The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

How to make a proper chile en nogada

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Every year in late summer and early fall, the chile en nogada makes its brief run through Mexico.

The star ingredients, walnuts and pomegranate seeds, are not available any other time of the year. So it’s a festive time. Restaurant storefronts become festooned with “We have chiles en nogada!” banners. Pomegranates glitter at the tianguis. Mexican Independence Day is right around the corner (on Sept. 16), and the dish is pretty much the culinary centerpiece of the celebration.

To me, the most interesting thing about chiles en nogada is that it’s a living piece of Mexican history. Puebla nuns invented the dish in 1821, to honor a visit by Mexican General Augustín de Iturbide. The dish featured the colors of the Mexican flag: a poblano chile stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, covered in creamy walnut sauce (white) and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and parsley (red and green). The Mexican flag was unveiled around the same period, so you can imagine the patriotic fervor.

Today, the chile en nogada sounds awfully baroque. Fruity meat? Pomegranate seeds? Who would eat that? At the time, however, nogada sauce was popular. And so was the idea of combining dozens of ingredients to create a complicated, tedious dish. (The Pueblan nuns also invented mole.)

Chiles en nogada is not an easy dish, and it’s not meant to be. That’s part of the tradition. Walnuts must be peeled. Spices assembled. Raw and dried fruit, chopped. Even after assembling your chile, you must dunk it in egg batter and fry it.

In the olden days, the nuns didn’t have blenders, so they ground the walnut sauce on the metate. As someone who has done her fair share of metate-grinding, I can tell you that it had to take entire days of grinding to get the texture they wanted. Let me repeat that: days of grinding.
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Real huitlacoche, in all its spooky beauty

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I was so excited to find this yesterday: a piece of huitlacoche, real huitlacoche, with the corncob still attached!

Usually vendors in Mexico sell huitlacoche (a corn fungus, obvs) in plastic bags, having already plucked the plump nuggets off the corncob. I bought this from an old woman outside Metro San Cosme, in the Colonia San Rafael. She had huitlacoche, nopal and a few bunches of herbs spread out on the sidewalk. Everything came from Toluca.

Fresh huitlacoche is a rare find in the United States, by the way. According to the cookbook Tacos, which I just stumbled on in Google Books (otherwise, I would not normally read a taco cookbook, because tacos are not dishes in themselves, they are a way to eat something) the U.S. government requires a special permit to grow huitlacoche, since it’s a fungus and the spores are disseminated through the air. Heaven forbid too much American corn becomes contaminated — how would we fulfill our corn syrup needs?

Unfortunately I won’t know what corncob-attached huitlacoche tastes like. I’m leaving town tomorrow for two weeks and won’t be home for most of today. Yesterday I gave my spooky huitlacoche to Lola, so she could enjoy it. She said she planned to make “unos ricos tacos.”

The glorious, messy Mexican torta

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The other day, I was really craving a torta. This doesn’t happen to me that often (I’m much more of a tlacoyos girl) but this craving was undeniable: I needed a stack of meat, melted cheese and avocado piled between layers of soft bread.

Since I don’t eat tortas that often, I don’t have a favorite variety. I asked my Facebook friends which type I should choose. The response was swift. “Cancún!” said my friend Hugh. “Anything with quesillo!” said Alejandra.

There are about 10 torta stands within walking distance of my house, but I wanted the best. So I went downstairs and asked the portero which one he preferred. He made a vague motion across the street. “Allí,” he said.

The only thing I’d seen across the street was a fonda, so I thought he meant across the street and down the block. I peered over the parked cars and didn’t see anything. And then, walking toward the corner, I saw it: a torta shop tucked next to the fonda, behind a tree, with a cheery sign.

The sign looked like someone had taken a bite out of the side.

Standing inside the cramped space, I kind of felt like being in a panadería for the first time. There were so many flavors! So many different meat and cheese combinations!

The long torta menu at ¡Tortas! in the Col. Roma

Even more options on a second torta menu at ¡Tortas! in Mexico City

I ordered the Cancún — a mix of chuleta, cheese and pineapple. (Thanks, Hugh.) But the shop had run out of chuleta. So I thought a bit and instead went with the Holandesa, which was the same as the Cancún, except with pierna. Of course it came with all the other torta fixins, too: beans, avocado, tomato, and a shmear of chipotle salsa.

I can’t tell you how excited I was when I took this thing home and unwrapped it. The greasy paper. The oozing cheese. The smell. I was so excited, in fact, that I managed to take only two pictures before taking a bite.

Since then I been thinking about tortas much more often, and I’m thinking this might be regular thing for me.

Next time I’m at the tortería, what kind should I get?

Guacamole de molcajete, and how to make it without fear

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I’ve always wanted to be an expert at making guacamole.

In my deep-seeded dreams for myself, I am that woman who throws a lovely, Mexican-food dinner party, featuring a simple batch of guacamole that blows everyone’s minds.

I could not make this dream come true, though, because I was too scared to make any. When I lived in Texas, I was on this guacamole high horse and didn’t want to use a recipe. So twice I made batches that were actually bad — one had too much lime juice; the other, too much onion. In Mexico City, I started making a kind of fast-food version of guac that combined avocados and Herdez salsa verde. It’s actually pretty good, but I felt a little ashamed to serve fast-food guac with something like homemade hibiscus-flower quesadillas.

Then about a month ago, I took a class on how to prepare salsas. We learned that the base of all guac is a pico de gallo — the combo of onion, cilantro, tomato and serrano chiles. You grind these things together in the molcajete and then add avocados. Top the whole thing with a few squirts of lime juice. That’s it. Doneskis.

I still didn’t have enough confidence to try it on my own, however, until I spent two hours seasoning my metate. Using just my two hands and a grinding stone, I had turned dried corn and beans into dust. Making guacamole? Pffft. That’s puny work.

About three weeks ago, with absolutely no nervousness at all, I used the ratios from my cooking class and whipped up a batch to accompany some quesadillas. The result was the best guacamole I’d ever made: buttery and creamy and evenly balanced, with a tang from the tomatoes. And I had made the entire thing myself. No Herdez.

I’ve since this a few more times, including at a party attended by some French tourists. They kept coming up to me and saying, “This is so good!” It was not exactly my dinner-party vision come to life, but close enough. I felt really proud.

Recipe below.
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Grinding chocolate on the metate, the traditional Mexican way

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Most people probably think of chocolate as being European, but the cacao bean itself — the bitter seed that gives chocolate its taste — is native to Mexico.

The Mayans were the first to domesticate the crop, thousands of years before the Spaniards arrived. (The name cacao actually comes from the Mayan word kakaw.) Later, Mexica priests and other upper-class Aztecs drank ground cacao as a beverage, mixed with water and spices. The Mexica venerated cacao so much, in fact, that they used it as a currency and imposed a cacao tax on conquered villages.

Yesterday at cooking class, Yuri told us we were going to make chocolate from scratch, in the traditional Mexican way. We’d each grind 1/4 kilo of cacao beans on our metates, drawing out the natural cocoa butter until the beans turned into a thick, glossy liquid.

In keeping with the way the nuns used to make chocolate in Mexican convents, we’d each receive a portable flame to place under our grinding stone. The flame would heat the stone and melt the cacao a bit, making it easier to grind.

I had no idea what lie ahead of me — a common theme in this cooking class — so I kneeled on my straw mat and began grinding with high spirits. The beans crackled and crunched under my metlapil.

We’d toasted the cacao beans in the last class, so pulverizing them produced this nutty, kind of toasted-walnut smell, mixed with aromas of intense dark chocolate.
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Homemade barbecue pork buns, rigged for Mexico

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Some of my fellow bloggers have opined recently about the lack of good Asian food here in Mexico City. It’s true: if you want good Asian food, with a few exceptions, you’re pretty much going to have to make it yourself.

Alice recently came back from a trip to the States, where she ate homemade barbecue pork buns (known as char siu bao) at her mom’s house every day. She was dying for more, but they’re not easy to find here. So she decided to make her own.

She called me and mentioned she was doing this, so I invited myself over to hang out and take pictures. I don’t know much about buns, but I do know a good photo-and-cooking opportunity when I see one.

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The most popular Mexican condiments, and why I love them

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After a year-and-a-half of living and eating here, I’ve finally started to understand Mexicans’ deep, intense love affair with condiments.

For those of you who aren’t as well acquainted with how Mexicans — specifically chilangos — eat, here are a few examples:

1. People here eat pizza with Worcestershire sauce (known in Spanish as salsa inglesa) and snow cones with chamoy.

2. They eat sushi, gleefully, with gobs of cream cheese.

3. They pile tortas with layers of ingredients (do you know the torta cubana?) and mix seafood cocktails with ketchup and hot sauce.

4. Jugo Maggi, a concentrated, salty sauce, is ever-present at restaurants, to sprinkle on soup or meat or pasta. The vinegary, hot Salsa Valentina is often served too, to drench on saltine crackers, potato chips, peanuts and fruit.

Basically, a dish is not appetizing here unless it is salty, spicy, creamy, meaty and acidic all at once.

I used to turn my nose down at the whole 12-tastes-at-once flavor profile. But recently — maybe it’s taking my cooking classes or starting Eat Mexico — I’ve become much more appreciative of how peculiar and Mexican this is.

The torta, for me, has become a thing of wonder: a single sandwich, the base of which is avocado, tomato, beans and mayonnaise. (That’s the base!) The bread is scooped out to make room for the fillings, because it is not acceptable to pile less than one-inch’s worth of two types of meat, cheese, pineapple and a fried egg. (Depending on what you’re ordering.)

While cream cheese is not an authentic sushi ingredient, it is quite utilitarian in holding your Mexican sushi roll together, especially when said roll contains grilled onions and camarones al ajillo. Worcestershire sauce adds a salty umami kick to pizza. After taking a few bites, regular pizza suddenly feels… plain.

Lately I’ve taken to sprinkling Salsa Valentina on saltine crackers. It’s kind of like an appetizer and bar snack rolled into one. A year ago I would’ve never, ever done this.

I’m curious whether you find yourself adding a bunch of condiments to your food, too. What are your favorites?

The Zen of bug-infested tortilla dough

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A few weeks ago, my cooking class instructor gave us our first major homework assignment. For the July 29 class, we were to bring one kilo of nixtamal, or dried corn that’s been soaked in a mixture of water and slaked lime. (Slaked lime is known in Spanish as “cal.”)

We could either soak our corn the night before class or do it Thursday morning. But the corn had to sit undisturbed for eight hours.

Luckily I already had my corn — I’d bought a kilo at the Central de Abastos about a month ago, before my cooking course even started.

I didn’t have time to make the corn Wednesday night. So at 9 a.m. yesterday, I padded into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, in my pajamas. I took out my corn from the pantry and poured it into a bowl.

I tweeted that I was about to make nixtamal. And of course I took a few photos.

Innocent-looking corn, before things turned ugly


The recipe I used, jotted down in class

I rinsed the corn under the faucet and shuffled the kernels with my fingers. And that’s when I spotted them: tiny black bugs, about the size of bread crumbs. My stomach dropped. There were bugs in my corn.
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Street-side Mexican quesadillas

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One of the most uniquely Mexican things to do in this town is to watch a quesadilla being made on the street and then bite into it while it’s still hot.

The women — it’s almost always women making quesadillas — slap a ball of masa into shape, or press it inside a tortilla press. The tortillas cook on the comal until they’re golden and crisp. And then, once the tortillas are firm but not overdone, the fillings are spooned (or tossed with one’s fingers) inside: anything ranging from squash flowers to huitlacoche to chicken tinga. The first few mouthfuls of a street quesadilla might be tortilla-only, and then the filling comes on like a little gift, warming your tongue.

I used to have a quesadilla lady in my old neighborhood whom I liked a lot. But I didn’t know what was available in my new ‘hood until a few days ago, when Jesica and I were poking around in Condesa for possible tour stops.

We asked a newsstand vendor if there was a place to buy quesadillas around here, and she motioned to some blue plastic stools that I could vaguely see in the distance. “Son muy ricos,” she added.

And man, as we got closer, we could see they definitely were ricos: maybe six or seven people sat on the stools, eating quesadillas. A few more were standing up and eating, and yet a few more folks were placing their orders. This place was slammed.

A team of three employees kept things moving. One woman grabbed handfuls of masa and pressed them into shape. Another woman hovered over the buckets and filled the cooked tortillas, somehow without burning her hands. The lone man of the bunch clutched a long spatula and flipped the quesadillas as they cooked, occasionally drizzling them with oil.

I think I may have murmured “Órale.” (I’m starting to get a lot better at using that word.)

We ordered one with half huitlacoche, half rajas with potatoes. We didn’t specifically ask for cheese and so because this is Mexico City, the quesadilla arrived without it.

After we turned in our plate and paid, we had to ask: How long has this place been here?

The answer was more than 40 years. Now that deserves an órale.

If you’re interested in going to this stand, it’s at the corner of Juan de la Barrera and the Viaducto, where it intersects with Avenida Chapultepec. In addition to huitlacoche and rajas with potatoes, they also had chicken tinga, mushrooms and maybe three other options that I can’t remember.

More photos below.
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Improvised tilapia pibil

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My husband is not a fan of seafood. Usually when I tell people that, they say, “Anything? He doesn’t eat any seafood?” And I say, “No. Nothing.” And then they persist: “Not even shrimp?” And I say no, not even shrimp.

Slowly, slooowly, I’ve been trying to introduce fish, because of its health benefits. But it’s been hard to find a fish that’s not overly fishy-tasting. (And it pains me to say that, because I love fish that’s overly fishy tasting.) A while back when we lived in Texas, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind tasting some tilapia. He agreed, and so I baked it in parchment and drizzled on some olive oil and lemon juice.

To my shock, he actually ate the whole thing. And he didn’t grimace, which is what he usually does when he doesn’t like a certain food. (The funny part is that he doesn’t know he’s grimacing. It’s pretty cute.)

We haven’t eaten fish in awhile, so yesterday I bought a few tilapia filets and decided to cook them in Yucatecan pibil-style spices. Pibil comes from the Mayan word “pib,” which means “cooked in an earthen oven.” The term generally refers to meat that’s been marinated in a mix of achiote, sour orange juice, garlic and spices. It’s wrapped in banana leaves and baked — traditionally in an underground pit — on low heat, until the meat is falling-apart tender. Cochinita pibil is perhaps the most famous dish made this way.

The pibil spices aren’t hot, in terms of chile peppers. The marinade is a combination of subtle flavors, with a zesty kick from the sour orange juice. It’s also pretty easy to throw together. If you don’t have sour orange juice, you can use half white vinegar and half regular orange juice.

I’m calling this “improvised” tilapia pibil because I baked it in aluminum foil, not banana leaves. (Not because I eschew banana leaves — I just didn’t have any on hand.) It worked fine. I need to keep banana leaves in the freezer though, because they impart a certain aroma that you don’t get with regular old foil or parchment paper.

By the way, Crayton enjoyed this. He ate the whole thing, again, with no grimaces. So we’re tilapia 2 for 2.

Recipe below.
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