The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

America, the land of dry hands

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Lesley’s husband Crayton is filling in this week with a few posts.

Oh how I crave your American technology. Mexico isn’t a total backwater, but every time I return to the U.S., I get the feeling I’ve stepped at least a few years into the future. Look at all those high-definition channels you guys have! Your Internet speeds are so fast! And OH MY GOD WHAT HAPPENED TO THE HAND DRYERS?

Back when I lived in the States, oh those many months ago, public restroom hand dryers were a thing to be mocked. Everyone knew they didn’t actually dry hands. They just made them less damp, enough so that you could wipe them on your pants to finish the job.

But apparently in the past year, serious advances have been made in hand dryer technology. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Dyson Airblade.

What is this strange contraption?

Image from dysonairblade.com

The Airblade site claims that the device “literally scrapes water from hands,” which sounds painful. But all you do is dip your hands in the well and draw them out slowly as the thing basically vacuums the water off of you. BOOM. Dry hands.

I encountered the Airblade in a restroom at True Food Kitchen in Phoenix. I must have looked like an unfrozen caveman encountering this strange device, peering at its instructions skeptically, dipping my hands in gingerly. But it worked as advertised, smoothly and quietly, in about 10 seconds.

On the other side of the spectrum, but equally impressive, is the Xlerator:

ZOMG

Image from exceldryer.com

Found this bad boy at an Edwards movie theater in San Diego. Where the Airblade is delicate and refined, the Xlerator is an industrial-strength blast of air that nukes the water off your hands. Regular hand dryers feel like a summer breeze compared to this blowhard. Most impressive.

Will these technological breakthroughs change the hand dryer vs. paper towel debate? Both manufacturers claim, at least, that their devices are more energy efficent than paper towels.

Anyway, way to go America! Way to finally get those hands dry! This gives me hope that the next time I’m back home, my mother country will have tackled some other seemingly insurmountable problem. I’m thinking college football playoff.

Taking a short break…

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Haven’t told y’all this, but for the past few months I’ve been fighting a cold/ear infection that I can’t seem to shake. It goes away for a week, then comes back. This is despite me visiting doctors and taking antibiotics.

Traveling like an insane woman hasn’t helped. So starting today, I’m taking a week off to do nothing — no blogging, no running around town eating, and no cooking. Or rather, no intense cooking. Scrambling eggs is probably fine. With some sliced zucchini. But I’m not going to go on a crazy quest to create the perfect crunchy exterior on a square of grits, which is what I was doing a few days ago. (The result, if anyone cares: pan fry it for like 5 mins per side.)

Crayton will pick up some of the slack around here, and he’s already told me he has some great things to tell you about hand-dryers.

As far as the bug goes, I visited a lab this morning for a throat culture. Guessing that as soon as the docs pinpoint the bacteria, we’ll be able to nail it.

Hasta soon!

Cooking with Paula Lambert, and lots of cheese

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Last week during my trip to Phoenix, I was lucky enough to attend a cooking class with Paula Lambert, a cheesemaker extraordinaire who lives in Dallas.

Paula started making her own cheese before it was cool. A trip to Italy inspired her, and in 1982, she opened up The Mozzarella Company in Dallas’s Deep Ellum neighborhood. Today she has an online shop, two cookbooks (one is called Cheese, Glorious Cheese), and accolades from The James Beard Foundation and national food magazines.

I’d heard of her when I lived in Dallas. In the same room with her, though, I was kicking myself for not visiting her shop more often. She’s funny, smart and charismatic. She really doesn’t seem to notice that she’s a big-deal cheesemaker, and you’re a home cook who doesn’t even know how to pronounce “marscapone.”

Anyway, the cooking class, no big surprise, focused on cheese. It was held at the Phoenix home of Barbara Fenzl, a chef who offers cooking classes under the name Les Gourmettes Cooking School. Each class is small and intimate, conducted in Fenzl’s kitchen.

My mother-in-law is a frequent guest at Fenzl’s classes, and she’s the one who brought me along. About a dozen of us sat in chairs in the breakfast nook while Paula prepared the cheese-centric menu.

First up was warmed goat cheese with sun-dried tomato coulis…

Then pea soup with mint and marscapone….

And poached salmon with feta mayonnaise, served with arugula salad with fennel, orange and ricotta salata.

Finally, for dessert, a deliciously messy angel-food marscapone berry trifle.

I didn’t take any pictures while she was cooking, because I felt conspicuous. (The whole “approaching strangers with my camera” fear reared its head.) The photos above came afterward, when we ate everything in Barbara’s dining room.

Each dish was delicious, but I especially loved the salad. Fennel is still pretty unfamiliar to me, and its delicate licorice taste matched really well with the bright citrus. The goat cheese appetizer was great too, and so simple — a warmed spoonful of goat cheese, smeared on bread with a tangy tomato sauce. (Think I may use slow-roasted tomatoes instead, seeing as how sun-dried aren’t carried at my local supermarket. Or maybe… tomatillos?)

Paula gave me permission to reprint the recipes below, so here they are, after the jump.

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How to shoot mouth-watering food photos

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From what I’ve gathered in my short career as a blogger who rhapsodizes about food, there are two keys to shooting great food photos: lighting, and practice.

I’m still futzing around with both, and trying to wrap my head around the behemoth that is “composition.” Since a few of you asked, I wanted to share a few tips from the recent workshop I took with Penny de los Santos.

Penny is a senior contributing photographer with Saveur, and she’s also shot for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, among others. She gives food photography workshops throughout the U.S., and I’d seen raves about her recent Seattle class via her Twitter feed. When she Tweeted that she was offering a class in San Francisco on the same weekend I happened to be in town, I quickly signed up.

The class cost about $300, so it wasn’t cheap. But this was a relatively low price compared to other food blogging/photography classes and retreats I’ve seen. (Some of these places charge $600 or $900, sending the message that you have to be SUPER RICH to be a quality food blogger. This drives me insane.)

Just like I’d hoped, the class was fantastic. Penny was friendly and funny, and she somehow managed to synthesize buckets of information on how to shoot a great picture into eight hours. Definitely worth every penny. (Heh. Sorry.)

Here are the four main points I came away with, and my thoughts on whether or not you need a fancy DSLR camera to shoot great photos.
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Bucking the e-book trend, with books coming out of my eyeballs

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One of the weird changes that’s happened to me since I moved to Mexico is that I’ve become ravenous for books.

I’ve always loved reading. I brought a packed bookshelf into the relationship when Crayton and I got married, then I got rid of a few dozen paperbacks, and then we slowly created another packed bookshelf, which is with us in Mexico.

When I lived in the U.S., I only visited bookstores to buy gift cards for friends or if an author I liked was giving a reading there. Crayton’s voice would echo in my mind every time I bought a book off Amazon: “Where are we going to put them?”

Lately, though, I buy books with absolutely no regard for the future. Our Mexico bookshelves are just about packed, and I don’t care.

A few days ago, while purchasing a discount copy of The Best American Travel Writing 2008 — I book I never would have bought PM (pre-Mexico), because anthologies are the types of books I breeze through, love briefly and forget about, and then give away four years later — I actually thought a tall stack of books might be a kinda cool decorative touch. A shabby-chic intelligensia kind of thing, maybe. (Don’t worry, I’m not really going to do this, it was a fleeting thought from a woman obsessed.)

These are the books I’m taking back to Mexico with me, after about two-and-a-half weeks in the States. And this is just my list, mind you. Crayton has about eight more books of his own. One of them is called “Cold,” and it’s about cold. As you can see, we have vastly different tastes.

1. Regional Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy. Scored this 1984 edition at Cookin’, a vintage kitchenware store in San Fran. There wasn’t even a question of where or not I’d buy it. It is DK, people.

2. From My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients by Diana Kennedy. This is her new book, which I purchased on Amazon. It’s full of the detailed information she’s famous for — the sections include “Fresh and Dried Chilies,” and “Making Vinegar.” Lots of beautiful photos, too.

3. Food from My Heart by Zarela Martinez. I love Zarela! She always posts interesting tidbits about Mexican food on her blog. I read about this book on Amazon, and it mixes personal stories with recipes, which is just the kind of cookbook I gravitate toward.

4. What the Dog Saw by Malcom Gladwell. It’s a collection of his New Yorker essays, and the quirky, random quality of each makes it the best airplane reading ever. For example: Did you know a Catholic scientist was among the American inventors of The Pill?

5. Recipes from the Old South, by Martha L. Meade. Another treasure from the San Francisco vintage cookware store, published in 1961. The first recipe, “Bacon Biscuit Balls,” won me over. I must make it for Crayton someday, followed by a gigantic salad.

6. Salsas by Ricardo Muñoz Zurita. A gift from my mother-in-law, who knows how much I love this guy.

7. The Looming Tower: The Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright. Been on my list for awhile.

8. One Amazing Thing by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni. An impulse buy at the bookstore, with book-jacket blurbs from Jhumpa Lahiri, Abraham Verghese and Louise Erdich. I cannot pass up a book that’s recommended by those three.

9. Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop. Recommended by a new friend. It’s about a British woman who moved to China and became obsessed with the food.

Truthfully, part of me hopes that someday I’ll have an entire room for my books, a library of my own, with cherry wood paneling, a leather chair and a duck phone like the one from Silver Spoons. This is probably not going to happen in Mexico — we can only afford two bedrooms tops in our neighborhood, and hubby needs somewhere to put the TV — but a girl can dream.

We’ve debated getting an iPad or Kindle, but haven’t decided yet. It certainly would cut down on our overweight-suitcase anxiety. We’ll see.

Barrio Cafe in Phoenix: Truly chingona Mexican food

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My father-in-law and I hit up Phoenix’s Barrio Cafe last night. It’s one of his favorite restaurants, and my mother-in-law’s, too. The restaurant’s motto is “comida chigona,” which roughly translates to “f**ing good food.”

They were a little worried that it wouldn’t be authentic enough for my chilanga tastes, but I checked out the menu beforehand and it looked pretty creative: salads with queso fresco, roquefort, apples and toasted pecans; upscale tortas topped with goat cheese and chicken and caramelized onions; steak paired with blue cheese, longaniza sausage and caramelized shallots. (You can download the whole drool-worthy menu for yourself here.)

The authenticity question is tricky, because to be honest, you wouldn’t find this type of menu in DF. (Tortas with goat cheese? No one has gone there.) But the food isn’t the typical for the U.S., either. There aren’t any chips and salsa here, or nachos, or the gloppy Monterey Jack/Colby cheese melt that usually comes draped over enchiladas. The food at Barrio Cafe takes a traditional Mexican idea and amps it up with an American twist — just a small twist, really, so it still retains its Mexican roots.

Anyway. Mexican Food Philosophy 101 is now over, I’ll get onto the food.

Oh, but wait. Before I do that, I have to let you know that the chef, Silvana Salcido Esparza, picked a real Latino neighborhood for her restaurant. It’s in downtown Phoenix, across the street from a dollar store, down the road from an income tax store called “Tio Rico Te Ayuda” and near several dive-y Mexican joints with crumbling, paint-peeling signs. It is an upscale Mexican restaurant in a a lower income Mexican neighborhood, and you don’t see that very often.

Ok, now really onto the food.

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Pecan pie, steaks and my husband’s birthday

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We celebrated Crayton’s birthday last night.

We’re lucky enough to be visiting his parents in Phoenix, so we had a special meal. Crayton’s dad grilled some insanely thick steaks, and his mom made her famous pecan pie. (She buys the pecans from Albany, Georgia, because the ones in Arizona aren’t as good.)

We also had ramekins full of mashed potatoes, bacon, scallions and cheese. Crayton was in heaven. I couldn’t resist telling him: “Aren’t you just super excited for the big bowl of vegetables I’m going to make when we get back?”

We drank Elizabeth Spencer wine, and sipped cognac. At least one of us noted: “I wonder what the poor people are doing right now.” (This is one of Crayton’s dad’s favorite phrases, as a subtle way to say that we’re blessed.)

It’s nice being here. The house is quiet, and the weather’s sunny but not too hot. Today we’re going to a baseball game and later Crayton and his mom are going to watch the Phoenix Suns beat the Trailblazers.

Instead of going to the game, I’m heading out to Barrio Cafe with Crayton’s dad, which I am super excited about. The chef, Silvana Salcido Esparza, is a semi-finalist for a James Beard Award this year. Plus I have a new orange strapless summer dress I’m dying to wear.

Just grateful to be with family. Hope you’re feeling the same way too. Un abrazo, and more later.

Mexican chef Martha Ortiz to open two new restaurants in DF

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A few weeks ago, a little item in El Universal mentioned that Martha Ortiz Chapa is developing two new restaurants in the Mexico City. Ortiz was behind the much-heralded but now closed Aguila y Sol restaurant, which specialized in high-end Mexican cuisine. Her new projects will be part of the Las Alcobas, a chic new hotel that recently opened in Polanco.

I reached out to the folks at Las Alcobas, and they were kind enough to send me some information. Here’s what I got:

The restaurants will be called Barroco and Dulce Patria, and they’ll be be located inside the hotel at Presidente Masaryk and Anatole France. Both restaurants will “venerate Mexican gastronomic traditions.”

Barroco will offer exotic moles, tamales, and even buñuelos, throwing back to one of the greatest moments of Mexican culinary history. (Guessing the baroque age? The press release doesn’t spell it out.) Design will veer toward intimate and unpretentious, with Mexican artesanía objects on the tables. Look for it in mid-July of this year.

Dulce Patria will be more lively and colorful, with a bar serving cocktails, mezcal, tequilas, flavored Mexican raspados and other “pequeñas delicias frías.” (Love that phrase.) The food will include ceviches, tostadas, guisados colorados and aguas frescas crowned with flowers, among other items. The wine menu will also emphasize Mexican varietals. Look for it in mid-April.

I never got to try Aguila y Sol — it closed before I moved here — but I’m really looking forward to trying out Ortiz’s new ventures. Will give you a full report once they open!

Eating in San Francisco’s Mission District, and beyond

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I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I’m in San Francisco this week, visiting a good girlfriend.

Of course, much to the chagrin of my now-tight jeans, I’ve been doing some fabulous eating. A few days ago, I took a food photography course with Penny de Los Santos, which gave me an excuse to wander around the hip Mission District and shoot everything that struck my fancy. Here are a few images from that day, and some of the other amazing things I’ve eaten while I’ve been here.

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A taste of TJ

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Hi everybody! Lesley’s husband Crayton here again. I’ll be your substitute blogger today.

Last weekend I went with friends to Salon Corona II, a nice downtown cantina with two levels. It’s become a good standby because it stays open pretty late and has decent tacos and tortas. (The original Salon Corona is a couple blocks away, and apparently has a long and storied past.) Let’s just say that the beer flowed like wine and afternoon quickly turned to evening, so I’m not sure who ordered the Tijuana beer first. But I’m glad he or she did.

What is this strange beer?

Tijuana Beer is a microbrewer in the border city, and its Web site lists a ton of places you can buy it in the U.S. In an exciting development, somehow the little brewer managed to break through Mexico’s beer duopoly and get served at a popular cantina. There is hope yet.

Tijuana makes a few different varieties and names them based on the extensive Mexican taxonomy of skin-color grades. I had a Morena (dark), and apparently they also sell a Dorada (golden) and a Güera (light). How was my Morena? Tasty! Definitely hoppier than the dark draft beer I’d been drinking earlier. (Oh! I should tell you about draft beer in Mexico. Typically, if you are in an establishment that serves draft beer (and I would say such establishments are rarer than in the U.S.), you will have a choice of dark (oscura) or light (clara) beer. They will often not be labeled by brand. They’re just dark and light.) Anyway, the Morena was very flavorful and lively. I’d definitely recommend it, and I salute Salon Corona for giving its clients an alternative.

One other note on Salon Corona II: It’s a Pumas bar. (Not that kind of puma.) The fútbol team was playing against Chivas, the beloved team of my friend Carlos, who couldn’t contain his excitement and had me worried for my safety. But the fans do really get into it, and if you’re looking for a place to watch a soccer game and experience the passion Mexican fans have for their teams, this is a good spot.