Category: Restaurants

Izote de Patricia Quintana: History on Your Plate

Izote, Patricia Quintana's groundbreaking Mexico City restaurant, will close permanently on June 30, 2013. This article, originally published on November 19, 2011, recounts just one of Mexico Cooks!' wonderful experiences there. Thank you, Chef Paty, for your incredible contribution to the cuisines of our beloved Mexico. Adelante, amiga!

Sr. Brandon Milmo, director of Casa Madero Winery (Parras, Coahuila,
Mexico), chef Patricia Quintana, and don Pedro Poncelis, Mexico's
premier sommelier, at Restaurante Izote de Patricia Quintana.

Rain! As Mexico Cooks! was leaving the house, as we finally
grabbed a cab, while we were traveling (in rush hour traffic, of
course) to Mexico City's upscale Colonia Polanco, the unseasonable rain
bucketed down. But like magic, just as we pulled onto slightly
nose-in-the-air Av. Presidente Masaryk (Mexico City's equivalent to New
York's Fifth Avenue) the rain–and the cab–stopped. Respectably late,
we strolled, blessedly dry and with umbrellas tightly furled, into
Patricia Quintana's little piece of heaven: Restaurante Izote.

Casa Madero sponsored the Casa Grande Shiraz cata vertical
(vertical wine tasting). In a vertical wine tasting, each of the wines
served is the same, but from several different years. In this case,
the Casa Grande Shiraz was from 2005, 2006, and 2007. Grown on the same
vines but under slightly different climatic conditions, each year's
crop had different fragrances, colors, and flavors.

Judith
McKnight, left, enjoys the company of Mexico City wine expert Rondi
Frankel (center) and Fabiola de la Fuente, editorial director of
Food+Travel México magazine. We all found plenty to talk about before
we were seated for the wine tasting and dinner pairings. A tidbit of
information: Casa Madero, founded in 1597, is the oldest winery in the
New World.

At first glance, these Casa Madero placemats appeared to have been already used, stained by circles of vino tinto (red wine). Several people (including Mexico Cooks!)
not-so-surreptitiously touched the wine stains, only to discover that
they were cleverly printed on the paper mat. Below each supposed stain
was space for notes about each year's wine. Jorge Luis Trejo
Villaseñor, Casa Madero's national sales manager, called my attention to
the outstanding legend at the bottom of the placemat: A qué sabe un vino con 5 siglos de pasión? (What is the flavor of a wine with five centuries of passion?)

Casa
Madero's director, Brandon Milmo, listens intently as elegant sommelier
(highly trained wine steward) Claudia Juárez discusses the special
characteristics of each of the three Shiraz wines. She wears the
sommelier's formal uniform, including the tastevin on its chain.

The tastevin (saucer-like silver cup) was originally created
by French winemakers to enable them to judge the clarity and color of
wine that was stored in dim, candle-lit wine cellars. Regular wine
glasses were too deep to allow for accurate judging of the wine's color
in such faint light. Tastevin are designed with a shiny
faceted inner surface. Often, the bottom of the cup is convex in shape.
The facets, convex bottom, and the shiny inner surface catch as much
available light as possible, reflecting it throughout the wine in the
cup, making it possible to see through the wine.

With the advent of modern electric lights, the tastevin has
very little practical use, although sommeliers often wear them on a
ribbon or chain around the neck as a nod to tradition and a symbol of
pride in their profession.

The three Casa Grande Shiraz pours; from left to right, 2005, 2006, and 2007.

While sommelier Claudia Juárez instructed us, we 50 guests of the house carefully tasted the three wines. Mexico Cooks! is a relative neophyte in the world of oenology, but the lessons of the evening were well learned. Really tasting
wine isn't about pounding down a tumblerful of the rosé that you've
poured from the cheap boxed wine in your refrigerator. Instead, there
are qualities to look for in your glass: how does the wine look, from
its color to its 'legs'? How does it smell–fruity, nutty, leathery,
spicy? How does it taste–floral, peppery, acidic, light, heavy? Most
important of all, of course, is whether or not you like what you're
drinking.

A
wine's 'legs' (also called 'tears') are the subtle traces left on the
inner bowl of the glass after the wine is gently swirled around several
times. Once thought to be an indicator of quality, experts now say that
the legs are in fact a product of surface tension and an indicator of
alcohol content. In the photograph, you have the best view of the legs
at the bottom left corner of the flower arrangement.

After carefully tasting each individual Shiraz and then comparing the
various merits of the three years, we began to enjoy the food maridaje
(pairings with the wines). Chef Patricia Quintana, internationally
known for Restaurante Izote, for her many cookbooks, her television
shows, and her annual Aromas y Sabores tours, prepared a twelve-course tasting menu (yes, twelve courses!) consisting of eight savories and four sweets.

First course: timbal de frijol con morillas, queso pijijiapan y chile ancho con mezcal.
In this case, the timbale is a cylindrical mold of beans filled with
minced morel mushrooms and topped with cheese from Pijijiapan, Chiapas.
You can see the sauce on the side.

Next, a taquito de cabrito con salsa verde–a
freshly made corn tortilla wrapped around shredded goat meat, then
fried and bathed with green sauce, Mexican table cream, and dusted with
aged cheese. A chopstick, inserted into one end of the taquito, made for ease of handling.

Third course: enchiladas de queso asadero en salsa de jitomate con chile verde. Queso asadero
is a melting cheese, used in this instance to fill the enchilada. The
tomato and green chile sauce, along with the topping of thinly sliced
onion, finely grated aged cheese, and shredded lettuce, were traditional
accompaniments raised to a celestial level.

Fourth: pescado al vapor a la tinga con papa
(steamed fish, in this case red snapper, in a spicy red sauce–all
sitting on a slice of potato and wrapped for steaming in a banana leaf).

The banana leaf spread open, showing the pescado al vapor a la tinga con papa. This dish was my hands-down favorite. The mixture of flavors in the tinga combined with the sweet tenderness of the fish to explode in a sensational fiesta in my mouth.

Fifth course: ensalada de jitomatitos con vinagreta al Shiraz Casa Grande 2007.
This salad is made of tiny grape tomatoes dressed with a vinaigrette
made with the 2007 wine we were tasting. The presentation of this
salad, as well as that of all the courses, was exquisite.

Sixth: camarones con azafrán y municiones
(shrimp in saffron sauce with little pasta 'bullets'). Perfectly
cooked shrimp-on-a-stick combined beautifully with the richly delicate
flavor of saffron, but in my opinion the municiones were a mistake. The pasta gave the dish a texture that reminded me–and not in a good way–of tapioca pudding.

Seventh: enchiladas de mole negro
(black mole enchiladas). Black mole is one of Mexico's most delicious
sauces and this one was no exception. The combination of mole, sesame
seeds, crisp tortilla, and shredded onions–wow!

All of us guests were of different opinions about which of the three
years' Shiraz wines paired better with each of the courses we were
eating, but many preferred the 2006 to the earlier or later year. The
2006 was Mexico Cooks!' favorite. Waiters circulated with
bottles of each Shiraz, replenishing our wine glasses as we emptied
them. At this point in the meal–after most of the courses had been
served–many of us began requesting water rather than more wine!

Eighth: filete Doña Manuelita de Parras.
This seared and crusty filet mignon was cooked exactly to medium rare.
The accompaniments, including the stuffed chayote seen at the top, were
excellent.

Chef Patricia Quintana gently tapped two copas
(wine glasses) together to quiet the crowd before she spoke to us about
the meal in progress. The flower in the photo's background images is
the izote (the edible flower of the yucca cactus)for which she named her restaurant.

After the first eight courses, which were of course accompanied by
liberal pourings of each of the three wines, most of the invited guests
were simply unable to continue to the four-course dessert menu. Even
though each of the savory courses was a small portion, their accumulated
richness overpowered all but the most hardy souls. In addition, we
finished the last of the savories at midnight! Reluctantly we
congratulated the chef and kissed her goodbye, shook hands with the
remaining guests, and made our way out into the starry late night, the
chilly air cleansed by the earlier rain.

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

29 de June de 2013
Mexico’s Home-Made Hash: Delicious Picadillo (pee-cah-DEE-yo)

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 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 (I prefer to leave out the garlic.)
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, dried cranberries, or a combination of both
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
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 our 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.

1 de June de 2013
Looking for Smut on the Internet?

Not that kind! What in the world do you think we're thinking!

Ustilago maydis, called corn smut, or huitlacoche.

Mexico Cooks! is rejoicing in a wealth of corn smut, known in Mexico as the delicacy huitlacoche (aka cuitlacoche) and known in the rest of the world as disgusting. The word cuitlacoche comes from the Nahuatl word cuitlatl (excrement) and cochi (sleeping). You wanted to know that, didn't you?

Ustilago
maydis (corn smut's biological name) is a fungal disease that most
often attacks corn before the ear forms. Spores enter corn stalks that
have been wounded by hail, insects, or cultivation cuts. The fungus
grows inside the corn kernel, distorting and discoloring it, leaving
only the husk of the kernel remaining. The fungus winters over in the
ground or in old corn stalks left to rot. Smut spores can blow long
distances, invading every cornfield in a region. No country is exempt
from its infection and losses to the fungus may be as high as 20% of a
corn crop. Most of the world's corn growers use every means possible to
stave off the infection, but here in Mexico, we love to see the fungus
come to market.

Here in Mexico City, the huitlacoche season just started. Some of the vegetable vendors at our Tuesday tianguis had piles of it for sale last week, in amongst the broccoli, chiles,
leeks, tomatoes, and the rest of the weekly array in their stands.
Twenty-five pesos (about $2.50 US) per half pound seemed like a fair
price, so we bought a bag of big juicy-looking fungus and brought it
home for comida, our main meal of the day.

The taste of huitlacoche
is deep, rich, earthy, and is frequently compared to truffles. The
texture is meaty, similar to a portabello mushroom. The color–well, we
don't eat many coal black foods, but it's quite elegant on the plate.

In Mexico, huitlacoche is sold either on the cob or loose, by the kilo. Once in a great while, fresh huitlacoche is available in a Latin market outside Mexico. It's said that the canned variety works as well as the fresh, although Mexico Cooks! hasn't used the canned product and makes no guarantees. Look for this variety:

Here's Mexico Cooks!' recipe for our comida muy de la temporada (very seasonal dinner).

Salsa de Huitlacoche con Espagueti y Pechuga de Pollo
(Cuitlacoche Sauce with Spaghetti and Chicken Breast)

Ingredients for the sauce:
1 large clove garlic, minced fine
2 tbsp white onion, minced fine
2 or 3 strips bacon, minced
3 chiles chilacas or 2 chiles poblanos
250 grams (1/2 lb) huitlacoche, roughly chopped
Sea salt to taste
Enough chicken broth to thin sauce to coat the back of a spoon
Bacon drippings plus 2 Tbsp vegetable oil

Utensils:
10-inch nonstick sauté pan
Wooden spoon
Measuring spoons
Blender

Procedure:
Roast the chiles on a dry (not oiled) comal (griddle) until the skins are blistered and nearly black. Put them in a plastic bag and twist it shut. "Sweat" the chiles for about 10 minutes. Remove the stems and seeds and peel the chiles. Roughly chop the prepared chiles and reserve for later use.

Sauté the minced bacon until nearly crisp. Remove from pan and reserve with the chiles. Keep the bacon drippings in the pan. Add the oil.

Sauté the garlic, onion, and huitlacoche in the drippings/oil until the cuitlacoche is soft, about 10-15 minutes. Be careful that the huitlacoche does not become mushy. It should retain some texture. The mixture in your sauté pan will be inky black.

Put the huitlacoche mixture, the reserved chiles
and the bacon in the blender. Add 1/2 cup chicken stock and purée.
The mix should thickly coat the back of a spoon. Add more chicken stock
if needed and blend again. Add sea salt to taste and blend briefly.
Again, the sauce will be black.

Chicken breasts:
Cut
two boneless, skinless chicken breast halves into 1/2" wide strips as
long as each breast. Put 2 Tbsp flour and 1/2 tsp sea salt in a plastic
bag and shake to mix. Add the chicken breast strips and shake to flour
thoroughly. Shake off excess flour. Sauté breast strips in olive oil
until they are golden brown. Be careful not to overcook the breast
strips. Remove and reserve.

Spaghetti:
I used 1/2 lb fettucine and cooked following package directions.

Plating:
Serves two generously.

Put half the spaghetti on each plate. Divide the cuitlacoche
sauce between the two servings of spaghetti. Divide the chicken breast
strips between the two plates, laying them across the spaghetti and
sauce. Drizzle more sauce across the chicken breast strips.

We all but licked our plates.

So…we've got rough stuff (the chopping), breasts (the chicken), and licking (the plates). I guess this really is smut on the Internet!

Provecho!

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

25 de May de 2013
Restaurante Nicos, Mexico City Treasure: Traditional Mexican Cuisine, Family Comfort and Warmth

Chef Gerardo Vázquez Lugo, consummately professional executive chef at Restaurante Nicos in Mexico City. Chef Gerardo's right-hand man at Nicos (and head of La Nicolasa, their organic food shops in Azcapotzalco and in Col. La Condesa) is César Galván Arciniega.

Freshly baked, still-warm bolillo (crusty white bread roll) served from a dried guaje (gourd) and accompanied by three salsas and a wee dish of sea salt.

Mexico City's gourmands–the many of us who are heartily fond of good food and drink–often travel substantially north of the Centro Histórico (downtown) to have a marvelous meal. The magnet that pulls us to Delegación Azcapotzalco? Restaurante Nicos, a Mexico City institution since 1957. Started by María Elena Lugo Zermeño (chef Gerardo's mother) and run by the Vázquez Lugo family for the last 56 years, the restaurant offers a warmly charming atmosphere, excellent service, and simply fantastic food.

It always makes me happy to see that Nicos makes its guacamole exactly
the way I've been doing it at home for 30 years. You can see that the avocado is left in silky
chunks; it's not mashed. Add a little olive oil, some sea salt, small-diced white onion, small-diced tomato, chopped cilantro, and as much minced chile serrano as your palate can handle. No limón (Key lime) is necessary.

Prepared at tableside with perfectly ripe, perfectly fresh ingredients, this guacamole brims over in its molcajete (volcanic stone mortar) and is a plentiful appetizer for four diners. It's served with freshly-fried salty totopos (tortilla chips).

This oasis of great eating has never pretended to be more than a family restaurant serving home-style Mexican cooking. Traditional recipes prepared and served in the spirit of Slow Food are the basis of Nicos' kitchen, and attentive, non-obtrusive, closely-supervised staff continue to ensure that the customer is king. Really, what more can we want?

Another appetizer, this time doblada de tinga (delectable stewed, spiced, and shredded chicken stuffed into a folded, hot-off-the-comal (griddle) tortilla). These dobladas are offered three to an order, but our server generously provided our table of four diners with an extra doblada.

Nick Zukin, a Mexican food enthusiast and restaurant owner visiting from Oregon, recently invited me, Ben Herrera Beristain, and Jon Seymour to accompany him for comida (main meal of Mexico's day) at Nicos. An eager sí, cómo no!, and Mexico Cooks! joined Nick's group of friends at table. Faced with the truly difficult choices among Nicos' marvelous appetizers, soups, salads, and main dishes, we of course ordered far too much food, and of course we polished it all off with delight.

Our third entrada (appetizer) was this beautiful plate of trancas—taquitos (small rolled and fried tacos) stuffed with chicken and served with farm-fresh crema de mesa (Mexican table cream, similar to creme fraiche), grated queso fresco (soft white cheese), lettuce, and tomato–plus a small bowl of guacamole.

We ordered two sopas to share. This is what Mexico knows as a sopa seca (dry soup). In this case, it's the very special sopa seca de natas; a 19th century recipe from the convent of the Capuchinas (nuns) in Guadalajara. It's made of crepes, layered with shredded chicken and a sauce made of natas (unpasteurized cream from raw milk), tomatoes, and finely sliced chile poblano. Once the ingredients are layered in a baking dish, they're baked for about an hour and a half.

A soup plate arrives at table already piled with accompaniments for sopa de frijoles, the sopa aguada (liquid soup) we ordered. The shallow bowl holds strips of thinly sliced, fried tortillas, queso Pijijiapan (a white crumbly cheese from the state of Chiapas), lightly fried chile de árbol, and crema de rancho (farm-style cream). Note the name Pijijiapan: it's the only place name in Mexico with five dotted letters in a row! You can count on Mexico Cooks! for this sort of fascinating trivia.

Absolutely delicious sopa de frijoles (bean soup), based on an ayocote (white runner bean) broth flavored with fresh epazote (wormweed) is then ladled atop the soup accompaniments, and our waiter added a few drops of organic olive oil.

The first of our three platos fuertes (main dishes) was adobo de antaño con carne de cerdo con tamal de ejote tierno (pork cooked in an old-fashioned smooth, spicy adobo (sauce) and served with a fresh-corn tamal.

A tiny pot of frijoles negros (black beans), for just a spoonful each to go with our main dishes.

And another tiny pot of frijoles charros (cowboy-style beans with bacon, onion, and tomato). We couldn't have just one pot of beans, right?

Our second main dish: conejo al chile piquín (tender rabbit in a chile piquín sauce), served with ensalada de nopalitos (cactus paddle salad). Next time I am at Nicos, I'll order this dish just for myself. It was unquestionably my favorite–fall-off-the-bone tender rabbit cooked in a supremely delicious sauce. Just try and get me to give you a bite!

This dish of pollo en hoja de aguacate con pulque (boneless chicken with avocado leaf, orange juice, butter, and pulque) was, for me, a close runner-up to the rabbit. Beautifully presented and carrying the subtle flavor of anise-y avocado leaf and earthy pulque, the recipe was created by one of Mexico's foremost chefs and my friend, the great lady Alicia Gironella d'Angeli.

Can you tell that we were simply too stuffed to order dessert? We waddled out of the restaurant into the first downpour of Mexico City's 2013 rainy season, happy to have spent several hours enjoying one another's company and a superb meal. Next time you're in Mexico City, Restaurante Nicos will be a truly memorable experience for you.

Restaurante Nicos
Av. Cuitláhuac 3102, corner of Clavería
Col. Clavería
Del. Azcapotzalco
Mexico City 02080
Tel: 55.5396.7090 (reservations suggested for hours of comida, 2.30-4:00PM)
Hours: Monday through Friday 7.30AM to 7:30PM

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

4 de May de 2013
Food Fair in Uruapan, Michoacán: Una Muestra de Gastronomía

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photo by Steve Sando, www.ranchogordo.com

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

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

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

This was such a sweet finish to a fascinating day in Michoacán. If
you'd like to travel to this event in 2014, be sure to email Mexico Cooks! in time to save your place for adventure.

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

13 de April de 2013
Chilaquiles Caseros con Huevo :: Home-Style Chilaquiles with Egg

The ingredients for home-style chilaquiles with egg are very simple. This easy-to-prepare, traditionally Mexican dish makes a perfect lunch or supper for a Lenten Friday, or for any day.

Many years ago, long before the Internet burst onto the world scene and long before Mexico Cooks! was even a glimmer in my eye, a close friend from Michoacán taught me to prepare several platillos mexicanos estilo casero (home-style Mexican dishes). I've written about my dear friend Sister Celia Gutiérrez Cortés before; more than 30 years ago, she introduced me to many of Mexico's joys that continue to reward me today.

Sister Celia Gutiérrez Cortés in 1982

Chilaquiles are one of Mexico's most comforting of comfort foods. A mere mention of the word in casual conversation with Mexican friends will bring forth memories, stories, and recipes for their favorite ways of preparing them. They can be como mi mamá los hacía (like my Mom used to make them), estilo el restaurante en donde almorzábamos en aquel entonces (the way the restaurant where we had brunch in the old days prepared them), or–like these–como me los enseñó mi querida amiga (like my dear friend taught me). Enjoy!

Chilaquiles Caseros con Huevo
(Home-Style Chilaquiles with Egg)

Ingredients
10-12 eggs
1/4 cup milk
Sea salt to taste
Bottled red salsa to taste (the salsa in the photo is Chapala brand, but you can use salsa Cholula, Tabasco or something similar)
2 fresh chiles serrano (use just one, if you prefer your food less picante (spicy)
1 medium white onion
16-20 stale tortillas, the staler the better.
Vegetable oil

Utensils
12" non-stick skillet
Mixing bowl
Wire whisk
Spatula

Procedure

Break eggs into your mixing bowl. Add milk, sea salt, and bottled salsa. (I give the bottle 6-8 thumps on the bottom.) Whisk thoroughly until all ingredients are completely mixed together.

Finely mince the chiles. Cut the onion into 1/2 inch dice.

In your skillet, heat oil until it shimmers. Add the diced onion and minced chiles and sauté until the onions are soft and translucent, but not browned.

While the vegetables are cooking, cut or rip the tortillas into 1.5" squares, into triangles, or into 2" X 3/4" rectangles. The shape doesn't matter and each tortilla piece does not have to be exactly the same as the other.

Once the vegetables are soft, add the tortilla pieces to the skillet and sauté until they are browned and moderately crunchy. The onions will caramelize during this step.

When the tortillas are moderately crunchy–and they don't need to be as hard as packaged chips, just nicely crisped–add the beaten egg mixture to the skillet.

Cook over medium heat until the eggs are well-set but not hard. You will notice that, as the eggs begin to cook, the surfaces of the tortillas will appear to be slick and shiny. That's the egg mixture. The tortillas will lose that shine; when it's gone, you'll know that they are done.

If there is half a chicken breast left over from a previous meal, you can cut it into strips and toss it into the chilaquiles.

Divide the chilaquiles onto four plates. Drizzle with Mexican crema para la mesa (table cream–NOT sour cream), if you can find it. Serve with refried beans, sliced ripe avocado, and a refreshing cold beverage.

Makes four generous servings. Provecho!

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

16 de March de 2013
Touring with Mexico Cooks! in 2012…and Beyond! Oh, The Places You’ll Go…

A November market tour on a chilly morning in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán: from left, Charlotte Ekland, Donna Barnett, and Mexico Cooks!. Marvey Chapman, the other member of this tour group, took the picture. I'm holding two Michoacán-grown chirimoyas (Annona cherimola), known in English as custard apples.

One of the great pleasures of 2012 was the number of tours Mexico Cooks! gave 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 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 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, Donna 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.

Twice in 2012 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.

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 Phillipines.

We went to the original location of Guadalajara's Karne Garibaldi for comida (main meal of the day). 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 from San Jerónimo, Michoacán, who presented the artist with various handcrafted items from the state.

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.

23 de February de 2013
Tamales, Tamales, and More Tamales in Mexico City

Tamales in the tamalera (the steamer) at Tamalería (tamales shop) Méndez, on the street at the corner of Av. Baja California and Av. Insurgentes, Colonia Condesa, Distrito Federal. You can see that the tamalera is divided into three sections. Each section can hold a different kind of tamal (that's the word for ONE of a group of tamales). In this case, the tamales at the bottom left of the photo are Oaxaqueños (Oaxaca-style). On the right of the divider are tamales rojos (with a red chile sauce) and tamales de mole (both with pork meat). The third section of the tamalera holds just-out-of-sight tamales verdes (with chicken, in green chile sauce) and tamales con rajas y queso (with cheese and strips of chile poblano).

Older than
an Aztec pyramid and fresh as this morning’s breakfast, a pot of newly-steamed
tamales whets Mexico City’s appetite like nothing else in town. Dating to pre-Hispanic times—most historians
say tamales date to the time before the Christian era—the tamales of New Spain (now
Mexico) were first documented in the Florentine Codex, a mid-16th century
research project crafted by Spanish Franciscan monk Fray Bernadino Sahagún.

Traditionally, tamales are made by hand, not by machine. At first, they seem to be exhaustingly labor-intensive and difficult. Just as with most wonderful food, once you learn the techniques and tricks of making the various styles, they're not so hard to prepare–and they are so worth the time and effort! Here, Carmen Titita Ramírez Degollado, owner of Mexico City's Restaurante El Bajío, preparaes masa cocida (cooked corn dough) for her special tamales pulacles from Papantla, Veracruz.

The
ancients of the New World believed that humankind was created from corn. Just as in pre-history, much of Mexico’s traditional and
still current cuisine is based on corn, and corn-based recipes are still
creating humankind. A daily ration of corn
tortillas, tacos, and tamales keeps us going strong in the Distrito Federal,
Mexico’s capital city of more than twenty million corn-craving stomachs. Tamales are created from dried corn
reconstituted with builder’s lime and water.
The corn is then ground and beaten with lard or other fat into a thick,
smooth masa (dough). Filled with sauce and a bit of meat or
vegetable, most tamales are wrapped in dried corn husks or banana leaves and steamed, to fill Mexico
City’s corn hunger and keep her hustling.

Tamal-to-be: cut the banana leaf to the size and shape of the tamal you're making, then lightly toast each leaf. On the banana leaf, place a layer of masa, a strip of hoja santa (acuyo) leaf, and a big spoonful or two of cooked, shredded chicken in a sauce of chile guajillo, onion, and garlic.

Mexico’s capital city makes it easy to buy tamales any time the craving
hits you. Every day of the week, nearly
five million riders pack the Metro (the city’s subway system) and are disgorged
into approximately 200 Metro stations.
At any given Metro stop, a passenger is likely to find a tamales vendor. Her huge stainless steel tamalera (tamales steamer) hisses heartily over a low flame until
the tamales are sold out. Each steamer
can hold as many as two hundred tamales, and the vendor may preside over two or
three or more of these vats.

Titita folds the tamal so that the banana leaf completely wraps the masa and filling.

Hungry
students on the way to and from classes, office workers with no time to eat
breakfast at home, construction workers looking for a mid-morning pick-me-up:
all line up at their favorite vendor’s spot on the sidewalk closest to a
Metro exit. Near the vibrant
Chilpancingo Metro station at the corner of Av. Insurgentes and Av. Baja California, Sra. María de los Ángeles Chávez Hernández sells tamales out of two huge pots. “Qué le doy?”
(‘What’ll you have?’) she raps out
without ceremony to every hungry comer.
The choices: rojo (with pork and spicy red chile); verde (with chicken and even spicier
green chile); rajas con queso (strips
of chile poblano with melting white
cheese); mole (a thick spicy sauce
with a hint of chocolate); some Oaxaca-style tamales wrapped in banana leaves; and
dulce (sweet, usually either
pineapple or strawberry). The stand
sells about 200 tamales a day. Sra.
Chávez’s father, Ángel Méndez Rocha, has been selling tamales on this corner for
more than 60 years. Even at age 80, he alternates
weeks at the stand with his brother, selling tamales by the hundreds.

The masa and filling are centered in the banana leaf. Titita is simultaneously pressing the masa toward the middle of the leaf and folding each end of the banana leaf toward the middle.

The pair of tamales in the center of the photo are filled with chicken and chile guajillo sauce. The tamal closest to the bottom is made with black beans crushed with dried avocado leaves. Avocado leaves give a delicious anise flavor and fragrance to the beans. These tamales are ready to be steamed in the tamalera.

The tamal de chile guajillo, fresh out of the tamalera and unwrapped on my plate.

A specialty breakfast, unique to Mexico City, is the guajolota: a steaming hot tamal, divested
of its corn husks and plopped into a split bolillo,
a dense bread roll. Folks from outside
Mexico City think this combo is crazy, but one of these hefty and delicious
carbohydrate bombs will easily keep your stomach filled until mid-afternoon,
when Mexico eats its main meal of the day. When I asked Sra. Chávez Hernández about the name of the sandwich, she laughed. “Nobody knows why this
sandwich is called guajolota—the word
means female turkey. But everybody wants
one!”

If you'd rather take your tamales home to eat them, Sra. Chávez of Tamalería Méndez or her employee, Sra. Lucina Montel, will gladly wrap them in paper and send them along in a bag.

For steaming tamales, the bottom portion of a tamalera is filled with water. Add a coin to the water and put the tamales vertically into the steamer, atop the perforated base that rests just above the water. When the water boils, the coin will rattle. When the rattle slows or stops, add more water.

Tamales can be a massive guajolota to eat on the street or the most delicate, upscale meal in a restaurant. These, prepared by chef Gerardo Vázquez Lugo of Restaurante Nicos, are a degustación (tasting) at the Escuela de Oficios Gastronómicos operated by online magazine Culinaria Mexicana, where chef Vázquez recently offered a workshop teaching the history, ingredients, and preparation of tamales. From left to right, the four tamales are: carnitas de pato en salsa de cítricos y chile chipotle (shredded duck confit in a citrus and chile chipotle sauce), tamal de tzotolbichay (with the herb chaya), tamal de mole negro (black mole),and tamal de frijol (beans).

Chef Gerardo Vázquez Lugo of Mexico City's Restaurante Nicos.

In
addition to being daily sustenance, tamales are a fiesta, a party.
In Mexico City and every other part of Mexico, Christmas isn’t Christmas
without tamales for the late-night family feasting on Christmas Eve. Gather the women of the family together, grab
the neighbors, and the preparation of tamales becomes a party called a tamalada. Mexico City chef Margarita Carrillo tells us,
“Mexican grandmothers from time immemorial say that the first ingredient for
great tamales is a good sense of humor.
Tamales like it when you sing while you prepare them, they love to hear a
little friendly gossip while you work, and if you make tamales in the good
company of your family and friends, they’re sure to turn out just the way you
want them: with fluffy, richly flavored corn dough on the outside and a delicious filling
on the inside.”

A small and elegant tamal de chocolate for dessert, prepared by Restaurante Nicos for the tamales workshop.

Señora Elia Rodríguez Bravo, specialty cook at the original Restaurante
El Bajío, strains masa cocida for tamales. She
gently shook a wooden spoon at me as she proclaimed, “You can’t make tamales
without putting your hands in the masa (corn
dough). Your hand knows what it
feels. Your hand will tell you when the masa is beaten smooth, when the tamales
are well-formed in their leaves, and when they have steamed long enough to be
ready to eat. Your hand knows!”

Señora María de los Ángeles Chávez Hernández (left) and her longtime employee Señora Lucina Montel (right) sell tamales at the street booth Tamalería Méndez seven days a week. They and Sra. Chávez's staff prepare hundreds of tamales every night, for sale the next day.

Let's go on a Mexico City tamales tour! Let Mexico Cooks! know when you're ready, and we'll be on our way.

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

9 de February de 2013
Colonia La Condesa Bakery Crawl–Un Paseo por las Panaderías de Colonia la Condesa

Pan de muertos (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, my baker-friend Jane 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 muertos 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. It 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 light supper in Col. Condesa. 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 muertos. We took some pictures 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 muertos 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!' wife 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 Jane and I had cameras with us; he started berating us with, "No photos! No photos! Put the cameras away!" If you want to put up with that kind of behavior, fine. Neither Jane nor I will be going back.

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. Jane 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 muertos a little less so. The outside seating (there are also tables inside) was comfortable and pleasant.

Manduca's pan de muertos enticed us to stay, but Jane and I both prefer 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 to the corner of Calle Laredo), bills itself as a 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 muertos from 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 who loves pan dulce (sweet bread) in the Distrito Federal and the response will be a sigh of blissful longing.

On November 2, the only bread for sale at Pastelería Suiza was pan de muertos, and the only pan de muertos 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 muertos. I could not resist buying two individual-size panes de muertos.

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 muertos 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 muertos. 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, my wife and I stopped at what is essentially our corner bakery, located at the corner of Av. Insurgentes and Av. Baja California, hard by the Metro station a couple of blocks from our house. Panificadora La Espiga (the Spike of Wheat bread maker) is large but ordinary, with not much to recommend it other than its proximity to us. A seasonal craving for pan de muertos 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 muertos, La Espiga.

When I tasted the pan de muertos, I was surprised. My exclamation was, "A poco!" (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. Jane and I had wandered far afield, spent time and money in all those uppity Condesa bakeries, and I had already tried the best bread of the bunch. Next year, Jane. I promise to take you to La Espiga first.

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

1 de December de 2012
Taiwan Cuisine in Mexico City: Restaurante Rico Food in Colonia Del Valle
On your table at Rico Food when you sit down, house-made nibbles to open your appetite: sweetly pickled crunchy
carrots and cucumbers.

If you regularly read this website, you already know that Mexico Cooks! is always on the lookout for a really good Chinese restaurant in Mexico City. In March 2012, you read our report about the wonders of Restaurante Dalián. Dalián, whose owners hail from Beijing, features very satisfying food from mainland China.

A few months ago, friends mentioned a Chinese restaurant in their neighborhood. Our friends didn't know the restaurant's name, they weren't sure of the exact address, and they had never eaten there. But they said it must be good, because it was always packed with Asian people. And they said the restaurant was on Av. Coyoacán, not far from their home in Colonia Del Valle. A few days later, we took our car for its monthly outing and drove down Av. Coyoacán: there it is! Sure enough, Restaurante Rico Food was just half a block from División del Norte and mere minutes from our home.

Julio Lai, the delightful owner and culinary inspiration at Restaurante Rico Food. He was brought from Taiwan to cook in a restaurant in the city of Guanajuato, Mexico. Several years later, he went back to Taiwan with the intent to open his own restaurant in his home country. Once he realized how difficult his hometown competition would be, he came back to Mexico City to open Rico Food.

At Rico Food, dry-fried green beans with pork and chile are so delicious and everyone loves them so much that, depending on how many diners we have with us, we sometimes have to order two big platefuls. At this meal, we all dove into the green beans so fast that they almost disappeared before I got a photo.

The last time we visited Rico Food, this order of 20 freshly steamed pork dumplings served our table of five remarkably restrained eaters. Of course we also ordered several other dishes. The dumpling's dipping sauce is prepared prior to being brought to your table; it's the perfect flavor combination of soy sauce, ginger, black vinegar, and sesame oil.

Fileted delicate white fish, bean sprouts, scallions, and hot red chiles are the heart of this incredibly delicious Taiwanese dish. When I saw the oily liquid in the bowl, I thought I might not care for this. Boy, was I wrong!

Up until now, Mexico Cooks! has been fairly unfamiliar with even the most common specialities from Taiwan. This Taiwanese pork chop is a staple recipe from any restaurant or home menu. Given that these pork chops are relatively easy to make, you might want to try them at home. This recipe (courtesy of Allrecipes.com) will give you chops similar to the ones that Rico Food serves.

Taiwanese Pork Chops

Ingredients
- 4 (3/4 inch) thick bone-in pork chops
- 2 tablespoons soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon minced garlic
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/2 tablespoon white wine
- 1/2 tablespoon Chinese five-spice powder
- vegetable oil
- vegetable oil for frying
Directions
1. With a sharp knife, make several small slits near
  the edges of the pork chops to keep them from curling when fried.
2. Into a large resealable plastic bag, add the soy
  sauce, garlic, sugar, white wine, and five-spice powder. Place chops
  into the bag, and close the seal tightly. Carefully massage the marinade
  into chops, coating well. Refrigerate at least 1 hour, turning the bag
  over every so often.
3. In a large skillet, heat enough vegetable oil to
  fill the skillet to a depth of about 1/2 inch. Remove chops from
  resealable bag without wiping off marinade. Lightly sprinkle cornstarch
  on both sides of the chops.
4. Carefully add chops to skillet; cook, turning once, until golden brown on both sides and cooked through.
Serves four.

Steamed white rice with special Taiwanese sauce accompanied our meal.

Our comida (Mexico's main meal of the day) a few weeks ago at Rico Food celebrated the birthday of one of our group and offered her and two of our other companions their first taste of the restaurant's wonderful dishes. Our friends Alejandro and Allyson recently returned from several years in China; owner Julio Lai was astonished to be able to speak to both of them in Mandarin Chinese. Long conversation, special off-menu treats, and an introduction to Julio's beautiful wife ensued. Alejandro helped me talk with Julio, who promptly adopted me as his 'mamá mexicana' I'm proud to say that my new son is an altogether superlative cook!

Last but very definitely not least, our dessert left all of us tremendously satisfied. Steamed sweet black sesame paste buns were the perfect ending, the final touch to a magical meal.

Exterior of Rico Food, Colonia Del Valle, Mexico City. The signage says
that Rico Food is a Chinese restaurant, but many of the specialties are
from Taiwan. Photo courtesy Alejandro Linares García.

Restaurante Rico Food
Av. Coyoacán 426
Col. Del Valle
Del. Benito Juárez
Mexico City
Tel. 5682-9220 or 5682-9989
Monday through Sunday, Noon until 10PM

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10 de November de 2012

Category: Restaurants

Ingredients

Directions