The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Calling all experts: How do you cook maguey flowers?

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maguey flowers

In the past six months or so, I’ve become a little obsessed with flowering maguey.

The maguey, also known as agave, blooms when it’s mature, a process that can take anywhere from 6 to 28 years depending on the plant. Weirdly, the flowers don’t sprout from the leaves themselves — they grow on a trunk-like stalk called a quiote, which grows from the center of the plant like a tree.

Blooming maguey

Blooming maguey from UNAM's Jardín Botánico

I love the idea that a regular old agave can transform into a strange, beautiful plant-within-a-plant when it’s about to die. (It kinda starts to make me believe in the mysticism of the Aztecs. Or maybe I’ve been here too long.) I’ve started spotting flowering magueyes everywhere and taking secret pictures of them on my camera. One day I’m going to post them all for you.

Right now I wanted to ask: how much do you know about maguey flowers as a food source? I know they’re eaten here as a vegetable, when folks can find them.

A few weeks ago I spotted a package at Mercado San Juan and decided to make them as an experiment. The vendor gave me detailed cooking instructions: peel back the outer petals, remove the center stigma, and then boil or sautee in oil, garlic and onion.

I did what she said, except I decided to steam them instead of boil. Cooked ’em in a little onion and garlic and sprinkled on some sea salt.

I was expecting a revelation, like the first time I tasted izote flowers. Instead they were bitter and sort of rubbery. My friend Liz, lover of bitter vegetables, raved about them. The rest of us kinda frowned. I felt bad later that night when I dumped them into the trash. Sorry agave that took maybe six years or longer to give us your flowers. I’m totally not worthy of you.

So how do I cook these? Have you made them before? I tasted them as they cooked on the stove, and they weren’t bitter after about 3 to 5 minutes in the frying pan. But the texture was even more rubbery that way.

What did I do wrong? Maybe I didn’t peel them correctly? Or were they old? (Or not old enough?)

Strawberry-lima (Mexican sweet lime) agua fresca

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A few years ago my friend Jesica and I were shopping at a market, and she pointed out some extra-large limes. “Mira, esa es nuestra lima.” Look, that’s our lime.

She made me taste some — I was a little wary of sticking half a lime in my mouth — and I was amazed. The lima didn’t taste like regular Mexican lime at all. It was like a pear crossed with a sweet orange, with an intense, floral perfume.

From then on, I called lima “nuestra lima” just because I liked how that sounded. I tasted some at the markets when vendors offered (“Quiere lima guerita?”), but I never bought any because I didn’t know what to do with it.

Then, last week, after tasting an especially juicy lima at Mercado San Juan, I thought: what the hell have I been waiting for? I bought a kilo and decided to make agua fresca.

When I got home that night, I squeezed the lima juice and added strawberries and a little sugar.

The result was exactly what I’d imagined in my head: whisperingly sweet with a bite from the berries. And the smell! It could’ve come from a spray bottle. Or a flower bouquet. I served it to my friends Erik and Liz for dinner and Erik said: “This tastes like summer.” Best compliment ever.

My only duda, as they say, is that I don’t know lima’s official scientific name, therefore I don’t know if you can find it outside Mexico. Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Mexican Gastronomy Dictionary says they’re citrus aurantifolia, but that doesn’t sound correct, as these limes aren’t tart or acidic. I think they may be citrus limetta. Anyone out there care to comment? Can you find these in the United States, Europe or elsewhere?

In the meantime, if you live in Mexico, please make this agua fresca and sip it outside, preferably at sunset on a weekend night. You can find limas at Mercado San Juan or the Condesa Tuesday tianguis, and I’m sure elsewhere.

Strawberry-Lima Agua Fresca*
*Remember this is the Mexican sweet lime, not the tart limón
Makes 12 cups, which four people can finish in one sitting, because it’s THAT good

Ingredients

1 cup fresh-squeezed lima juice (about eight limas)
12 strawberries, quartered
4 tablespoons sugar
12 cups water

Directions

I actually halve this recipe and make two batches, since my blender only holds 6 cups of water at a time. So place half of the above in the blender and blend until smooth. Strain into pitcher. Repeat with second batch and serve cold or room-temperature.

A visit to the tianguis in Col. Santo Domingo

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A mixiote taco from the tianguis on Coyamel street in the Col. Santo Domingo.

My friend Mojdeh does cultural tours in Mexico City, and for more than a year we’ve been planning for me to go visit her neighborhood south of town. She lives in the Colonia Santo Domingo near Metro Copilco, almost to the UNAM.

There are several tianguis (the Nahuatl word meaning outdoor neighborhood market) in Santo Domingo. The one near her house is on Coyamel street on Wednesdays.

She told me I was going to love it, and she was right. The Coyamel tianguis was larger than the two markets near my house, full of people eating and saying hi to each other and pushing shopping trolleys. Smoke billowed from a taco stand offering fresh cecina cooked on a wood-fired grill. Mojdeh and I waited 30 minutes, along with 15 other people, just for tortillas — one woman sold blue and white versions, plus sopes, tlacoyos and gorditas out of big boxes lined with dish towels. Her steamy, delicate blancas were worth the wait.

We ate and wandered, and ate some more. I bought some gorgeous tomatillos that the vendor told me were from Ixtlahuaca, past Toluca. I bought fresh requesón and homemade pan de pulque, and a white zapote, which tastes kind of like sweet avocado. And I spotted a quelite I’d never seen before — trébol de carretilla (medicago polymorpha).

A few photos:

Tomatillos from Ixlahuaca, in the State of Mexico

Spotted this unusual cinnamon bark. The vendor said he grows it in Tuxtla, Veracruz. It smelled much more intense than the usual Mexican cinnamon.

Mexico City tianguis vendor

The cinnamon vendor

Trébol de carretilla

A big pile of trébol de carretilla

Mixiote taco

Serving tacos de mixiote from a gigantic steam pot.

Taco vendor tianguis

A vendor makes cecina tacos, known as tasajo in Oaxaca, from a wood-fired grill.

Longaniza taco

A taco with grilled cecina and longaniza. This tasted even better with a few spoonfuls of crema on top.

Here’s a map to the location, in case you want to visit yourself someday (click to open in Google maps):

Where to eat in Mexico City: El Parnita

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El Parnita in the Colonia Roma. Photo by Martin de la Torre

El Parnita, a fonda in the Roma, calls itself an “antojería.” The word antojito can mean two things in Mexico — a corn-based street snack, or a little craving. So an antojería is a place where you’d find those two things. And fulfill your cravings, of course.

The menu here is stocked with Vitamina T: tacos, tortas, tlacoyos. The presentation and flavor are more thoughtful than what you’d find on on the street. Stalks of jicama, a free appetizer for customers, arrive in a perky cluster doused with Valentina sauce. Another dish — a smoky, stuffed chile meco — comes bathed in a lagoon of piloncillo sauce. It’s eye-wateringly hot and sweet all at once.

The staff is friendly, too. Bertha Acra, who owns El Parnita with her children Paulino, Nicolás and Jorgina, greets almost everyone who walks in the door. She’s an elegant woman with black eyeliner and silver hair. The word Parnita comes from her late husband’s nickname, “Parner.” (As in John Wayne-style pardner.)

I took my friend Martin to lunch there several months ago and went back again this week. Both times the food was excellent, especially for the price point. Nothing is over 75 pesos.

Vintage toys on a shelf.

The menu, which has a similar vintage feel.

Salsas at El Parnita. Photo by Martin de la Torre.

The idea here is to order a lot of small things, so we started with a grasshopper taco and a cup of the cream of chard and purslane soup. Sometimes cream soups in Mexico City can be heavy and greasy. This one tasted like real vegetables, with just a hint of butter underneath.

The grasshoppers, meanwhile, were limey and tart, almost mouth-puckering. A thin stripe of the red salsa added the mandatory heat and fruit and salt.

Did I mention how good the salsas are here? The habanero salsa is always on the table and the rest rotate out. “We don’t want to bore people with the same salsas,” owner Paulino Martinez said.

The soups change daily, too, and there’s a daily taco special. This week it was shrimp sauteed in a chile canica sauce.

Habanero salsa. "Está rica pero picosa," the waitress warned.

Taco de chapulínes at El Parnita in the Colonia Roma

Creamy chard and purslane soup. I wanted to take home the little crock it came in.

After the appetizers, Martin and I went on an ordering spree: tlacoyos, a salad, a quesadilla, three types of tacos. The waitress kept asking, “Do you want to try this?” and we kept saying yes.

The tacos viajeros were standouts. Juicy, falling-apart lomo and pierna de cerdo sat in a peppery, citrusy sauce, kind of like cochinita pibil but tangier. Juice dripped onto my plate and I lapped it up with a piece of tortilla.

It’s worth ordering the breaded shrimp “Carmelita” taco just to spoon the habanero salsa on top. One bite made my nostrils sting, but the garlicky, burned-chile taste melded perfectly with the pickled red onions and mayonnaise in the taco. I sneezed and coughed and spooned on some more.

The carnitas taco

The shrimp taco, aka "Carmelita", at El Parnita

At this point we probably should’ve stopped eating (I haven’t even showed you pictures of everything we ate), but the waitress enticed us with the offer of a torta. The sandwich was small and dangerous-looking. I squeezed it a bit, and meat juices oozed out.

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I only wanted a bite but ended up eating half. The bread — crisp on the outside, soft in the middle — and meat and avocado were too voluptuous to pass up. Martin pronounced it “a good proportion of meat to bread.”

We ended the meal with amaranth-cajeta pudding. It tasted like a slightly grainier version of dulce de leche. Martin wasn’t a fan, but I liked it. It was sort of like eating cajeta frosting (for those of us who like that kind of thing), and the amaranth gave a fun pebbly texture and cut some of the sweetness.

El Parnita did a remodel in December, adding nearly double the space to the restaurant. Before you used to have to arrive before 2 p.m. to get a table; now, if you get there by 2 or 2:30, you should be fine.

El Parnita
Avenida Yucatán 84, #E2 (Near the corner of Yucatán and Monterrey)
Tel. 5264 7551
Hours: 1:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday
El Parnita on Facebook (their website is under construction)

I’ve been nominated for a Saveur Food Blog Award!

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You may have noticed a new sidebar to the right. I found out late last week, right when I was returning from New York, that I made it as a finalist in Saveur Magazine’s Best Food Blog Awards.

Out of 40,000 entries, the editors chose my little blog as one of the top blogs in Culinary Travel, along with five others.

This is a huge deal for me. Saveur is one of the top food magazines in the country and I buy it every time I’m in the States. There aren’t many outlets left publishing the kind of work they do: personal, emotion-driven food stories, which have nothing to do with hot new trends.

Will you vote for me? You do have to register your email address, and you can only vote once.
Voting is open through April 26.

Even if you don’t have time to vote, or you feel weird giving out your email address, I want you to know that I appreciate you reading and commenting. (Or, in some cases, not commenting, which is okay too. Being a lurker is perfectly fine.) You guys make this a better place.

An Indian Food Tour of Queens with Madhur Jaffrey

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This is dahi aloo puri, a type of cold snack made of chickpeas, crispy puri shells, yogurt, tamarind and chiles.

Last week I was in New York for the IACP conference, a huge annual gathering of culinary folks from all over the U.S. — chefs, food writers, bloggers, entrepreneurs.

As part of one of the official pre-conference activities I’d signed up to take an Indian food tour of Queens with Madhur Jaffrey. I was particularly jazzed about this. Madhur Jaffrey is one of the world’s foremost authorities on Indian food. Her first book, an Invitation to Indian Cooking, was published in 1973 and is still widely considered a classic. She has written more than 15 books on Indian cuisine and hosted Indian cooking programs on the BBC. She’s also a film and television actress. (For further study: Madhur Jaffrey’s lengthy IMDB entry.)

Meeting Madhur, and getting ready for Indian food

On the morning of the tour, Ms. Jaffrey — an elegant, regal woman — showed up at the conference hotel in a chic black jacket with a fur-lined collar, oversize sunglasses and sparkly stud earrings. She passed out handouts that listed what we’d try: Gujarati sweets, homemade chapatis, parathas, chana masalas, paan, goat curry, plus chaat and curries from Kerala. We’d also visit an Indian grocery store.

Twelve of us piled into a small white bus near Times Square and set off for Jackson Heights. About 20 minutes later we pulled up to Rajbhog Sweets, a bright, spotless cafe owned by a family from Gujarat.

Rahjbog Sweets: chapatis, sugar, hand-rolled noodles and more

The sweets were already on the tables: sticky, syrup-soaked jalebis, creamy milk-fudge squares of barfi. We sipped hot chai and nibbled on the sweets — “Not too much, there are several meals to come,” Madhur warned — and we tried a light, spicy, canary-yellow piece of dhokla, a garbanzo-flour cake topped with chili oil, mustard seeds and cilantro.

I kept asking Madhur questions. “So people eat this in the morning?” She said yes. “They eat them both at the same time?” She said the sweet and savory combo was very desirable.

Baadaam barfi, left, and jalebis, right.

Dhokla, a light, spicy garbanzo-flour cake generally eaten for breakfast.

Before we got off the bus, Madhur had said that Rajbhog’s chapatis were the best she’s tried in the U.S.

Owners Nirav and Neha Shah invited us into the kitchen, where we watched the cook, Sabita, roll out the dough with a thin rolling pin. She heated the chapatis on a grill and then placed them on a gas flame, where they ballooned into puffy ovals.

A perfectly inflated chapati.

Madhur also gave us a short history lesson on where the word “chapati” comes from — chapat means to slap, so chapati is a bread made by slapping or hand-patting the dough into a thin sheet.

Parathas, paan and ogling the Indian produce aisles

The next stop was just a half-block away: cauliflower and potato parathas from Raj Sweets, and black garbanzo bean curry. “The garbanzo bean was originally black,” Madhur told us. (As an aside, this is about where I pinched myself for the fifth time that day. How did I get lucky enough to take this tour?)

A cauliflower paratha, just waiting for a smear of butter and yogurt.

We stopped for paan, a digestive snack wrapped in a betel leaf, sold from a tiny, closet-sized stand. It reminded me of a similar paan stand I’d seen in Mumbai.

Our piece of paan had rose jam, along with several other spices and seeds.

Our last three stops were just as great as the rest: a stroll through Patel Brothers Indian supermarket, where I ogled the fresh curry leaves, and a sumptuous goat curry from a place called Kabab King. We visited Kerala Kitchen — the only Keralan food restaurant in New York that Madhur knows of — where we tried creamy and smoky fish curries, several types of dosas and coconut mung-bean rice.

But there was still one last stop to come: chaat.

Chaat: the snack I’ve always wanted

I thought chaat, an umbrella term for Indian snack food, meant fried crunchy potato chip-like things, or some sort of breaded, fried nugget.

Totally not true. Bhel puri, from Usha Foods in Floral Park, was just as baroque as any of the street snacks I’d see in Mexico — cold garbanzo beans lay mixed with potatoes, tamarind and puffed rice, topped with crispy-fried garbanzo noodles and lots of cilantro. It was like an Indian-Mexican potato salad. Why was the whole world not eating this?

Bhel puri at Usha Foods in Floral Park, New York.

Madhur saw my look of glee (I was shoveling in the stuff as if I had grown an extra stomach) and she smiled.

“I love chaat!” I said.

“Good,” she said. “Indians love chaat. They can’t live without their chaat.”

I’m so grateful to have been on this tour. An Invitation to Indian Cooking is in my Amazon queue. Can’t wait to get it and start cooking.

A couple of thoughts after the earthquake

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A section of pedestrian bridge fell on this empty pesero during the quake. No one was hurt. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini)

Thanks to everyone for asking about us. We’re fine.

I’m sorry I didn’t check in sooner, but I left for California for a few days to hang out with my family. (I already had the trip planned.) The quake was a doozy, though — people here are still talking about it.

I was just getting off the elevator when it happened. The door opened and I went to put my key in the door, and the door hit me in the forehead. I thought: What the…? Am I dizzy? Just then a young guy came downstairs and grabbed my elbow. “Vámanos, vámanos!” I stared at him. “There’s an earthquake, señorita, we have to go.” Feeling numb, I ran down five flights of stairs, holding onto his arm with one hand and clutching a stack of copies I’d made with another.

The building was still swaying when we got to the parking garage. One of the cleaning ladies, who was also in the parking garage, fainted. She later told me her brother-in-law’s family died in the earthquake in ’85 because they were unable to get out of their building.

After the quake was over, the power was out and the phones didn’t work. I finally got a hold of Crayton about 1 1/2 hours later. I cried when I heard his voice.

I’m still a little shaken up, even though it was a week ago. If Crayton stirs just a little bit in bed, I’m up immediately, thinking about the roof caving in. This whole thing also has me seriously wondering whether we should move into a lower floor apartment building. We’re on the fifth floor now, and I really don’t want to run down five flights of stairs again when the next quake hits.

And I’m wondering, honestly, how much more of this I can take. Crazy drivers I can deal with. Mexican bureaucracy, ok. But earthquakes? I don’t want to die in a stairwell, crushed by a falling wall. For the first time, I thought seriously about moving back to the States.

There are earthquakes there, too, though. And I don’t want to be afraid of something that may not happen. I’ll probably start looking at apartments when I get back from my trip to New York next week, which I was planning to do anyway. Now I have a bigger excuse.

Squash flower, corn and poblano pepper soup

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Because of the temperate climate here, Mexico City is blessed with beautiful produce almost year-round. You can always find squash, green beans, carrots, tomatillos, tomatoes and poblanos at the markets. (Notice I said markets and not supermarkets — the supermarkets are always running out of stuff.) You can almost always find squash flowers, too.

Sometimes they’re big and gorgeous like this.

I snapped this last July outside the market in Xochimilco.

We’re not exactly in squash flower season right now — they’re mostly available in May and June, and then August through October — but you can find a few solitary bunches at the markets if you get there early enough. They’re often eaten in guisados or soups.

This soup in particular comes from Diana Kennedy’s Mexican Regional Cooking, one of her earlier books that was later folded into The Essential Cuisines of Mexico. (I found the book at a thrift store in Olympia, Wa., and finished reading it while preparing for my cooking class with her a few months ago.)

The soup comes together quickly, and because all the ingredients are fresh, it tastes like it took hours. In the book it’s described as a ranch-style soup — basically using whatever ingredients are on hand and tossing them into the pot. I really like this specific combination, though: a poblano pepper, charred on the comal and peeled, adds a sweet, buttery note. The squash flowers and corn add texture.

I’ve eaten this soup as a first course to a mole dinner, but it’s hefty enough to work as a light lunch.

You can make this with either chicken or vegetable broth. If you do the latter, I highly recommend making your own broth in the slow cooker. I’ll post a recipe for that next. It’ll make your house smell amazing.

Squash flower, corn and poblano pepper soup
Adapted slightly from Diana Kennedy’s Mexican Regional Cooking
Serves 4

The original recipe calls for both cream and either queso fresco or Muenster, but I’ve omitted both because I like the soup on the lighter side. Also, be careful when adding the poblano peppers because they may be hotter than you think. Try a piece first before adding them to your soup.

When buying fresh corn in Mexico City, any market vendor will shave the fresh kernels right off the ear if you ask. (As an aside, can I quickly rant about restaurants who use canned corn here? USING CANNED CORN IN THE CRADLE OF CORN DRIVES ME NUTS.) If you can’t find fresh corn, frozen is acceptable.

Ingredients

1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon oil
1 small onion, sliced thin
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
1 1/2 cups fresh corn, or about 250g (see note)
Salt to taste
1 1/2 cups diced or quartered squash
1 small bunch squash blossoms (about 10)
1 to 2 poblano chiles, charred on a comal, peeled, seeded and de-veiened, and then diced
6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Fresh epazote, chopped (optional)

Directions

Heat the butter and oil in a soup pot or saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and stir, cooking until soft and translucent. Then add the garlic and stir quickly, cooking for about 30 seconds more. Add corn kernels and salt to taste. Cover and cook until corn is slightly tender, about 5 minutes.

Add the squash, squash flowers, poblano peppers, broth and more salt to taste. Cook until all the ingredients are tender, about 20 minutes, and then stir in chopped epazote if using. (I also like to add a few grinds of fresh-cracked black pepper.) This soup tastes even better the next day.

Touring Xochimilco’s farms with De la Chinampa

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Cilantro, just beginning to sprout, from a chinampa in Xochimilco.

When I moved to Mexico City in 2009, people here didn’t talk much about where their food came from. A few stores sold organic groceries. A small handful of restaurants, including Pujol and Nicos, mentioned local items on their menus, but that was about it.

A lot has changed. Mexico City now has an eco-friendly tiangius every two weeks. La Nicolasa, a fabulous shop in Azcapotzalco, stocks organic products made in Mexico. New restaurants including Quintonil, Maximo and Kui make it a point to use locally sourced ingredients where possible.

De la Chinampa, a company that works with Xochimilco farmers, has supplied local restaurants with pesticide-free, ecologically friendly produce for the past three years. Lately, though, they’re pushing to let consumers know that they also do private deliveries. They’ll bring Xochimilco-grown fruits and vegetables to your doorstep for a small (75 peso) delivery fee. You receive a spreadsheet, place an order and receive the goods within one or two days.

De La Chinampa offers tours to anyone who wants to learn more about their operations, so I organized a group of 12 people last weekend to hit the chinampas. Chinampa is the name for a floating farm and it’s the main way produce is grown in Xochimilco — sprouted in layers of fertile mud, directly over water.

The Chinampas Tour Begins

We set off from the Cuemanco docks around 4 p.m., with a gorgeous salad (composed of locally grown ingredients) and cheese to munch on as we drifted.

Ricardo Rodriguez, who runs De la Chinampa with his wife Laura, a biologist, mentioned that more than 26,000 hectares of Xochimilco’s land could be developed for farming. Nearly 12,000 of those hectares are in Xochimilco’s Ecological Reserve, the area we were visiting that day.

De La Chinampa wants to generate a demand for Xochimilco produce, which would eventually create more farming jobs and hopefully restore the area ecologically. Much has been written about Xochimilco’s ecological decline; a recent Washington Post story quoted an UNAM biologist saying that he feared that within his lifetime, Xochimilco would no longer exist.

For those who don’t know, Xochimilco has been an agriculture hub in Mexico City since prehispanic times. A network of canals used to ferry produce to the Centro. The last canal only disappeared in the 20th century.

Ricardo said he believes this damage is reversible. It’s an overwhelming challenge, but on the tour, meeting the farmers, it seems possible.

Inside a working chinampa in Xochimilco

About an hour into our ride, we docked at a little cottage with flowers growing out front. A field stretched out to the left of the cottage. Nothing moved, except for wind rustling the trees.

Xochimilco chinampa

Ricardo introduced us to the farmer, Nicolás, who’s been growing produce on this particular chinampa since he was a little boy. He showed us his neat rows of quelites, chard, radishes, and the lushest spinach I’d ever seen.

Spinach at a chinampa, or floating farm, in Xochimilco

Nicolás, a Xochimilco farmer, with the spinach he grows

Chard, Chinampas of Xochimilco

Chard that's barely begun to sprout

A row of quelites.

Nicolás walked us through his farming process, describing how he uses mud, earth and local ground cover to keep the soil moist, cool or warm when needed. He also stressed that he doesn’t use any chemicals. “I’m an enemy of chemicals,” he said, smiling. My friend Janneth asked him how he learned to farm and he told us his grandmother taught him.

None of us really wanted to leave the farm — the grass there was so thick, I wanted to take off my shoes and run around — but we eventually got back on the boat.

We stopped at a smaller farm afterward. We poked around the succulents and patches of spinach.

A small chinampa in Xochimilco

I've never seen succulents like this before.

Finally, it was time to leave. We watched the sun set on the way back.

As I mentioned above, De La Chinampa will give tours to anyone (a minimum of 10 people) interested in learning about their products. The tour runs about 3 to 3 1/2 hours and is conducted in Spanish. To arrange a tour, or to receive a spreadsheet with De La Chinampa’s products available for order, contact Ricardo Rodriguez with De La Chinampa at ricardo[at]delachinampa.mx.

De La Chinampa is also seeking donations to build a sort of community center for the chinamperos in Xochimilco, which would offer training on local agricultural issues. They’re getting close to their May deadline and still need quite a bit. To give, visit their Fondeadora page (it’s like Kickstarter in Mexico).