Since moving to New York, Crayton and I have suffered from intense salsa deprivation.
It took me awhile to start making my own because I kept looking for chile de árbol, the go-to red table salsa ingredient in Mexico City. But the chiles de árbol in Queens always looked stemless and [...]
Continue Reading →
My only knowledge of chile piquín prior to Saturday was that it was sold two ways in Mexico City: as a wrinkly, small red chile, or in powder form. (The powder is often used in spicy cocktails here.)
Last Saturday, a stand at Mercado Medellín had little bags of fresh piquín [...]
Continue Reading →
For awhile now, I’ve liked green salsa more than red. Green was always brighter, more acidic. A drizzle on my taco set off sparks on my tongue. And when the salsa had avocado, as green taquería salsas often do here, I wanted to curl up and take a nap in its creaminess.
[...]
Continue Reading →
Whenever I have visitors in town or I want to wow dinner guests, I break into my stash of Oaxacan pasilla chiles. I’ve been obsessed with this chile for the past year — unlike the regular chile pasilla, or even the chipotle or mora for that matter, they’re intensely smoky, [...]
Continue Reading →If there is one chile you need to try in your life, it’s the chile pasilla oaxaqueña.
The dried, wrinkly, pointy chile is almost cartoonishly smoky. It smells like a campfire, or like a match right after you’ve blown it out. And the taste! It’s woodsy and kind of fruity, and perfumed [...]
Continue Reading →One of my new favorite smells is the chile mora. It’s a smoked, dried jalapeño, and therefore classified as a chipotle. But it’s a bit sweeter and more raisin-like than the brown chipotles you see in the markets. It’s also not as hot. (The chile morita, a cousin, is much spicier.)
Chile [...]
Continue Reading →Even after almost two years in Mexico, I still like to buy salsa out of a jar. (Hey, it’s convenient.) But because this is the Week of Huauzontles, and the huauz requires so much care, I figured it’d be worth it to make a salsa molcajeteada — a salsa where you [...]
Continue Reading →Whenever I ate enchiladas growing up — which means whenever my mom decided to make them, around once a year — we used canned sauce.
It was completely fine. I had no problems.
When it finally occurred to me as an adult that one could make homemade sauce (and that it [...]
Continue Reading → Who is Mija?
Mija is Lesley Téllez, a food writer and culinary guide in New York City. I spent four years in Mexico's Distrito Federal, which launched my deep love for Mexican food and culture. In 2010 I co-founded the tourism company Eat Mexico.
