The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for May 2011

Mango pico de gallo

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Mango season in Mexico is one of my favorite times of the year. It comes in the early spring, after tangerine season, when there’s nothing enticing on the market shelves except for hit-and-miss mameys and round, nubby guavas that looked better in the winter.

It’s like everyone’s waiting, and then boom, there they are — mango wedges sold in plastic cups on the street corners, mangos piled up at the tianguis, an army advancing on the rest of the produce. There’s nothing like that first slice from a vendor’s knife. It’s wet and sweet in a way that almost seems unreal.

A few months ago, I had dinner at Azul Condesa, Ricard Muñoz Zurita’s new restaurant. A special menu had ben devoted to mangoes, with all sorts of plates containing the fruit. My favorite was the mango pico de gallo, served in a large glass. It was sweet and spicy and tart, and Crayton and I annihilated it in minutes.

Lucky for me, I ended up finding a mango pico de gallo recipe inside Zurita’s cookbook, Salsas Mexicanas. (If you read Spanish, this is a great book to have.) The recipe, interestingly, calls for fish sauce, which creates a delightful Thai-type of flavor. Zurita says in the book that he got the recipe from a Filipina chef studying in Mexico.

If you don’t have any fish sauce, the pico is still quite good on its own. I imagine it’d be great with a spritz of lime. Just make sure you have fresh mangoes. Or you could probably even try it with other sweet fruits, like pineapple.

Mango Pico de Gallo
from Salsas Mexicanas by Ricardo Muñoz Zurita
Serves 4 as an appetizer

Note: The original recipe calls for manila mangoes, which are prized in Mexico for their sweetness. Other types of mangoes would probably work as well, as long as they’re mature. On the fish sauce, I’d add a little bit at a time and taste as you go along. The two tablespoons adds a recognizable fishy flavor, but it mellowed out a bit as the pico sat at room temperature.

Ingredients

1 very ripe beefsteak tomato, diced, with the skin and seeds
2 tablespoons of minced onion
1/4 cup of finely chopped cilantro, including stems
1 tablespoon of minced chile serrano (this is about one chile)
2 manila mangoes, about 250 grams each, peeled and cut into roughly two-centimeter cubes
2 tablespoons fish sauce* (see note)

Directions

Mix the first five ingredients together in a bowl, and add the fish sauce. Taste for either more fish sauce or perhaps a little salt. (I didn’t use any.) Serve with tostadas.

Lessons in pineapple atole

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I haven’t written about my cooking class in awhile, mostly because I was starting to feel really comfortable there.

I’d figured out the answers to the nagging doubts that used to send me running to Yuri or another classmate. Chile water thins out a thick salsa. The mole is done when little pools of fat form on top. When in doubt, blend a sauce extra-fine, especially if it’s going to be served with meat. Overall, I had finally learned to relax. Mexican cooking doesn’t leave that much room for error. If I made a mistake, I could fix it.

Then last week, that familiar, scared-of-messing-up-because-I’m-a-gringa side came back. I’d been gone for awhile — I had to take another trip to the States, which meant I’d missed several classes. My Spanish had gotten rustier. The theme of the class was tamales, but I didn’t feel like doing any metate-grinding (for once) so I signed up to make pineapple atole. It was a traditional atole made with masa and sugar.

Yuri had told us to dilute the masa first in water, so I put a big pot to boil on the stove and tossed in the lump of dough. Stirred it around a bit so it would dissolve.

Patty, one of my classmates, looked up from cleaning verdolagas (did you know there are sweet tamales made with verdolagas?) and she peered into my pot. “What did you put in there?”

“Masa and water.”

She shook her head. “No…”

Ana, another classmate, looked up. “Did you put the masa in there?”

What was the big deal? Yuri had said to dilute it.

Ana looked pained. She said we had we had to take the masa out right now, and she sped to the other side of the kitchen for a bowl and a strainer. While she was gone, Patty told me that I can’t just put the masa in the atole pot like that. I’d end up with hard bits of masa in my drink, or worse, a layer of hard masa stuck to the underside of the pot.

“You have to dissolve the masa like this,” she said, fishing out a lump of dough. She placed it in a bowl, added water and mushed the masa together with the tips of her fingers, until she had a think paste. “See? This is what I always do when I make my atole.”

Of course she does. And if I’d made atole before, I would’ve known that too. But I haven’t made atole before!

Feeling like a lame gringa, I strained the masa out of the pot and poured the yellowish, cloudy water back on the stove. I was still worried that I’d ruined the drink. The lump of masa and the water had already touched. Did that mean something? I asked Ana and she shook her head. (I thought I detected a “that was a dumb question” look in her eyes, but perhaps I was projecting. Ana is really nice.)

Patty told me to strain the paste to make sure there weren’t any hard bits hiding inside. Just as I was doing that, Yuri walked up. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Straining wasn’t part of our instructions.

“I know you didn’t say to do this,” I started, “but it’s that, I was wrong, I added the masa at the beginning, it was too early, I had to take it out…”

He stared at me. His eyes said, Foreign girl, what the hell are you talking about?

“You don’t have to strain the masa, if you diluted it well,” he finally said. He mentioned something about the pineapple pieces that I didn’t quite catch, and then he walked away.

Once my cloudy water had boiled, I poured in my masa paste, stirring vigorously so any hard bits could break down. Eventually the water looked smooth. I added the pineapple that Ana had blended and strained, and then the pineapple cubes. I added a little sugar and tasted as I went along, not wanting it too sweet. I stirred and stirred, trying to make sure the atole wouldn’t stick to the bottom.

Yuri wandered by again. “It’s better to use a wooden spoon. You can really scrape the bottom.”

Finally, about 40 minutes later, the masa had bubbled and thickened, and it was done. I tasted a bit — it was sweet but not too much, and faintly pineappley. The masa added this hearty, rich flavor, much more complex than the cornstarch atoles you usually get on the streets here.

A few students came up to me while we were eating our tamales. “Did you make the atole?”

“I helped,” I said. I couldn’t take credit — I’d almost ruined the drink.

“Está rico.”

I allowed myself to feel just a little proud. I was the one who added the sugar and scraped the pot, after all.

I’m sorry I don’t have a photo to show you, but I was too busy slurping it up. Recipe to come soon, once I make it at home.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña

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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 with smoke. Make a salsa with this baby and you’ve got everything you’ve ever wanted: acid. Heat. Fire. And just a little nudging of raisins and berries.

This chile is hard to find outside of Oaxaca. I didn’t realize that until I came back from Oaxaca thinking, “I’ll go to Mercado Medellín and pick up some pasilla oaxaqueñas!” and my guy didn’t have any. Ending up finding them at Mercado San Juan, for eight pesos each. I paid — that’s almost $1 per chile — because the pasilla is worth it.

This chile is also known as the mixe (pronounced MEE-hay) because it’s grown in the Sierra Mixe, which is a region east of Oaxaca City. In From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients, Diana Kennedy says the chiles are grown in such small batches that they’ll probably never be imported on a large scale. Interestingly, my sister- and brother-in-law in New York recently found a “pasilla de Oaxaca” salsa at their local grocery store, made by Rosa Mexicano.

If you haven’t tasted this chile before, I’d highly recommend making a table salsa. You can really do it any way you want, but the basic ingredients are the chiles and garlic. I don’t toast my chiles or add any onion, but you can. Really at the end you want to taste the pasilla as much as possible.

If you can’t find the pasilla oaxaqueña, this salsa also works with chile de árbol. Just make sure you use a good, hefty handful. Don’t be afraid about making the salsa too hot — the point of this dish is that the chile is the star.

Tomatillo salsa with chile pasilla oaxaqueña
Recipe first learned in Reyna Mendoza’s cooking class
Makes about 1 1/2 to 2 cups

Note: This tastes best at room temperature, so make sure you give it time to cool down before serving. Also, store your dried chiles in an air tight container, in a cool, dark place. Humidity enables mold growth.

Ingredients

1 pound tomatillos, husked and washed
1 or 2 unpeeled cloves garlic, depending on your preference
2 chile pasilla oaxaqueñas or 8 chile de árbol
salt

Directions

Place the chiles in a shallow dish and cover with very hot water. In the meantime, dry-roast the tomatillos on a comal until they’re soft and blackened in spots, and have turned a dull green color. Toast the garlic as well, ideally on the outer edges of the comal so it doesn’t burn. You want it softened too.

Once the chiles have softened — perhaps 10 to 15 minutes; if you need more time or to replenish the hot water, that’s fine — carefully cut open the chiles and remove the seeds. Place the chiles in a blender jar with the garlic and just a little water, perhaps two or three tablespoons. Blend until smooth. Then add tomatillos and blend until you reach your desired consistency. (For me it’s about 5 to 10 seconds.) Add salt to taste. Serve the salsa at room temperature.