The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for August 2010

Morgan Spurlock on transparency and activism in food blogging

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Morgan Spurlock at the International Food Blogger Conference in Seattle, on Friday Aug. 27, 2010

Morgan Spurlock kicked off the opening night of the IFBC conference yesterday, chatting for about an hour about why eating locally grown food matters and how we can get folks to care.

He’s a funny guy, and he talked briefly about creating a Supersize Me sequel called Supersize Me 2: Obesity Boogaloo. (“I still may do it,” he said.) What struck me most were his thoughts on the future of food blogging.

In his opinion, food bloggers need to get away from the computer and get out into the streets. We should be educating people, working with the local media to teach people where their food comes from and how to cook it properly. Bloggers could lead field trips to local farms, he said. Or organize a visit to a local restaurant, where the chef could talk about eating sustainably.

“That’s what you all need to be focused on,” he told the crowd. “How can my words drive action?”

He briefly mentioned that food bloggers need to be a lot more transparent. He said it at the end of his talk and he didn’t have time to elaborate, but I’m assuming he meant in regard to whether we’ve received free meals or if we’ve been paid to endorse products. I heartily agree.

I admit that while I’m passionate about eating less processed food and enjoying the natural taste of a product (as opposed to something laden with corn syrup), I haven’t spent enough time in Mexico yet to understand exactly how to educate people here. Regarding transparency: The only free meal I’ve received in writing this blog was at El Bajío, as part of the Aromas y Sabores tour. The entire tour was free for all the invited journalists/photographers. But that doesn’t excuse it — I should’ve left an extra-large tip or at least mentioned in the post that the meal was free.

I’m curious about your thoughts. If you blog about food, do you see yourself taking a more activist turn? Do you think you’re being transparent enough? Do you accept free meals when you’re writing, and do you expect it?

Headed to the International Food Blogger Conference

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International Food Bloggers Conference 2010

I’ve been visiting the States for two reasons over these past two weeks. One was to watch a dear friend get married, which she did, on a hill overlooking the San Juan islands. The second reason was to attend the International Food Blogger Conference.

I’m usually skeptical about blogging conferences and classes. With the exception of BlogHer, most of them tend to be outrageously expensive and focused on, “Look at all the swag we’re getting!”

This one seemed different. It’s small and aimed at how to specifically improve the content of your food blog, through streamlined recipe writing, and better writing and photography. There’s also a seminar on SEO and blog traffic (with my friend Joy on the panel), and a keynote speech from James Oseland, the editor-in-chief of Saveur. Other panelists include Victoria von Biel, executive editor of Bon Apetit, and Molly Wizenberg of Orangette and A Homemade Life.

Of course, there is swag too, but I’m more worried about how I’m going to fit it in my packed suitcase. (I’ve got a fancy new pair of rainboots taking up a bit of space.)

The conference starts tonight, with an opening reception at the Hotel Monaco with Morgan Spurlock, best-known for directing Super Size Me. I’ll have more updates to come!

How to season a molcajete, when you’re absolutely tired of grinding

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During my last cooking class, Yuri announced that we were taking a break from the metate. Instead, we’d cook up a few antojitos — corn-based snacks — which we’d then get to eat. This was cause for rejoicing, because we hadn’t eaten anything in the past two classes, despite marathon-amounts of grinding.

On the menu was homemade refried black beans, various types of salsa made in our molcajetes, and tortillas, tlacoyos and sopes from ready-made masa.

First, he instructed us how to cook the beans. We should pick over them carefully to remove any small stones, and then soak them overnight until the water turned an inky black color. We could use the same soaking water to cook the beans, ideally in a clay bean pot. Yuri warned us not to salt the beans or add anything to them while they’re cooking, save for a wee bit of epazote at the end.

He rhapsodized a bit more about black beans and how delicious they are, and then sent us off to our molcajetes to make salsas. As folks began pulling their molcajetes off the shelves, he called out a question:

“Everyone has seasoned their molcajetes, right?”

I’d been dreading this moment.
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And… we have a winner!

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Wow. I am so amazed by all the comments over the past three days. Y’all shared some fantastic memories, and I felt honored to read each of them.

I wish I could give everyone just a little something (and maybe I will get to do that someday, when I’m rich and famous), but alas, the package goes to one winner.

And he/she is….

Melodie! The commenter who ate turkey tamales wrapped in foil as a child, even though neither of her parents were Mexican.

Melodie, you’ll receive the sweets package from La Nicolasa. I’ll email you directly using the email address you provided in the comments.

Thanks again to everyone for playing.

The first-ever Mija Chronicles blog giveaway

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I know I use exclamation points a lot, but this deserves one: I’m giving away some Mexican goodies!

I’ve been wanting to do this for months now, as a way to say thanks for reading. I really appreciate every single comment you guys leave — at least, the nice comments anyway — and I’m just honored that y’all take the time to spend a few minutes here.

This little tray of goodies, all of which were purchased at La Nicolasa, includes tejocote jam (so fabulous I started buying loaves of bread, just to have something to spread it on); piloncillo en polvo; a package of peach ate — perfect for slicing and serving with Mexican manchego; and a package of dried xoconostle, which is the sour tuna fruit. When it’s dried, it has a pleasant, sweet-and-tangy flavor that makes it perfect for salads, rice, trail mix, etc.

The pretty plate in the picture above isn’t included, because it’s my mom’s. (Thanks for letting me use it Mom!) Also, in the interest of complete transparency, I purchased these things with my own money — La Nicolasa didn’t give me anything for free.

To win, all you have to do is answer this question in the comments below:

What is your favorite Mexican food memory, and why?

I’ll pick one person randomly as the winner on Monday. Thanks for playing, and thank you again for reading.

La Nicolasa: Organic, gourmet Mexican groceries in Mexico City

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I’ve been meaning to write about La Nicolasa for a long time. It’s a small store in Azcapotzalco that offers organic, natural food products, all of them 100 percent Mexican.

There’s no other store I know of here where everything is both all-natural and domestic. Among the products for sale at La Nicolasa are:

Brie and Camembert cheese, olive oil, turkey burgers, whole frozen organic chickens, tejocote jam (my absolute favorite in the universe), organic ate, ground chiles, homemade potato chips, dried xoconostle, bottled spices to make vegetable caldo, and Mexican wine. You can also buy lead-free clay bean pots at La Nicolasa, similar to the one I purchased last year.

The prices aren’t cheap for Mexico standards, but they’re less than what you’d pay for similar high-quality items in the United States or elsewhere.

Really, what I love about this store is that I know exactly where the products are coming from. In Mexico, food transparency laws are still in their beginning stages and as a consumer, I have no way of knowing whether the packaged ate I purchase in the mercado was really made using fruit from China. (By the way: I heard recently that China supplies a lions’ share of dried chiles in Mexico. So you really never know.)

At La Nicolasa, I know I’m supporting Mexican farmers and food-makers, many of whom live in small rural communities. It makes it worth the trip. Plus Azcapotzalco — a quiet colonia north of Polanco — is quaint and cool anyway. I’d love to live there someday, if Crayton didn’t have to commute to Reforma.

Here are a few pictures of the place. If you’re looking for all-natural, artisanal Mexican food products, this place must be on your list.

Roasted, dried chiles, already ground up and ready to add to soups and sauces. They're made by a community of women in Guanajuato.

Olive oil from Baja California

Organic guava jam. The Savia brand is one of my favorites.

Piloncillo, the traditional Mexican sugar, made in polvo (dust) instead of the usual cone shape.


Xoconostle salsa, banana vinegar, agave syrup and more.

La Nicolasa
Clavería 235, at the corner of Avenida Cuitlahuac
tel. 5342 0099
Open Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 9 p.m.

How to make a proper chile en nogada

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Every year in late summer and early fall, the chile en nogada makes its brief run through Mexico.

The star ingredients, walnuts and pomegranate seeds, are not available any other time of the year. So it’s a festive time. Restaurant storefronts become festooned with “We have chiles en nogada!” banners. Pomegranates glitter at the tianguis. Mexican Independence Day is right around the corner (on Sept. 16), and the dish is pretty much the culinary centerpiece of the celebration.

To me, the most interesting thing about chiles en nogada is that it’s a living piece of Mexican history. Puebla nuns invented the dish in 1821, to honor a visit by Mexican General Augustín de Iturbide. The dish featured the colors of the Mexican flag: a poblano chile stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, covered in creamy walnut sauce (white) and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and parsley (red and green). The Mexican flag was unveiled around the same period, so you can imagine the patriotic fervor.

Today, the chile en nogada sounds awfully baroque. Fruity meat? Pomegranate seeds? Who would eat that? At the time, however, nogada sauce was popular. And so was the idea of combining dozens of ingredients to create a complicated, tedious dish. (The Pueblan nuns also invented mole.)

Chiles en nogada is not an easy dish, and it’s not meant to be. That’s part of the tradition. Walnuts must be peeled. Spices assembled. Raw and dried fruit, chopped. Even after assembling your chile, you must dunk it in egg batter and fry it.

In the olden days, the nuns didn’t have blenders, so they ground the walnut sauce on the metate. As someone who has done her fair share of metate-grinding, I can tell you that it had to take entire days of grinding to get the texture they wanted. Let me repeat that: days of grinding.
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Real huitlacoche, in all its spooky beauty

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I was so excited to find this yesterday: a piece of huitlacoche, real huitlacoche, with the corncob still attached!

Usually vendors in Mexico sell huitlacoche (a corn fungus, obvs) in plastic bags, having already plucked the plump nuggets off the corncob. I bought this from an old woman outside Metro San Cosme, in the Colonia San Rafael. She had huitlacoche, nopal and a few bunches of herbs spread out on the sidewalk. Everything came from Toluca.

Fresh huitlacoche is a rare find in the United States, by the way. According to the cookbook Tacos, which I just stumbled on in Google Books (otherwise, I would not normally read a taco cookbook, because tacos are not dishes in themselves, they are a way to eat something) the U.S. government requires a special permit to grow huitlacoche, since it’s a fungus and the spores are disseminated through the air. Heaven forbid too much American corn becomes contaminated — how would we fulfill our corn syrup needs?

Unfortunately I won’t know what corncob-attached huitlacoche tastes like. I’m leaving town tomorrow for two weeks and won’t be home for most of today. Yesterday I gave my spooky huitlacoche to Lola, so she could enjoy it. She said she planned to make “unos ricos tacos.”

The glorious, messy Mexican torta

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The other day, I was really craving a torta. This doesn’t happen to me that often (I’m much more of a tlacoyos girl) but this craving was undeniable: I needed a stack of meat, melted cheese and avocado piled between layers of soft bread.

Since I don’t eat tortas that often, I don’t have a favorite variety. I asked my Facebook friends which type I should choose. The response was swift. “Cancún!” said my friend Hugh. “Anything with quesillo!” said Alejandra.

There are about 10 torta stands within walking distance of my house, but I wanted the best. So I went downstairs and asked the portero which one he preferred. He made a vague motion across the street. “Allí,” he said.

The only thing I’d seen across the street was a fonda, so I thought he meant across the street and down the block. I peered over the parked cars and didn’t see anything. And then, walking toward the corner, I saw it: a torta shop tucked next to the fonda, behind a tree, with a cheery sign.

The sign looked like someone had taken a bite out of the side.

Standing inside the cramped space, I kind of felt like being in a panadería for the first time. There were so many flavors! So many different meat and cheese combinations!

The long torta menu at ¡Tortas! in the Col. Roma

Even more options on a second torta menu at ¡Tortas! in Mexico City

I ordered the Cancún — a mix of chuleta, cheese and pineapple. (Thanks, Hugh.) But the shop had run out of chuleta. So I thought a bit and instead went with the Holandesa, which was the same as the Cancún, except with pierna. Of course it came with all the other torta fixins, too: beans, avocado, tomato, and a shmear of chipotle salsa.

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I took this thing home and unwrapped it. The greasy paper. The oozing cheese. The smell. I was so excited, in fact, that I managed to take only two pictures before taking a bite.

Since then I been thinking about tortas much more often, and I’m thinking this might be regular thing for me.

Next time I’m at the tortería, what kind should I get?

Guacamole de molcajete, and how to make it without fear

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I’ve always wanted to be an expert at making guacamole.

In my deep-seeded dreams for myself, I am that woman who throws a lovely, Mexican-food dinner party, featuring a simple batch of guacamole that blows everyone’s minds.

I could not make this dream come true, though, because I was too scared to make any. When I lived in Texas, I was on this guacamole high horse and didn’t want to use a recipe. So twice I made batches that were actually bad — one had too much lime juice; the other, too much onion. In Mexico City, I started making a kind of fast-food version of guac that combined avocados and Herdez salsa verde. It’s actually pretty good, but I felt a little ashamed to serve fast-food guac with something like homemade hibiscus-flower quesadillas.

Then about a month ago, I took a class on how to prepare salsas. We learned that the base of all guac is a pico de gallo — the combo of onion, cilantro, tomato and serrano chiles. You grind these things together in the molcajete and then add avocados. Top the whole thing with a few squirts of lime juice. That’s it. Doneskis.

I still didn’t have enough confidence to try it on my own, however, until I spent two hours seasoning my metate. Using just my two hands and a grinding stone, I had turned dried corn and beans into dust. Making guacamole? Pffft. That’s puny work.

About three weeks ago, with absolutely no nervousness at all, I used the ratios from my cooking class and whipped up a batch to accompany some quesadillas. The result was the best guacamole I’d ever made: buttery and creamy and evenly balanced, with a tang from the tomatoes. And I had made the entire thing myself. No Herdez.

I’ve since this a few more times, including at a party attended by some French tourists. They kept coming up to me and saying, “This is so good!” It was not exactly my dinner-party vision come to life, but close enough. I felt really proud.

Recipe below.
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