The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Travels through small-town Mexico: Tamales & atole in Tetepango, Hidalgo

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A tamalchil, or tamal topped with an ancho chile and steamed.

A few months ago, my friend Ruth forwarded me an email about a tamales and atole fair in Tetepango, Hidalgo. The email was scarce on details, but it did contain one important fact: there would be more than 100 varieties of tamales and atoles for sale. More than 100. The organizers were also offering a free hotel stay for any DF foodies on the email list.

This was not a hard decision for me to make, although I don’t have a car and had no idea where Tetepango was. Free stay? A hundred tamales? I’m in.

Arriving to the tamales & atoles fair

After securing driving directions, I set off with Crayton, my friend Ben and his partner John in a rental car one Saturday afternoon. We arrived to Tetepango, a small town just past Tlaxcoapan (so you have a reference point), to find a party that had pretty much taken over the square. A live band blared cumbia. Hundreds of people milled underneath a huge tent, many of them wearing cowboy hats. I was expecting a series of stands along a street, but this looked like the event of the year.

We quickly set to work trying as many things as we could: atole de xoconostle con manzana (a tart, warm apple drink); red-wine flavored atole, coconut atole. We tried a tamalchil, which was a tamal topped with an ancho chile. We tried pork with peas in tomatillo sauce, tamales de quelites and a fabulous bean tamal wrapped in a banana leaf.

In front of one atole stand, a teenager shouted out all the varieties, urging people to stop and taste. “Atole! Atole de manzana! Pásale!”

There were a lot of atoles.

Atole varieties

Just when we thought we’d eaten enough tamales…

Right as we were getting full, I called my contact, Jair, the director at a local cooking school, to see if there was anything he recommended we try. His wife answered his phone and said, “Come on stage.” (Yes, there was a stage.)

The four of us trooped up and made introductions. Then Jair motioned to a nearby table and told us to sit down. The festival included a contest, so about eight people in chefs’ jackets nibbled on tamales and sipped atole, scribbling notes on scorecards. “Go ahead, integrate yourselves,” Jair said. Wait — he wanted us to judge?

Crayton bowed out and so did John. I’m sure my eyes must have lit up, because these are the kind of tasks I was born for. This might have been the reason why I specifically chose a loose-fitting shirt.

Over the next 2 1/2 hours, Ben and I ate and ate. Corn husks piled up on top of each other, cold crumbs of masa inside. Jarritos containing our tastes of atole squeezed together in any open spot on the table.

I tried to judge the best I could, but to be honest, there were simply too many tamales and atoles moving too fast. They came at me from both sides of the table, about one every 30 seconds.

Crayton caught a blurry picture of us judging from afar. You’ll notice Ben and I deep in concentration.

Once we were done, and my stomach had sufficiently stretched the waistband of my jeans, it was time for the prizes. Tetepango knows how to throw a big event, so the prizes were enviable — a flat screen TV, an electric mixer, a set of glass casserole dishes.

The winners, announced with fanfare, were the tamales de pulpo with tomatoes; tamales de cueritos and, in first place, tamales de frijol con salsa de chinicuiles.

On the atole side, the winners were red wine atole and atole de cajeta con whisky.

After the festival was over the organizers were kind enough to show us our hotel, located next to a balneario. I think I might have dreamed of tamales on a conveyor belt.

The next morning another festival organizer, Amalia Rufina Neri Ángeles, had arranged for us to have breakfast with a local gastronomy student and guide, Marco Ramirez. We headed for the Sunday tianguis in Tlaxcoapan for barbacoa.

Well, first I asked Marco if we could stop for pandulce, and then try barbacoa.

Fresh bread sold at a roadside convenience store and bakery in Tetepango, Hidalgo

This is the breadmaker.

Salsa for sale at the Sunday tianguis in Tlaxcoapan, Hidalgo

Moronga, or blood sausage, at a barbacoa stand in Tlaxcoapan

A chunk of barbacoa, before serving.

Hidalgo barbacoa

A kilo of barbacoa, which we barely made a dent in. (Took the rest home.)

After we ate, we wandered around and took more pictures. I bought some gorgeous beans I’d never seen before, which the vendor told me were called San Franciscanos, grown locally in Hidalgo.

San Franciscano beans

Fresh corn for tortillas

A bucket of fresh, nixtamalized corn, bound for the local molino

Inflated tortilla

A perfectly inflated tortilla.

Amalia and Marco, who were both so gracious and generous with their time, told us there were dozens of festivals in that part of Hidalgo every year, including ferias de barbacoa and barro. I’d really like to go back.

I’m up for a Readers’ Choice Award

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The Mija Chronicles is a finalist in About.com’s Readers’ Choice Awards, for Best Mexico Travel blog. If you have a few minutes — and you’ve enjoyed what you’ve read here — perhaps you could mosey over and vote for me? All you’d need to do is submit your email address, or you can sign in through Facebook.

UPDATE: Readers Tricia and William have pointed out that you can vote once a day if you like.

Thank you for your votes!

Do you know this Mexican vegetable?

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Corn from Mercado La Merced

I found this skinny vegetable, which almost looks like oversized baby corn, at Mercado La Merced a few days ago. The vendor, an older woman with gray hair, told me the name. But she spoke softly and I was too embarrassed to ask her to repeat it. It sounded Nahuatl.

She said you remove the leaves, boil the cob and then shave off the kernels. She also said I could serve it with mole.

Have any of you seen this before? Each piece is roughly a foot long, with bumpy, somewhat soft flesh.

Adventures in quelites: Flor de nabo

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The first time I saw flor de nabo was a few years ago on a sidewalk in the Roma. A woman was selling it out of a big plastic bag, and I, ever the quelite-scouter, stopped to ask her: “Qué tipo de quelite es?” She said flor de nabo. I loved how pretty it was, so I bought a kilo right there.

It turns out flor de nabo is brassica rapa, a type of spicy, peppery green that’s in the same family as rapini or broccoli rabe. They look similar.

Flor de nabo

Flor de nabo drifted out of my life until last week, when I saw it on the menu at Rosetta, an Italian restaurant in the Roma. Then a few days later I found a sidewalk vendor selling a bagful near the Meracdo Portales.

Cooking flor de nabo

When raw, flor de nabo tastes bitter and sharp. Cooking it for a long period of time in broth brings out its natural sweetness, with little touches of mustard and pepper. Because it was so rainy and dreary outside, I bought a kilo from the Portales vendor and decided to make soup. (Another day I’ll maybe try to attempt Rosetta’s garlickly flor de nabo with orecchiette pasta.)

The soup ended up being just what I craved: comforting and hearty, with just enough pizzazz to brighten up the gray day. Here’s the recipe, in case you’re needing some comfort-food inspiration.

Chicken Soup with Flor de Nabo, Carrots and Noodles

Ingredients

For the broth:
1 chicken breast
1 small piece onion (about 1/4 chunk of small onion)
1 bay leaf
5 or 6 peppercorns
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1 big clove garlic
Salt

For the soup:
1/2 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 carrots, chopped
About 1/2 pound flor de nabo, chopped (stems included)
100 grams noodles of your choice
Salt to taste

Directions

Place the chicken breast in a pot and cover with water. Add onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, thyme and garlic, with a few pinches of salt. Bring to boil, skim off any scum and then lower the flame. Cover and simmer for 40 minutes, or until chicken is cooked. Note that the time is variable — my chicken breast weighed about a pound, but for smaller chicken breasts and regular altitudes, I’d start checking at the 25-minute mark.

When chicken is cooked, remove from the flame and cool while you chop your vegetables. Then strain the broth and reserve both the broth and the meat separately.

Heat about a tablespoon of oil in a heavy-bottomed pot. Add the onion and cook until translucent; then add garlic and stir, cooking with the onion until aromatic, about 30 seconds. Add the carrots and mix well. Then add the chopped flor de nabo, some pieces of chicken breast (I just tore some off with my hands and shredded it directly into the pot) and your reserved chicken broth. (You can add as much broth as you want, depending on how thick you like your soup.) Season with more salt and black pepper.

Bring the soup to a boil, then lower the flame, cover and simmer for 20 minutes. Add noodles and cook until al dente. Season for more salt and pepper and serve hot.

Tacos al pastor in Mexico City

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Tacos al pastor

I snapped this a few months ago at Plaza Meave on Eje Central, in the Centro Histórico. They’ve got the biggest spit (trompo in Spanish) that I’ve seen in the city. It’s always crowded, and fun to just sit and watch — the taquero works like a madman, slicing meat with one hand and catching it in a tortilla.

The tacos are decent. I’ve only had them at mid-day, when the meat isn’t quite caramelized enough. If you want to go, it’s located on Eje Central, north of Mesones.

Five truths about tamales

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A masa-free tamal, made with mojarra, tomatillos, xoconostle and epazote

The more I learn about Mexican food, the more I realize I’ll never know enough.

So many things just simply aren’t written down: recipes, techniques, the names of regional chiles from tiny villages. Really learning this cuisine means traveling to cities and towns and tasting as many things as possible. Or at least studying with people who have.

This is why I was so excited to take a four-day prehispanic tamales cooking course at the Fundación Herdez last week. The course would be taught by Raúl Traslosheros, a chef who has researched tamales in cities and villages across Mexico, and writes about Mexican culinary culture for the magazine Sabor a México. The course also included a guided visit to UNAM’s Jardín Botánico, led by two UNAM scientists (I’d probably call them ethnobiologists): Drs. Robert Bye and Edelmira Linares.

After four days — and the fantastic visit to the Jardín Botánico, where I’d never been — I ended up learning more than I could have hoped. I was literally on a tamal-high, wanting to shout at everyone, “My eyes have been opened!”

Here’s a list of five things I learned in the class. If you’re planning to make tamales for Día de Candelaria, which is today, this might be helpful for you. (For more on what tamales have to do with Día de la Candelaria, here’s my post on strawberry tamales from last year.)

Five Truths About Tamales

Tamales at the Fundación Herdez

Beating the masa in a KitchenAid mixer.

1. The perfect tamal starts with the masa. Of course the fillings matter too, but the most margin for error lies in the dough. If your masa isn’t adequately hydrated, the tamales will come out sandy and dry; if you haven’t beaten the dough enough, they’ll be too dense. The most important thing to remember is that tamal masa must be very moist and light. When you’ve prepared your masa, do the “float” test: spoon a little bit of dough into a bowl of water. If it floats, it’s done. If it sinks, it needs more liquid, a little more fat and several more minutes of mixing, ideally with a high-powered mixer.

The KitchenAid is a tamalero’s best friend.

Adding tortilla masa to a standing mixer, during a tamales course at the Fundación Herdez

2. Using fresh, nixtamalized corn flour makes a difference. I know not all of us have access to harina fresca, made from coarsely ground, winnowed nixtamalized corn. (If you live in Mexico, this sold at most molinos de nixtamal.) But fresh flour really does make a difference. Not only is the masa more flavorful — it tastes like corn! — it’s also moist, and you don’t have to drown your flour in chicken stock or more lard to make up for the difference. Which brings me to number two…

Fresh lard

Doesn't the lard look so creamy and good?

3. Lard, if you’re using it, must be whipped into submission. One day I’m going to experiment with coconut oil, but right now my tamal fat-of-choice is lard — preferably very white, fresh lard. Vegetable shortening can work, too, although Chef Raúl says the tamales made with manteca vegetal overcook and dry out easily. (So watch the pot like a hawk if you’re a vegetarian.) The lard needs to be light and airy, which is what results in that gorgeous, porous, spongey tamal. In class, we whipped our lard with the paddle attachment on a KitchenAid mixer for a good 10 minutes.

But if you don’t want to use lard….

4. You don’t need to use any fat at all — lard-less tamales are actually delicious. Lard-free tamales are the most historically accurate to Mexico, considering the Spaniards brought pigs after they arrived in the 16th century. I’d always assumed they’d be dense bricks, and they are if you put too much masa in the husk. But if you put just the right amount — a thin disc, folded gently around the filling — it’s gorgeous. I like the masa-free tamales to be mixed all the way through with beans or herbs. You don’t even miss the lard.

5. No corn husks? No problem.

Chaya leaf tamales

Chef Raul demonstrates how to fold a chaya-leaf tamal

The word tamal comes from the Nahuatl word tamalli, which means “wrapped.” You could really wrap your tamales in anything: banana leaves, corn leaves (“hoja de milpa” in Spanish), the leaves of large reeds (“hoja de carrizo”), chaya. Alternately, you don’t even need masa, if you’ve got cornhusks on hand. Some prehispanic tamales, such as the one of the mojarra at the beginning of this post, required just placing the fish and ingredients in a corn husk, wrapping it tightly and grilling it.

Wait, did you just say grilling a tamal?… Yes. I did.

6. Tamales can be microwaved or grilled. (I know this is a list of five truths, but these were too good to leave off the list.)

Charred, grilled tamales

These tamales were cooked on a grill, over a medium-low flame for about an hour.

It was not uncommon in prehispanic Mexico to use the husk as a sort of parchment wrap, to slow-cook and steam whatever was inside. You just choose your filling (in our case, we made a fish-tomatillo-xoconostle tamal, and one with chicken gizzards and tomatillos), wrap it tightly, and heat it on the comal until cooked all the way through.

As far as microwaving goes, I wouldn’t recommend it for very large batches, but it’s helpful if you’d like to zap one and see how it tastes. The masa often needs more salt than you think it does, because the saltiness level dulls quite a bit as the tamales steam. UPDATE: You can also microwave raw, frozen tamales that haven’t been steamed yet. Again, I’d only recommend in small batches, as the edges tend to get overcooked and tough. (The rest of the tamal is fine.) Wrap them in paper towels and start at two minutes on high, depending on how large they are. This is super convenient if you make a big batch of tamales are are too tired to steam them all! The rest can be placed raw in a resealable freezer bag and microwaved one or two at a time.

I know I’m only hitting the tip of the tamal iceberg here, so if you have any more tips or ideas, I’m open to them below.

Feliz Día de la Candelaria!

More On Tamales & Prehispanic Mexican Foods:
Fundación Herdez: A Comprehensive Report on the Mexican Chile (PDF in English)
Tecnología Alimentaria Prehispánica by Janet Long (PDF en español) — An interesting report on how Mesoamerican cultures cooked, the utensils they used, and their cooking techniques
Candelaria means Tamales by Rachel Laudan (Zester Daily)

Tamales de frijol, the last variety we made at the Fundación Herdez

Sounds of the Centro Histórico: the Zócalo

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Mexico City's Centro Histórico

If you’ve ever wandered near the eastern edge of the Zócalo, over by the Templo Mayor, you might have heard them: street vendors selling scarves, hats, sunglasses, purses, desk items and whatever else might be useful from tarps spread out on the sidewalk. As people pass, the vendors call out: “10 varos! 10 pesos mire! Todo le vale 25 pesos!”

The vendors all have slightly different cadences, so when they shout at the same time, their voices turn into this sort of chaotic roar, almost banshee-like at times. It’s amazing, annoying and slightly terrifying if you’ve never heard it before. What is all that noise in the background? Is it really people?

Moneda Street in particular — where the photo above was snapped, looking down Moneda from the Zócalo — is so crowded it’s often impossible to walk on the sidewalk. Pedestrians walk in the narrow strip of space between the cars and the gutter. Or they just walk in the street.

For the past few days I’ve been listening to the vendors’ cries from our second-floor kitchen at the Fundación Herdez, where I’m taking a cooking class. Today on my way home I recorded a snippet of what it sounds like to walk through there. This was taken in the small area of space that borders the Metropolitan Cathedral, at the head of Moneda Street.

I’m not necessarily complaining about these vendors, by the way. I’m just sort of… in awe. How do they not lose their voices at the end of the day?

How to safely ride a bike in Mexico City

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Photo: Flickr/Paul Brady

“A red trickle flowed from the young victim’s nostrils, and when he stopped blinking the crowd started to thin, people walking away in a silence as yet unbroken by the wailing of an ambulance. At that moment, Araceli fully and finally comprehended the cruelty of her native city, the precariousness of life in the presence of so much unregulated traffic and unfulfilled need, a city where people born farmers and fishermen sprinted before cars faster than any horse or sailing ship.”
— From “The Barbarian Nurseries” by Hector Tobar

I’ve been a faithful user of Mexico City’s EcoBici bikeshare program since it began a few years ago. We don’t have a car, so both Crayton and I use the EcoBici to go pretty much anywhere. Crayton rides it to work; I use it to go to the markets, friends’ houses, and to my tours.

In theory, the bikeshare program is a fantastic idea. We’re helping get more cars off the streets and we’re no longer paying cabs to sit in traffic. But a lot of times I wonder: what the hell am I doing riding a bike in this city? Cars cut me off. Pedestrians step right in front of me. Peseros rumble dangerously close to my left side, silently warning that they could come closer and crush me with a flick of their tires.

I’ve been thinking about this even more than usual lately, because I had my first accident a few weeks ago. A woman in a dark parked car opened her door and I smacked into it. (Other than a few scrapes, I was fine.) Crayton has now had three accidents, including one that resulted in a cracked rib. The passage I quoted at the beginning of this entry is about a bike-riding vendor in Mexico City who is hit by a car. It’s fiction, but still, accidents are a very real possibility here.

As the EcoBici program continues to grow — there was a six-week waiting list, last time I heard — here are some suggestions on how cyclists can ride as safely as possible:

Tips on How to Ride A Bike Safely in Mexico City

1. Follow the flow of traffic. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen people riding the wrong way down a one-way street. This is especially dangerous in the city’s main bike lane on Reforma. A few times I’ve turned a curve and almost hit someone who was headed right toward me. Please, if you’re riding a bike, ride in the same direction as the cars.

2. Respect the stoplights. I know, I know. A lot of cars don’t respect the stoplights here. So why should the cyclists? The thing is, it’s much more dangerous for a cyclist to get hit by a car, than a car to hit another car. If you’re just blazing through the intersection without a care in the world — as I’ve seen people do here — you’re tempting fate. Crayton has also argued to me that if the cyclists respect the stoplights, then drivers will respect us more, too. I’m not entirely sure if I believe that one.

3. Be aware. Mexico City drivers are, by nature, both reckless and defensive. They’ll ignore red lights and swerve across three lanes of traffic to make a right-hand turn. Chilango drivers still haven’t accepted that cyclists share their roads, so if you’re on your bike, it’s important to keep an eye on the cars in front of you and behind you. I often sneak looks behind my shoulder to see if a car is hoping to turn, or at least to let him know I’m there. I also use hand signals to communicate where I’m going. Which brings me to my next piece of advice…

4. Don’t ride too fast. I personally love riding down a busy street, the wind whipping through my hair. But if you’re riding too fast, you have less time to act quickly if something comes across your path. Riding a bike in Mexico City can feel like a video game a lot of times — obstacles like the tamale vendor, the street sweeper, and the woman walking her dog step right in front of your tires, and you have to be able to anticipate.

5. Watch out for motorcyclists. For some reason in Mexico City, motorcyclists think they can ride in the bike lanes and blatantly ignore traffic laws — even more than regular drivers.

Other Basic Safety Tips

  • Crayton and I always wear helmets.
  • We never talk on the phone or listen to music while we ride.
  • Texting while bike-riding seems like an obvious no-no, but I’ve actually seen people do this before.

Knowing The Law

A current version of Mexico City’s transit law is hard to find, but Crayton, a skilled Googler, unearthed this PDF — ojo: it takes awhile to load — on the Setravi website. Setravi is the Secretaría de Transportes y Vialidad del Distrito Federal; the rules about cyclists start in Article 29.

It’s actually a pretty entertaining read. Sensible transit laws actually exist in this city! It’s just that few people follow them. (And maybe that’s because the law doesn’t have any teeth — cyclists who don’t follow the law receive a verbal warning instead of fines.)

Do you have any other tips for riding a bike safely here? Let me know below.

More on bike-riding in DF:
A Cinematic Love Letter To Riding a Bike Through Mexico City (The Atlantic.com) A neat, two-minute video depicting what it’s like to ride a bike here. You’ll notice the cyclist doesn’t exactly follow the traffic laws.
Bike Riding Flourishes in, of all places, Mexico City (Fox News Latino)
Atiende EcoBici Lista de Espera de Usuarios (El Universal)

Understanding Mexico’s seasonal produce

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A few weeks ago I stumbled across a neat little pamphlet put out by SAGARPA, Mexico’s agriculture ministry. Transparency around food isn’t exactly common here, so I was surprised to see a neat, organized chart listing the seasonal availability of some of Mexico’s most popular ingredients.

I checked out the accompanying website when I got home, and it’s worth visiting if you’re curious about Mexican ingredients and their benefits. The page, México Produce, offers seasonal calendars for common Mexican fruit, vegetables and seafood, and it gives nutritional facts about each item. It’s in Spanish, but if you don’t speak Spanish maybe Google Translate could help.

Here’s one of the charts I found so useful:

Happy market shopping!