The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for April 2011

Swiss chard pesto, with pumpkin seeds and queso añejo

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One of the funny things about living in Mexico City is that it’s tough to find basil here. The big bunches of fresh Genovese basil don’t really exist — I’ve seen them once in two years, at the Mercado El 100.

We also don’t get a large variety of year-round greens. We’ve got spinach and chard, and quintoniles and quelites in the rainy season. But I feel a pang in my heart whenever I hear Americans talking about kale, broccoli rabe and collards. Oh well. We’ve got mamey and drippy, juicy manila mangoes, and they don’t.

The point is: I’m always looking for new ways to prepare my old chard-and-spinach standbys. A few weeks ago, I saw a recipe for swiss chard pesto in Sunset magazine. How perfect! Why hadn’t I ever thought of that before?

(You may be asking what the heck I’m doing thumbing through Sunset magazine when I live in Mexico City. My mom, who lives in Washington, occasionally buys it for me. She subscribed when I was a kid, and the magazine still reminds me of all the things I love about California — the sunshine, the fresh produce, the constant promise of eating dinners outside. Mexico feels like that at times.)

I ended up making Sunset’s pesto recipe a half-dozen times, Mexicanizing the ingredients where possible. I swapped out the walnuts for pine nuts and then pumpkin seeds, and the parmesan for queso añejo. I also added more garlic, because there’s never enough for me. Although I will definitively tell you that five cloves is too much. Aack.

All of the pestos were pretty great: the pine-nut version was creamier and nuttier than other pestos I’ve tried, while the pumpkin seed-añejo was slightly more crumbly, salty and sharp. (I didn’t make it with walnuts, because those are in season only once a year here.) Drizzling the pesto over steamed chayote was just about perfect, even though the entire thing was green. I also bought some beet pasta from a little shop near Mercado San Juan, which made for a colorful purple-and-green dinner. Crayton said it looked like Mardi Gras.

Here’s the recipe, in case you’re looking for something quick to make for dinner. I may even try it with epazote, which is growing like a weed outside my window.

Swiss Chard Pesto
Adapted slightly from Sunset Magazine
Serves 4 with sauce left over

Note: Don’t feel hemmed in by the amount of chard you use. The original recipe called for two cups, but I didn’t want to be bothered with measuring the leaves, so I just started using the entire bunch. You could also save the stems for a soup or to chop and stew into a taco filling later, with some tomatoes and spinach.

Ingredients

1 bunch swiss chard (around 7 ounces), leaves removed, stems discarded or saved for another use
2 cloves garlic, peeled
1/4 cup grated queso añejo, or grated parmesan
1/2 cup pine nuts or pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup olive oil — possibly a little more if you’re using the pumpkin seeds
Salt
Pepper

Directions

In a food processor, add the garlic and pulse to chop. Then add the chard, cheese and nuts or seeds. Pulse until smooth — feel free to scrape down the sides of the bowl to add in any errant cheese or chard bits. Add olive oil and blend until smooth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with pasta, vegetables, or (as I did with my sister-in-law recently) spread on crusty bread.

Concha Taste Test #16: Nicos

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A few weeks ago I was eating breakfast at Nicos, one of my favorite restaurants in the city. It’s been owned by the same family for more than 50 years, and the chef, Gerardo Vázquez Lugo, cares deeply about using fresh ingredients and promoting traditional Mexican recipes.

I had only ever eaten lunch there, but breakfast turned out to be top-notch. A friend’s cecina was about as tender as I’d ever tasted. My eggs with chile pasilla Oaxaqueña left me scraping the bowl with my fork to eat the last crumbly, smoky chile bits.

The concha couldn’t have been better unless we’d plucked them ourselves straight from the oven. The roll was airy, lightly sweet, butter humming a little tune in the background. The Nicos concha made Bondy’s version seem like a hippopotamus. (I’ve never blasphemed Bondy before, so you know this is a big deal.)

Chef Vázquez happened to be there that morning, so I struck up a conversation with him. Actually, I exclaimed, “Cuéntame de la concha!” Tell me about the concha!

He explained that his concha derived from a French-style dough, made with butter. He talked about how Mexican conchas were originally made with lard and how there were now numerous types of conchas in the city, some heavy with butter, some fluffy, some with a crispy crust, some not. I could’ve sat there all day, listening to him and wiping sugary crumbs from my lips.

Then he said something interesting: “The variety of the conchas is what makes the experience so rich.”

I pondered that for awhile. Later, I asked him: Are you saying there is no such thing as one specific, authentic Mexican concha? He nodded.

That’s when I realized — what if my concha search has been flawed all along? What if there is no best concha in Mexico City, no authentic concha recipe that I’d been struggling to find? What if the beauty here is in the search?

I’ve been in a bit of a funk recently, as you might have noticed from my less-than-regular blogging. I don’t want to go into specifics, but suffice to say that some intricately laid plans I had didn’t work out. I told myself that God/the universe has a plan for me and perhaps that plan isn’t exactly on my desired timetable. But when Chef Vázquez started talking about the conchas, I realized I had been looking at this experience the wrong way.

The end result was crappy, but what if that wasn’t the point? The beauty could’ve been in the búsqueda. I was so busy thinking about the bigger picture that I missed the little moments of beauty along the way.

The concha taste test will continue, but it’s no longer a contest, so to speak. More of an exploration of all the different types of conchas. Think my next one will be from Damiana in Condesa — I heard it’s stuffed with refried beans.

I plan to write about Nicos again, but here’s the address, in case you’d like to stop by: Av. Cuitlahuac 3102, Esq. Claveria, Col. Clavería, Azcapotzalco. They’re open for breakfast until about 12:30 p.m., and for lunch until about 6 p.m. They’re closed for dinner and on Sundays.

An afternoon with Diana Kennedy at Mexico City’s UNAM

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It seems like everything I’ve dreamed of doing in Mexico, Diana Kennedy has already done — which makes sense, considering she arrived here in 1957.

Kennedy has worked in a Mexican panadería. She has toured the country befriending fabulous cocineras, and coaxed out the secrets of their prized recipes. She’s passionate about preserving traditional Mexican cuisine just as it is. And she hasn’t wavered in that mission, even into her 80’s.

Last Friday she gave a book presentation at UNAM’s Jardín Botánico, hosted by the university’s Instituto de Biología. The event honored her new cookbook, Oaxaca al Gusto, and Kennedy was scheduled to give some remarks and sign copies. Afterward the crowd could partake in a Mexican food degustación.

The event was open to the public, but the simple flyer belied how star-studded the afternoon actually was. Preparing the tasting were some of the best-known women in Mexico City cooking: Carmen “Titita” Ramirez of El Bajío; Gabriela Cámara of Contramar, and Marcela Briz of El Cardenal. Kennedy herself had brought beans she’d prepared at home in Zitácuaro.
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On coming home to Mexico, again

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Mexico City, as seen from the top of the Torre Latinoamericana

I was recently in the States for an extended stay — that’s part of the reason why I wasn’t blogging so much. When I was on the plane coming home, for the first time I thought about Mexico City with the teensiest bit of dread. The thought scared me. Did this mean I didn’t want to live here anymore?

I pictured myself in the cab heading home from the Mexico City airport, bumping over the potholes, all the crumbling, graffiti-sprayed buildings lined up on the side of the highway. There would be trash in the medians, and the air would be thick and warm and slightly sewer-smelling. The U.S. didn’t smell like a sewer. Cities there were clean and had zoning laws.

When I eventually found myself in a cab headed back from the airport, at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Mexico City looked much cleaner than I’d remembered. In fact, it reminded me a lot of California. (I’ve been thinking about California a lot lately — I don’t know why.) There were street lights that worked, and palm trees, and twinkling lights in the hills, and windows that glowed on apartment buildings. People lived here. I lived here. The polite cab driver steered us down the Viaducto, through a few tunnels and past the Liverpool department store. Everything felt comfortable and right.

The next day, it was a stack of corn tortillas that made me feel like I was officially, truly happy to be home. They were from Superama (not my first pick, when it comes to tortillas), but they were warm and damp inside their paper wrapping. I dug into the stack like a girl who’d been shipwrecked for the past three weeks. One taquito de sal. Two. Three.

For lunch — yep, I had lunch after my corn-tortilla snack — I went a little crazy ordering tacos from El Faraón. Two al pastor, one rib eye, and an order of aguacate and nopales con queso. The sight of two voluptuous avocado halves sitting in their styrofoam container made my heart leap. I scraped some out with my knife and spread it inside my rib-eye taco, with a drizzle of red salsa.

It’s funny, because whenever I come home from an extended stay in the U.S. I find myself examining my thoughts, searching for some sort of sign that would tell me how much longer I want to stay in Mexico. My mind says at least two more years. But whenever I’m eating Mexican food after a long trip away, I don’t ever want to leave this place.

What are the foods you find yourself eating, and missing, when you come home after a long trip? What tastes like home to you?

Where to eat in Mexico City: Con Sabor a Tixtla

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Con Sabor a Tixtla, a fonda in the Col. Roma. Photo by Martin de la Torre.

I stumbled on Con Sabor a Tixtla by chance.

I’d been wandering around the Roma neighborhood, looking for a few new places to add to Eat Mexico’s Taco Tour, when I saw a chalkboard menu propped up on the sidewalk. Colorful tables and umbrellas had been spread out in a neat row, and baskets of paper flowers dangled underneath the awning.

The cheeriness of it all made me stop. And so did the menu. This place offered “tacos guerrerenses.” What were those?

As soon as I sat down, the waiter dropped off a little bowl of toasted pumpkin seeds. They didn’t taste like any pumpkin seeds I’d had before. Sheathed in their papery armor, they were crunchy and warm and tasted like the sun.

Then came a little bowl of beans, another botanita provided by the house. And then, on the waiter’s recommendation, I ordered a mole verde taco.

Like the pumpkin seeds, this mole was unique — herbal, assertive, not subtle as green moles normally are. (Marilau would call these pipianes.) The waiter explained that the mole contained a mix of hoja santa, avocado leaf, pumpkin seeds and something called hoja de mole. Most of the ingredients were brought directly from Tixtla, a small town in Guerrero state.

Then this man, whom I’d later find out was Alfredo, one of the owners, volunteered another nugget: his mother cooked all of the food.

At that moment, I felt really, really lucky to be living in Mexico.

I ended up adding Con Sabor a Tixtla to my Taco Tour, and I’ve since gone back several times. It’s right around the corner from my cooking school and Mercado Medellín, so when I’m in the neighborhood, I like to stop and say hi to Alfredo, who runs the place with his brother Juan Patricio. Once I even saw Yuri and Edmundo there — they’re big fans of the place, too.

The food, prepared by Alfredo and Juan Patricio’s mother Enedina Bello, consistently tastes like it’s been cooked with love and care. The menu focuses on typical items from Tixtla, so they’re items you rarely see anywhere else. Besides the herbal mole, there’s fiambre, a mix of marinated meats and crunchy bits of chorizo served with white bread; Tixtla-style tostadas with sweet-and-sour dressing, and pollo enchipotlado, or chicken stewed with tomatoes, raisins and chipotle peppers.

And the salsas — the salsas! The ensaladita de rábano, made from hoja santa stems, lime, onion and radish, waps you over the head with its simplicity. A smoky, creamy salsa de jalapeño con aceite tastes like it contains avocado, but it’s actually just jalapeños fried with onion and garlic, and blended with olive oil. I wanted to gulp it down like milk in a cereal bowl.

Con Sabor a Tixtla recently added a list of platos fuertes to the menu, and they do a special pozole guerrerense once a week. But if you go, you must get the fiambre. The meat is falling-apart tender, and seasoned simply but dazzlingly — the kind of seasoning I wish I could emulate as a home cook. It’s served on a bed of lettuce that’s dressed the same salsa agridulce that comes with the tostadas. The dressing tastes like something you’d get at an Asian restaurant, which makes sense, considering Acapulco (Guerrero state’s biggest city) was Mexico’s major port to Asia and the Philippines for 250 years.

On my last visit to Con Sabor a Tixtla, my friend Martin and I found ourselves sopping up the fiambre sauce with hunks of bread, even though we were stuffed. Here’s the plate before we tore into it.

Here are a few more photos of the place. If you’re in the mood for a visit, it’s located at Manzanillo 45b, in between Coahuila and Campeche. They don’t have a website, but they do have a Facebook page.

UPDATE: Con Sabor a Tixtla has moved! You can find them now at Chiapas 173, near the corner of Medellín. They’re right next door to the pastes shop. The fonda also now has a website.

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