Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border
In honor of my first year in Mexico, I thought it might be fun to reflect back on some of my favorite food memories over the past 11 months.
Also: I wanted to thank you for reading and commenting over the past year. You’ve really made this year special, and I’m sending you each a virtual abrazo. (Although not a beso, because of swine flu concerns.) Please have a happy New Year, and felicidades!
My visual Mexican food journey starts below….
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Bacalao is the Spanish word for a slab of boneless, skinless dried salt cod. The filets — long, snowy looking things — pop up in all the Mexico City grocery stores and markets during Christmastime.
I had eaten fried bacalao a few times in Spain, but I’d never tried it the Mexican way, which combines tomatoes, onions, green olives, chiles and garlic to make a kind of fishy stew.
The idea of cooking with salted fish intrigued me, in a Laura Ingalls Wilder kind of way. (Remember how her family used to eat salt pork?) So I picked out a rather large, one-and-a-half pound piece at Mercado de la Merced a few weeks ago, and asked the vendor for cooking instructions.
She gave me a detailed list, which I wrote down in my moleskine. You can see them below, at the bottom of the page.
To check the recipe’s veracity, I flipped through Diana Kennedy and Rick Bayless, who currently comprise the bulk of my Mexican cooking library. Luckily, “Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen” had a recipe that mirrored the vendor’s instructions almost exactly. I decided I’d whip up a mixture of his dish and the market vendor’s.
Unfortunately, amid attending a friend’s posada and throwing my own tamalada, I didn’t plan very well. Bacalao must be de-salted before cooking, which means it has to sit in a dish of water for several hours. Once mine was sufficiently salt-free, I was up to my ears in cornhusks. I wasn’t ready to cook it, so I stuck it in the freezer for a few days and prayed.
Surprisingly, it turned out great. The fish was hearty and toothsome, but not tough. And the tomato-onion mixture was the perfect foil — light, spicy, and with a kick of saltiness from the olives. I added small red potatoes, too, although you can also serve it with rice. The dish looks complicated, but really, it’s not difficult at all. We’ve been eating the leftovers over the past few days and it only gets better with time.
I think this might be another new Christmas tradition, along with figgy pudding.
Recipe below.
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Crayton decided a few days ago that he wanted to make figgy pudding for Christmas this year.
He’d been humming “We Wish You a Merry Christmas” on Wednesday night when he suddenly asked, “What is figgy pudding, anyway?”
We looked it up on the Internet and discovered it was a cake filled with dried, boozy fruits. We found a recipe by Dorie Greenspan and it seemed easy enough: whip up a type of cake batter, add some spices, scrape it into a bundt pan. The cake did need to be steamed, which meant we’d cook it on the stove top in a water bath. But we could do that. I had a new tamale-steamer that could double as a stock pot.
So, on Christmas Eve, I shopped for figgy pudding ingredients while Crayton worked. Found everything quickly except for the dried figs, which took me two hours to find. Eventually scored them at the El Progreso spice shop near Mercado San Juan.
On Christmas Day, Crayton made the whole thing almost entirely by himself. I hovered nearby and washed the dishes, and chopped the apricots. I prayed he wouldn’t burn the house down. Lighting the cake on fire is a key part of figgy pudding presentation, and that’s all he kept talking about: “We’re going to make figgy pudding and light it on fire!”
Mixing the butter and eggs together
Folding together the eggs, sugar and fresh breadcrumbs, which Crayton pulsed in the food processor
Alcohol-soaked figs and raisins, softly burning in a very safe area of our kitchen
The thick batter, ready to be scraped into my cathedral bundt
The finished bundt, ready for steaming
The pudding finished cooking in about two hours. Crayton used a knife to loosen the pudding’s edges, just like the recipe said. (He’d printed out a copy and placed it on the kitchen table, for handy reference.)
When he was done loosening the cake, I started to advise him on how to invert it onto our wire cooling rack.
Before I could say more than two words, though, he simply picked up the pan and tipped it over. Plop. The pudding fell out in one big mass. I winced.
But the cake looked fine. More than fine — it was pretty.
And it tasted fantastic: hearty, moist, and soaked in bits of alcohol-drenched fruit. I liked the apricots the best, but Crayton loved the raisins. “They’re little booze bombs,” he said.
No lie. We had wine with dinner and after one slice of cake for dessert, I felt my head swimming. Crayton asked if I wanted to see Avatar later on that evening, and I shook my head. “I’m drunk,” I said.
But three hours and many glasses of water later, I felt fine. We saw Avatar after all. It was good, if you disregarded the dialogue.
Oh, and Crayton did light the cake on fire, fulfilling his one Christmas wish. The flames only burned for a few seconds before they went out. Next time, I’ll pour the rum while he has the match ready. We’re making figgy pudding an annual Christmas tradition.
Recipe below.
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I loved all the colors and the pageantry of Día de los Muertos in Mexico. I expected I’d love Christmas here too.
Not so much. Traffic is now insane in my neighborhood, largely spurred by the presence of the World’s Largest Christmas Tree. It’s impossible to find a taxi. The markets are crowded and crazy, and for the first time in my 11-month marketing experience, some of the vendors I encountered were rude. One at Mercado de la Merced sighed and acted annoyed when I told him I only needed a half-kilo of tamale flour. Dude! Por favor.
In the Zona Rosa yesterday, the streets were nearly empty, hopefully because everyone was fleeing the city. Unfortunately, less people meant less crowds, which meant I was suddenly a walking target for folks selling things. One lady approached me and said, “Hola chica guapa!” and then asked if I wanted to buy some lotion. Another one approached with incense.
Usually if you say “no gracias,” they’ll leave you alone. But one guy started walking right next to me, matching my fast pace as I walked down the street. (As a sidenote: None of this has never happened to me in the Zona Rosa before. Usually there are so many people, you’re able to walk safely and anonymously.)
The guy was yammering on about religion, or something, and I said “no gracias.” He kept on walking and talking, staying close to my left side.
I started to feel uncomfortable, so I said no gracias again.
“Are you an angry person?” he asked me. “Are you sad about your life? God can help.”
He kept on talking, but I couldn’t tune him out. Finally I looked at him and barked: “Déjame en paz! Por favor. Gracias.”
He looked startled and walked away.
Lord. Seriously? Is this what it takes now? Puro yelling on the street to get people to leave you alone?
Right after that, various men walked by and murmured “hola chiquita” at me and made a lip-smacking sound. I HATE THE LIP SMACKING SOUND. Mexican men do it all the time. It’s like some carnal form of cat-calling. It’s disgusting.
Can’t wait for life to get back to normal around here again. Merry Christmas, yeah, great. But January cannot come quick enough.
*Photo of a Christmas piñata in front of Mercado Sonora, taken on Dec. 14, 2009
Spotted this pair this morning. The back dude was the yeller, shouting about mattresses for sale.
At least, this is what I think he said — I couldn’t understand him very well. Next time, perhaps they should go for a recorded message, like the tamale vendors do.
Remember the bean pot I bought last week? Here it is.
My mom wanted me to make sure and tell you that it’s lead-free. Too much lead in one’s system can lead to neurological problems.
So. I used it on Saturday for the first time. Well, actually, on Friday, per the seller’s instructions, I filled it with water and simmered it on a low flame for four hours, to prep the pot for cooking. (I think this removes a layer of grit on the surface.)
On Saturday, Lola came over to help me get ready for the tamalada. We finished a few fillings, and she prepared the beans while I was at the gym. Into the pot the beans went, with a handful of epazote, onion and a little bit of canola oil.
About three hours later, we fished some out of the pot with a wooden spoon. The bean caldo had turned a rich, hot-cocoa brown color, with a sheen of greenish-brown on the surface. I was worried about the green color at first, but Lola reminded me that it was from the epazote.
I couldn’t get over how good they smelled. Of course I’d been around pots of beans cooking before, but they were never as fragrant as this. These were earthy and sweet, and clean. The bean starch, when you rubbed it between your fingers, felt creamy and soft. And the caldo — oh god, the caldo. It had this thickness to it, this heft, as if we had added flour or something. I wanted to bottle it, and save it, and slurp just a teensy bit every day for the rest of my life.
I’d bought these beans and the bean pot, by the way, through Xoxoc, a small family-owned business based in Hidalgo state.
“Mmmmmmmm,” I said loudly, after dipping my nose in the pot and inhaling deeply.
“Está enamorada de frijoles,” Lola announced. She’s in love with beans.
More correctly: I’m in love with fresh beans, my new clay pot, and the mixture of the two together.
All my cazuela needs now is a name. Any ideas?
Six really cool women came over for my tamale-making party yesterday — four Americans, one Mexican, one Venezuelan. One of the Americans brought pizza dip. We also had raisin-walnut bread, cookies, a spread of cream cheese and red chile marmalade, and toasted pumpkin-seed dip.
Using fresh masa harina my friend Alejandra bought at a tortillería, which was much moister and fresher than the flour I bought last week at Mercado de la Merced….
… we mixed up a lard-laden tamale masa, fluffy like buttercream frosting.
We soaked corn husks in a big pot, removed them, squeezed them dry, and spread a layer of masa inside.
Added fillings: rajas con queso and salsa verde, chicken with green mole sauce, and tomato-cumin with shredded chicken. Then we rolled ’em up, and tied them closed with strips of corn husk.
We placed them in my steamer pot, which I’d filled partially with water and two 1-peso coins. The coins rattle in boiling water, so when they stopped rattling, we’d know to add more water. The tamales need constant steam in order to cook.
After about 90 minutes, they were done.
And man were they good. Better than my practice version. The masa was spongy and light, just like I’d hoped. We served them with homemade refried beans, boiled in my clay bean pot and then fried in a few tablespoons of lard. (You don’t want to know how much lard we went through yesterday.) And we had champurrado, made with Mexican chocolate I’d purchased in Pátzcuaro.
It was a perfect Christmas moment: friends, a bountiful table and a warm home. So warm, in fact, that the steam from the tamales had condensed on the windows. I can’t wait to do it again next year.
I’ll post the recipe for sweet tamales in the next few days. They were my faves, with cinnamon, sugar, pineapple, nuts and raisins. Yum.
Before I moved to Mexico City, Crayton and I went to fancy restaurants in Dallas about once a month. (Ah, the joys of two incomes!) I studied which restaurants were new and noteworthy, and we’d get dressed up, take a taxi, order a bottle of wine.
I figured I’d dive into the upscale restaurant scene here, but I haven’t. This is partly because the traditional Mexican food cannon interests me more. But also because: what if it’s not any good? In my experience, Mexico City restaurants have been inconsistent. It’s not worth it when you can get fresh, hot street food every day for a fraction of the price.
That said, on Tuesday, I ignored all my past behavior and booked a table at Oca, a new fancy Mediterranean restaurant in Polanco. Chilango gave it great reviews, and I figured: I’ll try just this once.
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I’d been dragging my feet on buying a tamale steamer pot, called a tamalera, for weeks. It’s a big, bulky steel thing, bigger (I imagined) than a stock pot. I wasn’t entirely sure where to buy it. Or whether I’d be able to carry it home.
Part of me also feared the whole buying process, because I had no idea what I was doing. How do you say “four-chambered steamer” in Spanish? What did a tamale steamer even look like up-close? What if some random vendor knew I was a foreigner, and decided to rip me off?
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This weekend I’m hosting a bunch of women for a tamalada, or tamale-making party. Seeing as I haven’t made tamales in like three years, and the last time was with a cooking course — when they chopped everything for me and cleaned up — I figured I should try a practice batch today, just to see how they turn out. And hell, since I’m doing this all by myself, why not live blog it?
I’ve got all my ingredients. Windows are open, as to diffuse any strange cooking smells. Hair is back. Apron, about to be tied on. Music, I need to choose. Other than that I’m ready to go.
Ooooh! Can you feel the excitement? What’ll happen? Will my lard be rancid, as a teensy weensy part of me thinks? (Because I purchased it from a plastic bucket, from a random dude at Mercado Merced.) Will I succumb to the little voice in my head telling me to toss in a handful of romeritos and mole as tamale filling, even though that’s not a typical Mexican Christmas tamale?
Will I eat all of my queso manchego before it makes it into the masa?
And how the heck long is this going to take, anyway?
Find out. Live tamale blogging starts now.
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