Category: Mexican Markets

Pan Dulce in Mexico :: Take Two, They’re Small

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

When my mother, may she rest in peace, first 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 and anyone visiting her consumed: white, rye, whole wheat, pumpernickel, sourdough, French baguette, and esoteric ethnic loaves that she just had to try. Mother wanted to see how bread was made in Mexico. At my suggestion, she even brought her baking apron for her stay here, hoping to push her floury hands deep into some yeasty dough.

In those years, there was a tiny and excellent bakery just a block from my house. In a room to the side of his house, through a semi-secret door at the back of his garage, don Pedro turned out hundreds of pieces of pan dulce every day. Shortly after Mom's arrival, I took her to meet don Pedro, the master baker, and his helpers.

Don Pedro spoke no English and my mother spoke no Spanish, but I interpreted between them and they discovered that they were soul mates. 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. The day before Mother was to leave for home, she asked to go back to the bakery to say goodbye to don Pedro. They both wept because she was leaving and insisted that pictures be taken before they exchanged farewell hugs. Such is the bond of bread. Don Pedro and my mother have both passed away, and I hope they've had a chance to hug one another again in the más allá (the great beyond).

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, local ovens disgorge mountains of pan dulce destined for tiny corner mom-n-pop stores or for sale hot from the ovens to individuals who know just when to arrive.

For a few pesos, an early breakfast of this hot, slightly sweet 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.

If you've never visited a Mexican bakery—a bakery where the breads are baked right on the premises, not brought in from a central bakery—you have a real treat in store. One of my favorite bakeries is owned by the Rojas family in Ajijic, Jalisco. When the bolillos (crusty, dense, 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.

The Rojas brothers, long-time bakers at Panadería Rojas in Ajijic, Jalisco. Photo courtesy Semanario Laguna.

At the Rojas bakery, the bakers will help you select the breads you want–if you don't know the bread by name, you just point and tell them how many. 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 intoxicating yeasty, sugary smells.

One of my favorite bakery excursions 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.

Very lightly sweetened biscochos are similar to biscuits.

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).

Niño envuelto on the left, besos on the right.

The loaded shelves at the Panadería El Resobado, in Coatepec, Veracruz. On this trip, my companions and I bought quite a bit of pan dulce and even though it had been highly recommended to us, we decided we really didn't care for it. The bread is baked in wood-fired ovens and tasted extremely heavily–and unpleasantly–of wood smoke. What a disappointment!

Mexican Wedding Cookies (Polvorones de Nuez). Photo courtesy Storethisnotthat.

Here's a familiar and delicious recipe for a traditional Mexican sweet bread.

Polvorones de Nuez

Mexican Wedding Cookies

Preheat oven to 275 degrees.

Ingredients
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

Procedure
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 un-greased 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 these sweet breads, she shook her head emphatically. "Oh no, señora, we always love the pan." Here, Edith is holding a huge rosca de reyes, the bread eaten on January 6, the Feast of the Three Kings.

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?

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

6 de April de 2019
Visit a Market in Paris–Yes, France–and Another in Mexico City. Celebrate the Similarities, Celebrate the Differences

A few Springs ago, Mexico Cooks! traveled to Paris–yes, that Paris–with a specific mission: to compare markets in the French capital with markets in Mexico City, Mexico’s capital. As for the photo above, well…you know what that is!

Prior to traveling to Paris, Mexico Cooks! had arranged a Parisian meeting over dinner (mais oui, what else!) with California foodie expat Randy Díaz. Randy invited several of his friends to join us and we had a marvelous evening at Le Casse Noix.

The lovely and tremendously knowledgeable French Market Maven (Marie Z. Johnston) at the incomparable Graineterie du Marché, a small shop on the square occupied by the Marché d’Aligre, Paris. Loui Franke and the peripatetic Mr. Pidds, whose attention was grabbed by an operatic canary, were along as well.

One of Randy’s friends at our dinner was the delightful Marie Z. Johnston. She very generously offered to take me shopping at her favorite Paris market. Oh joy! My first thoughts were, what will I see that compares with the tianguis (Mexican street market) where I shop every week? And what will I see that I’ve never seen in Mexico?

The Mexican tianguis is simply a moveable market. In my Mexico City neighborhood, three separate tianguis occur every week. In Paris, we visited the Marché d’Aligre, which sets up in the same square six days a week and also has a brick-and-mortar building alongside the square. Many fruits and vegetables are the same in both Paris and Mexico City, but for the rest–vive la difference!

In Mexico, we are limited to one or at most two varieties of tomatoes. But there is really NO limit to the kinds of fresh and dried chiles we can buy! The plum tomatoes in the photo above are accompanied by (from the far left, top shelf) fresh, tiny orange chile habanero, long thin green chile de árbol, fatter chile jalapeño, smaller and spicier chile serrano, and (at top right) yellow-orange chile manzano. The chile manzano, just a bit bigger than a golf ball, is nearly as hot as the habañero, which is considered by many to be the world’s hottest chile. It is the only chile in the world with black seeds.

At the Marché d’Aligre, this whole box was filled with different kinds of tomatoes, including some heirloom varieties. But there wasn’t a chile to be had.

At my tianguis: to the left, standard round, large Mexican rabanitos (radishes), which in Mexico are eaten out of hand or are thinly sliced and sprinkled as a condiment in certain kinds of hot soup. To the right, a bunch of huauzontle, a pre-hispanic vegetable that looks just a little like broccoli. It’s completely unknown in France and the rest of Europe.

At the Marché d’Aligre, a crate of tender and beautiful red and white French radishes–often eaten with a smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt.

Flor de calabaza (squash blossoms) are sold by the large bunch in Mexico. They can be cut up in soups, stuffed and fried, or used in several other ways. Trivia tidbit: only the male blossoms are cut and sold, the female blossoms are allowed to develop into a zucchini-like squash.

At the Marché d’Aligre, I had to ask what this was. Even after reading the sign, I was puzzled. It’s wild asparagus! And behind the wild version, the ubiquitous thick, white French asparagus. ‘Twas the season, and asparagus was everywhere. We only occasionally see fresh asparagus in Mexico, and when it is available it costs el ojo de la cara (the eye out of your face)-the Mexican version of “an arm and a leg”.

Fruits in Mexico can be completely different from fruits in Paris. For example, on the top shelf of my neighborhood tianguis fruit stand are small cups of granada china (pomegranate) seeds, already removed from the fruit and ready to eat with one of those little pink spoons. On the bottom row are large cups of cut up sandía (watermelon), fresh, sweet, already-peeled tunas (cactus fruit), and a mixed cup of mango, melón (cantaloupe), papaya, and fresas (strawberries).

At my tianguis, a typical display of (foreground) fresh Mexican papaya, bananas (top left), jícama, mangos, and peel-on tunas (bottom right).

In Paris, a number of Marché d’Aligre vendors offered Cavaillon melon, similar to cantaloupe but with a definite panache and a fame of its own. The green-striped melons look so beautiful in their bright-red tissue paper.

It was cherry season in France–look at these beauties! We sometimes see black bing cherries in Mexico, but the yellow and red cherries on the right in the photo are unheard of here. In France, I bought a kilo of the addictive black cherries for 5€ (about $6.00USD). In Mexico, I recently saw them offered for 20 pesos (about $1.50USD) for a tiny bagful. But as I said: addictive. I had to buy some.

Unknown in France, considered a plague in the United States, and prized as a delicacy in Mexico: huitlacoche (corn fungus). It’s sometimes called the Mexican truffle.

These are unknown in Mexico, but coeurs-de-boeuf (beef heart) tomatoes are much sought-after in France. What a color, what a shape, and what a flavor!

These tomatoes are endemic to Oaxaca. Called jitomate riñón (kidney-shaped tomatoes) they are smaller than the French coeurs-de-boeuf variety but bear a strong resemblance to it.

Peonies and primroses at the Marché d’Aligre. We do see primroses in Mexico, but peonies do not grow here.

Wild orchids grow on trees in Mexico’s mountains–and I am not certain, but I suspect that there are none at all in Paris.

Isn’t the diversity of our world wonderful? As I said before, vive la difference! Viva la diferencia! Long live our differences!

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

30 de March de 2019
Touring with Mexico Cooks :: An Unforgettable Experience, Stories That Live in Your Mind and Heart

This little boy's mother and I thought he would be terrified by the pig heads hung up in one of the pork stands at a Mexico City market. On the contrary, he was fascinated! Two seconds after I took the picture, he leaned over and kissed the snout. We all laughed, even the vendors.

One of the great pleasures of my life is the number of tours Mexico Cooks! gives to lots of excited tourists. Small, specialized tours are a joy to organize: the participants generally have common interests, a thirst for knowledge, and a hunger for–well, for Mexico Cooks!' tour specialty: food and its preparation. Touring a food destination (a street market in Michoacán, an enclosed market in Guadalajara, a crawl through some Mexico City street stands, or meals in a series of upscale restaurants) is about far more than a brief look at a fruit, a vegetable, or a basket of freshly made tortillas.

A Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, street vendor holds out a partially unwrapped tamal de trigo (wheat tamal). It's sweetened with piloncillo (Mexican raw sugar) and a few plump raisins, wrapped in corn husks, and steamed. Taste? It's all but identical to a bran muffin, and every tour participant enjoyed a pinch of it.

A tour planned to your specifications can lead you to places you didn't know you wanted to go, but that you would not have missed for the world. Here, a tour participant talks with the man who makes these enormous adobe bricks. He let her try to pick up the laden wheelbarrow. She could barely get its legs off the ground! He laughed, raised the handles, and whizzed away with his load.

Several times in recent years, small groups wanted to tour traditional bakeries in Mexico City. The photo shows one tiny corner of the enormous Pastelería La Ideal in the Centro Histórico. Just looking at the photo brings the sweet fragrances back to mind. And never mind the taste of the delicious pastries!

Ramon and Annabelle Canova wanted an introduction to how ordinary people live and shop in Guadalajara. We spent a highly entertaining morning at the Tianguis del Sol, a three-times-a-week outdoor market in Zapopan, a suburb of Guadalajara. Our first stop was for breakfast, then we shopped for unusual produce, fresh spices, and other goodies that the Canovas don't often see in their home town. Annabelle said she felt right at home because so much of the style and flavor of this market was similar to what she experienced in the markets near her home town in the Philippines.

We went for comida (main meal of the day) to the original location of Guadalajara's Karne Garibaldi. The restaurant does one thing–carne en su jugo (meat in its juice)–and does it exceptionally well. The food is plentiful, delicious, and affordable. The place is always packed, and usually has a line to get in!

Ramon wanted to try tejuino, a regional specialty in the Guadalajara area. Mixed when you order it, the refreshing, lightly fermented drink is thickened with masa de maíz (corn dough) and served with a pinch of salt and a small scoop of lemon ice.

Pillars of nopal cactus paddles, taller than a man, at Mercado de la Merced, Mexico City. La Merced is the largest retail market in Mexico, if not in all of Latin America. It's the ultimate market experience and just a partial tour takes the best part of a morning. Comfortable walking shoes are a necessity–let's go!

A more intimate, up-close-and-personal Mexico City market tour takes us through the Mercado San Juan. The San Juan is renowned for its gourmet selection of meats, fish and shellfish, cheeses, and wild mushrooms–among a million other things you might not expect to find.

Pepitorias are a sweet specialty of Mexico's capital city. Crunchy and colorful obleas (wafers) enclose sticky syrup and squash seeds. Mexico Cooks!' tour groups usually try these at the Bazar Sábado in San Ángel.

Lovely and fascinating people and events are around almost any Mexican corner. The annual Festival Internacional de Música de Morelia opens every year with several blocks of carpets made of flowers. Residents of Patamban, Michoacán work all night to create the carpets for the festival. This piano is made entirely of plant material. Enlarge any picture for a closer view.

Entire flowers, fuzzy pods, and flower petals are used to create the carpets' ephemeral beauty and design; these carpets last two days at most.

In November 2012, one of Mexico Cooks!' tours was dazzled by a special Morelia concert given by Tania Libertad. With Tania is Rosalba Morales Bartolo, a fabulous traditional cook from San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro, Michoacán, who, in the name of the state, presented the artist with various handcrafted items–including the lovely coral necklace and rebozo (shawl) that Tania is wearing.

No matter where we start our tour and no matter what we plan together for your itinerary, a Mexico Cooks! tour always includes a terrific surprise or two, special memories to take home, and the thirst for more of Mexico. Marvey Chapman had a wonderful time! By all means come and enjoy a tour!

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

16 de March de 2019
Special Lenten Foods in Mexico :: Lent (Cuaresma), March 6 Until April 18, 2019

One year during Lent in Chiapas, Mexico Cooks! ate tortitas de papa (potato croquettes, left) and frijoles negros (black beans, right), ideal for a Lenten meal.

Catholic Mexicans observe la Cuaresma (Lent), the 40-day (excluding Sundays) penitential season that precedes Easter, with special prayers, vigils, and with extraordinary meatless meals cooked only on Ash Wednesday and during Lent. Many Mexican dishes–seafood, vegetable, and egg–are normally prepared without meat, but some other meatless dishes are particular to Lent. Known as comida cuaresmeña, many of these delicious Lenten foods are little-known outside Mexico and some other parts of Latin America.

Many observant Catholics believe that the personal reflection and meditation demanded by Lenten practices are more fruitful if the individual refrains from heavy food indulgence and makes a promise to abstain from other common habits such as eating candy, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol.

Atole de grano, a Michoacán specialty made of tender corn and licorice-scented anís, is a perfect cena (supper) for Lenten Fridays.

Lent began this year on Ash Wednesday, March 6. Shortly before, certain food specialties began to appear in local markets.Vendors are currently offering very large dried shrimp for caldos (broths) and tortitas (croquettes), perfect heads of cauliflower for tortitas de coliflor (cauliflower croquettes), seasonal romeritos, and thick, dried slices of bolillo (small loaves of white bread) for capirotada (a kind of bread pudding).

This common Lenten preparation is romeritos en mole.  Romeritos, an acidic green vegetable, are in season at this time of year. Although romeritos look a little like rosemary, their consistency is soft and their taste is relatively sour, more like verdolagas (purslane).

Here are raw romeritos that I saw recently at the Mercado de Jamaica in Mexico City.You can see that they do look like rosemary, but the thin leaves are soft, more like a succulent.

You'll usually see tortitas de camarón (dried shrimp croquettes) paired for a Friday comida (midday meal) with romeritos en mole, although they are sometimes bathed in a caldillo de jitomate (tomato broth) and served with sliced nopalitos (cactus paddles).

During Lent, the price of fish and seafood in Mexico goes through the roof due to the huge seasonal demand for meatless meals. These beautiful huachinango (red snapper) come from Mexico's Pacific coast.

Chef Martín Rafael Mendizabal of La Trucha Alegre in Zitacuaro, Michoacán, prepared trucha deshuesada con agridulce de guayaba (boned trout with guava sweet and sour sauce) for the V Encuentro de Cocina Tradicional de Michoacán held annually in Morelia. The dish would be ideal for an elegant Lenten dinner.

Capirotada (kah-pee-roh-TAH-dah, Lenten bread pudding) is almost unknown outside Mexico. Simple to prepare and absolutely delicious, it's hard to eat it sparingly if you're trying to keep a Lenten abstinence! This photo shows capirotada as served by Carmen Titita Ramírez Degollado at the El Bajío restaurants in Mexico City.

Every family makes a slightly different version of capirotada: a pinch more of this, leave out that, add such-and-such.  Mexico Cooks! prefers to leave out the apricots and add dried pineapple. Make it once and then tweak the recipe to your preference–but please do stick with traditional ingredients.

A huge pile of piloncillo for sale at the Mercado de Jamaica. On the left are large cones of light brown piloncillo, in the middle are small cones, and on the right are large cones of dark brown piloncillo. You choose which you want!

CAPIROTADA (Mexican Bread Pudding)

Ingredients

*4 bollilos, in 1" slices (small loaves of dense white bread)
5 stale tortillas
150 grams pecans
50 grams prunes
100 grams raisins
200 grams peanuts
100 grams dried apricots
1 large apple, peeled and sliced thin
100 grams grated Cotija cheese
Peel of one orange, divided for two uses
*3 cones piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar)
Four 3" pieces of Mexican stick cinnamon
2 cloves
Butter
Salt

*If you don't have bolillo, substitute slices of very dense French bread. If you don't have piloncillo, substitute 1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar.

A large metal or clay baking dish.

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 300°F.

Toast the bread and spread with butter. Slightly overlap the tortillas in the bottom and along the sides of the baking dish to make a base for the capirotada. Prepare a thin syrup by boiling the piloncillo in 2 1/2 cups of water with a few shreds of cinnamon sticks, 2/3 of the orange peel, the cloves, and a pinch of salt.

Place the layers of bread rounds in the baking dish so as to allow for their expansion as the capirotada cooks. Lay down a layer of bread, then a layer of nuts, prunes, raisins, peanuts and apricots. Continue until all the bread is layered with the rest. For the final layer, sprinkle the capirotada with the grated Cotija cheese and the remaining third of the orange peel (grated). Add the syrup, moistening all the layers little by little. Reserve a portion of the syrup to add to the capirotada in case it becomes dry during baking.

Bake uncovered until the capirotada is golden brown and the syrup is absorbed. The bread will expand as it absorbs the syrup. Remember to add the rest of the syrup if the top of the capirotada looks dry, and reserve plenty of syrup to pour over each serving.

Cool the capirotada to room temperature. Do not cover until it is cool; even after it is cooled, leave the top ajar.

Try very hard not to eat the entire pan of capirotada at one sitting!

A positive thought for this Lent: give up discouragement, be an optimist.

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

9 de March de 2019
The Traditional Mexican Kitchen :: Is It Authentic, or What?

I wrote and first published this article in 2010, in response to inquiries from readers who were confused about other authors' articles about "What is authentic Mexican food?" The subject has come up again and again, most recently in comments and queries from readers and food professionals about Mexican and other cuisines. I still stand behind what I wrote nearly 10 years ago.

"Real" Mexican chile relleno (stuffed, battered, and fried chile poblano), caldillo de jitomate (thin tomato broth), and frijoles negros (black beans). Notice that the chile is not suffocated with globs of melted cheese.

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 to those in Mexico).

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 blind man, 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. I contend that if you haven't experienced what most writers 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 in my opinion, "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. And Señora Martínez in Mexico makes yet another version of tuna salad, very different from any I've eaten in the USA.

Carne de puerco en salsa verde (pork meat in green sauce), a traditional recipe as served at the restaurant Fonda Margarita in Mexico City.

Carne de puerco en salsa verde from the Mexico Cooks! home kitchen. The preparation looks similar to that at Fonda Margarita, but I tweak a thing or two that make the recipe my personal tradition, different from the restaurant's.

As you can see, the descriptor I 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 northern part of Mexico, in Mexico City, 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 considered 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.

A nearly 200-year-old tradition in Mexico that shows up every September: chiles en nogada (stuffed chiles poblano in a creamy sauce made with fresh (i.e., recently harvested) walnuts. It's the Mexican flag on your plate: green chile poblano, creamy white walnut sauce, and red pomegranate arils. But hoo boy–there are arguments to the death about the "authentic" way to prepare these chiles: battered or not battered? Put up your dukes! (I fall on the not-battered side, in case you wondered. God help me.)

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 "authentic" Mexican x, y, or z 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 mexicana (Mexican haute cuisine) and fusion restaurants, but even those liberties are based, we hope, on specific traditional recipes. As Alicia Gironella d'Angeli (a true grande dame of Mexico's kitchen) often said to me, "Cristina, you cannot de-construct a dish until you have learned to construct it." Amen.

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 to what's available in what the writer believes to be more sophisticated food sources such as the United States.

Deep red, vine-ripened plum tomatoes, available all year long in central Mexico. The sign reads, "Don't think about it much–take home a little kilo!" At twelve pesos the kilo, these Mexico-grown tomatoes, brought to market red-ripe, cost approximately 75 cents USD for 2.2 pounds.

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, fish, and meat markets are inevitably astonished to see that what is grown for the ordinary home-cook end user in Mexico is fresher, riper, more flavorful, more attractive, and much less costly than similar ingredients available in the United States.

Chicken, ready for the pot. The chickens raised in Mexico for our food are generally fed ground marigold petals mixed into their feed–that's why the flesh is so pink, the skin so yellow, and why the egg yolks are like big orange suns.

It's the same with most meats: pork and chicken are head and shoulders above what you find in North of the Border supermarkets. Fish and seafood are direct-from-the-sea fresh and distributed by air within just an hour or two from any of Mexico's long coastlines.

Look at the quality of Mexico's fresh, locally grown, seasonal strawberries–and the season starts right now, in February. Deep red to its center, a strawberry like this is hard to find in other countries.

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 or Cal-Mex cooking. There's nothing wrong with Tex-Mex and Cal-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 some of Mexico's restaurants, fajitas are offered to the tourist trade as prototypically authentic.

Pozole blanco (white pozole) with delicious clear broth that starts with a a long-simmered whole pig's head, nixtamalized native white cacahuatzintle corn, and lots of tender, flavorful pork meat. Add to the pot some herbs and spices. Then add hunks of avocado at the table–along with a squeeze or two of limón criollo (you know it as Key lime), some crushed, dried Mexican oregano, crushed, dried chile de árbol, and, if you like, a tablespoon or two of mezcal. Traditional and heavenly!

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, and so forth. But the most traditional, the most (if you will) authentic Mexican meals are home prepared.

Diana Kennedy, UNAM 2011. Mrs. Kennedy was at the Mexican National Autonomous University to present her book, Oaxaca Al Gusto.

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 facing the stove in a home kitchen, watching doña Fulana prepare desayuno (breakfast), comida (the midday main meal of the day), or cena (supper) for her family. Ms. Kennedy, an English woman, 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 take advantage of her wealth of experience and can come to understand what traditional Mexican cooking can be. Her books will bring Mexico's kitchens to you when you are not able to go to Mexico. But please: do follow the recipes, or your dish will come out different from what it is supposed to be.

My dear friend Abigail Mendoza, cocinera tradicional (traditional home cook) from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, prepares a vat of mole negro (black mole, the king of moles) for a large party she invited me to attend at her home.

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.

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

9 de February de 2019
The Feast of La Candelaria :: Time for Tamales!

I wrote this article in February, 2014. Today I republish it in memory of my dear friend, Edmundo Escamilla Solis, so loved by so many, and whose knowledge of all things Mexico had no bounds. He lived and breathed the history of this country in all of its aspects, he was a magnificent and educated eater, and he went on before us on December 13, 2018. Missed beyond measure.

Mexico Cooks!' dear friends Edmundo Escamilla Solís (L) and Yuri de Gortari Krauss. Between them, Yuri and Mundo know more about Mexico's history and its cuisines than most of the rest of our friends put together. I can't imagine that anyone would disagree. Photo courtesy wradio.com.mx. All photos by Mexico Cooks! unless otherwise noted.

A number of years ago, mutual friends introduced Mexico Cooks! to Edmundo Escamilla and Yuri de Gortari. Within minutes, it was obvious that I was in the presence of two of Mexico's treasures. Far from being museum pieces or distant ruins, these men are a vibrant, living storehouse of this country's past and present. Today, I am honored to count Mundo and Yuri among my very good friends. We don't see one another as often as any of us would like–they're busy, I'm busy–but the moments we spend together are precious.

The double stairway into the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana (Esgamex, School of Mexican Gastronomy), Colonia Roma, Distrito Federal. Since 1990, Yuri and Mundo have dedicated themselves to an in-depth study of Mexico's gastronomy; after running a restaurant and catering company, they founded the school in 2007. Esgamex is unique among culinary schools in Mexico, teaching not only Mexico's regional and national cuisines, but also teaching Mexico's history, art, and culture. Although the school offers no program leading to a culinary degree, it continues to attract students who want to learn traditional recipes from the best teaching team in the city.

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation from Yuri and Mundo–please come share our tamaliza (tamales party) on the night of February 2, el Día de la Candelaria (Candlemas Day). An intimate circle of friends gathered in homage to a close friend of our hosts, who had passed away. In her honor, we ate tamales–and more tamales–five varieties in all.

First were tamales de cambray, from Chiapas. These corn masa (dough) tamales, wrapped in banana leaves and steamed, were savory and delicious.

Tamal de cambray unwrapped. Each tamal was small enough to leave us hungry for the ones that followed.

The tamal de cambray cut open to show its savory filling.

Why tamales on this particular date? Tradition in Mexico has it that if your slice of the rosca de reyes–Three Kings cake, eaten on January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany–has a wee Niño Dios (Baby Jesus) in it, you must give a party on February 2, the Feast of the Candelaría. On the menu? Tamales! Tamales for everyone who was at the party for the Kings, when you bit your slice of cake and oops! A mouth full of Baby Jesus!

This rectangular, flat tamal de cazón is filled with flaked and seasoned baby shark flesh. It's a specialty of the state of Campeche.

A marvelously spicy salsa made with chile habanero accompanied the tamal de cazón.

The next three varieties of tamales looked almost identical to one another. Each was wrapped in corn husks and steamed–but despite appearances, each was very different from the other. The first variety was a tamal de pollo, frutas, y verduras (chicken, fruit, and vegetables) from the state of Sinaloa. The second was our first sweet tamal of the evening. A tamal from the state of Colima, its masa is prepared with mixed corn and rice flours as well as dried coconut. The sweet filling is a mix of various dried and crystallized chopped fruits.

The last (but definitely not the least!) tamal was a tamal de almendra (almond). The masa contains not only corn and rice flours and sugar, but also blanched, peeled, and finely ground almonds. The almonds both sweeten and give texture to the masa. And sweet surprise!, the tamal is filled with sweet crema pastelera (pastry cream). If we had had one inch of space in our stomachs, we each would definitely have eaten two of these!

[youtube=://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HonJ3sz8HOw&w=420&h=220]
Here's Yuri de Gortari, teaching the proper way to prepare tamales de almendra. Even if you don't understand all of the Spanish-language instructions, you'll be fascinated by his teaching manner as well as his techniques. And his lovely speaking voice is simply hypnotizing.

When our group finished eating, we stayed for hours in the sobremesa–the after-dinner conversation that is frequently as delicious and nourishing as the food itself. What better way to enjoy an evening than in the company of precious friends, sharing ideas, feelings, and loving laughter? Next year, have a tamaliza at your home on February 2, invite your friends, and deepen your love and appreciation for one another–and of course for the marvelous cuisines of Mexico.

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

2 de February de 2019
Tachigual: Traditional Bread of the Riviera Chapala

Two days a week, José Manuel Mora Velásquez continues a tradition that has been part of his family for more than 80 years. Long before dawn, he begins preparations for baking pan de tachigual, a type of bread so distinctly regional that Sr. Mora says that as far as he knows, it has only been made in San Juan Cosalá and in Ajijic, (in the state of Jalisco, Mexico), although the bread is sold in other towns along the north shore of Lake Chapala.

In years gone by, natives of those two towns did not allow a wedding, baptism, First Communion or confirmation to pass without tachigual as part of the festivity rituals. Although times are changing, even today the most traditional celebrations of these life passages include the humble local loaves.

Sr. Mora showed me around the tiny bakery at his home in Ajijic. The ceiling is low and the only light comes from windows without glass. Loaves of freshly baked tachigual are piled high on a wooden shelf while dough rises in a warm corner, out of the way of any passing breeze.

Tachigual loaves stuffed with nuts and raisins rise on the bakery shelves.

"The oven is heated only by wood. It's not easy to keep a good supply of wood, but we collect it from all over the area. People usually tell me where a dry tree has fallen, or where someone has cut down a tree that will burn well when the wood is dry."

"Which days of the week do you bake?" I asked.

"Wednesdays, like today, and Saturdays. It's very time-consuming work and you have to pay very close attention to the masa (dough) or it won't turn out right." Sr. Mora turned to peer into the oven as he spoke to me.

"A full twenty-four hours before I bake, I have to prepare the harina fermentada (starter). It's a mixture of flour and water. I mix that, and then it sits in the warm bakery for a full day before I can use it for the bread.

"Early in the morning of the days I bake, I mix the dough. It's made with the starter dough I made the day before, plus additional flour, eggs, sugar, and lard. Some of the dough is made with whole wheat flour and some with white flour. The white flour dough has white sugar, raisins and toasted nuts blended into it. The whole wheat loaves are sweetened with piloncillo (cones of brown sugar)."

Sr. Mora showed me how he weighs each of the ingredients to make the bread. "I don't measure. The bread is better if each component is weighed. How many kilos of flour I use depends on how many loaves I need to bake on any given day. Usually I make enough dough to produce 400 loaves each baking day.

"Baking this traditional way is different from baking in a modern oven. The first difference, of course, is that the oven is made of bricks and clay. It's shaped like a beehive. And as I said before, I use wood fire for the heat. Temperature control is more difficult. I have to start the fire about three hours before the dough starts to bake. That's so the oven will reach the right temperature. It takes two hours for the coals to be at the right stage, then another hour for the temperature to go down enough so the bread will bake in the right amount of time."

Tachigual bakes right on the floor of the brick beehive oven.

I looked into the oven, which has no door, and saw that the baking bread was beginning to turn golden brown. "I don't see a thermometer, Sr. Mora. How do you know when the oven has reached the right temperature to begin baking?"

Sr. Mora checks the oven to make sure the temperature is right.

He laughed. "I put one loaf in to bake. It should be ready in about 30 to 40 minutes. If it takes longer than that, I put more wood on the fire. If it bakes too quickly, I wait a bit for the temperature to go down. Then I try again. Of course I've been doing this for so long that I can almost always tell when the temperature is right, but I still bake a trial loaf to be sure."

I asked Sr. Mora if there were other tachigual bakers in Ajijic. "Yes, my cousin still makes this bread the old way. She lives on Calle Constitución and bakes on Tuesday and Thursday. I think we're the only two left in Ajijic who bake this bread. There is a family in San Juan Cosalá that still has a bakery, but I don't know them personally."

Ojitos (little eyes) rise near the warmth of the oven.

An article about the San Juan Cosalá bakers appeared several years ago in El Charal, a Lake Chapala Spanish-language weekly newspaper. At that time, Sra. Margarita Villalobos and one of her daughters were baking pan de tachigual for distribution and sale in San Juan, in Nestipac, and in Jocotepec. Sra. Villalobos told El Charal that as a young girl, she had learned to make tachigual from her mother. Her methods hadn't changed over the years, she said, because making the bread in the traditional way gives it the delicious flavor that people want. Sra. Villalobos said that someone had offered her an electric mixer to help beat the dough, but she was not interested in changing her style of preparation. "Other bakers make it using the same recipe I do, but they don't mix it by hand. Their results aren't the same," she reported.

Sr. Mora's baking sheet is made of a flattened 5-gallon square tin can.

Sr. Mora tells a similar story. "A woman named Teresa taught my aunt how to make tachigual, and my aunt taught me," he reminisced. "And now there's no one left to teach. My children don't want to be bakers. It's sad to think that I might be the last in the family to keep this tradition alive."

Although Sr. Mora graciously told me about his work and the traditions of the bread he makes, there was never a time when he was not also paying strict attention to the rising loaves, the bread baking in the oven, and the bread that was cooling on primitive wooden shelves along three walls of the bakery. I watched quietly for a while as Sr. Mora worked.

With one eye on the oven, he picked up an escobilla (double-ended straw brush) and started rhythmically sweeping the wood ash from each cool loaf of tachigual. As he cleaned each loaf, he placed it in a pile.

When he noticed that the bread inside the oven had turned a deep golden brown, he set aside the escobilla and picked up a pala (literally a shovel, but in this case it resembled a long-handled wooden pizza peel). He used the pala to remove a metal tray holding the ojitos from the oven and placed it on a table near where I was standing. In one experienced and skillful motion, he scooped up as many small panes de tachigual as the pala would hold and transferred them from the oven to a shelf for cooling. With a similar movement, he loaded the pala with unbaked loaves of tachigual. Gently shoving the pala as far into the oven as he knew it needed to go so that the bread would bake evenly, he snapped his elbow back and the raw loaves landed evenly spaced on the oven floor. In just a few minutes he demonstrated skills he had acquired over his 22 years as a baker.

The sweet smell of baking tachigual was making me very hungry. "Sr. Mora, do you take all of the bread to be sold at stores here in town?" I was hoping he'd say no, and I was not disappointed.

"A lot of people come here to the bakery to buy bread. And the boys take some to be sold out on the streets in that washtub…" he gestured to a galvanized metal tub in the corner by the oven. "And of course some does go to stores around town."

"What does the tachigual cost?" I was fingering some coins in my pocket.

"The small loaves are four pesos, the big ones are ten pesos. And those mini-loaves are two pesos apiece. I sell the miniatures to mothers for little kids."

I bought four loaves, one large and three small. The large one came home with me and I took the three small ones to share with my neighbors. My car held the tantalizing scent of the fresh-baked bread for two days.

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

26 de January de 2019
The Native Corns of Mexico :: Prehistoric Ancestors in Danger of Disappearance

In 2016, my dear friend and colleague Maestro Rafael Mier were invited to give conferences in the Mexican state of Puebla. After our conferences, we visited the Biosphere Tehuacán-Cuicatlán, important to the world for numerous reasons. Mexico Cooks! wrote then about the discovery of corn, the reason most important to Mstro. Rafael and to me–a reason important to you, as well.

At first glance, these appear to be flowers–but look closely: they're actually cross-sections of different varieties, sizes and colors of maíces nativos (native corn), grown continuously in Mexico for many thousands of years, right up to the present time. They're so beautiful–and delicious! Photo courtesy Tortilla de Maíz Mexicana.

A few weeks ago, CONACULTA (Mexico's ministry of culture) invited Maestro Rafael Mier and Mexico Cooks! to speak about the preservation of traditional tortillas and about the milpa (millennia-old sustainable agricultural method still used in Mexico) at the Second Annual Festival Universo de la Milpa, held this year in Santa María Coapan, Puebla. Santa María Coapan, a part of the municipality of Tehuacán, is at the epicenter of the documented-to-date 11,000 year history of corn.

Left to right in the photo: Maestra Teresa de la Luz Hilario, Regidora de Educación y Cultura de Santa María Coapan; Maestro Rafael Mier of Tortilla de Maíz Mexicana; Mexico Cooks!; (speaking) the humanitarian and life-long human rights abogada del pueblo (advocate for the people) Concepción Hernández Méndez; and at far right, Lic. Roberto G. Quintero Nava, Director General de Culturas Populares of Puebla, CONACULTA. It was an honor to be part of this event and to meet its outstanding participants in this center of Mexican corn production. Photo courtesy Rafael Mier.

In tiny Coxcatlán, Puebla (just down the highway on the road south out of Tehuacán), a main attraction is the monument to corn. The legend at the base of the recently refurbished monument reads, "Coxcatlán, Cuna del Maíz (Cradle of Corn)". All photos copyright Mexico Cooks! unless otherwise noted.

From the small town of Coxcatlán, our driver took us about five kilometers further, south toward the Oaxaca border; there's a turnoff onto a dirt road at the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán Biosphere Reserve. The September 24, 2016 Mexico Cooks! article offers some fascinating general information about the biosphere.

If you didn't know to turn onto that poorly marked, narrow, and winding dirt road, you'd just keep whizzing along the highway, saying, "Nothing to see here, just a lot of big cactus and scrub trees. The Oaxaca border is only 30 kilometers away, let's hurry so we get there before dark." But this humble dirt road twists through a portion of an internationally important site marking the origin and development of agriculture in Mesoamerica and the world. Archeological research here has provided key information regarding the domestication of various species such as corn (Zea mays sp.), chile (Capsicum annuum), amaranth (Amaranthus sp.), avocado (Persea americana), squash (Cucurbita sp.), bean (Phaseolus sp.), and numerous other plants that are with us still in the modern era. This biosphere is home to just under 3000 kinds of native flora plus the largest collection of columnar cacti in the world. In addition, the biosphere contains approximately 600 species of vertebrate animals. Let's not hurry–let's spend some time here.

Archeologist Richard S. MacNeish (April 29, 1918-January 16, 2001). In 1965, Dr. MacNeish and a group of his colleagues first uncovered the agricultural treasures in the Tehuacán-Cuicatlán biosphere. Their excavation resulted in some of the most significant agricultural finds in the world. A statue in his memory is prominent today in Tehuacán. Dr. MacNeish, one of the most outstanding archaeologists of the Americas, developed innovative field methods that allowed him and his teams of co-archaeologists, anthropologists, sociologists, agronomists, and others to use science rather than educated guesswork to locate potentially important sites for excavation. Other than his discoveries in this biosphere, which are crucial to our understanding of Mesoamerican agriculture and settlement, his greatest legacy is probably his influence on and encouragement of students, other archaeologists, and the multitude of scientific professionals with whom he worked. Photo of Dr. MacNeish courtesy LibraryThing.

My good friend and colleague Rafael Mier, founder of Tortilla de Maíz Mexicana (by all means join the Facebook group), had talked a good while with me about his desire to visit the site where, over 50 years ago, Dr. MacNeish documented the remains of ancient corn. The more we talked about going to the cave, the more my heart raced: We were going to visit one of the places in Mexico where corn was born. Where corn was born. I felt that the trip would be much more than a Sunday drive in the country: it felt like a pilgrimage, to the most basic food destination in Mexico. To the origin of everything.

The extremely ancient peoples of what is now Mexico domesticated a native wild-growing plant called teocintle, which over the course of many years became what we know today as corn. Teocintle–the photo above is a seed head of the plant, harvested in 2015 in the State of Mexico and framed in sterling silver–is a grass similar to rice in that the grains grow and mature as a cluster of individuals, on a stalk. A mazorca (seed head) of teocintle has no center structure; no cob, if you will. One of the primary features that distinguishes corn from teocintle is the cob. Scientists tracked the domestication of teocintle from the wild grain to its semi-domesticated state, and from semi-domestication to the incredible variety of native Mexican corns that we know today. The actual teocintle seed head in the photo measures approximately three inches long. What you see in my hand is the million-times-over great-grandfather, the ancient ancestor of corn.

The mouth of la Cuna del Maíz Mexicano (the cradle of Mexican corn). I grew up in the southern United States, where I knew a few caves. I had expected to see a cave along the lines of Wyandotte Caves in Indiana, or Mammoth Cave in Kentucky: huge, multi-room caverns in which a person can walk along seeing rivers, stalagmites, stalactites, and other underground cave formations. Not here; this cave is simply what you see in the photograph, a sheltering karst-formation in the limestone, a pre-historic bubble. Standing in this spot gave me chills, and simply thinking about it while looking at the photograph now makes a shiver run up my spine. Out here in the vastness of this ancient natural world, in some ways so similar to the primitive world into which corn was born, one forgets about the crowded city, one forgets about modern problems, and one returns both mentally and spiritually to another time and to a connection with those Stone Age people who gave us the gift of corn, the true staff of life in much of today's world.

This shelter, according to years-long archeological research by Dr. MacNeish and others, was used as a camp, as a shelter during the rainy season for as many as 25 to 30 people, and as a post-harvest storage place for corn and other native vegetables (corn, beans, chiles, etc). Families, bands of families, and tribes living in or traveling through the Coxcatlán area used this type shelter for 10,000 years or more, primarily during the time in Mesoamerica that is analogous to the Archaic archeological period: approximately 5000 to 3400 BCE. Dr. MacNeish's extensive research showed more than 42 separate occupations, 28 habitation zones, and seven cultural phases in this cave.

At the Museo del Maíz (Corn Museum) in Tehuacán, there is a small display of the original dehydrated corn cobs as well as some utensils found in the cave in the biosphere. This tiny cob measures less than one inch long.

These dehydrated cobs, also found in the cave, are quite a bit larger and probably somewhat younger than the tiny one in the photo above. They measure between 2 and 3 inches long. Some ancient fingers plucked this corn from its stalk, some long-ago woman–she must have been a woman–removed the kernels from the cobs and prepared food. How similar the growing methods, how similar what they ate, those people who created corn from a wild plant. Corn, beans, chiles, squash, amaranth, avocado: all served up in some way for millennia-past meals, and all available in Mexico's markets today. What foods do you eat that nourished your Stone Age forebears? How precious it is to know and taste the flavors of 7 to 10 thousand years worth of comidas (Mexico's main meal of the day)!

In addition to the important finding of dehydrated corn cob specimens (nearly 25,000 samples) and other kinds of vegetables in the substrata of the Tehuacán cave, Dr. MacNeish and subsequent archeologists found a large number of ancient tools such as chipped-flint darts used for hunting, grinding stones, and coas (pointed sticks used for planting). The investigators also found approximately 100 samples of human feces, which were examined to document the human diet of those long-ago days. Thanks to carbon dating, a method of determining the age of organic objects which was developed in the 1940s, scientists were and continue to be able to assign dates to ancient artifacts.

Part of a mural found in ruins dating to 650-900 AD in Cacaxtla, Tlaxcala. Click on the photograph to enlarge it; you'll see that what initially appear to be ears of corn are in fact a part of Mexico's creation myth: humankind is born of corn, and corn is born of humankind. Corn, which humankind created in the domestication process, cannot in fact exist without a human helping hand to husk it, take the dried kernels from the cob, and plant those kernels for subsequent harvest. Above even wheat and rice, corn is the single-most planted grain in the world; there are countries and regions where humans could not exist without corn.

This tiny mazorca (dried ear of corn) is maíz palomero: (popcorn, scientific name Zaya mays everta), native to Mexico, the only kind of corn in the world that pops. Maíz palomero is believed by many scientists to have been the first corn. Today, this original corn is tragically all but extinct in Mexico. My colleague Maestro Rafael Mier, who lives in Mexico City, wanted to plant it; he contacted a number of possible sources without locating any seed at all. He ultimately called a seed bank in a nearby Mexican state to see if they had some. They did, and they took seeds out of their freezer bank so that he could sow them on his property. His goal is to begin the reversal of the extinction of this original Mexican corn. This wee ear of popcorn, the standard size for this variety, is just about four inches long. Look how beautiful it is, with its crystalline white and golden triangular kernels.

Mexico still grows and cooks with 59 different varieties of native corns, corns that are essential to the regions in which they grow. A type of native corn that grows well in the state of Tamaulipas, for example, will probably not produce as well in Oaxaca. Nor will a native corn that is easily produced in the west-central state of Guerrero grow well in the north-eastern Mexico state of Coahuila. Climates differ, altitudes differ, soils differ: all impact Mexico's native corns. If you click on the poster to enlarge it, you'll see how very, very different Mexico's 59 corn varieties are from one another. Click on any photo to enlarge it for a better view. Photo courtesy CIMMYT.

These multi-colored mazorcas are native to the Mexican state of Tlaxcala, the smallest state in the República.

These elotes (ears of freshly harvested young corn) are native to the state of Michoacán.

These large fresh ears are elotes of maíz cacahuatzintle, from the State of México, for sale earlier this summer at Mexico City's Mercado de Jamaica. This type corn is processed naturally so it can be used to make pozole, a pork (or chicken) soup with deliciously spicy broth.

A bowl of pozole on a chilly night at the Mercado Medellín, Mexico City, a few Decembers ago.

And finally, these mazorcas are native to the far-southern state of Chiapas.

Mexico knows itself as 'the people of the corn'. Mexico knows that sin maíz no hay país–without corn, there is no country. Right now, Mexico is at a crisis point, the point of preserving its heritage of corn–or allowing that heritage to be lost to the transnational producers of uniform, high-yielding, genetically modified corn that is not Mexico's corn. The Chinese characters in the photo mean crisis, defined as both danger and opportunity. Which word will Mexico choose to safeguard its heritage and frame its future? I take my stand on the side of the 11,000 year history that defines us.

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

19 de January de 2019
Ambling Around With Mexico Cooks!, the Second Half of 2018

Celebrating the first of June–with a taco made with a real tortilla: freshly nixtamalize-d native Mexican dried corn ground into damp masa (corn dough), patted or pressed out, and cooked on a comal (griddle) at Tortillería Ichuskata, in Morelia, Michoacán. I had been to a food event in the city and brought a half-kilo home with me–they're so delicious, it didn't even matter what was in the taco–the tortilla was just perfect! If you've never eaten a real tortilla–not from a plastic package, not even from the general run of tortillerías–you haven't enjoyed one of life's greatest pleasures. Anything else just isn't worth it.

In Mexico, our presidential election is held every six years on July 1. Just after casting the ballot, your thumb is stamped to show that you voted. Every election since 2006, I've voted for the candidate who won the presidency this year: Andrés Manuel López Obrador. I'm so thrilled and proud that he won! That's my thumb, hiding my grin!

Pesca del día–catch of the day on July 28–at Restaurante Pasillo de Humo, Mexico City. The robalo (Centropomus mexicanus), cooked perfectly and with a crisp, delicious skin, is served over a heap of freshly cooked vegetables. In this case, there were fresh fava beans, fresh peas, fresh corn, and the tiniest whole fresh carrots. Pasillo de Humo is consistently marvelous, and this fish preparation is no exception.

Mexico Cooks! spent the first two weeks of August leading two back-to-back tours in Oaxaca. One of the must-do markets in Oaxaca is in Tlacolula, south of Oaxaca City, where my early-August group exclaimed over everything they saw, including the gorgeous rambutan displays. The rambutan, an Asian fruit grown extensively in Mexico's southernmost state of Chiapas, is similar to the lychee, but as you can, see the red skin has long red feelers–well, maybe not quite feelers, but don't they look like feelers? Inside the flesh is white, like the lychee, with a similar texture, flavor and a similar stone.

You can find just about anything you need at Mexico's markets, including household goods, fruits and vegetables, and brassieres of uplifting colors.

In Tlacolula this past August, we also saw wheelbarrows full of beautifully ripe, Oaxaca-grown melón (cantaloupe). The deep orange flesh is perfect, slightly tender, running with sweet juices, and ready for your table at any meal of the day. Mexican home and restaurant cooks also make an agua fresca (fresh fruit water) with melón; it's one of my favorites.
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Photo courtesy Mi Mero Mole.

Agua Fresca de Melón
Fresh Cantaloupe Water

1/2 ripe cantaloupe, peeled and with seeds removed
1/2 cup sugar
6 cups water

Cut the peeled cantaloupe into chunks.

Put the chunks of fruit, the sugar, and 2 cups of water in a blender. Blend for 30 seconds. Add another cup of water and blend for an additional 30 seconds.

Pour the blended mixture into a pitcher and add the remaining 3 cups of water. Stir until completely mixed.

The cantaloupe water should be chilled before serving. Just prior to serving, stir the pitcherful again, with a large spoon.

**Note: if you prefer this agua fresca a bit sweeter, add more sugar to taste. You can also replace all of the sugar with an equal amount of Splenda granulated no-calorie sweetener.

Serves 6
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My second August tour group was invited to a private traditional cooks' event, organized just for us by Srta. Petra Cruz González, the president of the Unión de Palmeadoras (Tortilla Makers' Union) in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. Tlaxiaco is located high in the Mixteca Alta about 2.5 hours north of the city of Oaxaca. Several of the union members demonstrated how Oaxaca-style tortillas are made, and then invited us to partake of a comida (main meal of the day) that the women had prepared for us. In the photograph, you see a freshly made blue corn tortilla filled with requesón (a spreadable white cheese similar to ricotta), delicious frijoles de la olla (whole beans just out of the cooking pot), a bit of chicharrón (fried pork skin, the light brown square at the top left), and spicy salsa, made in a molcajete (volcanic stone grinding bowl).

Was it good? Yes it was! The home made food, cooked over wood fires, was simple, heart-warming, and exactly what we needed. We ate and drank and chatted with the cocineras traditionales (traditional cooks), enjoying their company as much as we enjoyed their food.

After the tours in Oaxaca, I came home to Mexico City to this new member of the family. When I picked her up mid-August from her rescuer, Pili was a tiny eight weeks old. Today, she's six months old and is fully integrated into the group the boss of the bunch–and certainly MY boss. Neither the three other cats in my household nor I stand a chance against Her Highness.

Above, a quesadilla sin queso (quesadilla without cheese). "With or without cheese" is a perpetual discussion among people who live in Mexico City. One faction says, "A quesadilla doesn't need cheese." The other side says, "It has to have cheese, why else is it called quesadilla?" The one in the photograph, prepared with chicharrón prensado (the pressed-together ends and various leavings in a pot used to fry pig skins) at a Sunday flea market just north of Mexico City's Centro Histórico, has no cheese. Regardless of which side of the cheese/no cheese argument you're on, you'd love to have this for breakfast.

In central highlands of Mexico, September is the middle of the rainy season, when nearly daily rains wet our mountainous oak and pine forests. Beneath the trees, many varieties of wild mushrooms spring up each night, to be harvested in the morning and brought to market. The bounty of the nightly harvests grace both home and restaurant tables; Mexico Cooks! buys setas and oyster mushrooms like those in the photograph, as well as many other wild varieties. Photo courtesy Rafael Mier.

Meet Sra. Georgina Gómez Mejía, who sells wild mushrooms during their season at the Mercado de Jamaica in Mexico City. Depending on what she finds in the forests near her home in the neighboring State of Mexico, she brings lobster mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, hens and chickens mushrooms, chanterelles, and morels, the king of wild mushrooms. In mid-September, I bought two kilos (about 4.5 pounds) of enormous wild mushrooms from her and made enough mushroom soup to eat, to freeze, and to give to friends.

Here, the October setting for a private dinner for 100 people in Morelia, to which I was invited by city government. The dinner, prepared and mounted by Restaurante La Conspiración de 1809, took place in the Palacio Municipal de Morelia in the Centro Histórico of that city. The building dates to the late 18th century and was the perfect location for the event, which included not only a multi-course meal, wines and other drinks, but also a play, presented on the stairway in the photo and throughout the entire room. It was an evening of tremendous excitement and delight, in every respect.

Mid-Fall, we begin to see romeritos (in English, the awful name seepweed) in our Mexico City markets. Romeritos are a leafy herb that looks somewhat like a softer, non-woody version of rosemary. The long, skinny leaves look similar to the thin needles of the rosemary plant, growing like feathers along a central stem. Unlike the stiff stems and needles of rosemary, romeritos are soft and floppy, more like a succulent, with a slightly acidic taste. Generally eaten at Christmastime, they are cooked in mole and accompanied by patties of dried shrimp.

In November I was surprised to see these enormous yaca (jackfruit) in a Mexico City supermarket. The biggest ones in the photo are about 24" long! Usually the fruit is opened and sold in segments, by weight. Inside, the orange-colored flesh is encapsulated into small pieces. It grows on Mexico's coasts. To the right of the yacas is a bin of tunas–in English, they're known as prickly pear cactus fruit.

Making longaniza, a spicy sausage very similar to chorizo, at the Mercado de Jamaica. November 2018.

The first week of December, a young friend in Baltimore and I had a ball with a long-distance bakeoff, each of us preparing the same recipe for blueberry coffee cake, at the same time, but she in Baltimore and I in Mexico City. It was enormously fun to do this! If you have teenage grandchildren in a city far from where you live, I think this would be wonderful to give you something to do together–choose a simple recipe that you would both enjoy, send one another photos of the process as you're doing it, and take the first bite at the same time. I know my friend Bea and I felt that we were doing something together despite the physical distance between us.

Later in December, a visiting friend from Oaxaca and I enjoyed wandering around Mexico City to see some sights:

Sunshine and shadows at the Casa Museo Friday Kahlo, in beautiful Coyoacán.

Stairway at the Palacio de Correos de México (Mexico's main post office), Centro Histórico. The first stone was laid in 1902, the building was finished in 1907, and was almost destroyed in Mexico City's September 1985 earthquake. The building was restored in the 1990s.

Pozole at the Mercado Navideño (Christmas market) at the Mercado Medellín, Colonia Roma.

Finally, an arbolito de navidad (Christmas tree) at the Mercado de Jamaica. Decorated with tiny lights and ornaments, the owner of this market booth also hung the tree with the product he makes and sells: crisp corn t
ostadas! Adorable!

Mexico Cooks! hopes that 2019 brings all of you the best of everything throughout the year. Come along with us as we see more of Mexico, her cultures and her cuisines–see you next Saturday!

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

12 de January de 2019
Nine Days of Piñatas :: Nine Days of Posadas!

Traditional piñatas ready for sale decorate the door to the Hernández family's tiny taller (workshop) on Av. Lázaro Cárdenas near Plaza Carrillo in Morelia, Michoacán.

Among clean ollas de barro (clay pots), plastic receptacles filled with engrudo (flour/water paste), and colorful, neatly stacked rounds of papel de china (tissue paper), Sra. María Dolores Hernández (affectionately known as Doña Lolita) sits on an upturned bucket. She celebrates her birthday on December 24, and she still lights up–just like a Christmas tree–when she talks about her business and her life.

The last point of the star-shaped piñata is in Doña Lolita's hands, nearly ready to be glued into place.

"When I was a young woman, raising my family together with my husband, it was hard for us to make a good living here in Morelia. We had eight children (one has died, but six girls and a boy survive) and we struggled to make ends meet. My husband was a master mason, but I wanted to help out with the finances. I knew a woman who made piñatas, and I thought, 'I can do that.' So I started trying my hand, nearly 60 years ago."

Doña Lolita adds another layer of newspaper to this piñata in progress. "You can't put too much newspaper on the pot, because it will take too long to break the piñata," she explained. "And you can't put too little on it, either, because then the first child to hit it will break it. That's no good, either. You just have to know how much to use." Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the clay pot inside the paper maché.

"The woman who made piñatas wouldn't give away her secrets, so I had to figure everything out for myself. You should have seen me the first time I tried to make a bird's beak for a parrot-shaped piñata! A man I knew told me to make it out of chapopote (a kind of tar), so I did. It hardened all right, but later in the day the weather warmed up and that beak dripped down to *here*! What a mess! I finally figured out how to make the shape out of paper, but I just about broke my head thinking about it!"

Pre-cut rounds of papel de china (tissue paper) wait to be glued onto a piñata. The black plastic bag holds strips of newspaper.

Doña Lolita told me about the different grades of paper used to create different styles of decoration on the piñata, and she explained different kinds of paper-cutting techniques; she's absolutely the expert. Here, her son-in-law Fernando cuts tissue paper for fringe. His hands are so fast with the scissors it made my head spin; he can even cut without looking.

"In those days, the clay pots cost four and a half pesos for a gross–yes, for 144. In the old days, I usually sold about 7,000 piñatas every December, so you can imagine the investment I made just in clay pots. In the 1960s, I could sell a large piñata for seven pesos. Now–well, now the pots are much more expensive, so naturally the piñatas cost more, too. The large ones cost 45 pesos. This year, I'll sell about 1,000 piñatas just for the posadas."

Piñatas in various stages of completion hang from every beam in Doña Lolita's tiny workshop.

"When my daughter Mercedes was about eight years old, she wanted to learn to make piñatas. She'd been watching me do it since she was born. So I taught her, and I've taught the whole family. Piñatería (making piñatas) is what's kept us going." Doña Lolita smiled hugely. "My children have always been extremely hard workers. There was a girl for each part of making the piñatas. Every year, we started making piñatas in August and finished at the beginning of January.

This gigantic piñata, still unfinished, measures almost six feet in diameter from point to point.

"One time, we had so many piñatas to finish that I didn't think we could do it. So I thought, 'if we work all night long, we can finish them by tomorrow morning.' Only I couldn't figure out how to keep the children awake to work all night." She laughed. "I went to the drugstore and bought pills to stay awake. I knew I could keep myself awake, but I gave one pill to each of the children. And in just a little while, I was working and they were sleeping, their heads fell right down into their work! What! Those pills didn't work at all! The next day I went back to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist about it. 'Oh no! I thought you asked me for pills to make them sleep!' he said." Doña Lolita laughed again. "We finished all the piñatas in spite of those pills, but you had better believe me, I never tried anything that foolish again."

Doña Lolita builds piñatas with her son-in-law, Fernando Cedeño Herrera (left), her daughter Mercedes Ayala Hernández, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren. A close friend, Oswaldo Gutiérrez López (background), works with the family. Her grandson Enrique, 19, says he intends to keep the family business going.

Oswaldo Gutiérrez works on this piñata in the doorway of the tiny taller. Doña Lolita has taught many people the art of creating traditional piñatas, but her family and her loyal customers say she's the best piñatera (piñata maker) in Morelia.

"People come from everywhere to buy my piñatas. I don't have to take them out to sell; I only sell them here in the taller. Because they're so beautiful and well-made, all the best people in Morelia–and lots of people from other places–come to seek me out and order piñatas for their parties. I've taught my family that our work is our pride and our heritage, and my children have all taught their children the same. That is our legacy, our family tradition."

Fill the piñata with candy like these bags of traditional colación (hard candies especially for Christmas).

But why piñatas, and why in December? During the early days of the Spanish conquest, the piñata was used as a catechetical tool, to teach the indigenous people about Christianity. The body of the piñata represented Satan; each of the seven points symbolized the seven deadly (capital) sins (pride, lust, gluttony, rage, greed, laziness, and envy). The blindfold worn by the child or adult trying to hit the piñata represents blind faith. Breaking the points of the piñata equated with the triumph of good over evil, overpowering Satan, overcoming sin, and finally enjoying the sweet delights of God's goodness as they pour out of the piñata. Doña Lolita's most sought-after piñatas continue to be the traditional style, with seven points, but she also creates piñatas shaped like roosters, peacocks, half-watermelons, deer, half moons, and once, an enormous octopus!

For the nine nights from December 16 through December 24, Mexico celebrates las posadas. Each evening, a re-enactment of the Christmas story brings children dressed as la Virgencita María (ready to give birth to her baby) and her husband Sr. San José (and a street filled with angels, shepherds, and other costumed children) along the road to Bethlehem, searching for a place to stay. There is no place: Bethlehem's posadas (inns) are filled. Where will the baby be born! For the re-enactment, people wait behind closed doors at certain neighborhood houses. The santos peregrinos (holy pilgrims) knock, first at one door, then another. At each house, they sing a song, begging lodging for the night. At each house, the neighbors inside turn them away in song: 'No room here! Go away! Bother someone else!' Watch a lovely slide show: Las Posadas.

Freshly toasted cacahuates (peanuts) are in season now and are also used to stuff the piñata. The wooden box holding the peanuts is actually a measure, as is the oval metal box.

Fresh caña (sugar cane) is in season now in time for the posadas. Buy it in two-inch unpeeled sections for adding to the sweets in the piñata; buy it in 3" peeled thin sticks for adding to your hot ponche navideño (Christmas punch).

After several houses turn away la Virgen, San José, and their retinue, they finally receive welcome at the last designated house. After the pilgrims sing their plea for a place to stay, the guests assembled inside sing their welcome, "Entren santos peregrinos…" (Come in, holy pilgrims…). The doors are flung open, everyone piles into the house, and a huge party starts. Traditional foods like ponche (a hot fruit punch), buñuelos (a thin fried dough covered with either sugar or syrup), and tamales (hundreds of tamales!) pour out of the kitchen as revelers sing villancicos (Mexican Christmas carols) and celebrate the coming of the Niño Dios (the Child Jesus). Finally, all the children line up to put on a blindfold and take swings at a piñata stuffed with candy, seasonal fruits, and peanuts.

These very large bags of individually wrapped candies are ready to use to fill any piñata. These are available at the Mercado Medellín in Colonia Roma, Mexico City.

Mandarinas (tangerines) are in season at Christmastime, as are tiny jícamas and fresh sugar cane, which round out the goodies in lots of piñatas.

The piñata, stuffed with all it will hold, hangs from a rope during the posada party. A parent or neighbor swings it back and forth, up and down, as each child takes a turn at breaking it open with a big stick. Watch these adorable kids whack away.

The piñata, lovely though it may be, is a purely temporary joy. Nevertheless, happy memories of childhood posadas with family and friends last a lifetime.

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22 de December de 2018