatulent properties, which is why it’s smart to add it to the boiling bean pot.

Other plants used to give uncommon seasonings to the cuisines of Mexico are hoja de plátano (banana leaf) and hoja de aguacate
(avocado leaf). You won’t be able to run right out to your nearest
Safeway or HEB store to find these. If you live in an area where
there’s a large Asian population, you’ll find packages of frozen banana
leaves in any well-stocked Asian food market. As for avocado
leaves—well, if you or your neighbor are lucky enough to have an
avocado tree, you can just go pick some. Unfortunately there’s no
seasoning substitute for them.

Hoja santa is used extensively in Mexican cooking. It’s a large,
heart-shaped leaf that comes from a tall, bushy plant—a plant that will
take over the garden space that it’s planted in and then some, if you
let it. It’s a native of Mexico and has medicinal properties as well as
seasoning uses. The flavor of hoja santa is reminiscent of licorice.

Banana leaves are used for wrapping meats to prepare barbacoa (southeastern Mexican barbecue, cooked in a pit) and for wrapping and flavoring tamales from the Yucatán Peninsula in far southeastern Mexico. Avocado leaves are used as a flavoring agent; like hoja santa, they have a mild taste somewhat similar to licorice.

As you can see, Mexican home cooking is far more than tacos and enchiladas. The
more unusual kitchen herbs of Mexican cuisine add intense flavor
without adding that blast of spiciness that we so often mistake for the
only seasoning of Mexico.

Corn is the staple and basic food of Mexico.  It's the place to begin this culinary journey.  There's nothing  in the food cultures of the rest of North America remotely comparable to the importance of corn in Mexico. 

Corn was so important in the lives of the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs that it was elevated to a special role in the culture. Centéotl, the corn god, and Xilonen, goddess of the corn ear, played a primary role in pre-Conquest mythology and religious practices. In some Mexican villages, it's still customary to make offerings to the corn plant itself prior to planting.  Farmers offer flowers, coffee, and aguardiente (a strong alcohol distilled from sugar cane) to the seed corn, along with prayers and songs specific to the occasion.

Another Mayan legend tells that when the gods had organized the earth, the water and the animals, they then turned to creating a being who would understand the goodness of life. First they tried molding a man of clay, but he was weak and inept. Then they attempted making a man and a woman of bark, but they lacked intelligence and gratitude. Finally the gods created beings whose flesh was made of corn and had the same colors as corn. These beings could think and could thank the gods that made them.

From that day forward–right up to the present moment–corn has been central to the Mexican diet and the Mexican way of life.  Think of its infinite uses: the ubiquitous tortilla (a family of five might consume as much as a kilogram–2.2 pounds–of tortillas per person in the course of a day's meals), antojitos (little whims) made of nixtamal-ized corn, and an assortment of delicious preparations that ranges from the hundreds of varieties of tamales to tiny region-specific soup dumplings. 

Corn can be yellow, white, blue, red, green, or black.   Any housewife can soak and boil the kernels and then grind them into dough–that's nixtamal-ization.  She can cook the prepared whole kernels in rich soups.  The variety of corn most often used in today's Mexico is cacahuacintle, Nahuatl for–what else–corn.  Cacahuacintle produces large ears and soft, broad kernels and makes an excellent pozole, a rich soup traditionally prepared with nixtamal-ized corn kernels and pork meat.  In Mexico, a whole cabeza de puerco (pig's head) is the foundation of the soup's broth. 

No matter how humble, it's rare to find a meal in Mexico that does not include corn.  For desayuno (breakfast), for comida (the main meal of the day), and for cena (late supper), corn's what's on the table.  We'll be talking much more about this gift of Centéotl as time goes by.