Category: Visiting Chefs

Morelia en Boca en la Boca de Todos :: Everybody’s Talking about Morelia en Boca, Sixth Year!

Due to an unexpected health issue, Mexico Cooks! is unable to attend the sixth edition of Morelia en Boca, taking place this weekend in Morelia, Michoacán. Rather than miss the festivities altogether, I invite you this week and next week to a re-run of the very first Morelia en Boca, offered in 2011.

Morelia en Boca 2011 offered three full days and nights of gastronomic conferences, wine and food tasting, and marvelous dinners (with wine pairings) prepared by internationally-known chefs. Whispers of the glories of this festival-to-come had circulated for an entire year, and Mexico Cooks! had eagerly awaited the event.

Everyone's first question was, "Why a rabbit for the festival logo?" The rabbit, long linked with the rich culture of Michoacán, has several meanings. First, it refers to the former town of San Juan Parangaricutiro, which was relocated to the former hacienda known as Los Conejos (the rabbits) when the erupting volcano Paricutín destroyed the original town in 1943. Second, the logo refers to the ancient Purhépecha legend of the rabbit in the moon. According to the legend, the mischievous rabbit devours the ripe produce in a farming family's fields. The farmer then traps the rabbit to serve as a family dinner. The smart rabbit tricks a coyote into freeing him from his cage. The watching moon–considered to be the rabbit's mother–gives her son the gift of zigzagging and hopping in order to escape the angry, hungry, and desperate coyote. Just as the rabbit is about to be trapped, the moon drops down a silver ladder that she has knit from spiderwebs. The rabbit hops high and skips up the ladder, disappearing forever into the moon's embrace. The coyote is left on the earth to howl his pain, his hunger, his fear, and his desperation, while the rabbit is plainly visible on the shining face of his mother, the moon. Next time the moon is full, take a look and you'll see him for yourself, still cuddled in the moon's embrace. The rabbit in the moon, ancient emblem of Michoacán and Mexico, is visible to the entire world.

Mise en place (all previously prepared ingredients in place) for a cooking demonstration, one of many presented at this recent and enormously successful international culinary event . The pre-measured ingredients that you see here are displayed in tiny dried jícaras (gourds).

The festival paired renowned chefs from as far south as Oaxaca and Chiapas with others from as far north as New York City. Food writers and photographers from both Mexico and the United States descended en masse on Morelia for the event. The most common and excited exclamation among wine and culinary participants at the festival–in both Spanish and English–was, "Oh my god, we're friends on Facebook and finally we get to meet in person!"

From left, Oaxaca's chef Pilar Cabrera of Restaurante La Olla, Morelia's favorite daughter chef Lucero Soto Arriaga (Restaurante LU, Morelia), and chef Iliana de la Vega, of the extraordinary Austin, Texas restaurant El Naranjo (formerly based in Oaxaca). The three laughing chefs were mid-presentation at Morelia en Boca.

The group from Cocina al Natural, including Celia Marín, Bertha Herrera, Martha Ponce, Sonia Ortiz, and Ana Luisa Suárez of Vinos Wagner, a sponsor of the website. Cocina al Natural launched its website with a joy-filled presentation that included video, delightful talk, and chilled white wines from from Vinos Wagner.

Morelia en Boca offered something for everyone with an interest in either food or wine or both. Daily conferences included panels speaking on topics ranging from the importance and influence of the Culinary Institute of America (Chefs Iliana de la Vega and Roberto Santíbañez) to the launch of the new and wonderful interactive–and very user-friendly–website Cocina al Natural (Celia Marín and Sonia Ortiz). Equally diverse demonstrations included presentations by chefs Enrique Olvera (Restaurante Pujol, Mexico City), Pablo San Román (Restaurante DO, Mexico City) and the new generation of chefs represented by Rodolfo Castellaños (Restaurante Huaje, Oaxaca) and Marta Zepeda (Restaurante Tierra y Cielo, San Cristóbal de las Casas), and an enormous chocolate sculpture–of our logo rabbit–by premier Mexican chocolate maker and chef José Ramón Castillo. More than a dozen separate catas de vino (wine tastings) showed off wineries from Mexico, France, Spain, and the United States. The Belgian brewer Gouden Carolus beamed over its featured offerings of summery wheat beer and truly delicious fruit flavored beers.

Part of the team from Riviera Nayarit, including the outstanding west coast chefs (left to right) Gerardo Sandoval Fernández, Betty Vázquez, and Marco Valdivia. The Riviera Nayarit stand at Villa Gourmet offered portions of aguachile de camarón (raw shrimp marinated in a sometimes-fiery sauce of jugo de limón and chile serrano), along with a delicious Nayarit-style cebiche topped with spicy Salsa Huichol, one of the sponsors of Riviera Nayarit's visit to Morelia en Boca.

Mexico Cooks! on the job. Photo courtesy Adriana Pérez de Legaspi.

Food and wine tastings at Morelia en Boca took place at the Palacio Clavijero, a 17th Century Jesuit school. In the building's second patio, more than 30 charming wooden providers' booths surrounded a multitude of comfortable tables and chairs. The cost of festival tickets included good-sized tastes (really, as much as you wanted) of both food and drink, including treats from Oaxaca, Chiapas, Nayarit, and Michoacán, Belgian beer, and wines from several countries.

Drop-dead delicious bite-size dark chocolate cups filled with jam handmade from Michoacán-grown blackberries and topped with artisan-made queso Cotija, also from Michoacán. These little marvels (and a big selection of others) were available at the Morelia Museo del Dulce stand at Villa Gourmet.

Next week, come back for Part Two of the festivities at Morelia en Boca. Mexico Cooks! will feature the Morelia en Boca dinners prepared by chefs Roberto Santibáñez of Fonda in New York City, Lucero Soto Arriaga of Morelia's Restaurante LU, Margarita Carrillo de Salinas of Restaurante Don Emiliano in Cabo San José, Baja California Sur, and Rodolfo Castellanos of Restaurante Huaje, Oaxaca.

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

21 de May de 2016
Mexico Cooks! Returns to Restaurante Yuban, A Special Taste of Oaxaca in Mexico City

Chef Fernando Martínez Zavala, in charge at Restaurante Yuban. Chef Fernando has headed up the kitchen at Yuban for about two years; he's made changes in both the space and the menu that have brought the restaurant to the forefront in Mexico City's mid-to-high-end places to dine. Photo courtesy Yuban.

It's part of my job description–self-described, this job–to write about restaurants. For the first time in nine-plus years, I'm writing a second review of a place I've wanted to love without reserve but needed to revisit several times to be able say, "Yes, absolutely, this is the place to go." Before you read further today, you might like to take a look at the first article from Mexico Cooks! about Restaurante Yuban, from July of 2015: Restaurante Yuban. You will see that although I loved much about what I ate there, I still had some questions and suggestions.

The first thing I noticed this visit, in April 2016, is Yuban's very recent interior renovation. The remodel is seamless, opening up both dining and bar space without sacrificing the cozy ambience that everyone has loved about the rooms since Yuban first popped up on Mexico City's restaurant radar. This new section at the front of the restaurant is now open to lovely light and air. Click on any photo for a larger view.

The bar, with its full complement of spirits, is now integrated into one side of the front dining room, making a wonderfully open space whether you're at Yuban to have a drink with a friend or to share a full meal with your friends, family, or a group.

I've always loved the floor tiles at Yuban and was so delighted to see that they haven't been changed. Remodel and floor tiles aside, the food! The service! What about them? The menu and the service have been remodeled as well, keeping the best and seriously improving the rest. Restaurante Yuban has graduated to full star status in Mexico City.

Of the various cocktails on the Yuban menu, this one–chagua de la reina–caught my attention initially because it is made with mezcal, a drink endemic to Oaxaca and currently the go-to liquor in Mexico City. Mezcal is also Mexico Cooks!' preferred drink, although I rarely drink alcohol. The chagua (according to chef Fernando, the word refers to someone who produces a lot of super-spicy chile de agua) is made of an infusion of chile de agua, jugo de limón (juice of native limón–you might know the fruit as Key lime), ginger, and mezcal. The drink's flavors explode in one's mouth and made me, at least, crave a second taste and then a second cocktail. I can't think when I've gone bonkers for an adult beverage, but yowzah–the chagua de la reina won my heart. Move over, straight up mezcal.

Oaxaca's chile de agua, the fiery heart and soul of the chagua de la reina.

Lovely bits of tlayuda (a large toasted corn tortilla, an icon of the Oaxaca Central Valley) with avocado and ash accompanied our drinks as a house courtesy.

As we chatted and drank, our server also presented us with frijoles de la olla estilo oaxaqueño (Oaxaca-style pot-cooked beans) seasoned with hoja santa (an anise-flavored leaf), radish, pickled onions, queso fresco (tender fresh cheese), chicharrón (fried pork skin), and cilantro sprouts. Both the tlayuda and the frijoles did what appetizers are meant to do: wake up one's appetite for what's to follow.

My dining companion and I each ordered Yuban's sopa de guías, she for love and I for comparison with the sopa de guías I learned from Celia Florián in Oaxaca. This sopa, served using the restaurant's elegant upscale pour, looked and tasted almost identical to the one I helped prepare in Oaxaca. The chochoyotes (tender corn dumplings with a dimple) were delicious! On a scale of 1 to 10, definitely a ten!

My companion ordered ensalada de siete jitomates criollos con queso fresco y pesto de hoja santa (salad of seven native tomatoes, transparently thin radish slices, fresh cheese, and hoja santa pesto). These tiny native tomato halves, dressed with a just-right anise-y pesto, seemed like no big deal on the plate: pretty as a picture, but with a salad-bored shrug. One taste and I wished I'd ordered my own plateful of pure ripe tomato, wonderful pesto, and all the rest of the flavors that combine to make this small dish a huge hit. I could cheerfully have licked the plate.

A second marvelous and beautiful salad, this time of roasted asparagus, roasted nopales (cactus paddles), pickled onions, and a turnip cream. The smokiness of the roasted vegetables was the perfect complement to the mezcal we drank.

After listening to me wax ecstatic about the marvelous mole verde (green mole) from February's Oaxaca cooking class, my companion was happy to find the dish listed on Yuban's menu. She wasn't disappointed; the carne de cerdo (pork meat) was fork-tender and the mole, served with a generous spoonful of alubias (small white beans) was all but identical to the mole verde our cooking class prepared in Oaxaca.

Tasajo, a Oaxaca-style thinly cut beef topped with quelites cenizo (a kind of greens), tender as served on a pool of black beans, with grilled cebollitas cambray de la sierra (knob onions from the hills) and grilled cheese. House-made tortillas were just right for mopping the plate.

Mole negro con pechuga de guajolote (black mole with turkey breast), served with a small pot of delicious, perfectly cooked rice.

We tried two of Yuban's three desserts. This one is pastel de chocolate oaxaqueño (Oaxacan chocolate cake) with house-made sorbet, blueberries, and a streusel crumble. Marvelous.

A companion ordered cremoso de requesón (creamy sweetened cheese similar to ricotta) with streusel de pinole (slightly sweetened toasted, ground corn), piña rostizada (roast pineapple), and coconut ice cream. I give it two–no, three–thumbs up.

When you're in Mexico City but craving the authentic taste of Oaxaca, Restaurante Yuban is definitely your best option. Don't take my word for it, though: go, and enjoy the best of Oaxaca outside Oaxaca itself. And by all means order a chagua de la reina and raise a glass to me.

Provecho! (Say Bon appetit! in Spanish.)

Restaurante Yuban
Calle Colima 268
Near the corner with Insurgentes
Col. Roma Norte
Hours:
Monday through Wednesday 13:30-23:00PM
Thursday through Saturday 13:30-1:00AM
Sunday 13:30-18:00PM
Tel. 6387 0358
Reservations strongly suggested

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

7 de May de 2016
Mexico Cooks! Winter Tour to Oaxaca, Part V: Cooking with Celia Florián

Our magnificent cooking teacher, Maestra Celia Florián, owner at Restaurante Las 15 Letras, Oaxaca.

Sometime in late 2015, I was chatting with my dear friend Celia Florián, who asked when I would be going again to Oaxaca. "I'll be bringing a group of women in February!" One thing led to another and soon Celia and I had scheduled a cooking class for the group. We planned a menu, an early-morning shopping excursion at the municipal Mercado de la Merced, the group cooking class to follow, and the joy of sharing the finished products as our comida (main meal of the day) later in the afternoon. I could barely contain my excitement at the thought of introducing this California tour group to one of the most generous and joyous traditional cooks in Mexico.

The menu that Celia and I planned for the group included:

–Garnachas del Istmo de Tehuantepec
–Sopa de Guías con Chochoyotes
–Mole Verde con Espinazo y Alubias
–Pastel de Elote estilo Las 15 Letras

Maestra Celia and her husband Fidel Méndez Sosa have been the proprietors of Restaurante Las 15 Letras since 1992; today, the restaurant is a favorite among Oaxaca locals and has also become a destination restaurant for in-the-know visitors, both Mexican and foreign. The photo shows an elegant and delicious dish I ate at Las 15 Letras in February 2015: quesillo (Oaxaca cheese) wrapped in a spiral with chapulines (grasshoppers) and hoja santa (an anise-flavored leaf).

Doña Carmen Florián, Maestra Celia Florián's now-elderly mother, continues to be able to make hand-made tortillas. Maestra Celia says, "What one learns well is never forgotten. My mother has been making tortillas since she was a little girl."

Oaxaca's Mercado de la Merced is a small, friendly market serving its neighborhood. It has become a magnet for Oaxaca cooks and food-oriented tourists, as well. It suited the shopping needs of our group, and Maestra Celia was the perfect guide as we purchased the ingredients for our class and comida.

We purchased a few of Oaxaca's iconic jitomates riñon (kidney-shaped tomatoes) as part of what we needed to prepare the garnachas.

The tray in the foreground contains the ingredients for the garnachas del Istmo de Tehuantepec. Clockwise from the left: jitomates riñon (kidney-shaped tomatoes), queso de Chiapas (cheese from Chiapas), vinagre de frutas (Maestra Celia's home-made fruit vinegar), cabbage, onion, garlic, and a bowl of masa de maíz (corn dough).

To make the garnachas, we first patted out gorditas (thick rounds of masa, each approximately three inches in diameter), and baked them on a metal comal (griddle).

When the gorditas were completely cooked, we allowed them to cool for a few minutes. Then we split them in half through the center and set them aside until ready to fill and serve as an entrada (appetizer).

The garnachas, ready to serve. Each half of a gordita is topped with shredded beef, along with cabbage and sliced carrots lightly pickled in home-made fruit vinegar. Sprinkle with freshly crumbled cheese. Add salsa made with jitomates riñon, if you are able to grow them or find them in a market. Otherwise, use the vine-ripened flavorful in-season tomatoes of your choice.

While the gorditas baked, we boiled lean beef for shredding as a topping for the garnachas. Maestra Celia was careful to note that in preparing a multi-course meal, it's important to begin with the steps that take the longest amount of time, finishing with the preparation that takes less time. That way, all of your menu is ready to serve and eat at approximately the same hour.

Guías de calabaza (squash stems and tendrils) for our sopa de guías. If you grow zucchini or know someone who does, you can use its tenderest young stems, leaves, and tendrils to make sopa de guías.

The recipe for sopa de guías (squash tendril soup) also calls for flor de calabaza (squash flowers). In addition, we used fresh corn, still on the cob and sliced into rounds, and tender young chayote, cut into round slices.

We added the vegetables and herbs we prepared to simmering, lightly salted water and allowed them to boil gently just until the vegetables were tender.

Maestra Celia adds blended water and masa to the soup to thicken it just a bit. It should be not too watery, not too thick, but just right. You'll know. Be sure to stir the mixture constantly until it thickens so that no lumps form. Our group was profoundly moved by the immense love and respect that Maestra Celia imparted to us: for her country, her city, the market vendors, the ingredients, Oaxaca's traditions, and the act of cooking. The food we prepared, prepared with this kind of love, had no chance but to turn out to be delicious.

While the soup continued to cook, we prepared chochoyotes (little masa dumplings) by making one inch spheres of masa, then pressing a fingertip into each one to make the indentation that you see in the photograph. We then added the chochoyotes to the soup pot and allowed them to cook until tender. Click on any photo to enlarge it for a better look.

Sopa de guías, ready for the table. See the chochoyotes, just under the surface of the broth?

This tray includes most of the ingredients for mole verde oaxaqueño. Clockwise from left: herbs including cilantro and several herbs unique to Oaxaca, a bowl of masa, green beans, chile, onions, new potatoes, and chayote. Rather than include a step-by-step for this simple (and simply extraordinary) recipe, I offer you Maestra Celia's recipe:

Oaxaca-Style Green Mole with Pork

Ingredients

3.5 lbs meaty pork neck bones
2.2 lbs meaty pork back bones
1/2 lb small alubias (or white navy beans), cooked until tender
1/4 lb corn masa
1 bunch parsley
1 bunch cilantro
1 bunch epazote (fresh, not dried)
4 hoja santa leaves
Salt to taste
1/2 white onion, toasted
1/2 head of garlic, toasted
3 cloves raw garlic, separate use
1 chile serrano
3 cloves
1 white onion, sliced in wheels and 'cooked' in Key lime juice and oregano

Procedure

Boil the two kinds of pork in water, with garlic, onion, and salt. When the meats are tender, drain them and reserve the pork stock.

In the pork stock, blend the masa. Strain and add it to the consomé, stirring little by little so that lumps do not form. Blend the herbs together with the clove, the chile serrano*, and the roasted garlic and onion. Strain the liquid into the pot and allow them to boil. Add the Blend the raw garlic with a little water and add to the pot. Correct the salt and remove the pot from the fire.

*If you want the mole to be fairly spicy, use the entire chile serrano. If you prefer less 'heat', add just half the chile.

For the garnish

2 chayotes, cut into pieces
A good-size handful of green beans, clean and with the stems removed
Quartered medium-size potatoes, or if you use small potatoes as we did, you may leave them whole

Boil these vegetables separately until they are tender. Drain and reserve.

To serve

The mole should be served in a bowl. First add the pork meats and bones. Cover with the green mole. Top with the cooked vegetables. Add a heaping tablespoonful of the cooked alubias to each bowl. Add a few rings of white onion.

Mole verde oaxaqueño!

Because Restaurante Las 15 Letras was in the process of a remodel, our class was held at Maestra Celia's home. Her staff brought our pastel de elote (corn cake) which had been baked at the restaurant; we did not prepare it ourselves, but we certainly ate it with gusto! It was the perfect finish to a marvelous meal al estilo oaxaqueño–Oaxaca style!

Our tour group. Left to right: Judith Eshom, Gayla Pierce, Maestra Celia Florián, Mexico Cooks!, Holli DeLauro, and Robyn Cota Cann. Back row: culinary school interns Cristina Flores (black cap) and Alonso Castillo, who assisted Maestra Celia and our group in the kitchen. Photo courtesy Alonso Castillo.

Our class, the connections we made, and our meal were extraordinary. Each of us felt that we had become very close to Maestra Celia during our time together. There were tears at parting, promises to stay in touch with her, promises to prepare these dishes for our families and friends–and my promise to pass information about this cultural and culinary event along to you.

Ending our tour in Oaxaca with a full moon and full hearts. Thank you, California friends and Oaxaca friends, it was a joy to spend these days with you.

If you'd like to schedule a tour in Oaxaca and would like to experience a cooking class with this most wonderful of teachers, please let me know. I'd be happy to plan an itinerary for your group.

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

30 de April de 2016
Adobo de Cerdo Huasteco, from Verde Blanco y Rojo by Ricardo Muñoz Zurita

Originally published in October 2011, this illustrated recipe for Adobo de Cerdo Huasteco is a perfect meal for February's chilly weather. Mexico Cooks! celebrates its ninth anniversary of publishing with this delicious meal to warm body and soul. Enjoy!

Roma tomatoes and onion quarters toasting on a comal (in this case, a cast iron griddle). That little tomato on the right looks downright happy to be toasting.

Several months ago, Mexico Cooks! was thrilled to receive a copy of Chef Ricardo Muñoz Zurita's newest recetario (cookbook), titled Verde, Blanco, y Rojo en la Cocina Mexicana. Due to the pressures of moving and settling into a new and somewhat more frenetic life in Mexico City, the very attractive book sat patiently in the kitchen bookshelf with its 150 or so brother and sister cookbooks, waiting to be chosen. 'Choose me, choose me!' it whispered each time I passed by the shelf. And finally I listened.

Serving-size pieces of maciza de cerdo (lean, fresh pork leg) simmering with onion and garlic.

My friends and I are very fond of traditional Mexican cuisine. Like most people, we have our favorite dishes. And like most people, I have a hard time breaking habits and wading into a new cookbook: it means learning a new format, a new organization of ingredients, and a new dish that I had never prepared.

The first task was reading the recipe all the way through to the end to make sure that I had all of the ingredients and utensils on hand prior to starting to cook and that I understood the order of cooking. It's really no fun at all to start the preparations and discover at the time of need that oops, there is no garlic and ouch, that one bowl I really wanted to use is full of last night's stew. You'll want to organize yourself and prepare your mise en place (all ingredients in place, ready to cook) well before you turn on the stove.

Differentiating between dried chiles ancho and chiles mulato can be confusing. If you open a chile ancho and hold it up to the light, it looks from the inside like red stained glass. The mulato, on the other hand, looks brown when held to the light. It's immediately apparent which this is. Always try to buy chiles that are leathery and flexible, not brittle.

Ingredients
2 kg (approximately 4.5 pounds) lean pork meat, cut into serving-size pieces
1 white onion, cut into quarters
1 head of garlic, split in half
4 liters water
6 tsp salt
8 chiles guajillo
5 large chiles ancho
3 large tomatos, roasted
1/2 white onion, quartered and roasted
5 garlic cloves
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp dry Mexican oregano, crumbled
1/2 tsp freshly ground black pepper
4 cloves
3 Tbsp pork lard (you can substitute oil if you can't get real, freshly rendered lard)
1/2 cup white vinegar

Utensils
Comal or griddle
Mesh strainer
Several small or medium-size mixing bowls
Mixing spoons
Heavy-bottom pot with lid
Blender

Toasting the chiles ancho on the comal.

Toasting the chiles guajillo on the comal.

Procedure
Put the pork, onion, and head of garlic in a large pot. Cover with water, add 4 tsp salt and bring to a boil. Lower the heat until the water is down to a simmer and cook until the pork is tender, about an hour. Remove the pork from the water, drain the liquid into a bowl, and reserve both the meat and the cooking liquid for later use.

Remove the stems, seeds, and veins from all of the chiles and discard them. Lightly toast the chiles on the comal, being careful not to burn them. If they turn black, they will be bitter. Soak the toasted chiles in four cups of the reserved cooking liquid from the pork.

Both types of toasted chiles are then soaked for a few minutes in some of the freshly cooked hot pork broth.

Blend the soaked chiles with enough of the cooking liquid to make a smooth, somewhat liquid paste.

Roast the tomatoes, onions, and garlic on the comal, then blend them until they make a very smooth sauce. If necessary for blending, add just a little of the reserved meat cooking liquid. Using the wire mesh strainer, strain into a bowl and reserve.

The mix of various seasonings (foreground), the blended and strained chiles (left rear) and the blended tomato/onion/garlic mixture (right rear).

Grind the cumin, the oregano, the pepper, and the cloves together until they are powdered. Set aside for later use.

Over a high flame, heat the lard or oil in a heavy-bottomed pot until it smokes slightly. Add the ground chiles (splatter alert!) and fry for about 15 minutes or until the mixture is reduced by about one-fourth. Add the blended tomato mixture, the spices, and two tablespoons of salt. When the mixture comes to a boil, lower the fire and allow to simmer until the sauce has reduced a little.

The pork now needs to simmer in the adobo for an hour or more, either in the oven or over a very low fire. The fragrance will drive you crazy, it is so tantalizing.  Mexico Cooks! prepared this recipe on top of the stove using the cast iron comal as a heat diffuser.

Add the meat, the vinegar, and three cups of the reserved meat cooking liquid. Correct the seasonings and cook with the lid ajar over low heat (or bake covered in a 350° oven) for about an hour. The finished sauce should be thick enough to cover the meat without sliding off the pieces.

Adobo de cerdo huasteco, ready to eat! Serve the dish with steamed white rice and plenty of hot-off-the-comal corn tortillas.

The finished recipe also freezes very well.  Mexico Cooks! served half the recipe as comida for six and froze the rest for a later meal.

Serves 12.

The wonderful Spanish-language Verde, Blanco, Rojo en La Cocina Mexicana, written by my friend Chef Ricardo Muñoz Zurita of Restaurante Azul/Condesa.

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

12 de March de 2016
Restaurante La Teca–Cuisine from Oaxaca’s Isthmus of Tehuantepec: Cocina Istmeña Oaxaqueña

A delicious Oaxaca specialty: sopa de guía, a clear soup made with chicken broth, tendrils of squash plant, and squash flowers.

While in Oaxaca with a writers' group, I took a little time away from that group to visit another group: several culinary-world friends who live and work in this southern Mexico city. I played hooky to eat on Friday with Pilar Cabrera at her wonderful restaurant La Olla, and on Saturday with chef Rodolfo Castellanos and his family at La Teca, a restaurant specializing in cooking from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is the skinniest part of mainland Mexico, lying between the Pacific Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Prior to the opening of the Panama Canal, it was the most important route for goods working their slow way across the relatively flat lands between the two bodies of water. Partly in Oaxaca, partly in Chiapas, partly in Tabasco and partly in Veracruz, the territory has its own legends, its own history, and its own cuisines.

You may not be aware that you are already familiar with the native dress of the Tehuanas, as the women of the isthmus are known. Above, a Frida Kahlo 1948 self portrait, dressed as a Tehuana. Image courtesy of: http://www.earlywomenmasters.net

Just off the beaten tourist track in Oaxaca, Restaurant La Teca serves outstanding food from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The welcoming owner and cook, Señora Deyanira Aquino, will make sure that you eat your fill of her marvelous regional cuisine.

The cooking of the Isthmus is traditionally corn-based and idiosyncratic. Most ingredients are indigenous to its hot lowlands (for example, armadillo and iguana) and its proximity to the sea: fresh and dried shrimp, fresh fish, and other creatures from the ocean depths.

At La Teca we shared a platter of garnachas, a traditional entrada or botana (appetizer or snack) based on a fried disk of corn dough and topped with a mixture of meat, vegetables, and salsa.

Tamalitos de cambray from Tehuantepec, savory-sweet tamales made of chicken, raisins, olives, almonds, and capers.

These are molotes de plátano macho (small, sweetly ripe plantain croquettes) topped with crema de mesa (table cream) and queso fresco (fresh cheese). The three of us shared an order of four molotes. We kept dividing the last one into smaller and smaller pieces so that one of us did not hog the whole thing–although each of us would have!

Next course at La Teca: a taco filled with a small chile pasilla oaxaqueño relleno (a regional dried chile, reconstituted, stuffed, and fried). It doesn't look like anything special, does it? If you could just enjoy the fragrance, I assure you that you would want to lick your monitor.

Tamales de elote (fresh corn tamales) followed, served with crema de mesa. These reminded me very much of Michoacán uchepos, another kind of fresh corn tamales.

Another traditional dish from the Isthmus, estofado de bodas (wedding stew). It's a delicious long-cooked combination of beef, fruits, chiles, and other spices, typically served at weddings.

Purée de papa, estilo Istmeño (potatoes, coarsely mashed and then baked, Isthmus style).

Asado de puerco con mole (pork roasted with mole, from Tehuantepec).

The owner and chief cook at La Teca is Sra. Deyanira Aquino, born and raised in the Isthmus. Women of the region are called 'tecas'–from Tehuantepec–hence the name of the restaurant.

You are probably well aware of the mythical seven moles of Oaxaca, and although the state is best known for those, there are many other less-well-known but equally wonderful dishes available to visitors. By all means go see Sra. Aquino at La Teca; you will be as thrilled by everything you eat as we were. This is not fancy, high-end designer-plated food. Your palate will be delighted by traditional Tehuantepec home-style cooking. And oh my god, you might exclaim, did the three of you really eat all that? We most assuredly did, every bite, and so will you.

Restaurant La Teca
Calle Violetas #200-A
Colonia Reforma
Oaxaca, Oaxaca
01.951.515.0563 (from within Mexico)

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5 de March de 2016
Abigail Mendoza Ruiz and Restaurante Tlamanalli: Food for the Gods in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca

This article, originally published in 2014, promised that Mexico Cooks! would be back in Oaxaca and would return to Tlamanalli. This week, we're there again, this time leading a tour and delighting in all the marvelous culinary and cultural treasures Oaxaca has to offer. Abigail Mendoza sends her best wishes to all who follow Mexico Cooks!.

Emblematic of Oaxaca: chocolate caliente (hot and foamy hand-ground hot chocolate) prepared in water and served in a bowl. Zaachila market, Oaxaca.

There's much more to Oaxaca's magic than simply its capital city, which is of course fantastic in its own right. Driving in any direction from the city, twisting two-lane roads lead to small towns; each town has a weekly market, and each market has beauties of its own.

At the Zaachila Friday market, a vendor sold calabaza en tacha (squash cooked in brown sugar syrup) covered with a leaf to keep insects away and maintain the squash fresh and ready to eat.

Another vendor offered flor de frijolón (the red flowers of a large, black, local bean known elsewhere as ayocote negro).

Tejate, Oaxaca's emblematic cold, foamy, and refreshing chocolate beverage, scooped out of this clay bowl with a red-lacquered jícara into the size cup you prefer: small, medium, or large.

When Mexico Cooks! traveled recently to Oaxaca, joyous anticipation and a letter of introduction were stowed among my baggage. For years I had read about and admired (albeit from afar) Abigail Mendoza Ruiz and her sisters, but we had never met. This trip would fix that: two days after my scheduled arrival, we had an appointment for comida (Mexico's main meal of the day) at the Mendoza sisters' Restaurante Tlamanalli in Teotitlán del Valle. The restaurant's name, a Náhuatl word, means several things: it's the name of the Zapotec kitchen god, it means abundance, and it means offering. For me, newly arrived in Teotitlán del Valle, the word Tlamanalli meant, 'you are about to have the experience of a lifetime'.

Teotitlán del Valle is best known as the principal Oaxaca rug-weavers' town. Among its five to six thousand inhabitants, the majority weaves wool to make lovely rugs and also combines the weaver's tasks with agricultural work, growing both marketable and personal-use corn and other vegetables plus raising poultry for personal use.

Detail of the rustic wooden rueca (spinning wheel) used by the Teotitlán del Valle rugmakers for spinning fine wool yarns.

Shown in this group of Oaxaca-made baskets: a flat double comb for carding wool, a pointed spindle, and various natural coloring agents, along with hanks of wool which demonstrate just a few of the colors used in Oaxacan wool rugs.

Not only are the Mendoza Ruiz sisters extraordinary regional cooks, they and their siblings are also well-known rug weavers. Their parents, Sra. Clara Ruiz and don Emilio Mendoza (QEPD), gave this world a group of supremely gifted artisans, all of whom learned the weavers' traditions at their parents' knees.

Abigail Mendoza started learning kitchen traditions as a five-year-old, as the first daughter of the family, watching her mother grind nixtamal (dried native corn soaked and prepared for masa (dough). In the postcard above, the little girl (who is not Abigail) watches seriously as the woman we imagine to be her mother pats a tortilla into its round shape.

By the time she was six years old, Abigail was in charge of sweeping the kitchen's dirt floor, gathering firewood, and making the kitchen fire. At age seven, she told her mother, "I'm ready to grind corn on the metate," (volcanic rock grinding stone, seen in the center of the photograph above), but she wasn't yet strong enough to use her mother's large stone. She was barely able to lift its metapil (stone rolling pin). She eagerly awaited the purchase of a metate small enough for her use. Doña Clara taught her to grind the home-prepared nixtamal, pat-pat-pat the tortilla dough into perfect thin rounds, and bake them on the comal (wood-fired griddle made of clay).

Abigaíl Mendoza Ruiz, the internationally known and much-traveled Zapoteca cook, best loves preparing meals in her home kitchen and her restaurant kitchen in Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca. Here, she's pictured in the beautiful open kitchen of Tlamanalli, the restaurant where she and her sisters Rufina and Marcelina (pictured above) create their culinary alchemy.

Abigail Mendoza is at once filled with light and filled with mystery. Luminous as her joy-filled personality, her smile lights up any room she enters. She is a woman of deep faith, a subscriber to the mysteries of dreams, a believer in spirit worlds both before and after life, a strong believer both in human relationships along life's horizontal and the vertical relationship of God with humanity. Formally educated only through primary school, she holds intense wisdom borne of deep meditation on the nature of life, both spiritual and physical.

In her extraordinary book Dishdaa'w, Abigail reveals her life story, her philosophies, and a good part of her soul. The Zapotec title of her biography (transcribed and organized by Concepción Silvia Núñez Miranda) means "the word woven into the infinite meal". And what does that mean? Food itself has a soul, the soul is transmitted in food's preparation and its ingestion. We are all part of the whole, and the whole is part of each of us.

In her restaurant's large kitchen, Abigail is the sun itself. Hair braided with traditional Zapotec ribbons into a royal crown, she's holding a fistful of freshly picked flor de calabaza (squash flowers).

What did we do, Señorita Abigail and I? We talked, we laughed, we discovered who our many friends in common are, we swapped kitchen lore and recipes, we gossiped (just a little, and in the best possible way), and we each felt like we had met yet another sister, a sister of the kitchen.

And then she asked what we would like to eat. After stumbling around in a maze of I-don't-know-what-to-request, I suggested that she simply bring us her personal choices from the day's menu.

Menu for the day, Restaurante Tlamanalli. The dishes are not inexpensive, but ye gods: save up, if you must, and go. You will never regret it.

First came made-on-the-spot creamy guacamole, in tiny turkey-shaped clay dishes and accompanied by a small bottle of local mezcal amd a wee dish of roasted, seasoned pepitas (squash seeds).

Mole zapoteco con pollo (Zapotec-style mole with chicken). Each of our dishes was accompanied by freshly made tortillas, hot from the comal (griddle).

Pre-hispanic segueza de pollo (breast of chicken in tomato and chile sauce with dried corn and hoja santa). If I should ever be in Oaxaca and in a position to choose one last meal, this would be it.

The herb hoja santa is added to the sauce just before serving and gives a delicate anise flavor to the segueza de pollo.

Oaxaca's heirloom jitomate riñón (kidney-shaped tomatoes) is used for creating the intense and deeply tomato-flavored sauce for the segueza.

When we finished our meal, the Mendoza sisters and doña Clara invited Mexico Cooks! to visit their private kitchen altar, devoted to the Preciosa Sangre de Cristo (Precious Blood of Christ), whose feast day is a major holiday in Teotitlán del Valle and for whom the parish church is named. The home altar has offerings of seasonal fruits as well as perpetually-burning candles.

Mexico Cooks! will go back to Oaxaca, back to Teotitlán del Valle, and back to Restaurante Tlamanalli. After all, I want to visit my new sister–she's a constant inspiration and the best Oaxacan cook I know.

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27 de February de 2016
Kitchen and Countryside Mexico 2015: A Recap of Some of Our Favorite Things

In Mexico, once we've rung in the New Year, the next party is ordinarily for Los Reyes Magos–the Three Kings–on January 6, their feast day. The photo above shows the traditional Mexican Rosca de Reyes (Kings' Bread) that is eaten (accompanied by a cup or two of delicious Mexican hot chocolate) at just about every table in the country on that day. The sweet, rich dough is rolled into an oval or a ring and then decorated with sugar, ates of various flavors (similar to fruit leather), nuts, and then baked. So what's the big deal? Inside the dough, bakers hide a tiny figure of the Niño Dios (Baby Jesus). There's great hilarity as the rosca is sliced: who will get the muñeco (little figure)? The person who finds the baby in his or her slice is required to throw another party on Candelaria (Candlemas Day), February 2: tamales and atole (a thick, sweet corn-based drink) for everyone! February 2 is the official end of the Christmas season in Mexico.

February took Mexico Cooks! to Oaxaca, invited to the wedding of dear friends Diana Miller and Adán Paredes. The wedding festivities lasted three days–we don't do things by half here!–and the guests still sigh and smile when we think or talk about the event's joyous beauty. The civil ceremony was a marvelous cocktail party and opportunity to socialize with everyone; the morning of the spiritual ceremony, Mexico Cooks! gave two Oaxaca market tours to guests from northern Mexico. Later that afternoon, a traditional Zapotec chamán and his wife presided over the spiritual ceremony (followed by all-night dining and dancing!), and the third day we toured with the wedding party to a market south of Oaxaca city and then shared a joyous meal at the ever-marvelous restaurant La Teca. It was only February, but we knew that no other event on the 2015 calendar would come close to matching this thrilling weekend.

March found Mexico Cooks! at Pujol, Enrique Olvera's flagship restaurant in Mexico City. Invited by a serious lover of food in all its aspects, we were not disappointed. In fact, we were overwhelmed by everything about our meal: the room, the service, and most of all, the food. There was no room at all for improvement: everything we experienced was perfect.

In April, we were back at Jing Teng, our favorite Chinese restaurant in all of Mexico. Yes: not just Mexico City, but the entire country. The photo shows perfectly cooked gai lan (Chinese broccoli) with garlic, one of the you-absolutely-gotta-get-it dishes on the menu.

Morelia en Boca, an international food and wine festival, takes place in Morelia, Michoacán on the last weekend of each May, and we were there. This fish is a pejelagarto, an enormous fish found primarily in the Mexican state of Tabasco. Look at its needle-teeth! The pejelagarto has no scales; its skin is like a suit of armor. This section of the fish was about one-third of its length; it measured between three and four feet long. World-acclaimed chef Aquiles Chávez brought this giant animal from Tabasco and cooked it (turning it with a broomstick rammed down its throat, all the way to the other end) over an open fire on the festival stage! The demonstration conference also included Rosalba Morales Bartolo of San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro, Michoacán, who prepared her famously delicious charales (fish as tiny as the pejelagarto is huge) in the style her grandmother taught her. This was without doubt the single best food conference I have ever attended; the skill, knowledge, and sense of humor on the part of both participants combined to receive a standing ovation at conference end.

June (and every other month of the year) took Mexico Cooks! on tour with various groups from the United States, Canada, and other countries from around the worl
d. This pork butcher's sign is always a favorite photo opportunity: unsuspecting little pig mariachis sing for somebody's supper!

An old friend, visiting me in Mexico City, was as interested as I in visiting the church of San Hipólito, in Mexico City's Centro Histórico. The 28th of each month, Masses are offered all day in honor of San Judas Tadeo. My friend and I were there on July 28, among a crowd that numbered in the thousands. On San Judas Tadeo's actual October feast day, the crowds number in the hundreds of thousands.

The Primer Encuentro Nacional de Cocineras Tradicionales (first national reunion of traditional cooks) in Morelia, Michoacán, in August 2015 brought together home cooks from 25 of the 31 Mexican states–plus the Federal District. Many of us who attended are long-time friends who see one another only occasionally. This memorable photo includes (L to R): Celia Florián from Oaxaca, Alma Cervantes Cota from Sinaloa and currently living in Mexico City, Susana Trilling of Seasons of My Heart cooking school in Oaxaca, Mexico Cooks!, and Calletana Nambo from Erongarícuaro, Michoacán. We spent hours around that table, eating, drinking mezcal, and gossiping catching up with one another.

The rainy season in central Mexico begins in mid-May and lasts until the beginning of November. During that time, wild mushrooms spring up in Mexico's oak and pine forests, especially in the more mountainous states. This vendor, who was too busy selling on this September day to tell me her name, brought mushrooms that she and her family foraged to sell in Mexico City's markets. Fresh chanterelles, boletes, and morels make up most of her wares. I bought a pound of fresh morels (approximately 80 pesos, or $4.50USD), gave half to my neighbor, and made a pasta sauce of the rest. Click on the photo to enlarge it and better see the mushrooms.

In late October we were in Quiroga, Michoacán, for carnitas. These, from a street stand under the traffic light downtown, are in my opinion the best carnitas in town. The vendor gave us this taco as a taste–just to see if we'd like what he was selling. Yes, it was exactly as enormous as it looks. And yes, we bought another half-kilo of carnitas to share among our group. The carnitas come with fresh tortillas, limones, and several kinds of salsas. Soft drinks and aguas frescas are available at a booth near your communal-seating outdoor table, and someone will come by your table to ask if you want to buy a cupful of guacamole. Yes, you do.

October gets two mentions! Suzanne Cope and her family came to Mexico City in the early Fall to tour with Mexico Cooks!. This sweet toddler is her son Rocco, who fell in love with a pig head at one of Mexico City's best markets. Who knows, you might fall in love with a pig head too!

A friend from Washington, D.C., ordered this bowl of crema de flor de calabaza at Restaurante Azul/Histórico in Mexico City in mid-November. She graciously let me taste it. This cream soup was without question one of the best I've ever tasted. Our waiter told us that each bowl contains 18 squash flowers plus the one used as decoration. Did you know that only male squash blossoms are harvested for food? The female blossoms are left on the vines to allow squash to form.

Just in case you might think that Mexico Cooks! never cooks at home: a Dece
mber dish of beautiful shrimp muenìere, served over fettucine.

Where will we travel and what will we eat in 2016? You're welcome to come along, whether to a market, a restaurant, or an exciting festival in Mexico City, Michoacán, or Oaxaca. Mexico City, just named the top travel destination in the world by the New York Times, is waiting for you. When you're ready to visit, Mexico Cooks! will gladly show you all the hot spots.

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23 de January de 2016
New in Mexico City: Fonda Fina, to Recharge Your Body and Soul

The main dining room at Fonda Fina is cozy in the best possible ways: it's warming to the spirit and feels just like the party you always wanted to attend. Not only that, it's filled with beautiful design. Case in point: those lampshades are enormous upside down cazuelas–Mexican clay cooking vessels–and illuminate the room with a joyous light.

In early December, one of the people I love best in Mexico City sent me a Whatsapp: "What are you doing tomorrow for comida? I want to take you to try a new place I found." Never one to say no to a dear friend or a new restaurant, I Whats'd her right back and said, "Vámonos!" (Let's go!) The next day, I met her at Fonda Fina in Mexico City's trendy Colonia Roma. At 2:30PM, the place was moderately busy. By three o'clock, it was packed. Just two and a half months post-opening, it was obvious from the happy hum in the room that something wonderful was happening.

Because my friend had arrived a few minutes before I did, a wee basket of tostaditas (little house-made tostadas) and two salsas in mini-molcajetes were already on the table. In addition, the restaurant has an old-fashioned practice that made me smile. Every day the chef prepares a lightly flavored water–one day with a touch of basil, another day a touch of jasmine, another day a delicious flavor that you can almost-but-not-quite place–that's offered as a reminder that you're visiting someone and that, as a visitor, you're important.

In Mexico, the very best mannered people (think your maiden great-aunt) insist that when a guest arrives, a glass of water is almost instantly forthcoming. It's always served in a glass placed on a small plate with a napkin, in case the water spills over or in case you dribble, and it welcomes you whether you have traveled days from a far-distant place or have merely come from the next floor down in your apartment building. Photo from the Mexico Cooks! kitchen.

Old-fashioned niceties, old-fashioned food (some with a modern twist), and old-fashioned service are the hallmarks of this charming restaurant. Fonda Fina, backed by chef Jorge Vallejo of the acclaimed Restaurante Quintonil, by the actor Luis Gerardo Méndez, and by the restauranteur Ramón Orraca, combines the talents of each man to bring a fresh, new aspect and ambiance to Colonia Roma. Fonda Fina's executive chef, Juan Cabrera Barron, has earned his stripes in a variety of kitchens in many parts of Mexico. During recent years, chef Cabrera has been an important part of the Hotel Camino Real restaurant staff in several cities including Guadalajara and Mexico City. Now he's all ours!

But enough preamble: let's eat!

The first two pages of the Fonda Fina menu explain how this restaurant serves your meal. Order a la carte items from the first page and order a meal similar to a comida corrida (complete main meal) from the second page. Click on any photo to enlarge the image for better viewing. Because chef Cabrera is a friend of the friend who invited me, and because she and I both wanted to try as many dishes as possible, we didn't place an order: chef Cabrera simply started sending dishes to our table.

Please notice, at the left of the photo, the paper bag holding the clay container. This was our pre-meal drink: it's called, at least at Fonda Fina, teporocho. Teporocho is a down-and-dirty Mexican slang word for the drunk who can't pick himself up off the sidewalk, the guy who's drinking from his pint bottle concealed in (you guessed it) a paper bag; the word has a long and inglorious history in Mexican popular culture. To find teporocho served in a high-class restaurant is a bit of a shock, a trip into the seamier side of life, and a really terrific start to a meal. I had two, and the taste and effect are a little like Long Island Iced Tea. If you don't see it on the menu, ask for it. And take it slow.

Our first treat was the taco placero (plaza-style taco). The soft, warm tortilla was smeared with asiento (the dark, thick lard left in the bottom of the rendering pot) and then smeared again with refried beans. Folded in half, it was then garnished with avocado, chicharrón (crisply fried pork skin), fresh crumbled cheese, a spicy salsa cruda (raw sauce), and cilantro sprouts. The small taco did what it was meant to do: it left us wanting more.

Chef Cabrera then sent out memelas de cecina (a Oaxaca corn-based delicacy). The toppings for the memelas were avocado, jícama, caramelized onions, pomegranate seeds, raw onions, and sprouts of acidy verdolagas (purslane). The combination of flavors was mouth-watering.

I could have eaten two of these incredibly delicious antojitos (literally, little whims) from Puebla: peneques rellenos de requesón. Fill a soft, uncooked tortilla with requesón (similar to ricotta cheese), fry it till it's crisp, then let it sit in a warm bath of green pipián from Puebla, and garnish it with Chiapas cheese, little cubes of avocado, and pumpkin seeds, add a swirl of Mexican table cream, and decorate the dish with an edible, peppery nasturtium leaf. I stopped at one, but…this was simply marvelous.

Fideo seco con chilaquiles (dry-cooked angel hair pasta with chilaquiles). Chef Cabrera's signature dish, topped with requesón and crema (cheese similar to ricotta accompanied by Mexican table cream), this is another do-not-miss from the a la carte menu.

Crema Conde, a classic Mexican cream soup, is made of puréed black beans, smooth as silk, and in this case poured over crumbled fresh cheese and a sprig of sprouts. Thick and rich, it made us aware that we hadn't quite arrived at the main course yet and we needed to slow the pace. Stop now? Never! Slow down a little, that's all.

Crema poblana, made from roasted, slightly spicy chile poblano and poured over tender corn kernels and fresh cheese. I am hard pressed to choose a favorite between the crema conde and the crema poblano. Fortunately Fonda Fina serves just one of them as the crema del día (cream soup of the day).

Main course: costillas de res (beef short ribs), oven-braised for 12 hours and served with tender baby asparagus, quelites de cenizo (field-grown greens), rings of raw onion, and diced avocado. Fork tender and complexly flavored, this offering from chef Cabrera was perfect.

The Fonda Fina kitchen offers simple and delicious roast chicken, either a half or the whole bird. On a second occasion at the restaurant, another friend and I ordered the whole chicken to share. The skin was crisp and golden, the chicken was juicy and tender, and we were both more than pleased to share it.

Dessert: a selection of unusual and delicious ice creams, all house-made. Clockwise from the left: avocado, hoja santa, chocolate, and chicozapote. The rich, deep, creamy chocolate and the hoja santa, with its marvelous anise flavor, were my favorites.

One of the latecomers ordered Chiapas-style cheese flan, garnished with guava, raspberries, edible flowers, and maguey cactus honey.

For our last dessert–and you thought we'd never stop eating!–the second late arrival asked for pan de elote tierno (sweet corn cake) with strawberries flamed with mezcal and a foam created from Michoacán's famous chongos zamoranos (a milk-based treat).

Mexico Cooks! has eaten at Fonda Fina several times since early December and has never been disappointed. If you're visiting Mexico City or if you live here and are looking for a delightul experience, do go for a meal. It's a wonderful thing to be able to recommend a new restaurant on all levels: ambiance, service, and excellent food. Let me know how you like it!

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16 de January de 2016
Restaurante Nicos: Vintage Traditions, New Acclaim

This article about Mexico City's ever-popular Restaurante Nicos bears repeating today for an important announcement. Just a few weeks ago, our much-loved Nicos was named to the list of 50 Best Restaurants in Latin America, presented by RESTAURANT, a British specialty magazine. Long a great cause for pride in Mexico City, thanks to this award Nicos is now even better known throughout the world.

Chef Gerardo Vázquez Lugo, consummately professional executive chef at Restaurante Nicos in Mexico City.

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 don Raimundo Vázques and his wife María Elena Lugo Zermeño (chef Gerardo's parents) and run by the Vázquez Lugo family for the last 58 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.

A Mexican food enthusiast and restaurant owner visiting from Oregon recently invited me and some other friends to accompany him for comida (main meal of Mexico's day) at Nicos. An eager sí, cómo no!, and Mexico Cooks! joined this 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 (Capuchin nuns) in Guadalajara. It's made of crepes, layered with shredded chicken and a sauce made of nata (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 table cream). Note the name Pijijiapan: it's the only place name in Mexico with five dotted letters in a row! You can always 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, Mexico's great lady of the kitchen, 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

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5 de December de 2015
Eat My Globe and The Day of the Dead, Revisited

For the next month, Mexico Cooks! will publish a retrospective of articles about the Day (and Night) of the Dead in Mexico. This brief article was published originally on November 24, 2007, when Mexico Cooks! was just a few months old.

Mexico Cooks!' friend Simon Majumdar, on his first tour of Mexico, joined us for a week-long whirlwind crawl to some of our favorite food sites in Guadalajara and Morelia. In between restaurants, taco stands, and walking-around food, we introduced him to the Day of the Dead in both cities.

Papel maché skull masks at the Tianguis del Día de los Muertos, Guadalajara.

Fancy-dress clay catrines (skeletons), each about 7" high, ready for an evening out on the town.

Little clay calacas (skeletons) in sombreros and serapes, the perfect size for hanging from your car's rear-view mirror.

Muñecas de cartón (cardboard dolls) dressed in crepe paper and sequins.

Part of a large ofrenda (altar) in Morelia's Centro Histórico. This altar was dedicated to Don Vasco de Quiroga, one of Michoacán's most historic figures and the first bishop of the state.

A traditional ofrenda (with a twist–click on the photo to get a better view of the hand creeping out of the grave) at Morelia's Hotel Virrey de Mendoza. Click on any photo to enlarge it.

The Plaza San Agustín in Morelia. The ofrenda covered the entire plaza. The central pyramid is made of carrizo (bamboo) and ears of corn. It's surrounded by cempasúchil and terciopelo (marigolds and cock's comb flowers). The cempasúchil fragrance leads the spirits of the dead back to earth and the deep maroon terciopelo is a color of mourning.

A skeletal pair in the Jardín de las Rosas, the garden outside the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia.

This ofrenda, in front of Morelia's Santuario de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, is dedicated to Frida Kahlo.

At the time of this 2007 article, our guest was traveling the world to research his first book, Eat My Globe. Today, Simon Majumdar is a well-known and well-respected Food Network personality, with several more books to his credit. His most recent, published a bit earlier in 2015, is Fed, White, and Blue: Finding America With My Fork.

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10 de October de 2015