Category: Kitchens and Cooking

Tamales for Christmas in Mexico :: It’s Never Too Early to Start Dreaming of Them!

Tamales Oaxaca style, wrapped in banana leaves. These tamales, prepared in the kitchen at Restaurante Las 15 Letras in Oaxaca, were filled with armadillo meat. They were absolutely delicious.

When I was a child, my mother would sometimes buy a glass jar (I have conveniently forgotten the brand name) packed with what we called "hot tamales". Wrapped individually in parchment paper, covered in a thin, brackish, tomato-y fluid, these slippery travesties were all I knew of tamales until I moved to Mexico.

The first Christmas season I that I lived in this country, over 40 years ago, my neighbor from across the street came to my door to deliver a dozen of her finest home-made tamales, fresh from the tamalera (tamales steamer). I knew enough of Mexico's politeness to understand that to refuse them would be an irreparable insult, but I also was guilty of what I now know as contempt prior to investigation. I did not want tamales. The memory of those childhood tamales was disgusting. I smiled and thanked her as graciously as I could.

"Pruébalos ya!" she prodded. "Taste them now!" With some hesitation I reached for a plate from the shelf, a fork from the drawer (delay, delay) and unwrapped the steaming corn husk wrapper from a plump tamal she said was filled with pork meat and red chile. One bite and I was an instant convert. My delighted grin told her everything she wanted to know. She went home satisfied, wiping her hands on her apron. I downed two more tamales as soon as she was out of sight. More than 40 years later, I haven't stopped loving them.

A three-compartment tamalera: bottom left, Oaxaca-style tamales wrapped in banana leaves. Right, central Mexico-style tamales, wrapped in corn husks.

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUWjZTAWMQU&w=350&h=315]
The 'official' voice of the ubiquitous Mexico City tamales oaxaqueños vendors. One of these carts visits our street every night at about ten o'clock.

Christmas in Mexico is a time for special festive foods. More tamales than any other food come from our Christmas kitchen. Tamales of pork, beef or chicken with spicy red chile or semi-tart green chile, tamales of rajas con queso (strips of roasted poblano chiles with cheese), and sweet pineapple ones, each with a single raisin pressed into the masa (dough), pour in a steady, steaming torrent from kitchen after kitchen.

I asked my next door neighbor what she's making for Christmas Eve dinner. "Pues, tamales,que más," she answered. "Well, tamales, what else!"

I asked the woman who cleans my house. "Pues, tamales, que más!"

I asked the woman who cuts my hair. "Pues, tamales, que más!"

And my handyman. "What's your wife making to eat for Christmas Eve, Felipe?"

I bet by now you know what he replied. "Pues,tamales, que más?"

Obviously there are other things eaten on Christmas Eve in Mexico. Some folks feast on bacalao a la vizcaína (dried salt codfish stewed with tomatoes, capers, olives, and potatoes). Some women proudly carry huge cazuelas (rustic clay casserole dishes) of mole poblano con guajolote (turkey in a complex, rich sauce of chiles, multiple toasted spices, and a little chocolate de metate (stone ground chocolate), thickened with ground tortillas) to their festive table. Some brew enormous ollas (pots) of menudo (tripe and cow's foot soup) or pozole (a hearty soup of nixtamaliz-ed cacahuatzintle, a native white corn, chiles, pork meat, and condiments) for their special Christmas Eve meal, traditionally served late on Nochebuena (Christmas Eve), after the Misa de Gallo (Midnight Mass).

As an exceptional treat, we're sharing part of a photo essay by my good friend Rolly Brook, may he rest in peace. The photo essay is all about tamales, their ingredients and preparation. Rolly's friend doña Martha cooks a whole pig head for her tamales; many cooks prefer to use maciza—the solid meat from the leg. Either way, the end result is a marvelous Christmas treat.

Doña Martha Prepares Tamales for Christmas

Doña Martha, now with Rolly in heaven, begins to take the meat off the cooked pig head.

Doña Martha mixes the shredded meat from the pig head into the pot of chile colorado (red chile sauce that she prepared earlier in the day).

Doña Martha needs a strong arm to beat freshly rendered lard into the prepared corn for the masa. The lard and ground corn must be beaten together until the mixture is as fluffy as possible.

Doña Martha's daughter spreads masa (corn dough) on the prepared hojas de maíz (corn husks).

Corn husks spread with masa, ready to be filled.

Doña Martha fills each masa-spread corn husk with meat and chile colorado.

Folding the hojas de maíz is an assembly-line process involving the whole family.

Tamales in the tamalera, ready to be steamed. Steaming takes an hour or so.

One small plateful of the finished tamales!

The photos only show part of the process of making tamales. You can access Rolly's entire photo essay on his website. A few years prior to his death, Rolly graciously allowed Mexico Cooks! the use of his wonderful pictures. Although Rolly is now having his Christmas tamales in heaven, his website is permanently on line for the benefit of anyone who needs almost any information about life in Mexico.

Can we finish all these tamales at one sitting? My friends and neighbors prepare hundreds of them with leftovers in mind. Here's how to reheat tamales so they're even better than when they first came out of the steamer.

Recalentados (Reheated Tamales)

Over a medium flame, pre-heat an ungreased clay or cast iron comal (griddle) or in a preheated heavy skillet. Put the tamales to reheat in a single layer, still in their corn husk wrappers. Let them toast, turning them over and over until the corn husks are dark golden brown, nearly black. Just when you think they're going to burn, take them off the heat and peel the husks away. The tamales will be slightly golden, a little crunchy on the edges, and absolutely out of this world delicious.

Provecho! (Good eating!)

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here to see new information: Tours

4 de December de 2021
Deliciously Spicy Picadillo, Ideal for Your Winter Table

Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz (1915-2003), a proper British woman married to Mexican diplomat César Ortiz Tinoco, learned Mexican cuisine in Mexico City, her husband's home town. She published her wonderful The Complete Book of Mexican Cooking in 1967, which introduced the English-speaking world to some of the regional cuisines of Mexico. I've cooked from this ever more raggedy, taped-together, yellowing, food-stained, still-magical paperback edition since the middle 1970s, starting years before I moved to Mexico. The first truly Mexican recipe I ever prepared was picadillo, from Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz's book. It's Mexico's traditional home-style hash.

The ingredients for picadillo are available in almost any supermarket. Starting with the bowl of ground beef and pork at lower left in the photograph and moving clockwise, you see the raw meat, Mexican cinnamon sticks, bright orange carrots all but hidden in the dish, chiles serrano, Roma tomatoes, white potatoes, a Red Delicious apple, raisins and dried cranberries, freshly dried hoja de laurel (bay leaves), a whole white onion, and, in the little dish in the right-center foreground, freshly dried Mexican oregano. I dried the bay leaves and the oregano myself, but you can make substitutions: use ground cinnamon rather than the cinnamon sticks, store-bought bay leaves, and the oregano you normally use instead of the Mexican type; the rest of the ingredients are commonplace.

Minced chile serrano and diced white onion.

Hash of all kinds is one of the most comfortable of comfort foods, and the hash called picadillo (the word means 'a little something chopped-up') is simply Mexico's slightly more rambunctious cousin. This picadillo recipe is always forgiving, always flexible. Prepare it with ground beef, ground pork, or a combination of the two meats. Use more potatoes, fewer carrots, an extra tomato (or two, if the ones you have are quite small). Don't care for olives? Leave them out. But by all means do try picadillo: it's a far cry from your mother's canned corned beef hash.

More ready-to-cook raw ingredients, left to right: diced tomatoes; peeled, diced apple; peeled, diced carrots. For size comparison's sake, the knife blade is 10.5" long.

Ingredients
1 kilo (2.2 lbs) ground pork, ground beef, or a combination of the two
3 large, ripe Roma tomatoes, diced
3 fresh chiles serrano, minced (Use less chile if your tolerance for picante (spiciness) is low.)
1 clove garlic, minced
1 medium-large white onion, peeled and diced
4 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 or 2 large Red Delicious apples OR 1 or 2 large, ripe Bartlett pears OR one of each, peeled and diced
4 medium white potatoes, peeled and diced
1 cup large green olives, with or without pimento, sliced
3/4 cup raisins, I like to use sultanas, but dark raisins are equally delicious
1 tsp dried oregano, Mexican if you have it
3 large bay leaves
2" piece of Mexican cinnamon stick OR big pinch of ground cinnamon
1 dried clove, pulverized
Freshly rendered pork lard OR vegetable oil, as needed
Sea salt to taste
Beef, chicken, or pork stock, or water, as needed

Sliced large green pimento-stuffed olives. Each of these olives measures a bit more than one inch long prior to slicing. Slice them in thirds or quarters.

Equipment
A large pot with a cover. I use a 4-quart enameled casserole.
Cutting board
Sharp knife
Large wooden spoon

Preparation
Heat 3 Tbsp lard or vegetable oil in your cooking pot until it shimmers. Add the onion and chile and sauté over medium fire until the onion is translucent. Add the ground meat and continue to sauté over medium fire until the meat is no longer pink. Break the meat into bite-size chunks as it sautés. Add the rest of the ingredients.

After sautéeing the onion, chile, and meat, add the rest of the solid ingredients to the pot and stir to incorporate them all. Then add stock or water; the liquid should come to about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the pot. Enlarge any photo for a bigger view; you'll be able to see that I used a combination of raisins and dried cranberries. I had about a quarter cup of dried cranberries on hand; a neighbor loaned me the raisins to make up the difference in measurement. The section at the bottom of the photo is blurred due to rising steam.

Cover the pot, leaving the cover just slightly ajar. Lower the heat to its lowest. Set your kitchen timer for 30 minutes and go do something else! When the timer rings, check the pot for liquid. If the picadillo has absorbed most of the original liquid, add the same amount again. With the cover ajar, continue to cook over a very low flame for another 30 minutes and correct for salt. Voilá! It's picadillo, ready to serve!

Picadillo, ready to serve after an hour's cooking. This amount of picadillo will serve 6 to 8 hungry people when served over steamed white rice or Mexican red rice. I like to prepare the picadillo recipe, serve it as a main meal, and save the rest to re-heat and serve the next day. If anything, it is even better after a night's rest–but then, aren't we all? After the second day, whatever picadillo is left freezes beautifully.

Delicious, spicy picadillo, served over rice. You and your family will love this traditional Mexican meal. By all means let me know how it goes over at your house. A huge thank you to Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz.

Provecho! (Good eating!)

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

20 de November de 2021
Carne de Cerdo en Salsa Verde (Pork in Green Sauce) :: Wonderful For Cold Weather

This recipe, initially published in 2008–13 years ago–by Mexico Cooks!, continues to be the most popular of all our articles. Any time of year, but especially in the winter months in frigid climates, you and your family and guests will relish the warmth of this delicious dish. Enjoy!

Tomatillos with their husks and fresh chiles serrano.

If you are like most cooks–Mexico Cooks! included–there are times when you want to astonish your guests with your intricate culinary skills by preparing the most complicated and time-consuming recipes you know. A seven-course Szechuan dinner that I prepared several years ago comes immediately to mind; it took me several days to recover from a full week of preparations.

Then there are other times when you want to prepare something relatively quick but still completely delicious and which will inevitably win raves from your companions at table. This recipe for pork in green salsa absolutely satisfies both requirements. It's my never-fail dish for many company dinners.

Although there are other ways to prepare the dish (griddle-roasting rather than boiling the vegetables for the sauce or leaving out the steps of flouring and browning the meat, for example), this is my favorite method.

Carne de Cerdo en Salsa Verde (Pork in Green Chile Sauce)
Six generous servings

Ingredients
Salsa verde (Green sauce)
1 pound tomatillos (known in Mexico as tomate verde), husks removed
4 or 5 whole chiles serrano, depending on your tolerance for picante (spiciness)
1/2 medium white onion, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic (optional)
1 medium bunch fresh cilantro, largest stems removed
Sea salt to taste

Fresh cilantro.

Carne de cerdo (Pork Meat)
1 kilo (2.2 pounds) very lean fresh pork butt, cut into 2" cubes
White flour
Salt
Oil or lard sufficient for frying the pork

Preparation
Salsa verde
In a large pot of water over high heat, bring the tomatillos and chiles (and garlic, if you choose to use it) to a full rolling boil. Boil just until the tomatillos begin to crack; watch them closely or they will disintegrate in the water.

Let the tomatillos and chiles (and garlic, if you like) boil until the tomatillos begin to crack.

Using a slotted spoon, scoop the cooked tomatillos, salt, and chiles into your blender jar. There's no need to add liquid at first, but reserve the liquid in which the vegetables boiled until you see the thickness of your sauce. You might want to thin it slightly and the cooking liquid will not dilute the flavor. Set the vegetables aside to cool for about half an hour. Once they are cool, cover the blender, hold the blender cap on, and blend all the vegetables, including the chopped onion, until you have a smooth sauce.

Be careful to allow the tomatillos and chiles to cool before you blend them; blending them while they are fresh from the boiling water could easily cause you to burn yourself, the hot mixture tends to react like molten lava exploding out of the blender. (Note: don't ask me how I know this.)

In the blender, the boiled and cooled tomatillos and chiles. The cilantro goes in last.

While the blender is running, remove the center of its cap and, little by little, push the cilantro into the whizzing sauce. Blend just until smooth; you should still see big flecks of dark green cilantro in the lighter green sauce. Taste for salt and correct if necessary. Reserve the sauce for later use.

Golden brown pork cubes.

Carne de Cerdo (Pork Meat)
Preheat oven to 170°C or 350°F.

Pat the 2" pork cubes as dry as possible with paper towels.

Put about 1/4 cup flour in a plastic grocery-size bag. Add 1/2 tsp salt. Melt the lard over high heat in a large heavy oven-proof casserole. While the lard is melting, shake about 1/4 of the cubed pork in the salted flour. When the oil or lard begins to smoke, add the floured pork cubes, being careful not to dump the flour into the pan. Cover the pan. As the pork cubes brown, shake another 1/4 of the pork cubes in flour and salt. Turn the pork cubes until all sides are golden brown. Remove browned cubes to a bowl and reserve. Add more floured pork to the hot lard. You may need more oil or lard as well as more salted flour. Repeat until all pork cubes are well browned. Reserve the browned pork in the same pan, scraping the crispy bits from the bottom.

Add the sauce to the pork cubes in the casserole, making sure that all the cubes are immersed in sauce. Cover and put the casserole into the oven, reducing the heat to 160°C or 325°F. Bake for two hours. Add cooking liquid from the vegetables if necessary to keep the sauce relatively thick but not sticking to the casserole. The pork will be fork-tender and the green sauce will take on a rich, deep, pork-y flavor and color.

The browned pork cubes and green sauce, ready to be baked. This particular batch of carne de cerdo en salsa verde was a little more than double the recipe included here. The recipe is very forgiving and can easily be doubled or tripled to fit the number of guests on your dinner party list. If a whole recipe is too much for your needs, make it anyway: it freezes very well.

Serve with arroz blanco (steamed white rice) or arroz a la mexicana (red rice), refried beans, a colorful, contrasting vegetable, and fresh, hot tortillas. Mexico Cooks!' money-back guarantee: everyone will come back for seconds.

Provecho!

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

13 de November de 2021
October in Michoacán :: Wildflowers and Fresh Produce at Pátzcuaro’s Municipal Market

The area around Lake Pátzcuaro, in the state of Michoacán, bursts into wildflower bloom in late September, just as the rainy season is ending here. The flowers are naturalized wild cosmos, known here as mirasoles ("look-at-the-sun"). Entire fields fill with swaths of these delicate flowers, turning our green countryside into a temporary sea of pink. Behind the mirasoles is a milpa, a field of native Michoacán corn, beans, and squash.

These beautiful blossoms, selling now at the municipal market in Pátzcuaro, are called estrellas del campo (stars of the field). From the tops of the flowers to the bottom of their thin, tender stems, they measure about two and a half feet long. Each multi-petaled bloom measure about 1.5" in diameter. I've lived in Michoacán for a long time, but this is the first year I've seen these for sale. We took three large bunches as a gift to a friend–at 15 pesos the bunch. The total for a big armful of beauty was the Mexican peso equivalent of about $2.25 USD.

Available throughout the year, the native Mexican nanche fruit is in full-blown season right now, piled high on stands around the perimeter of the Pátzcuaro municipal market and on numerous street corners all over the town. Sold in clear plastic cups (as seen in the photo, courtesy of Healthline) or by the plastic bagful, the vendor will slather these 3/4" inch diameter fruits with jugo de limón (fresh-squeezed Key lime juice), a big sprinkle of salt, and as much highly spicy bottled salsa as your mouth can handle. The biological name of the nanche is Byrsonima crassifolia.  The fruit is slightly sweet and mildly musty-flavored, a combination that most people love and that I regret to say is not a taste I enjoy at all. Nanches are packed with nourishment, though–a half-cup of them will give you nearly 60% of your daily Vitamin C requirement, 41 calories, and only 9.5 grams of carbohydrates!

These are jocotes (native Mexican plums), also in season now in central Mexico. The fruit measures about two to three inches long; the flesh is bright orange and the flavor is marvelous. Unfortunately the stone of this plum is almost as big as the entire fruit, and although you could eat it out of hand, the delicious jocote is most often made into an agua fresca (fresh fruit water) that is only available for the fruit's short season. This little plum is replete with Vitamins A and C, phosphorous, iron, and calcium, and is said to work wonders with gum problems.

A bucket of freshly made agua fresca de jocote, with whole peeled plums floating on top. It's my favorite agua fresca, and only available when these plums are in season: right now!

Who wants to take a guess at what each of the green herbs (and the vegetable) is? The elotes (tender fresh Pátzcuaro red corn) at the bottom of the photo were part of a small daily harvest brought to sell on the outdoor periphery of Pátzcuaro's market. Just to the left of the corn, at the bottom of the photo, are some mint branches that the same vendor brought for sale. But above the mint? Click on the photo to enlarge it and you'll be able to tell that these are home-grown spiny chayotes. You are probably familiar with the paler green smooth-skinned chayotes (mirliton in Louisiana, pear squash in other English-speaking locations). The chayote has an interesting growing habit: unlike most squash, which grows as a vine along the ground, the chayote is airborne–its vines grow on overhead trellises and remind me of grapevines; the small squash hangs down from the vines. It's an extremely versatile vegetable, taking on the flavors of what you cook it with. Be sure to eat the soft, tender, flat, white seed–it's considered to be the prize part and is as delicious as the chayote itself.

To the right of the chayotes is a big bunch of wild anise, known in Pátzcuaro as anisillo. Used to make the Pátzcuaro regional specialty atole de grano, this herb is tremendously flavorful. In case you find some anisillo where you are, here's a recipe for atole de grano.

Atole de Grano
(Fresh Anise-Flavored Corn Kernel Soup)

Ingredients
2 fresh ears of tender young corn
2 cups fresh corn, cut from the cob
1 bunch wild anisillo
3 liters water
2 whole chiles perón (or substitute chiles poblano)
1/2 pound recently ground corn masa (dough)–ask at the tortillería near you
Salt to taste

Garnishes
1/2 medium white onion, minced
Chile serrano or chile perón, minced
Fresh Key limes, cut in half
Sea salt

Preparation
1. Clean the ears of corn, remove the silk and cut off the ends. Cut each ear into three pieces.

2. Boil the corn on the cob AND the corn kernels in enough water, for an hour and a half or until the corn is tender.

3. Cut the stem away from the chiles, take out the seeds and veins. Cut the chiles into small pieces.

4. In the blender, liquify the chiles, the anisillo, and the masa with two cups of water. Strain and add to the pot where the corn on the cob is cooking.

5. Allow to boil gently for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid is slightly thickened.

To serve
1. Place sections of the cooked corn ears into bowls.

2. Ladle soup and corn kernels into the bowls.

3. Serve with the minced onion, minced chile to taste, sea salt, and Key lime halves to squeeze into the soup.

Serves 2 people as a main dish, 3 as a first course. This soup is both vegetarian and vegan, and gluten-free.

Atole de grano, made in a cazo (large copper kettle).

The vendor at this small booth at the Pátzcuaro market had an interesting variety of things for sale. Bottom right are fresh guavas, just now coming into season. To the left of the guavas are chiles perón (aka chiles manzano), arguably the most-used chile in this part of Michoacán. Above the chiles perón are fresh, green chiles de árbol. To the right are wild mushrooms known as patita de pájaro (little bird foot). These mushrooms, growing wild in Michoacán's woods and foraged during the rainy season, make a wonderful mushroom soup.

These are home-grown loquats, known in Mexico as nísperos (NEE-speh-rohs). Nísperos are local and are plentiful in markets right now.

Gelatin–this large cupful is called "mosaíco"–mosaic, because of its many colored cubes. More gelatin is eaten in Mexico than in any other country of the world! A cupful this size is usually an eat-while-you-walk snack food. This one was made and sold from a tiny cart with no name, just to one side of the Pátzcuaro market. The young woman selling the gelatins said her name was Yesi–I said her cart was now dubbed Gelatinas Yesi, and she laughed.

Just at the corner of the market, we bumped into don Rafael, who was selling–you guessed it–cotton candy. Cotton candy HAS no season, it's always available here. Get the blue, it will turn your lips and tongue blue as a blueberry, but just for a while.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

23 de October de 2021
Pan de Muerto :: Bread of the Dead. Now In Season at a Bakery Near You

Pan de muerto! This seasonal bread starts making an appearance in Mexico bakeries as early as the end of August, but the majority is made and sold between mid-October and the first week of November, just in time for one to enjoy for breakfast (with a cup of hot chocolate, or an atole, or an herbal tea–or for supper (with a cup of ditto that list), or just because you want one and you want it now! At the end of the article, I've added a photo of my all-time favorite pan de muerto, produced here in Morelia, Michoacán, where I have been living for the last several years.

Pan de muerto (a special bread for Day of the Dead), almost ready for the oven at Panadería Maque, Calle Ozululama 4, at the corner of Calle Citlatépetl, Colonia La Condesa.

Late in October, a bread baker I know suggested that in honor of Mexico's Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), we go poking around in bakeries. Pan de muerto is one of the traditional treats set out on altars to entice the spirits of the dead back for a visit with the living, and every bakery has its own recipe. As it happened, neither of us had a lot of time on the appointed day, so we made a list of eight spots to visit in Colonia La Condesa. We set off on foot with high hopes of finding sublime breads.

The family-size pan de muerto at Panadería Maque, wrapped in cellophane and ready to go home with you. We calculated that it would serve eight or more people, with a good-sized slice or more for each person. A few years ago, this size cost just under 400 pesos.

Our first stop–we arranged our bakeries in a big oval starting with the one closest to Mexico Cooks!' home and ending as near as possible to the same spot–was at Panadería Maque. Maque is a several-bakery/coffee shop chain open from 8AM breakfast to 10PM, when it serves a light supper. We were impressed by the big crowd at the outdoor and indoor tables, the long line waiting to be seated, and the bustling wait staff whizzing by with coffee, great-looking sandwiches, and lots of pan de muerto. We took some photos and made a note to return for breakfast another morning when we both had more time.

Not on our list but in our path, at the corner of Calle Ozululama and Av. Amsterdam: Louis Robledo's Tout Chocolat, where the pan de muerto was made with chocolate. Jane bought one hot out of the oven to take home. She also bought each of us a delicious macarrón. They were very nearly as good as the ones I tried last spring in Paris.

Next on our list was Panadería La Artesa, at Alfonso Reyes 203, corner Calle Saltillo. Mexico Cooks! often stops at La Artesa for baguettes and pan de agua, both of which are good but not spectacularly so. The owner noticed that both my companion and I had cameras with us; he started berating us loudly with, "No photos! No photos! Put the cameras away!" We opted to leave without an interview and obviously without photos.

As we strolled along, we noticed this sign: MANDUCA. Recently opened at Calle Nuevo León 125-B, this terrific bakery was also not on our list–but what a find! Trendy but not precious, all its bread is baked on the premises.

Real bread! Manduca's delightful manager, Alejandra Miranda Medina, told us that the baker is German.

We couldn't leave; hunger suddenly overcame our need to step lively. My friend ordered a pan de muerto and coffee; I asked for one of the pretzel bread individual loaves and butter. The pretzel bread was marvelous, the heavily anise-flavored pan de muerto a little less so. The outside seating (there are also tables inside) was comfortable and pleasant.

Manduca's pan de muerto enticed us to stay, but each of us prefers this bread with more orange flavor and a lighter touch of anise.

We continued to meander down Calle Nuevo León, looking for Panadería La Victoria, our next destination.

La Victoria, at Calle Nuevo León 50 (almost at the corner of Calle Laredo), bills its style as Rioplatense (from the River Plate area that lies between Argentina and Uruguay) rotisserie and bakery. The chef is from Uruguay. These little sweet breads, called vigilantes (watchmen), are filled with a sweetened creamy cheese and topped with ate de membrillo (sweet quince paste). In Uruguay, these are said to be the favorite sweet bread of policemen–hence vigilantes.

Pan de muerto available at La Victoria. These mini-breads (compare them with the ordinary size of the tongs at the right of the photo) are just the right size for two or three bites.

We spent a few minutes looking for Panadería Hackl (Calle Atlixco 100, between Calles Campeche and Michoacán, but realized distance and our rapidly disappearing time meant that we would have to come back another day.

We walked through Fresco by Diego (Fernando Montes de Oca 23, near the corner of Calle Tamaulipas), which offers some breads but is primarily a restaurant.

Our last stop was Pastelería Suiza, at Parque España 7 (between Calles Oaxaca and Sonora). It's a 70-year-old Mexico City institution with several sucursales (branches); this location is the original. Mention this bakery to almost anyone in the city who loves pan dulce (sweet bread) in and the response will be a sigh of blissful longing.

On November 2, the only bread for sale at Pastelería Suiza was pan de muerto, and the only pan de muerto left, in several sizes, was split horizontally and stuffed with a huge schmear of nata (thick sweet cream). It looked like the Holy Grail of pan de muerto. I could not resist buying two individual-size panes de muerto to take home.

You choose your bread, take it to the wrapping station, pick up your ticket, pay at the cashier, and then go back for your bread. The wrapping staff put the pan on a tray, then surrounded it with a cardboard collar.

Wrapped up in paper and string, the package has a come-hither look equal to the bread itself.

We could hardly wait–the Pastelería Suiza pan de muerto and a cup of hot tea would be our cena (supper) that night.

The verdict? The thick mound of nata was quite honestly an overkill of creamy sweetness. And the bread itself? The texture was wrong, more like a dry, crumbly, unpleasant muffin than like traditional pan de muerto. The bread had no flavor–not a drop of orange, not a drop of anise, nothing. It was a tremendous disappointment. Big sigh…but not blissful in the least.

So, you might ask: you walked all over Colonia La Condesa, you sniffed breads, you tasted breads, and nothing really satisfied Your Pickiness. What now?

A few days prior to Mexico's Día de los Muertos, another companion and I stopped at what is essentially a corner bakery, located at the corner of Av. Insurgentes and Av. Baja California, hard by the Metro station a couple of blocks from my apartment. Panificadora La Espiga (the Spike of Wheat breadmaker) is large but ordinary, with not much to recommend it other than its proximity to the house. A seasonal craving for pan de muerto had us by the innards, though, and we bought two small ones. They looked generic, with the traditional sprinkle of sugar: no nata, no chocolate, nothing special at all.

Pan de muerto, La Espiga.

When I tasted the pan de muerto, I was surprised. My exclamation was, "A poco!" (Are you kidding me? I don't believe it!) The texture was dense, slightly layered, and moist. The not-too-sweet flavor leaned toward the orange, with just a hint of anise. Who could have guessed! It was perfect. My friend and I had wandered far afield, spent time and money in all those uppity Condesa bakeries, and even before our pan de muerto crawl, I had already tried the best bread of the bunch.

Now for the 2021 update, direct to you from Morelia, Michoacán! A week or so ago, we went to visit our wonderful friend Beto at Beto Chef Michoacano–and lo and behold, he and Lalo had at least two trays of pan de muerto, just about ready to take out of his wood-fired beehive oven. We sat down to wait for a minute and he set a plate of two hot-from-the-oven chocolate conchas (a sweet bread crowned with a sweet chocolate topping) in front of us–just to keep us happy until the pan de muerto finished baking. We split one, eating two would have been truly sinful. The concha was excellent, the crown made from chocolate de metate (local stone-ground chocolate) and the bread itself outstanding. And then…and then…pan de muerto, hot from the oven, to take home! We were too full from the concha to eat the pan de muertos right then and there, but we ate one for breakfast the next morning and I am here to tell you, it was PERFECT. The flavor was just the right delectable combination of orange and anise and yeast, the bread was just the right texture and consistency. There's a saying in Mexico: como Dios manda–it means "the way God intends–and this was 100% IT for pan de muerto. If you're in or near Morelia, head on over to see Beto and buy pan de muerto for you and your family and friends. Beto charges $15 pesos for one of the panes in the photo below; that's about the US dollar equivalent of 75 cents apiece. Buy a dozen, buy two dozen! Give some to your pals! Freeze some! And please give Beto a hug from Mexico Cooks!.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

16 de October de 2021
Three Thousand Years of the Traditional Mexican Kitchen :: Tres Mil Años de la Cocina Tradicional Mexicana

A drawing from the 16th century Florentine Codex showing the pre-Hispanic making of tortillas. The utensils the woman uses for the preparation of tortillas de maíz (corn tortillas) are the same utensils that are used today–3000 years from the time tortilla-making was begun. That's not a typo: 3000 years. Tamales came first, about 4000 years ago, and after them came tortillas, their younger relations. The olla (clay pot in the foreground) was used for nixtamaliz-ing corn (processing dried corn kernels in a hot water and calcium hydroxide bath). The woman is using a metate (volcanic rock grinding stone) and its metlapil (like a rock rolling pin) to grind the nixtamalize-d corn (and some of its water) into dough. To the right in the drawing is a comal (clay griddle), used to cook the tortillas over an open wood fire; the three circular items around the comal are, as far as I know, supposed to represent the rocks that support the comal above the flames. Drawn above the comal is a molcajete (volcanic rock round grinding bowl, like a mortar) and its mano (the pestle used to do the grinding). ALL of these utensils continue to be used in today's traditional Mexican kitchen.

This 1924 painting by Diego Rivera represents the same activities drawn in the Florentine Codex–plus the indigenous man tending a corn plant–that show us the preparation of a tortilla from its beginnings as a plant through the grinding of the dried, nixtamalize-d corn, to the woman wearing a head covering patting the testal (the round ball of masa (corn dough) from which a tortilla is formed, to the woman toasting tortillas on a comal.

The clay comal that I bought from its maker and use in my modern kitchen. Its diameter is fourteen inches, plus the slightly elevated sides. Compare it with the comal shown in the painting above.

A Mexican kitchen circa 1830s, painted by the French artist Theubet de Beauchamps. Note that the woman grinding corn on the metate is kneeling on a woven palm mat known as a petate. A small-ish petate was used as a kneeling mat, a larger one was used as a sleeping mat in lieu of aa different kind of bed. At the end of life, a person with very few financial resources would be rolled up and buried in his or her sleeping petate. In the center of the painting, behind the tall clay jug, you can see the fire built in a fogón (the circle of rocks) and the comal where the tortillas are toasting.

I took this photo approximately 10 years ago. The style of clothing has changed, but the rest remains the same.

This Mexican kitchen photo dates to circa 1850. The artist is unknown, although prints of the painting are widely available today (even at Walmart, to give you an idea of how well-known and commonplace it is). This is a typical kitchen of the period, one that would have been in the home of a fairly well-off family. I would wager a guess that both of these women are indigenous servants, not members of the home's family. These kitchens are still in use today, in some homes; friends of mine here in Morelia have a close-to-identical 19th century kitchen in their home.

The arches at ground level are for storing firewood; the square holes beneath the stove's surface are for burning the wood to cook the food. The clay pots, all of which have rounded bottoms, fit into the holes on the surface of the stove; today, stoves in modern homes have gas or electric burners. The woman standing at the stove and wrapped in a rebozo (long rectangular shawl used for warmth and a multitude of other things) is wielding a ventilador–the typical hand-woven palm fan used to blow air into the fire.

The shelf above the woman kneeling on the floor can be lowered and raised by a primitive pulley; that shelf is used to store staples like dried ears of corn, wheat flour, sugar, salt, chunks of cal (calcium hydroxide), chunks of tequesquite (a naturally-occurring leavening agent), and some other things that one would want small rodents to access. The large clay vessel on the floor to the left of the painting holds potable water; the small clay jar next to it is used to take water
out of the large jar. The woman grinding corn at the metate is kneeling on a petate, which is hidden by her voluminous skirts. At the time this painting was made, there was usually no ventilation (flues, chimneys, etc.–and usually no windows) for removing wood smoke from a kitchen. These middle-19th century kitchens in well-off homes had actual STOVES, a new-fangled convenience compared to cooking directly over a wood fire on the ground. In poor homes and/or in rural areas, open-fire cooking was done both outside in a patio and inside on the kitchen's dirt floor. Obviously huge amounts of smoke billowed everywhere, including into the cocinera's (cook's) eyes and lungs. These circumstances are still very common today in rural zones.

A Mexican kitchen dating to the end of the 19th century. The household collection of hand-hammered copper cazuelas (cooking pans) hangs on the wall above the table, and there's one on the floor, center stage. The two women on the right are handling a live turkey–native to Mexico–and the kitchen cat is peering around the corner of the stove. This kitchen is remarkable for its ventilation and light.

Two cocineras tradicionales (traditional cooks) from the state of Michoacán, where I live, are cooking on a wood-burning stove built of adobe (mud and straw) with an outer coating of yeso (plaster), in this case a thick layer of plaster, and painted with the oxidized brick color that was as far as I have seen the most common color used for this type stove. Alberto Ríos Szalay took this photo within the last ten years.

This kitchen still exists in Casa Zuno, which was built starting in 1923 in Guadalajara, Jalisco. This elaborate and elegant home belonged to José Guadalupe Zuno Hernández, who was governor of the state of Jalisco at the time the house was built. He and his wife donated the house to the University of Guadalajara. From 1993 until today, it has been the seat of the Historic Archives of the city and state. Above the stove are typical pottery decorations that are common in a kitchen of the era. All photos by Mexico Cooks! unless otherwise credited.

The kitchen at Casa Azul, the Frida Kahlo museum in Mexico City. The home was built in 1904 and opened as a museum in 1958, retaining the family furnishings and decorations. Above the stove (blue painted with yellow diamond shapes), you can see tiny pots forming the names "Frida" (to the left) and "Diego" (to the right). Above the window are doves stretching a large ribbon between their beaks.

Here's an early 20th century addition to one Mexican kitchen: a wood-burning beehive oven tucked into the corner. Most kitchen work in this era continued to be done on the floor, rather than at a table or a counter. Most ovens were built outside the kitchen, in the patio, to avoid the intense heat they generated.

Above is the room dedicated to the traditional Michoacán kitchen at the Museo de Artes y Oficios (Museum of Arts and Trades) in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. The stove is free-standing in the middle of the room, rather than having been built against a wall. Above the shelves at the end of the room, you can see a banner made of little pots (and again held by doves).

The kitchen in the family home of the painter Rodolfo Morales (RIP). Morales lived in this house in Ocotlán, Oaxaca, from his birth in 1925 until his death in 2001. It's one of my favorite Mexican kitchens–filled to bursting with pots ranging from the tiniest to the largest. Click on the photo to enlarge it; you can see that the stove burners have been converted from wood to gas.

Finally, here is an outdoor kitchen in a rural area of Michoacán. Built to use for cooking in the heat of spring (the hottest time of year in this part of Michoacán is from late March until late May), you can click on this photo (or on any of the photos on Mexico Cooks!)
to get a better look at their detail. At the left of this photo, you will see the steam in the air from a pot of cooking beans. When I took this picture, about 13 years ago, I knew this was soon to be a vestige of an earlier time, a beautiful remnant of Mexico's past and present.

I hope you have enjoyed this time travel, from the beginning of the recorded history of Mexico's traditional kitchen right up until today. If you'd like to tour with me, take a look at the link below and let's make a plan.

Looking for a tailored-to-your-interests specialized tour in Mexico? Click here: Tours.

9 de October de 2021