Archives for July 2012

Eat Mexico’s newest food tours, in Puebla

July 31, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

Slicing off grilled pork for tacos árabes in Puebla, Mexico

So I’ve been holding onto this news for a few weeks now, but I can finally tell you officially: Eat Mexico has launched culinary tours in Puebla!

We’re pairing up with All About Puebla, an English-language website that’s run by my friend Rebecca Smith Hurd. She’s an amazing Puebla resource and an all-around excellent person. Rebecca will be leading the tours.

As of now, we’re offering two routes — Chiles en Nogada and A Taste of Puebla. The former includes a visit to the Ex-Convento de Santa Mónica, where chiles en nogada were created, and a market visit to learn about the ingredients. It’s capped off with a chile en nogada cooking class with renowned Puebla chef Alonso Hernández.

The Taste of Puebla tour offers an introduction to Puebla’s more popular casual fare, including all the gorgeous goodies I blogged about a few weeks ago: pelonas, tacos árabes, cemitas and more.

You can find more details, including prices and reservation info, on our (sort of newly designed) Eat Mexico website.

If you or anyone you know is visiting Puebla, I’d love it if you kept us in mind. Note that the Chiles en Nogada Tour will be offered in August and September only, in keeping with the seasonality of the ingredients.

On a personal note, I am really excited about this collaboration and for stepping out beyond Mexico City with the food tours. My business turns two years old this month. Feeling like a proud mom.

Kicking off chiles en nogada season in Puebla

July 18, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A chile en nogada from Mesón Sacristía in Puebla

The 2012 chiles en nogada season officially started last weekend in Puebla. I was lucky enough to visit the city just beforehand and score a chiles en nogada cooking class with Alonso Hernández, chef at Mesón Sacristía, one of the best restaurants in the city.

I’ve explained the chile en nogada process before, but cooking this dish at home — or anywhere — is painstaking. First you have to char, peel and seed the chiles. Then you have to chop a long list of sweet and savory ingredients, including tomatoes, onion, apples, pears and peaches. You have to peel walnuts BY HAND, because no walnut-peeling device has been invented yet.

I actually think you gotta feel a little like the nuns, or at least remember them, when you’re putting this all together. (The nuns of Puebla’s Santa Mónica Convent invented the dish in 1821.)

This chile is the equivalent of a baroque altarpiece in a church.

The chopped peaches, apples and pears, ready to go into the pot.

Gorgeous chopped tomatoes

Everything in the pot together, before it's spooned into the chile

Chef Alonso took us through the chopping and the preparing of the fluffy egg batter, called the capeado. Then, when it was time to fry the chiles, he placed one in the eggy cloud and brushed each side lovingly.

When it was our turn to do the same, he told us: “Slowly. Con calma.”

After the egg-dip, into the frying pan it went. There we bathed the chile just as lovingly with oil. It puffed up and sizzled.

Bathing the egg-dipped chile en nogada with oil

My first chile en nogada of the 2012 season:

Pouring walnut sauce on the chile en nogada

The finished chile en nogada

Where do you plan to eat a chile en nogada this year?

More on chiles en nogada and Mexican convent cooking:
Four Chiles, One Day: A marathon chile-en nogada tasting in Mexico City
How to make a proper chile en nogada
Where to eat chiles en nogada in Puebla
Desserts of the Spanish convents in Mexico

Beyond mole — Poblano food in pictures

July 9, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A pelona, or fried poblano sandwich stuffed with lettuce, crema and shredded meat

I was in Puebla this weekend visiting my friend Rebecca, who runs the excellent All About Puebla, an English-language online city guide. She’s a badass go-getter type of gal, so when the two of us get together it always feels like we can conquer the world.

She took me to some of her favorite places to eat, and interestingly, few involved corn. Puebla is full of savory breads: the pambazo (a plump, flour-dusted bread, not in any way similar to the Mexico City pambazo); the pelona (a fried roll); the chancla (a fried roll covered in sauce); the telera (a flat, soft roll used for tortas); the cemita (an airy, sesame-seed dusted roll), and the torta de agua (a crunchy, rustic bread). All are used in different sandwiches. The most Poblano of tacos, the taco árabe, is traditionally served on pita bread and not corn tortillas.

The two of us hit Puebla’s Centro last week for a food-fest, filling up on as many snacks as our stomachs could handle. (This may be why my stomach can suddenly only handle rice and applesauce. The travails of being a food researcher.)

Here’s a quick look at what we tried:

A taco árabe, or spit-roasted pork wrapped in pita bread. This tasted different than Mexico City's árabes -- much closer to shawarma.

We tried mole in sandwich form. (As an aside, I love how manageable Puebla's tortas are. Yay for not being as large as your head!) This torta de mole from El Girofle was excellent.

Chalupas, or little corn tortillas bathed in salsa and shredded meat. The red salsa uses chipotles, because poblanos love them.

I've technically eaten this same cemita once before, but it's so good (Cemitas Beto at La Acocota) that it has become my poblano requirement.

Did I really have room to squeeze in a fresh-baked concha after all of that food? Yes. Yes, I did.

I’ve got some exciting Puebla news to share in the next few weeks, so stay tuned…

Making mole and touring the Etla market with Seasons of My Heart in Oaxaca

July 3, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

Chiles de agua at the Wednesday market in Etla, Oaxaca

I met Susana Trilling in New York a few years ago, at a culinary event given by Zarela Martinez. I was from Mexico (or visiting anyway), and so was she, so I boldly approached her and introduced myself. She was gracious and warm, and we ended up keeping in touch once I got back to Mexico.

A few months ago Susana invited me to visit Seasons of My Heart, the cooking school she runs in San Lorenzo Cacaotepec about 45 minutes from Oaxaca City. She gives an open cooking class on Wednesdays for $75 USD, which includes a visit to the Wednesday Market in the nearby town of Etla.

I finally took the tour a few weeks ago and I’m so glad I did. The market itself was worth the price of admission.

The Etla Market: A must-visit

We met Yolanda, one of Susana’s market guides for the past several years and a Oaxaca native, at a central meeting point. She spent the next 2 1/2 hours pointing out the ceramics and herbs, and giving us tastes of nicuatole, homemade smoky requesón, sesame-topped pan amarillo, nieves, tamales and more.

Pan dulce at one of the Etla market stands

Bags of nicuatole, a corn-and-sugar dessert

The tamales, sold from a stand near the back entrance, nearly swore me off of Mexico City streetside tamales forever. The squash flower-chepil variety (there was a squash-flower chepil variety!) tasted like the ingredients had been plucked from a garden somewhere nearby. And the ~~coloradito~~ amarillo. Oh god. These were the tamales to end all tamales.

The amarillo tamal

A black bean tamal wrapped in hoja santa

Returning to the Cooking School

Back at Seasons of My Heart — the school is tucked off a dirt road, nestled in the Etla hills — I volunteered for team tasked with making chichilo mole. My partner and I gathered at the outdoor wood-fired kitchen stove and toasted our chiles and tomatoes. We lit a tortilla on fire with a few spoonfuls of chile seeds and watched it burn.

It started to rain, and I finally had a chance to think about where I was and what I was actually doing — standing in front of the wood fire and a comal de barro, blackening a tortilla until it smoked, in the same way who knows how many women had done before me.

The tortilla started out like this...

... And then turned into this...

... And finally, once the flamed petered out, became this. This is what we'd crumble, soak in cold water and eventually stir into our mole.

Chichilo mole and rice at Seasons of My Heart in Oaxaca

Then, finally, it was lunch time. The food kept coming: nopales salad, pumpkin seed dip, corn soup, corn antojitos called tetelas, chichilo mole, rice. We stuffed ourselves and talked.

By the time the class ended and the van arrived to pick everyone up, the rain had started again, and thick swaths of dark clouds covered the mountains in the distance. I wanted to curl up in a chair with a blanket and a cup of tea and stay until the stars came out.

I’d highly recommend Susana’s class if you’re visiting Oaxaca. (You can reserve directly through the Seasons of My Heart website.) I’ll leave you with more photos of the Wednesday Market in Etla.