Category: Tours

Another Year Has Passed :: Time for Chiles en Nogada (Stuffed Poblano Chiles in Walnut Sauce)
It's that time of year again: time for chiles en nogada! The photo above is of beautifully home-prepared chiles en nogada, as presented several years ago at a traditional food exhibition in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán.

This year's freshly harvested and peeled nuez de castilla (walnuts), an essential for seasonal chiles en nogada. The nut meats must be perfectly white, with no pieces of the papery brown peel left at all. This step is the fiddley-est part of the recipe. You can do it, it just takes patience. If you have school-age children, get them to help you.

Mexico celebrates its independence the entire month of September with parades, parties, and traditional food and drink, served in restaurants and at home. The traditional festive dish during the weeks just before and after the Independence Day holiday is chiles en nogada, a magnificent tribute to the seasonal availability of a certain kind of peach, a particular kind of pear (the pera lechera), the locally grown panochera apple, newly in-season granadas (pomegranates) and nuez de castilla (freshly harvested walnuts). From mid-July until early October, seasonal local fruits, fresh pomegranates, and newly harvested walnuts make chiles en nogada possible. Mildly spicy chiles poblano, stuffed with a special kind of picadillo and topped with richly creamy walnut sauce and pomegranate seeds, flaunt the brilliant green, white and red of the Mexican flag.

The panochera apple, grown in the Mexican state of Puebla, and pera lechera (milky pear), also grown in the area, are two must-have ingredients for making chiles en nogada in Mexico. If you live outside central Mexico, a small crisp apple and a very crisp pear (Bosc or d'Anjou) would substitute.

This festive dish is traditionally served on September 15 or 16 in honor of Mexico's Independence Day, though it is popular anytime in the late summer and fall. During August and September in the highlands of Mexico, particularly in Mexico City and Puebla, vendors wander through tianguis (street markets) and other markets, selling the clean, white meats of nuez de castilla. It is important to use the freshest walnuts possible, as they produce such a creamy, rich sauce that it is worth the effort to buy them peeled or peel them oneself. Yes, the recipe is time-consuming (not difficult, just takes time)…but you and your guests will jump up and shout "VIVA!" when they've licked the platters clean.

Ingredients

For the meat:
- 2 pounds beef brisket or other stew meat or 1 pound beef and 1 pound pork butt*
- 1 small white onion, quartered
- 2 large cloves garlic
- about 1 Tbsp sea salt
  *You can, if you are in a pinch for time, use equal quantities of coarsely ground beef and pork. Brown them before adding other ingredients.
For the picadillo (filling):
- 4 Tbsp safflower or canola oil
- the shredded meat (or the ground meat)
- 1/3 cup chopped white onion
- 3 large cloves garlic, minced
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
- 1/8 tsp ground cloves
- pinch pimienta gorda (allspice)
- 1/2 plátano macho (plantain), chopped fine
- 1 or 2 chiles serrano, finely minced
- 4 Tbsp chopped fresh walnuts
- 4 Tbsp slivered blanched almonds
- 2 Tbsp finely diced biznaga (candied cactus, optional)
- 1 fresh pear, peeled and chopped
- 1 apple, peeled and chopped
- 4 ripe peaches, peeled and diced
- 3 Tbsp Mexican pink pine nuts. Don't substitute white if you aren't able to find pink. White pine nuts have a bitter aftertaste.
- 3 large, ripe tomatoes, roasted, peeled and chopped
- sea salt to taste
Fully mature chiles poblano, picked fresh and sold on the street in Tehuacán, Puebla, very close to where the chiles are grown.

Deep green chiles poblano are normally used for chiles en nogada. These measure as much as seven inches long. If you click on the photo to make it larger, you can see that these chiles have deep, long grooves running down their sides. When I'm buying them, I choose chiles poblano that are as smooth and flat as possible on their broad flat sides. The flat smoothness makes them easier to roast easily.

For the chiles:

–6 fresh chiles poblanos, roasted, peeled, slit open, and seeded, leaving the stem intact

For the nogada (walnut sauce):
- 1 cup freshly harvested nuez de castilla (walnuts), peeled of all brown membrane**
- 6 ounces queso de cabra (goat cheese), queso doble crema or standard cream cheese (not fat free) at room temperature
- 1-1/2 cups crema mexicana or 1-1/4 cups sour cream thinned with milk
- about 1/2 tsp sea salt or to taste
- 1 Tbsp sugar
- 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1/4 cup dry sherry (optional)
**Please note that this recipe is correctly made with walnuts, not pecans. Using pecans will give your sauce a non-traditional flavor and a beige color, rather than pure white.

Remove the arils (seeds) from a pomegranate.

We who live in Mexico are fortunate to find pomegranate seeds ready to use, sold in plastic cups. See them at the top of the photo, with the pink plastic spoons stuck into the cups?

For the garnish

–1 Tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
–1/2 cup fresh pomegranate seeds

Preparation:

Cut the meat into large chunks, removing any excess fat. Place the meat into a large Dutch oven with the onion, garlic, and salt. Cover with cold water and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Skim off any foam that collects on the surface. Lower the heat and allow the water to simmer about 45 minutes, until the meat is just tender. Take the pot off the stove and let the meat cool in the broth. Remove the pieces of meat and finely shred them.

Candied biznaga (aka acitrón) cactus. Do try to find this ingredient in your local market. There isn't an adequate substitute, so if you don't find it, leave it out.

Mexican pink pine nuts. Their taste is sweeter than the standard white ones, and they leave no bitter aftertaste in your dish. If you can't find these pink pine nuts, you can substitute the white ones.

Warm the oil in a large, heavy skillet and sauté the onion and garlic over medium heat until they turn a pale gold. Stir in the shredded or ground meats and cook for five minutes. Add the cinnamon, pepper, and cloves, then, stir in the two tablespoons of chopped walnuts. Add the chopped pear, apple, and finely diced biznaga cactus, and mix well. Add the tomatoes and salt to taste, and continue cooking over medium-high heat until most of the moisture has evaporated. Stir often so that the mixture doesn't stick. Let cool, cover, and set aside. The picadillo may be made and refrigerated a day or two in advance of final preparations.

Roasted chiles poblano, ready to peel, seed, and stuff. Photo courtesy Delicious Mexican Recipes.

Roast and eel the chiles and make a slit down the side of each chile, just long enough to remove the seeds and veins. Keep the stem end intact. Drain the chiles, cut side down, on paper towels until completely dry. Cover and set aside. The chiles may be prepared a day in advance.

At least three hours in advance, put the walnuts in a small pan of water, boiling over high heat. Remove from the heat and let them sit for five minutes. Drain the nuts and, when cool, rub off as much of the dark skin as possible. Chop the nuts into small pieces. Place the nuts, cream cheese, crema, and salt in a blender and purée thoroughly. Stir in the sugar, cinnamon, and sherry until thoroughly combined. Chill for several hours.

Preheat the oven to 250ºF. When ready to serve, reheat the meat filling and stuff the chiles until they are plump and just barely closed. Put the filled chiles, covered, to warm slightly in the oven. After they are thoroughly heated, place the chiles (cut side down) on a serving platter or on individual plates, cover with the chilled walnut sauce, and sprinkle with the chopped parsley and pomegranate seeds.

Chile en nogada as served at Restaurante Azul Histórico, Mexico City.

Chile en nogada as served at Restaurante Las Quince Letras, Centro Histórico, Oaxaca.

This dish may be served at room temperature, or it may be served slightly chilled. It is rarely if ever served hot.

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17 de August de 2019
Picadillo :: Mexican Homemade Hash, It’s What’s for Dinner!

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 several 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, and it made quite the hit with my guests, who had never heard of it prior to snarfing it down and asking for seconds at my table.

When I first started making this dish in the United States, some of the ingredients were hard to source. Today, nearly 45 years later, the ingredients for picadillo are easily available in almost any supermarket. Starting with the bowl of ground pork at about seven o'clock 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, tomato purée, 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 shallow 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, tomato purée, or water; the liquid should come to about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the pot. In this instance, I used a combination of tomato purée and water. 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 read your email, walk the dog, or look at Facebook! 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! I just made a pot of picadillo yesterday, and it's as good as it always has been.

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

Delicious, just-right 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, hasta donde tú estés (wherever you might be–the hope, of course, being Heaven).

Provecho! (Good eating!)

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10 de August de 2019
Orange Coconut Flan :: The Best Flan Ever!

Mexico Cooks! originally published this recipe for orange coconut flan in 2011. Today, it's back by by popular demand!

The major ingredients for Mexico Cooks!' best flan ever–clockwise from the bottom: fresh oranges, cream of coconut, whole milk, real Mexican vanilla, fresh eggs, and sal del mar (sea salt, in the little red hen salt cellar). You'll also need some sugar.

This is a Mexican flanera (flan pan). It's made of aluminum; the lid fastens down with a hinged clamp. If you have one, use it. If you don't, you can use any kind of oven-proof pan that holds about two liters. It need not have a lid. That's San Pascual Baylón, the patron saint of the kitchen, in the background. He can be especially helpful at the moment you turn the chilled flan onto the serving platter.

Start by caramelizing the sugar in a heavy pan. This is an 8" enameled cast iron omelet pan; it's been in the pantry for nearly 20 years and, for this purpose, works better than any other pan in the kitchen. Just dump the sugar into your pan over very low heat; when you see that the sugar begins to melt a bit around the edges, move the pan a little to redistribute the sugar so that it caramelizes as evenly as possible.

When the sugar is fully caramelized, it will look like this photo. Caveat: this process seems to take forever, but you can't hurry it. And no matter how tempted you are, do not stir the sugar! Just move the pan little by little, tipping the un-caramelized sugar into the melted mass.

As soon as all the sugar is caramelized–while it is still boiling hot–pour it into the flanera or whatever pan you are using. Tip and turn the flanera so that the sugar evenly coats the bottom and sides. Be very careful not to burn yourself. Set the flanera aside and complete the recipe.

Mexico Cooks! Flan de Coco y Naranja a la Antigua (Old-Style Coconut and Orange Flan)
8 servings

Make the flan one day ahead of the time you want to serve it. Once baked, it needs to chill for about 18 hours.

Move the oven rack to its lowest position. Pre-heat the oven to 165-170°C or 325°F.

Ingredients
Caramelized Sugar
1 cup granulated sugar
4 Tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice

Flan
3 cups whole milk
1 cup cream of coconut
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1 Tbsp freshly grated orange peel
4 eggs
6 additional egg yolks
pinch sea salt

Garnish as shown in photo
3 perfect strawberries with their leaves
4 1/4" slices carambola (star fruit)
2 to 4 Tbsp grated fresh coconut, toasted

Preparation

Caramelized Sugar
Over a low fire, pour one cup of granulated sugar into a small, heavy skillet. Do not stir the sugar. When the sugar begins to melt, move the skillet a little, tipping and turning it so that all of the sugar caramelizes evenly. Allow the sugar to boil until it is a deep caramel color. Add the orange juice and tip gently until the juice is fully incorporated into the sugar. Immediately pour the boiling caramelized sugar/juice mixture into the flanera or other pan, tipping the flanera until the sugar fully coats the bottom and sides.

Flan
In a 2-quart pot, combine the milk, 3/4 cup granulated sugar, the cream of coconut, vanilla, grated orange rind, and salt. With a wooden spoon, stir the ingredients over a medium fire until they are well-heated. Raise the fire to high and allow the mixture to boil, but don't let it boil over. Continue to boil the mixture until it has reduced by nearly one cup. Set aside and allow to cool slightly.

The milk mixture needs to boil until it has reduced by about one cup. Be sure to set it aside to cool when the reduction is finished.

To easily separate six of the eggs so that you can use just their yolks, crack each egg into your open hand and allow the white to run through your fingers into a container.

With an electric hand beater, beat the eggs together with the additional yolks until they are light and foamy. Add the cooled mixture of milks. Pour the entire mixture into the flanera or prepared pan. If it is a flanera, cover it and fasten the latch. If it is another type pan, do not cover. Whichever you are using, put the recipient into a baño maría (bainmarie) and then into the pre-heated oven.

The milk mixture in the flanera; the caramelized sugar is at the bottom.

The flanera in the baño maría, just going into the oven. The baño maría can be any kind of pan; use enough water to come about one and a half to two inches up the side of the flanera or other pan.

Bake the flan for approximately two hours. At the end of two hours, take the top off the flanera and test the flan by inserting a thin knife or metal skewer into the middle; if it comes out completely clean, the flan is done. If some of the egg mixture clings to the knife or skewer, bake the flan about fifteen minutes longer, being careful not to over-cook it.

Once the flan is cooked, take it AND the baño maría out of the oven. On a cooling rack, let the flan rest in the baño maría about fifteen minutes more. Then remove the flanera (still covered) or other pan from the baño maría and allow the flan to cool at room temperature until the pan is cool to the touch.

Once the flan is cool, put the flanera (still covered) or other pan in the refrigerator and allow to chill until the following day.

To remove the flan from its mold, uncover and run a thin table knife around the entire outer edge. To ensure ease of release from the pan, dip the bottom of the flanera or other pan into very hot water so that the caramelized sugar liquifies a little. VERY CAREFULLY turn the flan out onto a platter. Mexico Cooks! puts the platter (one with a lip) on top of the open flan mold, calls on San Pascual Baylón for help, and quickly turns the platter and the mold so that the flan slips out easily. The caramelized sugar will run onto the top of the flan and make a pool in the bottom of the platter.

Approximate preparation time: 30 minutes
Approximate baking time: 2 hours

The finished product, ready to be taken to the dinner table.

Just prior to serving, decorate the flan however you like. In the photo, you see that I put one large strawberry in the center of the flan. I carefully made a border of toasted coconut and then cut the two remaining strawberries in half, leaving the leaves attached to each half, and placed one half at north, south, east, and west on top of the coconut. I then placed four slices of carambola between the strawberry halves. You could also use fresh red raspberries, thinly sliced twists of orange, and fresh mint leaves for a garnish, or any other seasonal fruit, or use no garnish at all.

Provecho!

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3 de August de 2019
Mexico’s Versatile Tianguis :: THE Place to Shop to Find Almost Anything You Need at Our Outdoor Markets

Lydia Gregory, a dear friend visiting from Phoenix, Arizona, tries a tuna (nopal cactus fruit) at the Tianguis Obrero Mundial, Colonia Narvarte, Mexico City. Tunas are delicious–and so is my friendship with Lydia! She loved it, but she couldn't smile because her mouth was full of tuna! We had such a great time.

Nearly twelve years ago, in August 2007, Mexico Cooks! featured every sort of produce, dairy product, and meat sold at a local tianguis (street market) near Guadalajara, Jalisco. For the entire month of August 2008, you read about seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables at the dozens of regularly scheduled tianguis (it's the same word in singular and plural: one tianguis, two or more tianguis, pronounced tee-AHN-geese) in Morelia, Michoacán. Mexico Cooks! would rather shop at a hot, crowded tianguis than at an air conditioned supermarket, would rather shop for supremely fresh foods at a tianguis than give a second glance to anything frozen, boxed, or canned that's offered for sale elsewhere.

A signmaker with a sense of humor stuck this tag on his fresh Roma tomatoes: "Like you saw on TV". These were offered at 14 pesos the kilo (about 45 cents US the pound).

The tianguis, wherever in Mexico it's held, is a basic part of the culture of modern Mexico. Its name comes from the Náuhatl word tianquiztli, market. Although Nahuatl markets are centuries old, the present-day form of the tianguis is fairly recent, originating during the 1970-76 Mexican presidency of Luis Echeverría Alvarez. The author of the tianguis project in Mexico was José Iturriaga, Echeverría's former finance minister.

These tender new elotes (early native corn) are piled up in a huge pot, ready to be steamed. When they're ready to eat, they'll be sold piping hot with a slather of mayonnaise, a heavy layer of freshly grated cheese, a squeeze or two of jugo de limón (the tiny fruit known in the USA as key lime), salt, and, to your taste, a sprinkle or more of powdered chile. Eat it while you walk the tianguis aisles–this is one of the most popular and delicious snacks in Mexico.

Cooked in a sweet syrup, whole calabaza de castilla (squash, left), camote (sweet potato, right), and higos (figs, rear) are available at the tianguis by the kilo or portion of a kilo. They're to be eaten for breakfast or supper.

Although Iturriaga was himself a wealthy, educated, and cultured man, he worried about the ability of Mexico's poor to feed their families. He was especially concerned about the availability of nutritious fresh foods sold at reasonable prices. The tianguis, otherwise known as a mercado sobre ruedas (market on wheels), was his idea. The government took charge of giving Mexico's working-class housewives and other food shoppers stupendous quality at the lowest possible prices.

Rambutan, available in season at tianguis all over Mexico. This exotic fruit, first hairy cousin to the lychee, is grown commercially in Chiapas, one of Mexico's southernmost states.

Beautiful cebollitas de cambray (knob onions), ready for serving with carne asada (grilled meat, usually accompanied by grilled whole onions like these.

Meats are available at a tianguis, too. At the left, these are long strands of longaniza (a spicy, fresh sausage similar to chorizo) and at the right, equally long strands of Oaxaca-style chorizo. My favorite is the Oaxaca-style chorizo.

Still operated by local government, today's tianguis only sometimes reach Iturriaga's ideal. Often the produce can be second-rate, the meats and seafood far less than fresh, and the market's hygiene questionable–while prices are often as high or higher than the días de plaza (sale days) in upscale supermarkets.

Prepared food, for eating on-site or for carryout, is available at all of the tianguis I've been to in Mexico–a lot! Here you see a taco of heavenly pork carnitas with chopped fresh cilantro and onion and some salsa roja.

Higos–figs, at the peak of maturity and ripeness–enjoy a relatively long season here in Mexico. We recently paid 100 pesos for two kilos of beautifully ripe figs and prepared half a dozen jars of you-don't-want-to-know-how-good fig conserve. Later this winter, spread on a toasted and buttered bolillo (small loaf of fresh-baked bread) from our tianguis, served over ice cream, or simply licked off the finger, the conserve will be an intense memory of summer.

Mexico Cooks! is a regular customer at one of the better tianguis in Mexico City. Our tianguis, set up early Wednesday mornings, is quite near our house. Our normal purchases include tortillas, bread, seafood, excellent pork ranging from maciza (fresh pork leg) to tocino (bacon), marvelously fresh chicken (whole or whichever part you want), all of our fruits and vegetables, cheeses and cream, grains, and flowers for the house. We don't eat much beef, but if we did, we'd buy it at the tianguis.

Tiny plátanos dominico (finger bananas, about 2.5 inches long) are just one of the banana varieties we usually see at the tianguis.

This is American-style yellow sweet corn, now grown in the Mexican states of Guanajuato and Querétaro. It's nothing like the native corns grown for millennia all over Mexico, but it's becoming very popular. I photographed this mound of corn at the tianguis in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán.

Prices at the Wednesday tianguis in our neighborhood, while not substantially lower than those at the supermarket, are still not higher than we care to pay. We usually budget about 700 pesos (about $50 USD) to buy what we need at the tianguis for a week's meals, including pork and sometimes shrimp. We budget another 400 pesos for purchases at the supermarket.

Mangos stacked high at a tianguis. This large variety is known as either Paraíso or Petacón.

On a recent Wednesday–when the refrigerator was bare of produce, as we had been out of the country for more than a week–these were our purchases:

6 large fresh white onions
1 huge cantaloupe
4 Petacón mangos
6 red-ripe Roma tomatoes
1/2 lb mushrooms
1/2 large white cabbage
8 Red Delicious apples
1 large avocado
2 large bananas
1 large papaya
1 lb fresh green beans
1 large head of broccoli
8 ounces crema de mesa (table cream, similar to crême fraiche)
1 kilo freshly ground-to-order beef
Total cost: 500 pesos–the equivalent of about $25.00 USD.

Common kitchen utensils of all kinds are also offered at a tianguis. These are escobetillas, used for scrubbing pots and pans. They're made from the root portion of a plant.

Times and needs change. Urban Mexico views the tianguis as both a terrible bother (who would want one on their street, with its attendant noise and mess that lasts till the market day is done!) and a joy (but where else can we get produce this fresh!). Mexico Cooks! knows people who disdain shopping at a tianguis, and we know people who will not shop anywhere else. You already know which side of that fence I stand on. Come with me some week and see what you think.

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27 de July de 2019
Full-Course Main Meals in Mexico, Comfort Food Family Style
Although Mexico Cooks! photographed this sign several years ago in Los Angeles, California, it absolutely represents what you will be served for comida (Mexico's main midday meal) at a fonda, a cocina económica, a cocina regional, or a comedor in Mexico: authentic home made food.

Although I thoroughly enjoy a tremendous variety of great food in some of the upscale restaurants in both Mexico City and Morelia, Michoacán, my heart continues to belong to the fondas, cocinas económicas, cocinas regionales, and comedores that blossom all over this country.

Menú del día (today's menu) at the now-defunct and much missed Fonda 127, Mercado San Nicolás, Morelia, Michoacán. Click on the photo to enlarge it for a better view. You'll see that the daughters of the family who made the sign used the letter 'Z' where you might expect to find the letter 'S', and the 'N's are all backwards. It's just a 'toque personal'–personal touch. And the word guisados, at the top of the list, simple means 'dishes', in this case those that are being served today.

In Mexico, almost any fonda is by nature a small and inexpensive eating establishment presided over by the proprietors. Generally those proprietors are women (sisters, sisters-in-law, cousins, or comadres), but sometimes you'll be attended by a husband and wife plus their older children. Although you can order a meal a la carta (from the regular printed menu), it's most common to order the menú del día, also known as comida corrida. Under either name, the menú changes every day and consists of your choice of items in three courses: caldo or crema (soup), a sopa seca (normally either rice or spaghetti), one of several guisados del día (main course of the day), plus a small courtesy postre (dessert).

Home-style tortita de calabacita en caldillo de jitomate (little zucchini croquette in tomato broth) as served at the late, lamented, long-time Morelia fixture, Los Comensales (the name means 'the diners'). Los Comensales closed its doors in 2010; the presiding owner, Sra. Catalina Aguirre Camacho, was unable to continue in business due to her advanced age.

I was fortunate to live just around a Mexico City corner from a wonderful fonda, El Portalito. But this is not unique: I suspect that the majority of people who live in Mexico City could say the same thing about a fonda in the colonia (neighborhood) where they live. For example, our good friend David Lida, who lives on the other side of our colonia, has his special favorite–we loved it when we recently ate there with him, but it's around the corner from his house, not ours, and it's just a bit too far away for us to walk there regularly for a meal.

The interior of El Portalito, in Colonia Condesa on Calle Chilpancingo between Aguascalientes and Tlaxcala.

Cazuelas (wide clay cooking pots) on the El Portalito stove. You can see that I was there a little later than the normal hora de comer (eating time)–the cazuelas are nearly empty. Left, carne de cerdo en adobo. Right, salsa ranchera for the beef dish of the day.

One of the many stands for Mexico City's wonderful Ecobicis is just a couple of steps from El Portalito–I took the photo from our sidewalk table. Enroll in the Ecobici program, grab a bicycle at a stand near your house, ride it over to the restaurant, park it here, have your lunch, and take another bike to go back home!

The other day I spent several happy hours shopping with friends at the fabulous Mercado de Jamaica and oops–we got off at the Metro stop close to home just a few minutes before fainting from hunger. No time to cook! Where to eat? El Portalito, of course! We wanted to leave our purchases at home before returning to have our comida (main meal of the day), so we checked out the menú del día as we passed by. Of course we told our favorite waitress that we would be right back.

The standard daily offerings at El Portalito.

The menú del día is always written on a menu board and hung on the wall and, in addition, is hand-written on a little piece of tablet paper, stuck under a piece of plastic inside the regular a la carta menu.

That day we stopped in at El Portalito, the menú sencillo offered a choice of one each of the following:
- sopa de pasta (brothy soup with a large amount of small pasta cooked in it) or caldo tlalpeño (another brothy soup with vegetables, including the traditional garbanzos)
- Arroz a la mexicana (rice cooked in a thin tomato broth with diced fresh vegetables) or spaghetti (either buttered or slathered in a creamy sauce)
- Cerdo en adobo (pork meat in a chile-based sauce), bisteck en salsa ranchera (thin pieces of steak in a tomato-based sauce, or enchiladas verdes con pollo deshebrado (green enchiladas with shredded chicken breast)
- Postre (dessert–at this fonda, always gelatin), on the house
The total cost for the menú del día sencillo was 65 pesos. The cost of the menú also includes a refillable basket of fresh telera (bread), tortillas, if you like, house-made salsa (either red or the delicious, tangy green, depending on the day you're there) and the agua fresca del día (fresh fruit water of the day), all you care to drink.

I ordered the caldo tlalpeño. I like to add a squeeze of limón, a spoonful of salsa, a bigger spoonful of rice, and a sprinkle of salt. It's not fancy, but it's definitely delicious.

Our favorite waitress, Gloria Callejas, with main courses in hand. She told us that El Portalito has been serving breakfast and midday meals to hungry customers for 26 years. We ate out on the sidewalk, where there are three or four tables and lots of lovely fresh air.

Here's an order of spiced-just-right cerdo en adobo (pork in a spicy sauce). This main course comes with frijolitos refritos and I had saved some arroz a la mexicana to enjoy with it. At El Portalito, rice is always served with the soup course, in case you want to add some rice to your soup.

My very nice order of three enchiladas verdes con pollo deshebrado, which also are served with frijolitos refritos. I opened up one of the enchiladas to show you the large quantity of shredded chicken breast inside. The enchiladas arrive topped with crema and queso rallado (Mexican table cream and grated cheese).

The menú drink of the day was agua fresca de melón (fresh house-made cantaloupe water). It was absolutely wonderful, made of sweet, ripe cantaloupe served frothy and chilled. It matched the tablecloth, too–a definite plus. My other favorite agua at El Portalito is sandía (watermelon). Or maybe guayaba (guava). Or…oh, all of the aguas frescas that they prepare are delicious. I can't possibly choose just one favorite!

The dessert gesture was lime gelatin. Usually it's served in little plastic cups. We were impressed by these little 'crystal' cups the last time we were at El Portalito.

In Mexico City's Centro Histórico, you'll find many popular old-time fondas. Here are a few you might want to try:

La Casa Humboldt
República de Uruguay #86

Cocina América
Callejón 5 de mayo Letra K

Cocina Elizabeth
Palma #9, Letra F

Fonda Mi Lupita
Mesones #113

Each of these serves home-style Mexican food at very affordable prices. Expect to pay between 40 and 60 pesos for a full menú del día.

Whatever your neighborhood, wherever you live in Mexico, you're sure to find an old-fashioned place for a full comida corrida. It won't be high-end modern food with fancy designer presentations, but you'll love what you taste and will leave with this old Mexican dicho (saying) in your mind: "Panza llena, corazón contento." (Full stomach, happy heart.) When you've found your favorite, let me know so I can try it too!

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20 de July de 2019
Meals At Home, Meals Away from Home :: Mexico Cooks! Travels to Eat

Truly wonderful aporreadillo from Apatzingán, Michoacán's Tierra Caliente (hot lowlands), as prepared by doña Victoria González at La Tradición de Apatzingán, her family's restaurant in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. Aporreadillo is a preparation of dried cecina, cooked in highly spiced tomato-y broth with scrambled egg. In this case, doña Vicky prepared a plate of aporreadillo for me with a base of morisqueta (steamed white rice) and frijoles de la olla (freshly cooked whole beans and their liquor). The small dish in the background is a bowl of doña Vicky's delicious salsa, made in a molcajete (volcanic stone mortar). Just looking at the picture makes my mouth water!

A Sunday afternoon on the trajineras (boats) in Xochimilco requires a refueling stop at a 'restaurant' trajinera. These boats with small kitchens pull up along side the trajinera that you're riding in to offer whatever's cooking. In this case, our midday meal was juicy carne asada (grilled meat) and quesadillas cooked to order, guacamole and tortilla chips, rice, beans, and hot-off-the griddle tortillas. Delicious!

Here's pan de romero (rosemary bread) from Rosetta, chef Elena Reygadas' lovely and well-respected Italian restaurant at Calle Colima 166, Col. Roma Sur, Mexico City. This bread is so delicious that sometimes I wish I could go to Rosetta and just fill up on bread and olive oil!

Home cooking: Mexico Cooks! prepared the hot, fennel-y Italian sausage and then created sausage, peppers, and onion sandwiches for a recent meal at home.

Another home-cooked meal: eggplant parmagiana. An Italian-American Facebook friend in New Jersey keeps me inspired to try his recipes. They're almost inevitably delicious and it's a huge pleasure knowing him, even in this virtual way.

Once every couple of months, Azul/Condesa or Azul/Histórico call out to us. It's difficult for me to resist the wonderful crema de flor de calabaza–squash flower soup, each bowl made with 18 squash blossoms plus strips of chile poblano, kernels of tender elotes (early corn), and tiny cubes of queso fresco (fresh white cheese).

Charales, tiny freshwater fish prepared as a snack almost everywhere in Mexico. These are special, though: prepared by my dear friend Rosalba Morales Bartolo, just as her grandmother taught her Rosalba lives in San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro, Michoacán. No one prepares charales the way Rosalba does, and once you've had one or two of these, there is no going back to the ordinary style. Until a few years ago when Rosalba grabbed me by the back of the neck and insisted, "Taste this!", I always thought I really despised these little fish. Now I dream about hers, and fortunately I live close enough to San Jerónimo that I often get to have some. If you come for a food tour with me, we'll go to her house for comida (Mexico's main meal of the day), and you'll be addicted, too.

Home-made sopa de albóndigas (Mexican meatball soup). I prepared this in February 2017 for dear friends in San Diego, California.

Perfectly grilled steak, prepared in February by chef Claudia Sandoval, for an amazing meal at the San Diego home of a friend. It was an honor and a pleasure to share dinner with chef Claudia, who is the 2016 winner of MasterChef/Gordon Ramsey. The hostess of the party is always the hostess with the mostess, and the evening was made complete by friends Holli and Jim DeLauro.

To end on a sweet note: these buñuelos–foot-in-diameter deep-fried flour pastry, finished with a dash of granulated sugar and cinnamon, broken onto a plate or into a bowl and bathed with syrup made of piloncillo (Mexican raw brown sugar)–were on the menu at a fonda (small family food booth or restaurant) the last time I was in Morelia, Michoacán. Could you resist? I couldn't.

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13 de July de 2019
Restaurante Los Comensales in Morelia, Michoacán :: How We Dined in Morelia in the Past

The covered dining terraza at Los Comensales bordered the restaurant's central garden, beautifully in bloom in rain or sunshine. Indoor dining was also available, but I loved to sit on the covered terraza to hear the sweet song of birds or to listen to the rain dripping on the greenery.

In years gone by, when Mexico Cooks! was looking for a traditional old-style Morelia comida corrida (soup-to-nuts main meal of the day, usually inexpensive), I often headed to Restaurante Los Comensales, on Calle Zaragoza in the Centro Histórico. A Morelia tradition since 1980, Los Comensales (the name means 'the diners') satisfied its clients' hunger very well, and in a genteel, old-fashioned way.

A small plate of verduras en escabeche (pickled vegetables) was the first dish to arrive at our table. This little plate holds carrots, cauliflower, green beans, chayote, and onions–along with a bay leaf or two and a sprig of oregano.

The lovely terraza and dining rooms at Los Comensales were filled with memories of days gone by. Photographs of the founders–Señora Aguirre has survived her husband by many years–are scattered on the walls. He was a bullfight aficionado; she was a great home cook, specializing in the broad gamut of Michoacán comida casera (home cooking). In 19th and 20th Century Mexico, French and Spanish cuisine were the sought-after flavors when Mexicans dined out in style. Mexican cooking was considered second-class restaurant cooking at best. Nevertheless, Sra. Aguirre and her husband decided to feature typical Michoacán cuisine when they opened Los Comensales in their own home in early 1980.

One always had a choice between at least two soups of the day. The last time Mexico Cooks! enjoyed comida at Los Comensales, the choices were between caldo tlalpeño that traditionally featured tender garbanzos and a touch of chile chipotle (pictured above) and crema de zanahoria (cream of carrot). We've also loved the delicious leek, mushroom, and potato soup and the simple consomé de pollo (chicken consommé).

Los Comensales was the first private home in Morelia to be converted into a restaurant. It immediately became a great success. In 1989, the pair opened a second downtown Morelia restaurant. Las Viandas de San José (The Foods of Saint Joseph), located directly in front of Morelia's Templo San José, was in the same style as Los Comensales: the rich and varied cuisine of the couple's beloved home state, Michoacán.

This tortita de calabacita was a tremendous hit, fresh and delicious in its pool of caldillo (thin tomato sauce). We chose it from the sopas section of the comida corrida menu. Other choices were spaghetti in cream sauce or standard Mexican red rice with diced vegetables.

Mexican sopas are divided into two classes: sopa aguada (wet soup) and sopa seca (dry soup).

Sopa aguada is divided into three further categories: caldos, consomés, and cremas. Caldos are clear broths, usually with other ingredients like vegetables and meat. Consomés are similar to caldos, but may not have vegetables or meat in their ingredients. Cremas are cream soups; the different possibilities are endless.

Sopa seca includes dishes such as pastas, rice, and vegetable tortitas–like the tortitas de calabacita shown above. These are easy to prepare and absolutely delicious.

Peeling one of the Roma tomatoes to make caldillo. Don't worry, you won't burn your fingers!

Tortitas de Calabacita (Little Zucchini Fritters)
Ingredients
6 small calabacitas (or zucchini), no more than 3" long
6 1/4" thick slices mild white cheese (queso fresco or queso panela, if possible)
2 eggs, separated
Salt
Flour
Vegetable oil for frying

Slice the calabacitas in half, lengthwise. Place one slice of cheese between the slices of each calabacita. Hold the slices of calabacita and cheese together with toothpicks. Dredge each calabacita with salted flour.

Beat the egg whites until stiff. Beat the egg yolks until thick and pale lemon in color. Gently fold the yolks into the whites.

Heat oil in a frying pan until hot but not smoking.

Coat the floured calabacitas in the egg batter and fry until golden brown. Serve bathed with caldillo.

Caldillo (thin tomato sauce)
4 or 5 red-ripe Roma tomatoes
1/2 small white onion
Chicken broth, preferably home-made
Oregano, preferably Mexican
Sea salt to taste
Vegetable oil for frying the sauce.

Bring a small pot of water to a full rolling boil. Add the tomatoes (I usually cut a 1/2" cross in the stem end) and boil till the skins split–just a single minute or a few seconds more. Remove tomato peels; they'll slip off like gloves from your fingers.

Place the peeled tomatoes and the onion in a blender. Add a very small amount of chicken broth and blend until smooth.

In a frying pan, fry the sauce in a bit of vegetable oil for about five minutes. Add chicken broth until you have a very thin sauce. Add a sprig of fresh oregano and salt to taste. Cook for another five minutes and remove the oregano. Strain the sauce through a wire strainer.

Plate each serving of calabacita on a small plate and pour enough sauce over each little squash–about 1/4 cup will do.

Serves 6 as a side dish.

Carne de res en salsa chipotle (beef in a smoky chile sauce) was Mexico Cooks!' main dish. Others sharing my table ordered milanesa de pollo (thinly sliced, lightly breaded chicken breast).

Los Comensales also offered an a la carta menu, but it never really tempted me. The daily comida corrida offered such a wide variety of dishes that I always chose my meal from that menu.

Our dessert, Flan napolitano (Naples-style custard with caramel), is firmer than its ordinary cousin. Flan napolitano is made with cream cheese, in addition to the usual milk and eggs.

The last time Mexico Cooks! dined at Los Comensales, my comida corrida was exactly what's pictured here. The total cost for me and my two companions was $300 pesos; each comida corrida was $60 pesos, plus the addition to our order of a large jarra (pitcher) of naranjada (orangeade, made with freshly squeezed orange juice and sparkling water). A tip was included in the cost of the meal.

Señora Catalina Aguirre Camacho, the owner of Los Comensales since 1980. Because of her advanced age, she closed the restaurant in 2010, and passed away shortly thereafter. She has gone to heaven to cook for God's angelitos.

Los Comensales was open for desayuno (breakfast) and comida every day except Wednesday. I think of the restaurant so often, and miss it very much now that I am once again at home in Morelia. Restaurants of this sort have all but disappeared in Mexico.

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29 de June de 2019
Made At Home With Mexico-Grown Blackberries :: Not your Abuelita’s Cobbler

Blackberries are one of the staples of the Mexico Cooks! kitchen. In season nearly year-round, Mexico's blackberries are commercially grown primarily in the states of Michoacán and Jalisco. I'm crushing this bowlful of delicious blackberries with Splenda® and a pinch of salt to add to breakfast yoghurt. Wild blackberries (in the Purépecha language, tzitún) still grow in the oak and pine forests of Michoacán.

In 1994, the commercially cultivated blackberry first arrived in the area around Los Reyes, Michoacán. High in the mountains, Los Reyes offered a perfect climate for the Brazos variety of erect blackberries. Originally, the commercial growers planted only three hectáreas (about 6 acres) of berries. Developed at Texas A&M University and introduced in 1959, 'Brazos' has been the Texas standard for years and is still a great variety. The berries are large and the plants produce heavily. In Michoacán, this variety starts ripening early in May. The berries are a just a little bit acid and are better for cooking and canning than fresh eating. This variety has more thorny plants and larger seeded fruit than many of the improved varieties. In fact, the blackberries offered in Mexico's markets are huge, about an inch long by half an inch in diameter–as big as the ball of my thumb.

Brazos blackberries 'on the hoof'.

Since those 1994 beginnings, local growers have learned a tremendous amount about the cultivation of blackberries. Today, the fruit fields cover more than 12,500 hectáreas in the area of Los Reyes, Tocumbo, and Peribán, and cultivation is currently underway in the area around Pátzcuaro–almost all in the west-central highlands of Michoacán. The 2018 blackberry production reached a weight of more than 260,000 tons of blackberries–tons! Ninety-five percent of those were exported to the United States, the primary foreign market. The rest of those exported went to Europe and Japan. This quantity of blackberries represents 95% of those grown in Michoacán and 90% of those grown anywhere in Mexico. Next time you buy a plastic "clamshell" box of blackberries, look at the label. Most labels will read, "Product of Mexico." Mexico Cooks!' rinconcito (tiny corner) of Mexico produces more blackberries than anywhere else in the world. Fortunately, enough of Michoacán's blackberries stay in Mexico to satisfy its population.

Recently Mexico Cooks! was unable to find unsweetened, unflavored yoghurt in our neighborhood shops–and there was nearly a kilo (2.2 pounds) of blackberries in the refrigerator that needed to be eaten immediately. They had been destined for a week's worth of breakfasts, but one morning se me prendió el foco (the light bulb went on in my brain) and I thought: COBBLER! In the bowl is the entire amount of berries, mixed with sugar, the juice and some grated zest of a limón (key lime), and a bit of cornstarch.

Blackberry cobbler, as you might have guessed, is not in the standard Mexican food repertoire. However, when all of the ingredients are grown or made in Mexico, maybe it should be. In the photo are salt, baking powder, an egg, two limones, wheat flour, standard-grade sugar,milk, and freshly rendered pork lard. Lard, so shoot me! You can substitute vegetable shortening, but lard tastes better.

Pre-heat the oven to 425ºF and butter a baking dish. In this instance, I used an 8" square ovenproof glass baking dish.

Scoop the blackberry mixture into the pan and gently even it out.

Measure the shortening of your choice. I always use the displacement method to measure solid shortening: for this 1/4 cup of lard, I started with 1 3/4 cups of cold water in this clear measuring cup. I added lard until the water rose to the two-cup level, then emptied out the water. Bingo, 1/4 cup of lard and no mess.

The flour mixture that will become the dough for topping the cobbler. You see the lard on top of the flour mixture, ready to be worked into it.

The flour mixture should look like this when you finish working the lard into it.

Break an egg into the milk and beat with a fork till blended.

The cobbler, topped with raw dough and ready for the oven. Sprinkle the raw dough with sugar to give it a finished look after baking. The cornstarch that I mixed with the raw blackberries and sugar thickens the juices as the cobbler bakes.

Bake the cobbler for about half an hour, or until the dough is light golden brown. Your house will smell heavenly!

Here's the entire recipe:

Blackberry Cobbler

Ingredients
4-6 cups fresh blackberries
3/4 cup sugar, divided use
1 Tbsp lemon juice
zest of 1/2 lemon
1 Tbsp cornstarch

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup shortening–in this instance, lard
4 Tbsp butter
1 whole egg
1/2 cup milk

Preparation
Preheat your oven to 425ºF.

Butter the glass baking dish. Mix blackberries, 1/2 cup sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, and lemon zest in a large mixing bowl. Reserve.

In a separate bowl, mix the flour, salt, baking powder, and 1 or 2 Tbsp sugar. Add the shortening and butter and work them into the flour with your fingers, until the mixture looks like fairly coarse corn meal.

Measure 1/2 cup milk into a large measuring cup; break the egg into the milk. Beat with a fork until well blended. Pour the milk/egg mixture into the flour/shortening mixture and stir until smooth. The dough should not be sticky; if you need to add more flour, start with just an additional tablespoon. When the dough is smooth but still quite damp, it's ready.

Pour the blackberry mixture into the glass baking dish and gently even out the berries with your fingers. Put large spoonfuls of dough all over the berries, leaving some small spaces on top for the juice to bubble through. Flatten the dough a little–use your fingers, and don't worry about how it looks. Sprinkle the top of the dough with a tablespoon or two of sugar.

Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes. A serving of blackberry cobbler, topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, will look like this–truly a thing of beauty.

The finished product: blackberry cobbler, hot out of the oven and topped with rich real-cream vanilla ice cream. The top diameter of the small white bowl in the photo above measures three inches.

What could be better for breakfast, or for dessert–a taste of Mexican blackberries, from a recipe straight out of your grandmother's kitchen!

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22 de June de 2019
Cena :: Late Evening “Supper”, Just Enough to Tide You Over Until Morning

The man who operates this cart in Mexico City's Centro Histórico (Historic Center) wheels his baked plátanos y camotes (bananas and sweet potatoes) around during the day. In residential areas, when downtown businesses are closed, you are most likely to hear the steam whistle's raucously, riotously eardrum bursting high-pitched TWEEEEEEEEEEET during mid-to-late evening hours. Each plateful is either a roasted banana or a sweet potato dripping with La Lechera, a brand of sweetened condensed milk. Either one is just right for your cena. Enlarge the photo to get a better look at the front of the vehicle, where the bananas and sweet potatoes are kept warm over the cart's firebox. See the can of La Lechera?

Cena (supper) in Mexico is a mixed bag. For an ordinary cena at home, it's a tiny meal: a cup of hot chocolate, herbal tea, or hot milk, a pan dulce (sweet bread), or a quick taco made with what's left over from comida (the main meal of the day). Comida being the large meal that it usually is, cena is meant only to tide you over from just before bedtime till early the next morning.

If you're out partying till the wee hours, a few tacos al pastor (shepherd-style marinated pork tacos) on the street might be just the ticket for your cena. See the whole pineapple at the top of the trompo (vertical spit)? The pineapple cooks along with the meat–see the gas grate behind the cone of meat?–and the pastorero (the guy who prepares tacos al pastor) tosses a few small sweet slices into your grill-warmed tortilla. Top your taco with red or green salsa (remember the green is almost always the hotter one!), a pinch of sea salt, and a shower of minced onion and cilantro for a taste of heaven.

Buñuelos are another favorite food for cena, either eaten at a cenaduría (supper spot) or purchased from a street vendor. Some people still make them at home–the dough is very similar to that of a wheat flour tortilla, stretched until thin over the rounded bottom of a clay pot. Traditionally, the dough was stretched over the maker's knee to achieve each buñuelo's large size and round shape! They are usually served either whole, dusted with granulated sugar and cinnamon, or broken into pieces in a bowl and drizzled with piloncillo (raw brown sugar) syrup.

Conchas (pan dulce), reposted from the breakfast article: food for cena is often the same food we eat for desayuno.

Just as an aside: in addition to cena, some people in Mexico still partake of merienda, a light snack that can come sometime between comida and cena. This 'light snack' can be as simple as a couple of cookies and a cup of té de manzanilla (chamomile tea) or it can be a more complex offering similar to an English tea. Mexico Cooks! will leave the question of how to find stomach room for merienda up to you.

Not all food eaten for cena is sweet. Case in point: this Pátzcuaro, Michoacán, specialty is atole de grano, a savory fresh-corn soup that's colored and flavored with anisillo, a wild anise that grows in this region. Atole de grano is one of my favorite things to eat in Pátzcuaro. Come touring in Michoacán with me, we'll have our cena there.

For an elegant and really delicious cena in what was originally an early 18th century home, an excellent option is Restaurante La Conspiración de 1809, located in Portal Allende near the corner of Calle Abasolo, Centro Histórico, Morelia, Michoacán. While you're there, be sure to get the story of why the restaurant is called "La Conspiración". You'll be glad you did.

Several Februarys ago, Mexico Cooks! and a group of friends attended a gala Valentine's Day cena at Restaurante Los Danzantes in Coyoacán, Mexico City. The dinner was presented by chef Cynthia Martínez and a team from Morelia, Michoacán.

If you are invited to a late evening cena baile (dinner dance) or a cena de gala (black tie dinner) at a restaurant, events center, or private home, your hosts will pull out all the stops. Champagne, beautiful entradas (appetizers), a superb multi-course meal, snazzy dessert, alcoholic beverages and music are de rigeur.

Mexico Cooks! researches possibilities for an elegant cena at Restaurante JASO, Colonia Polanco, Mexico City. It's a tough job, but somebody has to do it.

Above, my all-time favorite cena. You can pretty much tell the size of the plate by comparing it to the normal-size forks stuck into the food. These are enchiladas placeras (plaza-style enchiladas), as prepared by one special street stand in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán. Open only in the evenings, there is nothing like them anywhere in Mexico. Others try to imitate them, but forget it: these are the best. I've been eating here for about 30 years. Your plate (the photo is a normal-size order) will hold eight enchiladas stuffed with mashed potato. The enchiladas are topped with freshly sautéed carrots, potatoes, and onions–the vegetables are just slightly caramelized. On top of the vegetables, crisp fresh cabbage–and on top of the cabbage, pickled chile perón, Michoacán's favorite chile. On top of the chile, shredded Oaxaca cheese! Ask the waiter for the piece of chicken you want: leg and thigh, or breast. The skin will be crisp, the meat tender. If you're splitting this platter full (and you should!), you can request two pieces of chicken. No matter how big an eater you are, when you've finished eating all you can hold, the platter will still look full. Takeout on request.

From eating tacos on the street to dining in stilletos and tuxedos, cena in Mexico will keep you going till morning. Provecho!

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15 de June de 2019
Mexico’s Main Meal of the Day: Comida–In Various Forms

Freshly made chicharrón (you might know it as pork rinds). Chicharrón is frequently broken into small-ish pieces and served (instead of totopos [corn chips] with guacamole as an appetizer before comida, Mexico's main meal of the day. Try it sometime, it's delicious.

Mexico's main meal of the day is comida, which is eaten sometime between two and five o'clock in the afternoon. Prime time for comida is three o'clock; in many places all over the República, businesses still respect the old-time rule that closes business doors during mid-afternoon meal time. In fact, unless the business mentions that it observes horario corrido (continuous work day) you can assume that from two until at least four in the afternoon, its doors are closed to business. Our normal workday is from 10:00AM to 2:00PM and from 4:00PM to 8:00PM.

Crema de cilantro (cream of cilantro soup). The soup course, which can be a caldo (clear broth), a consomé (another kind of clear broth, usually chicken), or a crema (cream soup), comes after the entrada.

At the late, lamented Restaurante El Portalito in Mexico City, Mexico Cooks! usually ordered either the "menú sencillo" or the "menu ejecutivo". Click on the photo to enlarge it–what deals these meals were! Each of them included a freshly made agua fresca of the day, as well. My particular favorite was melón (cantaloupe).

El Portalito agua fresca de melón.

In cities and towns all over Mexico, you'll find fondas, comida económica, and comida corrida restaurants. All of these small, usually family-run restaurants specialize in full meals that stoke your furnace for the rest of your workday and beyond. In addition, in many cities there are high-end restaurants that specialize in comidas for professional and business lunches, others that are designed for the ladies-who-lunch trade, and still other, family-style restaurants that invite everyone from the oldest great-grandpa to the newest newborn to enjoy time together.

A variety of prepared salads for sale in a market. Sold by the kilo or portion of a kilo, these salads are meant to be taken home and eaten along with your comida.

Mexico's signature mole con pollo (mole with chicken) is always popular for the platillo fuerte (main dish) at a comida, whether served at home or in a restaurant. Many regions of the country have special mole recipes; some, like the mole poblano found in Puebla or the mole negro that comes from Oaxaca, are very well known. Others, especially some from the state of Michoacán, are less well known but equally delicious.

These Jalisco-style albóndigas (meatballs) are traditional and typically served as a platillo fuerte for comida, along with their delicious sauce, a big helping of steamed white rice, a garnish of avocado, and a tall stack of tortillas.

Many soon-to-be-visitors to Mexico write to me saying something like this: "I want to plan for breakfast in the hotel and a meal in such-and-such a restaurant at lunchtime. Then we want to go for dinner at such-and-such restaurant." Unless you are a professional eater–and I know that some of you are!–it's difficult to fit all of that food into one day, given the times of day that meals are usually eaten here. If you're having breakfast at your hotel, many of the available dishes will look like those featured here last week. They're very, very filling. Just a few hours later, it's time for comida, an even more filling meal when eaten in a restaurant.

Carne de cerdo en salsa verde (pork in green sauce) is a typical home-style dish (in this instance, just being put into the Mexico Cooks! oven) often served for comida. Of course it is preceded by an appetizer, a soup, and perhaps a salad; it's accompanied by red or white rice, refried beans, and a stack of tortillas–and followed by dessert!

Lonche de pechuga de pollo (cold chicken breast sandwich, garnished with lettuce, tomato, and pickled chiles jalapeños). This kind of sandwich is neither lunch nor comida. Photo courtesy Big Sky Southern Sky.

Photo courtesy Lonchería San Ignacio. The awning offers lonches de guisado (one of many stew-like preparations), de pierna (pork leg), de jamón (ham), de panela (a soft, white cheese), and de queso de puerco (head cheese).

"Lunch" as it is eaten in the United States or elsewhere does not exist in Mexico. You might see a restaurant sign reading "LONCHES" or "LONCHERÍA", but the words refer to a kind of cold sandwich known as a 'lonche', not to a place where you can have lunch–although a lonche late in the morning would be great! A lonche can be eaten at any old time–between meals, instead of meals, before or after a movie, and so on.

One taco–I swear to you, ONE taco–of Michoacán carnitas: huge chunks of pork, boiled in freshly rendered lard until the pork is fork-tender with crisp, chewy outsides. Coarsely chopped and served by the platter, ready to stuff into hot-off-the-fire tortillas and top with minced onions, chopped cilantro, super-spicy salsa, a sprinkle of sea salt and a squeeze of lime, carnitas can be a rustic and delicious comida all on their own.

Gelatina is a common light dessert, particularly with a comida corrida (think of the old-time blue plate special: everything from soup to dessert for one price.

On the other hand, you will almost always have room for a slice of old-fashioned creamy flan.

Next week, we finish our day of Mexico's meals with cena–supper!

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8 de June de 2019