The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Red taquería-style salsa

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For awhile now, I’ve liked green salsa more than red. Green was always brighter, more acidic. A drizzle on my taco set off sparks on my tongue. And when the salsa had avocado, as green taquería salsas often do here, I wanted to curl up and take a nap in its creaminess.

Red salsa never hit me that way. It wasn’t luxurious or intense. Red salsa just sat there. Blinking. (Little did I know red salsa doesn’t work like that. It plants a seed, and then hurries away to see what you do with it.)

In the past few months, whenever I’d visit taquerías, I’d find myself looking at the red more than the green. I already knew what the green contained: chile serrano or chile verde, maybe chile de árbol or an avocado. But the red remained an enigma. Did the taquero use tomatoes? They’re not essential. Which chiles did he use? Guajillo, cascabel, mora? There were no acidic tomatillos to mask everything. With red salsa, you tasted the chiles themselves. The result was subtler, more mysterious.

I’ve been wanting to experiment with red salsas at home, so I tiptoed into the game with a batch of guajillo-árbol salsa from Ricardo Muñoz’s excellent book Salsas Mexicanas. I’ve used it several times before, always with good results.

This salsa contained a few tomatoes, pureed with toasted chiles until they became a thick, deep-red soup. (In another time five thousand years ago, maybe I could’ve dyed my hair with this stuff.) One bite murmured of garlic and the piney herbs of the guajillo. Then came the searing heat — like, straddling the line of edible — from the 8 chiles de árbol I used. Heat is the main difference between a table salsa and one you’d cook meat and vegetables in, by the way. The former, if you like spicy food, should be tongue-swellingly hot.

Seven days later, I still have a glass jar of this salsa in my fridge. I’ve slowly been working my way through it, spooning it into quesadillas, on chips, over eggs. It’s fabulous on anything.

Recipe below. Oh, and tell me — where do you come down on the fence? Red or green, and why?

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On graduating from cooking school

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A year and a half later, it’s come to an end. I’m now the owner of a diploma in Especialización de Gastronomía Mexicana from the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City.

I should’ve been excited at graduation last week. Instead I was nervous. What if I wouldn’t get my diploma after all? What if there was some weird fluke and they’d left my name off the list?

I was sad, too. I’d made my first tortilla dough here. I learned how to properly salt a mole. And how to toast chiles, how to crack dried beans under the weight of my metlapil, how to appreciate the nuns’ inventiveness, and how to tie little bows made from cornhusks to the edge of the tamale pot so the pot stayed happy and steamed properly.

The class had gotten Yuri and Edmundo a card, and when it was my turn to sign I didn’t know what to say. I looked at Crayton helplessly. How do I sum up into words… ? I felt teary.

Crayton suggested an opening line: “I’m of Mexican-American roots, and you taught me about a culture that was always inside me but I didn’t know existed.” It was exactly what I felt, so I scribbled it down, along with a few other thoughts about them giving me a gift. It didn’t seem like enough.

Toward the end of the ceremony, Dulce, the academic coordinator, called my name and I stood up to get my diploma. I kissed Edmundo and Yuri on the cheek. Crayton snapped a photo. And then that was it.

There’s a sentence at the bottom of the diploma that says I’ve completed 148 hours. Can you believe it?

I keep thinking about the time we made manchamanteles in class and it was so good I ate it cold from my refrigerator the next day. I had never liked manchamanteles, but there I was, not even caring to sit down, standing in front of the open refrigerator with a tupperware and a spoon. That’s what good mole can do to you.

Rio de Janeiro – A photoset

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The beach in Leblon, where we stayed

They sell bags of these on the beaches -- they're fluffy, donut-shaped snacks that come in salty and sweet flavors.

Sunset overlooking Leblon beach

One of the views from the Christ the Redeemer mountain

A samba band boarded the little tram that took us up the mountain.

Jack fruit dangled from the trees, outside the windows of the tram near Christ the Redeemer.

Rio has agaves too! These are outside one of the subway stations.

The Escadaria Selarón, a famous set of mosaic steps in Rio's Lapa neighborhood

Cruising the markets of São Paulo, Brazil

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The cajú fruit, pictured at São Paulo's Municipal Market.

On my second day in town I booked a tour with Around SP, a small company in São Paulo that offers tours of the city’s cultural sites. I told my guide, Luis, that I wanted a culinary tour, so we zoomed off in his car one morning with plans to hit some of the city’s markets, bakeries and dessert shops.

The Food Tour Begins

One of our first stops was a feira, or outdoor neighborhood market. It looked just like the tianguis: vendors had set up under plastic tarps, selling fruits and vegetables arranged into attractive piles. They called out to customers passing by. (This was no doubt the Portuguese equivalent of “We have papaya! 10 pesos a kilo!”)

The feira had things I’d never seen before: bulbous, thick squash shaped like a barbell; short spiky cucumbers; wild Brazilian cabbage known as couve, shredded and wrapped in plastic. Thick bulbs of garlic hung from ropes. Mounds of spices sat in large bowls — whole cumin seeds, peppercorns, dried chilies.

A big meat and seafood section lay beyond all the fruit, with the items displayed in neat rows inside plastic display cases. There were fresh sardines, calamari, and whole, fresh fish that I didn’t recognize. I was kind of in awe about how orderly this section was. In Mexico all the meat sits out in the open and kind of piled on top of each other.

The sardines, which I would've bought if I had a kitchen.

Whole cumin seeds at the São Paulo feira

Chiles at a Brazilian feira


They sell cinnamon just like in Mexico!

Couve at the Sao Paulo outdoor market

This is the couve. It's a garnish for feijoada, a typical Brazilian dish.

Dried herbs in Sao Paulo

Dried herbs are sold bundled with red chiles.

The market prices are displayed on a clothesline.

The spiky cucumber (it has a tail, too) is known as maxixe.

Moving on: São Paulo’s Mercado Municipão

Toward the end of the day we stopped at São Paulo’s Municipal Market, a huge indoor place filled with fish, produce, sausages, nuts, dried fruits, spices, thick blocks of guava ate, and even cacahuates japoneses. (In Portuguese they’re called amendoim, and they come in barbecue flavor!)

It was pretty much a gourmet-food lover’s paradise. Bacalao, several varities, lay stacked maybe two feet high, next to linguica and soft cheeses, hard cheeses, olives. We tasted soft, spreadable catupiry cheese on crackers, and I looked at an oyster bar longingly, where people sat slurping and drinking beer. The market’s second floor has a food court, where you can supposedly find the best mortadella sandwiches in the city.

A view of São Paulo's Municipal Market from the second floor

I still wasn’t very hungry, so we walked around the fruit area. I tasted jabuticaba (pronounced jah-boo-chee-KA-bah), an oversize grape kind of like a capulín. And, best of all, I tasted cajú, the cashew fruit.

Didn’t know cashew came from a fruit, you say? I didn’t either. The weird thing is that the cashew lies outside the fruit itself, like a little hat. You have to open the shell and fish out the cashew. The flesh itself, on the main part of the fruit, was the strangest thing I’d ever tasted — rubbery, fibrous and juicy like a ripe peach. I think I laughed while I was eating it, because I didn’t know what else to do.

Here is a picture of the cajú, again:

The cajú fruit, pictured at São Paulo's Municipal Market.

And the jabuticaba, which is fantastic in a caiparinha. And it apparently grows on trees, literally on the bark itself.

Pão de queijo: The perfect end to a great day

We finished our tour with a piece of pão de queijo, a stretchy, dense cheese bun made with tapioca flour. As a sidenote, I think I had pão de queijo every single day in Brazil. I think it might be the world’s most perfect food.

Rio de Janeiro photos coming next!

A few thoughts on São Paulo

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I didn’t know anything about São Paulo when I arrived there last week.

Crayton had told me it was big, but I didn’t expect how big: skyscrapers and high-rise apartment towers, a solid chain of them, squeezed together end-to-end on the horizon like a mountain range. Multi-story buildings loomed against the highways. More people technically lived in Mexico City, but São Paulo felt like Gotham from the Batman movies. I was dwarfed — slapped — by its grit and bustle almost immediately. (Where were the charming four-story art deco buildings that I know and love?)

I liked the place right away. São Paulo is the fastest-growing economy in Latin America. There’s a sense of urgency and order there that doesn’t exist in Mexico City. People have places to go, money to make. I ended up on Avenida Paulista my first day in town — it’s a wide avenue lined with skyscrapers, and the center of the city’s financial district. People in suits rushed by, talking on cell phones and texting. They crossed at the stoplights en masse and then disappeared into the subway stations. It felt just like New York.

São Paulo is super expensive, but since I was on vacation, I did a lot of upscale Paulista things that I wouldn’t have been able to do if I lived there. I wandered around the Jardim Paulista — a high-end Polanco-like neighborhood — and bought a lacy scarf and yummy-smelling hand soap from a boutique. (“Is this a gift?” the soap lady asked me. “Oh no, it’s for me,” I said, kind of embarrassed.) I booked a day tour with Around SP and visited some really cool São Paulo markets.

And we braved the traffic. Every Paulista has a car, so it takes at least 30 minutes — repeat, at least — to get anywhere. Crayton and I debated over whose traffic was worse, DF or SP. We were split down the middle.

Overall, I was only there for two days, but I left feeling intrigued and kind of mystified. São Paulo didn’t seem like an easy place to live, but it hinted that it rewarded the people who stuck it out.

On another note, I apologize for the lack of posting lately. I was traveling most of November, then sick, and now I’m finally feeling better. I promise things will be busier around here in the next few months. More photos from São Paulo and Rio to come!

The view from our hotel in the São Paulo Hilton

São Paulo office tower

A São Paulo office tower, near the Centro

A small São Paulo apartment building

Fall in South Carolina

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Crayton and I spent the past few days in Anderson, South Carolina, visiting his grandparents. The fall leaves are stunning here: fiery burgundies and golds and oranges, set against a deep blue sky. One morning Crayton’s grandma and I just sat and looked at them from her screened-in porch.

Here are a few more shots of them.

And here is my obligatory Clemson University mention, because I am an Anderson, South Carolinian by marriage (go Tigers!):

Clemson isn't too far from Anderson, SC, and everyone is a fan. This is a gift for our 5-month-old second cousin.

We’re in Atlanta now and then we move on to Huntsville. We get home Sunday and then on Tuesday I’m off again, this time to Brazil for a week. We’ll spend four days in Sao Paulo and 3 days in Rio.

Hope your November is treating you well so far!

How to make a Día de los Muertos altar

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A close-up of a Day of the Dead altar at the Escuela de Gastronomía in Roma

I had never built a Día de Los Muertos altar until two years ago. It was my first year in Mexico, so I put up a few photos and some candles, and a sugar skull I’d bought at the Feria de Alfeñique in Toluca. After the holiday was over I didn’t want to take my altar down. It made me feel centered, like I knew where I came from.

This year I was curious about all the altar decorations I kept seeing in the markets. So I took the Día de Los Muertos Ofrendas y Tradiciones course at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana, where I recently (last week!) finished up a diploma program in Mexican gastronomy.

The course would teach us about the tradition of the altar and the history of Día de los Muertos, and we’d get to cook some typical Day of the Dead foods: bean tamales, pan de muerto and calabaza en piloncillo.

Here’s what I learned.

The Elements of a Day of the Dead Altar

First off, you can really make the altar any way you want. There’s no right or wrong way to do it — the idea is that it’s something personal that speaks to you. That said, here are some general elements to include if you’ve never built one before:

1. Flowers

Making a cross out of cempasúchil for a Day of the Dead altar at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana in Mexico City

Cempasúchil, also spelled cempoalxochitl and other various ways, is an orange marigold. It’s Mexico’s traditional Day of the Dead flower and it grows wild in many parts of the country. During Day of the Dead season here, the Mexico City government plants rows of cempasúchil on Reforma. In Mexico it’s customary to include vases of cempasúchil, petals, or rings of flowers on one’s altar. If you live elsewhere, any other seasonal flower would work as a substitute.

2. Fruit — specifically tejocotes and oranges.

A bag of tejocotes, known in English as a Mexican hawthorn apple

Tejocotes are a mild, seeded fruit that taste like a cross between an apple and a pear. No one I know eats them raw. Instead, you boil the fruit in syrup or cook it to make ponche. In the case of the Day of the Dead altar, the fruit, along with oranges and other seasonal items, symbolize the earth’s bounty. And it’s something for your loved ones to eat on their journey into the next world.

3. Papel Picado.

Papel picado for Day of the Dead

Papel picado symbolizes wind. It’s draped around the edges of the altar, or used to decorate the area behind the altar, if needed.

4. Foods your loved ones liked eating.

Food decorations for Day of the Dead altar

A miniature plate of sweet bread and atole, with rice and mole to the left

These little plates of food are made out of sugar and sold at almost any market in Mexico City. In general, the food element of the altar is one of the neatest ways to find out about your loved ones who’ve passed on.

Two years ago, when I was building my first altar, I wasn’t sure what my grandfather liked to eat. He died when I was little. So I called up my mom and asked her. She said spaghetti. (Me: “Spaghetti? Really?”) This year, I put out a little plate of quesadillas for my grandmother. I may also put a few dried spaghetti noodles for my Grandpa Joe.

5. Alfeñique.

Alfeñique Day of the Dead

Alfeñique, the art of making animals and other shapes out of sugar, was imported into Mexico from Europe. Today it’s customary to put a few of these animals on your altar. They’re sold at Mercado Merced and Mercado Jamaica, but the best place place to get them if you live in Mexico is the Feria de Alfeñique in Toluca, which occurs annually in October. Toluca is about 45 minutes to an hour west of Mexico City.

6. Pan de muerto.

Pan de muerto for Day of the Dead

I made this pretty little pan de muerto.

I didn’t realize how regional pan de muerto was. In Mexico City, we’re used to seeing the round domes with thin, knobby “bones” draped on top; in parts of Oaxaca they don’t make bread like this at all. That bread is larger, more eggy, with a woman’s face painted and baked into the top. Other areas of Mexico make bread in the shape of skulls, rabbits, pigs, crocodiles, hearts, or a pretzel shape that symbolizes fertility. It’s customary to place a few loaves on your altar.

7. Bean tamales. The bean symbolizes fertility, too. There’s a lot of fertility associated with this holiday, no?

8. A Xoloescuintle. It’s thought that Xolos helped spirits cross the river into the next world.

9. A glass of water. In case your loved ones are thirsty.

10. Salt. It’s nutritive and it restores bodily fluids. This is usually displayed in a little dish or bowl.

Here’s a final photo of the altar we built at school…

Day of the Dead altar in Mexico City

… and here’s mine at home, which I put together on Sunday.

Did you build an altar this year? What did you include?

Feliz Día de los Muertos!

UPDATE: If you want to make your own pan de muerto, here’s a recipe from Fany Gerson’s My Sweet Mexico that I posted last year.

Food that supports a good cause: CREA

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Mexican peaches in syrup, made by Almíbares Mier and sold by CREA, a Mexico City nonprofit

CREA is a Mexico City nonprofit that supports women entrepreneurs in low-income communities, specifically with the idea to empower them and help them grow their businesses. I found out about CREA through my friend Liz, who is associate director.

Right now CREA works with women in Zacatecas, offering a business course where women can learn accounting practices and other skills, and later pairing up these women with mentors and role models. Many of CREA’s clients make food products: jams, stuffed olives, mole, pipián, peaches in syrup, homemade chocolate. Other women make ceramics, rebozos and jewelry.

A few months ago, Liz mentioned that she’d love to find someone to take pictures of the food products for their website and catalog. Of course I volunteered — I’m a budding food stylist and photographer, and this was for a good cause.

We had a great time. Here are a few items from the shoot:

Chicken in pipián sauce

I took this powdered pipián sauce, made by Delicia Jerezana, to my in-laws in August. All you do is add chicken broth, heat and stir; it’s easy and fast. I ended up making empipianadas for my in-laws, which were a big hit. You can also just heat the sauce and pour it over poached chicken, as pictured below.

Chicken with pipián sauce. The pipián, made by Delicia Jerezana, is sold in powder form.

Chicken with pipián sauce, made using a powdered pipián sold by CREA.

Chocolate cake, using homemade chocolate

Doesn’t this cake look decadent? The main ingredient is homemade chocolate, which CREA sells in blocks of about 1 lb.

This chocolate cake was made by chocolate from Delicia Jerezana, one of CREA's clients.

Apple marmalade

Apple marmalade, sold by CREA

Made from apples grown without pesticides, by producer Comenopal. It’s really good stuff — I ate both of these pieces of bread afterward.

Pinole

The most difficult thing to shoot was the pinole, a drink made from ground corn. The drink is fantastic, but I couldn’t figure out how to get that feeling across in the image. If you have any suggestions for me, I’m open to them.

Pinole, made by Delicia Jerezana and sold by CREA

Finding CREA’s products near you

If you live in Mexico, you can buy any of CREA’s food products right now via their online Christmas catalog, which has the products arranged into gift baskets. Unfortunately they’re not available in the U.S., although Liz says CREA staff are working to place them in Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Mi Pueblo supermarkets and REI. Fany Gerson also has plans to sell the homemade chocolate in New York.

I’m happy to share some recipe ideas, if you end up buying any of the products.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce

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We like to buy trout from the organic tianguis that comes to the Roma every two weeks. A vendor sells it whole and in filets. The trout isn’t available all the time, so when we buy it, it’s a treat.

In the past, I’ve poached the fish and served it with a salsa verde (one day I’m going to post all these recipes for you, I swear). But lately I’ve been bored with poaching. I said to Crayton, who is slowly coming around to eating seafood, what would you like to do with this fish? Usually when I ask him what he wants to eat, he says meatloaf. This time he said, Why not fish tacos?

The idea zapped me, because I’ve never actually made fish tacos before. Salad tacos, peanut butter tacos, roasted carrot and banh mi tacos, yes. Fish tacos no.

The dream fish taco… and the reality

My favorite kind of fish taco is deep-fried: nuggets of bland white fish, sheathed in beer batter, puffed up in hot oil and served with shredded cabbage and a spicy cream sauce. The cream sauce is kinda half tartar sauce, half salsa.

For our meal at home, I wanted to make something healthier while keeping the idea of that sauce intact. The fish, because I would not be marinating it, needed a little zing.

So I pan-fried my trout filets. I made a sauce using the Oaxacan chile pasilla (I am obsessed), garlic, yogurt and mayonnaise. The result, thrown together in 30 minutes, was exactly what I wanted it to be: a simple taco that felt hefty because of the cabbage, and that wowed you with its smoky-creaminess. My friend Liz came over for dinner and moaned when she bit into these. “What is the name of this chile?” she demanded.

If you don’t have Oaxacan pasillas, you could substitute morita or chipotle.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce
Serves 4 with a few side dishes

For the sauce (makes about 1/4 cup):
1 Oaxaca chile pasilla, or any other intensely smoky, spicy chile
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

For the fish:
12 ounces trout filets
Vegetable or olive oil (or oil of your choice)
Six to 8 corn tortillas
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
Lime wedges
Shredded cabbage

Directions

It’s a good idea to make the sauce first, so the flavors mix while you’re preparing the rest of the dish. Using kitchen shears or a knife, make an incision in the chile and scrape out the seeds and veins. Don’t use your fingers — it’s better to use a small spoon or a butter knife. Cover chile in hot water and let hydrate until the skin has softened, about five to 10 minutes. While the chile rests, you can slice your cabbage and let it sit in cold water, so it stays fresh.

Once the chile is sufficiently softened, add it to a blender with the garlic and just a little (1 or 2 tablespoons) water. Blend until as smooth as possible. Don’t worry if you see pieces of chile — that’s okay. Scrape or pour mixture into a small bowl, and whisk in mayonnaise and yogurt. Taste for salt and add if necessary. Store sauce in fridge until ready to use.

Wash and pat dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper. To cook, drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet and heat to medium. Add the fish when the pan is hot. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

To serve tacos, take a fork and shred a little bit of fish into a warm corn tortilla. Top with a spritz of lime juice, a spoonful of salsa and the cabbage.