The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Calabaza batida from the Tlacolula market in Oaxaca

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We spent two hours at the Tlacolula market outside Oaxaca City this morning, and the dessert above is one of the best things we tried. It’s called calabaza batida and it’s squash — the tamala variety, as it’s known locally — cooked with water and piloncillo until it’s thick and saucy. The mixture is then topped with pozole corn.

I have lots more pictures to share with you, but I’m going to go read on the lounge chair while it’s still light outside. This is supposed to be a vacation, after all… even though I brought my computer.

How to make ponche, the traditional Mexican Christmas punch

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Ponche is a warm tropical-fruit punch. As I mentioned in my previous post — thank you for all the wonderful comments! — it’s traditionally imbibed in Mexico during Christmastime. Vendors sell it at night near the sidewalk Christmas markets. It’s also served with buñuelos during the posadas.

No one seems to know exactly how and why Mexican ponche materialized. In general, historians seem to agree that the punch concept originated in India, where English sailors took a liking to it and brought to Europe. The Spaniards (or the French?) must have carried the tradition to Mexico.

Today, the base of Mexican ponche comprises piloncillo, a dark-brown unrefined cane sugar, mixed with water and cinnamon sticks. To that, you can add pretty much any winter fruits you want: apples, oranges, guavas, tejocotes.

The latter two are key. Tejocotes are small, speckled orange fruits with an apple-pear taste, and their soft flesh turns almost creamy while soaking in the ponche.

Guavas lend just the right amount of tang and citrusy perfume. The smell of guavas cooking with cinnamon and sugar is intoxicating. Someday someone’s going to make a million dollars selling it to Williams-Sonoma as an air freshener.

The ponche workhorses: tejocotes (small orange fruits in front), guavas (left), apples and cinnamon

In addition to the fresh fruit, ponche can contain prunes, raisins, tamarind, walnuts. Some folks add hibiscus flowers, which gives the ponche a pretty burgundy color.

Ponche isn’t an exact science. Everything simmers together until the fruit is tender, and the dried fruits become plump, sugar-swollen nuggets. If you are like me, you will hover over the pan and give yourself a ponche facial, letting that sweet, spicy steam envelope your face.

You can’t see the steam in the picture below, but that’s because I was so smitten once the ponche started to cook that I forgot about my camera, and kept fishing raisins and tamarind pieces out of the pot to eat.

Ponche simmering on the stove

Ponche has a lot of ingredients, but it requires minimal chopping. If you have a helper the whole thing can be on the stove within 20 minutes.

If you like — and we do, in our house — a little nip of brandy, rum or tequila, feel free to add it in. Just make sure to serve the cups with a spoon, so everyone can dig into their boozy (or not) fruits.

Recipe below.
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Christmastime at Mercado Medellín in the Colonia Roma

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I’ve been kind of a Christmas grinch lately.

It’s not a fun time to be living in Mexico City. The traffic is twice as bad. Drivers become despots of their own car-kingdoms, leaning on their horns at any pedestrian in their way. (Even if us walkers have the light!) Christmas lights blink wildly on random street corners, part of these pop-up markets on the sidewalk. And there are no taxis available.

I had a whole post planned last week about how Christmas had turned me into a ball-busting chilanga who glares at everyone. At the end I’d asked for advice: what do I to make my spirit feel a little brighter?

I realized the answer before I could post anything. For me, getting into the spirit meant staying home and curling up with Crayton while listening to Christmas music and decorating our tree. It meant making ponche spiked with brandy. And visiting a market specifically to marvel at the Christmas items — not the hurried, in-and-out visit I normally do.

Last week I took a trip to Mercado Medellín in the Roma, which is where I buy my dried chiles and mole pastes. It’s also one of the stops on Eat Mexico’s Taco Tour.

Like nearly every market in the city right now, they’ve got piles of winter fruit for making ponche, which is the typical warm punch enjoyed during the holidays in Mexico. Dozens of piñatas and their long, papery streamers dangle from the ceiling.

Sugarcane, called caña in Spanish, is peeled and chopped used in ponche

Tejocotes, called Hawthorne apple in English, taste somewhere between an apple and a pear. They're peeled, seeded, halved and boiled until soft for ponche.

Guavas are at their freshest and most aromatic in December. They can literally perfume an entire room.

Tangerines aren't used in ponche, but they're plentiful around this time of year. They're called mandarina in Spanish.

After buying my ponche fruit, I discovered an area I’d never visited before, a hallway lined with fondas selling romeritos, bacalao and buñuelos. I asked the woman at a fonda called “Sonia” if I could have half romeritos and half bacalao, and she agreed.

Last year I had trouble getting into the whole romeritos-drowned-in-mole thing, but now the dish is growing on me. Good mole is key.

The romeritos are on the left.

A pot of bacalao from Chucho's, a fonda next door to Sonia's inside the Mercado Medellín

Buñuelos, with a pitcher of piloncillo syrup

After leaving the market, I felt much better, and I no longer wanted to kill any of the honking drivers on the streets. I even stopped at the Christmas tchotchke market and debating buying some hand-painted ornaments.

I’d still like to know: Are you feeling grinchy this year, too? What are you doing to get into the spirit of things?

How to make homemade corn tortillas, using an electric grain mill

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I wasn’t an immediate whiz on the Nixtamatic.

The instruction manual for my new corn grinder was woefully lean. It basically said, “Turn it on and enjoy!” so I waited until Lola came over to clean, thinking she might have intrinsic knowledge of how the thing worked because she was Mexican. (This seems like a ridiculous notion now, because very few Mexicans in this city grind their own corn. But I was flailing.)

Lola looked at the two-page manual, and I did too, over her shoulder. She looked over the parts and I did, too.

“I guess we should add some corn?” I said.

I had a bag of frozen nixtamalized corn, which I’d defrosted to use a test batch. We loaded it into the Nixtamatic’s collector tube and pressed the “on” button.

The plates squeaked and wobbled and corn went flying everywhere, ricocheting off the cabinets and onto the floor Lola had just cleaned. We both squealed and turned the thing off.

“Maybe that’s just what happens the first time you use it?” Lola suggested. I agreed, so we loaded more corn in the collector tube.

The same thing happened again.
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If you had four days in Oaxaca City, what would you do?

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I think it might seem like I go on vacation a lot, but I promise, I’m working up to my ears. In fact, I’m so busy that I feel like I have exactly two minutes to plan my and Crayton’s next trip — back to Oaxaca, but this time to the city. We’ll be there Dec. 18-22. Then it’s back to DF for Christmas and New Year’s.

I was stressing about planning the trip — where are we going to stay? It’s only two weeks away, for goddsakes — then yesterday, while I was on the elliptical at the gym, it hit me that I could ask you all for recommendations!

So where should I go? Should we rent a car and drive there, or fly? At this point I’m starting from zero. Only thing I know is that I’d love to stay somewhere with a kitchen, and that I want to sample as many moles and tlayudas as possible. Visiting a fábrica de mescal would be great, too.

Can you help?

Desserts of the Spanish convents in Mexico

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The kitchen inside Puebla's Convento de Santa Rosa, where mole is thought to have been invented. Photo by Jesus Guzmán-Moya via Flickr

Spanish nuns arrived in Mexico in the 16th century. Over the next 300 years, they’d play a big role in shaping modern Mexican cuisine, creating dishes that combined both Spanish and indigenous ingredients. Several of the convent-era dishes are still eaten today, including mole, chiles en nogada, rompope and several other candies and desserts.

We’re studying desserts of the convents in cooking class right now, and it’s been eye-opening to learn what the nuns created. The ingredients are humble compared to what we’d use today. One simple biscuit called a tlaco combines pulque and lard. A stovetop pudding called manjar blanco calls for boiling chicken, grinding it until smooth, and then mixing it with sugar, ground rice and milk. (Everyone in the class hated that dessert. One student called, “Who wants a licuado de pollo?”) Wikipedia says the dessert came from Spain, but using ground rice as a thickening agent is an Arab technique.

Butter is rarely included in the convent desserts, or heavy cream. Both were too difficult to store and too expensive. You don’t see any chocolate either, except as a beverage to accompany a bread.

Ladling out bienmesabe, a pudding made from ground almonds, rice and coconut, mixed with milk and sugar

While I was impressed by the nuns’ ingenuity and resourcefulness — I personally loved the licuado de polla idea, even if the taste was a little odd — I was absolutely smitten with how the nuns named their creations. “Bienmesabe,” for instance, is a rice, coconut and almond pudding that means “tastes good to me.”

Ring-shaped cookies flavored with anise seed, dipped in piloncillo syrup and sprinkled with powdered sugar are “rosquetes impregnados del espíritu del anís.” (Rosquete cookies impregnated with the spirit of anise.) Last week we made “empanadas de la concepción,” or conception empanadas, flaky lard pockets filled with pastry cream.

I ate those for breakfast over three days, slicing off little slivers with a knife.


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A long, lazy weekend in Huatulco, Oaxaca

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Good friends from Seattle came to visit us last week. Since it’s cold where they live, we took off for a long weekend in Huatulco.

To say we all needed this trip is an understatement. The Seattleites only get sun three months a year; I’d been dealing with Eat Mexico up to my ears (business is great) while simultaneously nursing a flu-ridden husband with Gatorade and soup and medicine. Crayton needed it because he was the sick one.

None of us had ever been to Oaxaca before. I’d kind of longed to visit one of Oaxaca’s small, bohemian beach towns (Mazunte perhaps) and wondered whether Huatulco, a planned tourist development boosted by the Mexican government, would just be another copy of Ixtapa. But it wasn’t. Huatulco was small and hilly and quiet, with resorts and hotels sprinkled around the area’s nine bays. The one bay we saw, Tangolunda, still felt fairly private. There were vendors, but not too many. Only sound was the breeze rustling the palapa fronds.

We rented a beach house on Tangolunda Bay, probably the most developed portion of Huatulco. A Dreams resort lay just down the road from our place, plus a Barceló resort and a golf course. The rental had three bedrooms and came with the use of a VW bug, so we could drive to pick up groceries or to dinner. (This also fulfilled a fantasy I didn’t know I had, to zip around in a bug in a Mexican beach town.)

Huatulco seemed great. But with only three full days of vacation, we didn’t have a whole lot of reasons to leave the beach house. This was the view from our bedroom:

We also had a pool in the living room.

We did explore a little bit. One afternoon we traveled to the Camino Real Zaashila to have drinks under the palapas and take in the sea breeze. We drove into Las Crucecitas, Huatulco’s charming downtown area, and had crispy-thin tlayudas piled with Oaxacan cheese at Sabor de Oaxaca. We slurped on paletas for dessert and walked through the square. We ate American-style hamburgers and Tex-Mex at the Tipsy Blowfish in Tangolunda, which is owned by a Texan. The salsa tasted eerily Tex-Mex and I couldn’t put my finger on why. Then it hit me: canned tomatoes.

We also grilled outdoors one night, setting up dinner on a table that overlooked the water and the stars.

Strangely, now that we’re back, I’m exhausted. Time to hit the gym and recover some energy. And maybe make a dent in some of those mimosas and chocolate chip cookies I had for breakfast.

Verdolagas (purslane) in salsa verde

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Verdolagas, called purslane in English, are a popular edible green in Central Mexico. They’re most commonly stewed with cubes of pork in tomatillo sauce, until the leaves are limp and soft.

I’ve been a bit scared to try them — I’ve met two people so far who absolutely hate verdolagas. (In The Essential Cuisines of Mexico, Diana Kennedy describes verdolagas as “curiously acid” and “very much an acquired taste.”)

But they’re cheap and abundant right now. And they’re much prettier than your average quelite. Verdolagas have these thick, teardrop shaped leaves, jutting out from a tender central stalk.


(Photo from The Kitchn)

No vegetable this beautiful could possibly taste bad. So, a few weekends ago, I bought a kilo at the tianguis. Tore off a raw leaf and ate it when I got home. The leaf tasted acidic and intense, almost minty. But it was not that bad. I wouldn’t put verdolagas in a salad, but I’d most definitely serve them under a blanket of stewed tomatoes.

Marichu had an easy-sounding verdolagas recipe that called for making a boiled tomatillo salsa, frying it, and then adding the greens.

In the end, this seemed like exactly what the verdolagas needed. A fried, liquified tomatillo bath lessened some of the greens’ harshness. In fact, after 20 minutes of cooking, I’d dare call the leaves sweet. They didn’t dissolve under the weight of the salsa, either — the leaves kept their hearty shape and texture.

Served these with leftover alubias and warm tortillas. It was a humble, comforting meal.

I’ll leave you with a few sentences from Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Encyclopedic Dicitonary of Mexican food, under the entry for verdolagas. He calls them “meaty and juicy,” which I’m inclined to agree with.

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Portulaca oleracea L. (Portulacáceas). Quelite herbáceo de la familia de las portulcáceas; mide en promedio de 15 a 50 centímetros de largo. Es suave, carnoso, jugoso y de sabor ácido. Se aprecia mucho como verdura, principalmente para elaborar diversos guisos y caldos. Juega un papel importante en la gastronomía del centro del país, donde es especialmente famosa la carne de puerco con verdolagas. Su nombre náhuatl es itzmiquílitl.

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Recipe below.
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The safest way to eat on the street in Mexico City

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A sweet, pineapple-flavored tamale from a street stand in Col. Roma

It’s a myth that eating any street food in Mexico City will make you sick.

But if you’re not used to eating on the street here, you shouldn’t just pick any stand. One of the most common questions I get through my Eat Mexico tours is: “How do you choose where to take us?”

Here are the guidelines I use when planning our Eat Mexico tour routes.

1. Pick a street food stand that looks crowded. This means several people standing up and eating in a cluster around the stand. If the stand is empty, and you don’t have a personal recommendation from someone else who’s eaten there, do not eat there.

2. Glance around and see if the stand looks clean. Are there stains everywhere? Dirty plates and napkins? If so, pass. I also pass on places where the food just sits in one big pile, as opposed to clean clay pots, or tupperware or stainless steel containers.

Plastic buckets are a common way to store various quesadilla or taco fillings in Mexico City. The ones above are quite large, which denotes high volume, which means the place most likely has great food.

3. Who takes the money? It’s a good sign if the person preparing the food and the person accepting payment are two different people. Smaller stands can’t afford this luxury, so make sure they place a piece of plastic over their hands when receiving cash or change.

4. The food must be freshly prepared. Some stands in Mexico City prepare a lot of food beforehand, and it just sits out. They don’t even necessarily warm it for you — it just goes from the container right into your tortilla. (My one exception here is tacos de canasta, which by definition sit out all day, steaming in a basket. They’re still really good.) These stands won’t automatically make you sick, but they just don’t taste as good. It’s a much tastier experience to watch the taquero make your taco right in front of you, or to watch the older woman pat the masa into a tlacoyo.

A woman prepares fresh quesadillas and tlacoyos at a street stand in Col. Roma

5. Feel free to make small talk while you eat, if you speak Spanish. Most stand-owners are nice and they’ll answer your questions, especially if you’re a foreigner. Ask, “Cuántos años llevan aquí, en este esquina?” which means, “How many years have you been here, at this corner?” Many stands have been on certain corners for decades. If you’ve found the tlacoyo stand with the little old woman with the gray braids who says, “I’ve been here 40 years,” you’ve struck gold.

6. Go during peak hours. This helps you get a better idea of which stands are the most crowded. In Mexico City, peak street food hours are generally 10 or 10:30 a.m., or 2:30 to about 4 p.m. (And then perhaps 8 p.m., when folks are getting off work.) Be aware that if you’re searching for street food at 6 or 7 p.m., some stands are closing up for the day, and you’re going to get the dregs of their daily product.

Do you have any tips you use when eating street food, either here or elsewhere? Feel free to share below.

Tacos de canasta with salsa verde, from a street stand in Condesa

Buttery, Mexican-style pan de elote

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Pan de elote literally means “corn bread,” and it’s one of those iconic Mexican desserts I can’t get enough of.

This is not like American cornbread at all. When it’s done right, it’s like the freshest homemade creamed corn crossed with a flan or bread pudding. It’s not so much a bread as a dense, buttery cake-pudding. That you just want to bury your face in. (As an aside, Azul y Oro was the first place that showed me how amazing pan de elote could be. If you go there, please order the pan de elote.)

I’ve been craving both sugar and corn lately, so last week, I picked up a few bags of fresh corn at the tianguis and decided to make pan de elote for the first time.

This being an iconic dish, I assumed there were several ways to make it. So I consulted my Mexican cookbooks to find a recipe I liked. Flipped through Diana Kennedy, Rick Bayless, Zarela Martinez, Josefina Velazquez de Leon and Fany Gerson before settling on Mexico en la Cocina de Marichu, a cookbook of traditional Mexican recipes published in 1969. (I bought it at the La Lagunilla market last year.)

In the “Reposteria” section, next to recipes for a Torta de Zanahoria and a Torta de Melón, was a simple recipe for a Torta de Elote. It contained only five ingredients: corn, butter, sugar, eggs and flour. Unassuming yet satisfying. Bingo.

The recipe called for grinding the corn up front, which would no doubt add that fresh corn flavor I craved. And it called for beating egg whites and folding them into the batter at the end — a step that kind of scared me a bit. I’m always afraid of under- or over-beating egg whites.

In the end, everything went fine, except for my crazy oven cooked the thing too fast. After two separate trips into the oven, the result was exactly what I’d hoped for: a rich, soft cake that tasted somewhere between creamed corn and the fresh, steamed ears they sell on the streets. Only sweet and slathered with butter.

I baked the corn cake in my springform pan because I didn’t want to fuss with removing anything from a greased dish, and I wanted to cut it into triangle-shaped wedges like they do in the restaurants.

Crayton took half of it to work. Later that afternoon I got a text from his coworker, Carlos. It read: “El pastel está GENIAL!”

The recipe’s below. For a similar pan de elote recipe with step-by-step photos, check out Mexico in My Kitchen.

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