The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

You’re now in the presence of a Top Global Culinary Guide

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I’m humbled and honored to announce that Travel + Leisure magazine named me one of their Top Global Culinary guides in the July 2011 issue! My name is listed in a small section near the back, in stellar company with guides including Robyn Eckhardt and Annisa Helou. I’m also featured on a slideshow on the T+L website.

I’ve worked really hard over the past year, both in giving tours and striving to create a top-notch product with Eat Mexico. Things like this — and our continually satisfied clients — really make it all worth it. I feel like a lucky girl.

Thanks, T+L!

Rainy season food: A simple guisado de quelite

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I think Tlaloc must have been paying attention to my dude-check-out-the-mountains post, because for the past five days, it’s rained every day. Nothing too scary. Just a nice, steady drizzle starting around 4 or 5.

So my sandals have gone back into the closet. I’ve replaced my light cardigans for a cheery, cobalt-blue cropped raincoat. I know Americans tend to think of rain as dreary, but it doesn’t feel that way here at all. At the markets we’ve still got mangoes, small stone fruits, luscious mameys (oh god — you should see their sunset-red flesh) and, the best of all, an abundance of quelites, which I’ve talked about on this blog before.

“Quelite,” pronounced keh-LEE-tay, is a catch-all term for pretty much any tender Mexican green. Epazote is considered a quelite, as is purslane (verdolagas), watercress (berros), chaya, romeritos, pápalo, pipicha. I ended up buying a big bunch of tender, almost peppery-tasting quelites from one of my favorite vendors for 10 pesos. They sat in my fridge for almost a week, washed and disinfected and stored in my salad spinner.

Last night I didn’t feel like cooking or eating out — there is such a thing as running to my corner empanada joint too many times — so I took out the quelites and made a quick guisado, tossing the leaves into a mix of tomato, onion and garlic.

On my tours, I talk a lot about how guisados are one of the workhorses of Central Mexican cuisine. A guisado doesn’t have to be anything fancy. It can have chile, or not. It can have garlic, or not. Generally it has a base of chiles, garlic and onions, and an acidic element like tomato or tomate verde. But the tomatoes don’t necessarily have to be cooked and blended. I chopped mine.

The result was comforting and simple, and I felt good for being healthy for once. You should know that last week I ate antojitos like a fiend. Gonna post a recipe for gorditas soon.

Simple Guisado de Quelite (greens stewed with tomatoes, onion and garlic)
Serves 4 with rice or grain of your choice

With a guisado, there aren’t really any rules, but Mexican cooks tend to not go overboard on the onion. You just want the perfume of onion flavor — you don’t want onion por todas partes. And of course it helps to use the freshest vegetables you can find.

2 pounds quelites, or any other green of your choice, washed and thick stems removed
1/2 to 3/4 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1/2 to 1 jalapeño or serrano chile, seeded and minced (optional)
3 to 4 ripe tomatoes, chopped
Chicken or vegetable broth, or water

Heat a small amount of oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Add the onion and cook until translucent. (In Spanish, this is called “acitronar.”) Then add the garlic and chiles and cook until aromatic, usually just a few seconds. Add the tomatoes and cook, lowering the flame a little so they don’t dry out too quickly. When tomatoes have softened, add the greens and about 1/2 cup of liquid. Bring to a boil and add salt to taste. The amount of liquid is really to taste here, too — you can make it as soupy or as thick as you like.

Simmer the mixture gently, covered, until the greens are tender and the flavors have mixed together. Serve with warm tortillas, rice, quinoa, or grain of your choice.

Rainy season has arrived

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Warm breezes. Darkening skies.

I’ve had a few “I hate Mexico” days lately, but the rainy season brings me back to why I love it here. These are the things that make up my neighborhood:

A guy racing by on his bicycle, an orange basket strapped to the back.

The pan dulce guy riding his bicycle down the street at 8 a.m., and then again at 4 p.m., his yellow and white striped conchas sitting snugly under a plastic sheet.

The norteño-themed taco guys, scrubbing their grill and closing up for the day.

The Condesa hipsters sitting outside Pizza Amore in flannel shirts and black-frame glasses.

The little ice cream truck at Parque Mexico.

Morning rituals

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Every morning I get up and head into the kitchen. I turn on our little Internet kitchen radio, which streams NPR from the States, and I set a teakettle to boil on the stove. Then I wash the rest of the dishes from last night, clean the counters, wipe the stove. All of this relaxes me. So does throwing in a load of laundry.

Once my tea is ready, I take it into my office and turn on my desk lamp, which throws a little bit of warm light on everything. Then I start my day.

We all have little things we do that relax us.  What’s your morning ritual?

 

 

The long, drawn-out, telephone goodbye

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Whenever I’m on the phone with a Mexican person and we’re about to hang up, they linger, as if they really don’t want to say goodbye.

Me: “Bueno, te dejo.” Well, I’ll let you go.

Them: “Sale pues.”

Me: “Este… sí.”

Them: “Nos vemos.” See you soon.

Me: Silence.

Them: “Un beso.” A kiss.

My problem is that I don’t have enough of these goodbye-filler words in my arsenal. (I don’t know what “sale pues” entirely means, for example.) In the U.S., we generally say “Ok, I’ll talk to you later, bye” and hang up. Most Mexicans I’ve talked on the phone with don’t do this, and I end up hanging up too quickly, which seems rude.

I use cuídate and nos vemos. Part of me wants to throw in ándale, too, as a type of “Okay then, sounds good.” But I’m still unsure whether “un beso” works for male and female friends, and how to say goodbye when I’m talking to someone in a professional context. Cuídate seems too personal then, no? Maybe just a simple gracias, hasta luego.

Any Spanish-speakers out there have any guidance?

On a clear day, it’s a whole other city

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The view today outside my office window, looking west

Mexico City lies in a basin, surrounded by mountains. Usually you can’t see them because they’re wrapped in smog, but every now and then, cool breezes sweep through and unmask everything.

It’s rare for this to happen without rain. (Think the equivalent of warm spring days in Boston, or a humidity-free summer day in New York.) For the past two days, though, Crayton and I have woken up to find the mountains peeking out over the rooftops, like these ghostly creatures that have suddenly developed an interest in studying our chaos and traffic.

It’s almost spooky. Where did these aliens come from?

Their other-worldliness makes me think of a line I read in The Conquest of Mexico, about how seemingly normal events used to freak out the Mexica. A rabbit running into a house wasn’t just a rabbit running into a house — it meant something, it was a sign, it had to be studied.

I hope the mountains’ arriving amid an otherwise hot, dusty and sweaty June means it’s going to rain soon. So far we’ve only gotten sprinkles. It’s almost July. Rainy season, where are you?

Homemade pineapple atole

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Part of me really did think that since I made pineapple atole before in cooking class, I’d be a whiz on it the second time around.

That wasn’t the case. In my own kitchen, without my classmates looking over my shoulder, I didn’t dissolve my masa very well. I ended up with little hard bits that I had to strain out. I also wasn’t sure how much masa to add, since I’d downsized the original recipe. (My pot held 2 liters of water, instead of the 3 we used in class.) I put in 170 grams of masa and hoped for the best.

But do you know what I learned? Atole is very forgiving. It really doesn’t matter how much masa you put in it, or how much fruit. As long as you dissolve and blend things correctly, it’s all to your own taste.

My own result, at the end of 40 minutes of careful cooking and tasting, was a thick, sweet drink that was just as good as the one I’d made in cooking class. And it tasted much more pineappley, since I’d added in an entire 4-lb. fruit.

Unfortunately all I had to serve it with were freezer-burned tamales. Oh well.

Recipe below.
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Sexism, crime and taxis in Mexico City

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An authorized "Pink Taxi" in Puebla, which only picks up women.

I’ve lived in Mexico City for two-plus years without a car. In that time, I’ve only had female cab drivers twice — once coming back from the bus station in 2009, and once a few weeks ago, when I was returning from a doctor’s appointment in Polanco.

Apparently more than 800 female drivers work in the city, according to an article published last year in Milenio. A 2008 article from Inside Mexico indicated that there could be thousands more, but the overwhelming majority aren’t officially registered.

As a woman I’d love to see more female cab drivers, especially in crowded areas where there are no taxi sitios. It’s still not safe in Mexico City for single women to hail cabs off the street. Female customers traveling alone can be robbed, beaten or raped.

I was really interested in how this female cabbie got her job, so we struck up a conversation. To my surprise, she seemed eager to share her story.

The driver’s name was Clara Dominguez, and she said she ended up as a cabbie four years ago after being laid off from her job in sales.

“I did very well in sales — very well,” she said, as we zoomed down Thiers, a busy avenue that connects Polanco to Reforma. “My boss wanted younger women.”
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The perfect gift for a Mexican-food lover

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Last week over lunch at El Cardenal, one of the restaurant’s owners, Marcela Briz, stopped by our table. Dining with me were some fancy guests — Penny, two chefs from the States and Ruth Alegria. So Señora Briz graciously gave us each a little present: a lotería game she researched and designed based on traditional Mexican foods.

I’ve seen riffs on the traditional lotería game before, but never anything that focused specifically on food. This game is actually quite educational. Each card contains a detailed description in Spanish of a variety of Mexican foods and cooking utensils. There’s a metate, comal, molcajete, cazuela, plus prehispanic foods like chinicuiles (maguey worms), amaranto and flores de maguey. And dozens more.

If you’re not familiar with how to play lotería (I actually don’t have much experience), Wikipedia says it’s like bingo except with pictures. Sounds easy enough. I wonder if you can play with mezcal?

As of now, the game is only available in Mexico City. You can find it the El Cardenal location inside the Hilton Hotel on Avenida Juárez, and at the Museo de Arte Popular. It costs 35 pesos, which seems like a steal for the amount of work that went into this.

If you’re a fan of Mexican cuisine and you’re passing through the city sometime soon, you should pick one up.