The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for March 2010

Homemade black bean burgers with cilantro-chipotle mayo, and ginger-carrot slaw

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My local grocery store doesn’t sell frozen veggie burgers. So if I want one, I have to make them from scratch. (Insert groan here.)

Really, I hadn’t craved them until recently. Who wants a veggie burger when you can have a warm carnitas taco? But then my pants starting getting a wee bit too tight. And I thought, well, maybe it’d be nice to have some more veggies in my life. (This from the girl who used to eat salads every day in the U.S., and whip up a frozen veggie burger at least twice a week. Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore.)

I’d made homemade veggie burgers once before when I lived in Dallas, and I remember it being an intensive process, and one I didn’t necessarily want to repeat again. Then, a few months ago, I was flipping through a copy of Cooking Light that my mom had sent me in the mail, and I saw a recipe for a quick black bean burger. It called for mixing beans with onions, spices, some egg and breadcrumbs. Sounded easy enough.

A few days ago, I whipped some up for dinner, adding my own Mexican-ish tweaks — bolillo roll for the breadcrumbs, a serrano pepper for spiciness, and a good slather of cilantro-chipotle mayo on top. (Cilantro-chipotle mayo tastes good on just about anything.) Paired the burgers with a gujarati grated-carrot salad, a warm, gingery, toasty side dish that comes together in a snap.

Found the carrot recipe in a charming cookbook called Cooking Com Bigode, which my friend Jesica gave me a while back. The book, whose name is Brazilian Portuguese for “Cooking With Moustache,” doesn’t so much offer specific measurements as loose instructions designed to empower the home cook. It was written by Jesica’s bohemian friend Ankur, an Indian guy who camped out in Brazil for awhile.

If you don’t have carrots, you can pair the burgers with any other salad you want. I think something mild might be best, as to not overpower the gooeyness of the cilantro/chipotle mayo and spicy black beans. Maybe tomatoes with queso fresco and black pepper. Or even jicama with a spot of lime juice.

A quick note: These burgers don’t have a typical “burger” consistency. They’re soft and kind of creamy, but crunchy on the outside from a nice sizzle in the frying pan. Ergo, I wouldn’t pair them with a traditional bun. I didn’t use any bread at all and didn’t miss it (I was too busy wow-ing over the mayo), but if you’re dying for bread, I would try a thinly sliced, toasted white or wheat bread.

Crayton, who loves a good carnitas taco, really liked these. Although he was a little alarmed by the mound of carrot salad I put on his plate. He said, “That’s too much,” and so I took some off. (I thought: How can one have too much carrots? They’re carrots!)

I know he’s very excited for all the other vegetarian recipes I have planned in the future.

Recipe below.
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Adventures in Mexican produce: The granada china

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I first bought a granada china — literally, a “chinese pomegranate” — a few months after moving to Mexico. I had no idea what it was (I’d been suckered by a tianguis vendor, oh naive extranjera that I was), and so I asked my Mexican landlady.

She said it contained a mucous-like sack of seeds. You cut the fruit in half and suck them out with your tongue.

The mucous idea scared me. The china slowly rotted in the fridge, and I never bought one again.

In India, we ate passion fruit right off the tree. The granada china bears a striking resemblance to passion fruit — actually, they’re related — and so at the tianguis a few weekends ago, I confidently asked for “dos maracuyá.”

A man behind the table laughed. “That’s not a maracuyá,” he said. “It’s a granada china.”

I bought a few anyway. Came back, sliced them in half — they opened with a satisfying crack — and dug into the gelatinous center with a spoon. It tasted similar to a passion fruit, but a little more musty — sweet, but without the bright, lemony, mangoey notes you sometimes get with passion fruit.

Eating it was so much fun. I used a wee spoon, and scooped out the soggy flesh from each half. We still have some Leblon Cachaça left, so when I feel better, hubby and I must try granada china caipirinhas on the patio.

Searching for the best concha roll at Snob Bistro

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I was itching to get out of the house last weekend, so on Sunday morning I told Crayton: “We’re going to breakfast.”

Didn’t feel like taking a cab anywhere, and I wasn’t in the mood for Sanborns or Bisquets Obregón. So we settled on Snob Bistro, an upscale-ish breakfast and lunch place in the Zona Rosa, about a 10-minute walk from our house. The online menu sounded appetizing enough — it had the typical Mexican chilaquiles and huevos, plus a yummy-sounding eggs with goat cheese in a pasilla chile sauce.

Plus, it was just kind of funny to visit a place called Snob. The website proclaims, “Are you a snob? Us too!” (The Zona Rosa, incidentally, has quite a few of these oddly named shops. I’ve also noticed a lingerie boutique called “Mom.”)

At around 11 a.m., Snob was empty, except for one table of about six people. (Bad sign?) We ordered coffee, and I asked for a concha roll, which was presented in a small basket with a croissant and a cinnamon roll. Wasn’t expecting much, since it was 11 a.m. and past the normal concha-baking hour. But the roll was surprisingly good. The breakdown:

Crumb: Above average — moist, but not so saturated with butter that it leaves an oil slick in your mouth.

Sugary crust: Decent. Stayed on the roll nicely (no loose-sock effect), and tasted faintly of orange blossom water. It seemed like it was missing something, though. Maybe a touch of cinnamon. Or maybe I just prefer chocolate.

Overall: Three stars out of four. I’d buy conchas here if I was organizing a brunch party, and needed to pick up something quick from the neighborhood. Still haven’t tried the rolls from Sanborn’s, though, which is technically closer to my house.

On Snob’s food: It was fine. I got the eggs with goat cheese, and they were tasty enough. Crayton got the huevos divorciados and liked them, too. I’m not sure I’d go back though — the service was quite slow, even for Mexico standards, and the juice didn’t taste fresh-squeezed. (I sound like a yuppie, but seriously: if you cannot get fresh-squeezed juice at a place that calls itself “Snob Bistro,” then what kind of world are we living in?)

The food also needed to be a bit more fabulous for the prices. The corn tortillas that came with my meal had the bitter taste of too much slaked lime. The goat-cheese eggs cost 70 pesos (~$5.50 USD), which is on the high side for one breakfast plate in Mexico. On the way there, we walked past a restaurant advertising an entire paquete — juice or fruit, roll, plato fuerte and coffee — for 54 pesos. Think we may try that place next time.

Snob Bistro
Londres 223 between Praga and Varsovia
tel. 5207 8963
Other branches located in Polanco, Interlomas and elsewhere

Spicy oatmeal with peanuts, cilantro and ginger

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One of the things I learned at the ashram was that I eat way too much sugar for breakfast.

If I’m not making mamey muffins while Crayton is rolling out of bed, I’m dreaming about making them, or flagging down the bicycle-riding pandulce guy. The problem with this — besides calorically speaking — is that I’m usually hungry again a few hours later. And sometimes kind of shaky from the careening dip in my blood sugar.

This issue could be solved by eating more protein-rich breakfasts, but the healthy ones, such as egg whites, don’t taste as good. (I know I sound like a six-year-old, but I don’t care.)

We ate savory breakfasts almost every day at the ashram. I loved all of them, because they were packed with spices, and they made my nose run. Most involved some combination of grains or starches (wheat, rice, noodles) tossed with fried mustard seeds, chile powder, sauteed chilies, ginger and onion. Usually I had two servings and I wasn’t hungry again until lunchtime.

My favorite of all was upma, a spicy porridge of semolina grains, spices and vegetables. To make it, you fry the spices and veggies, toast the grains, and then let the whole thing steam in the veg’s spicy-oily goodness. It’s served with coconut chutney.

In pictures on various food blogs, upma looks very prim, scooped into a little mound. This is not how we ate it at the ashram. Our upma was messy, and scattered around our plate in various lumps and valleys. We’d pick up a piece with our hand, swirl it in some chutney, and pop it in our mouths. The taste lay somewhere between Mexican rice and couscous, but with ginger and mouth-warming heat from the chili powder.

One day, the ashram’s cool chef/philosophy teacher told me that upma can also be made with oatmeal. A little thrill surged through my heart. Semolina isn’t easy to find in Mexico, so that meant that I could make upma when I got home!

A few days ago, I did. I used the the mustard seeds I’d bought in India, one of the items that the overzealous Mexican customs lady didn’t take. Added some dried curry leaves gifted by Alice; tomatoes, because they were plentiful at the local market, and cilantro, because I have two bunches of it in my fridge. Chopped a little onion and some ginger, and half of a serrano chile.

Traditional upma calls for frying a spoonful or two of lentils, but I used peanuts instead, because I had a bunch on hand.

The result was a hearty, spicy bowl of cooked grains, bright from the addition of the tomatoes, and nutty from the fried mustard seeds and the peanuts. Even Crayton liked it. He took a bite and said, “Hmmm…. gingery.”

I served this with a few spoonfuls of sliced bananas, dates and honey. Hey, the point isn’t giving up sugar entirely — it’s knowing that I can still be creative in the mornings without it.

Recipe below.
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