The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Where’s the beef: Steak and rib tacos in Condesa

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I tend to favor pork, chicken or veggie tacos over red meat. But on Tuesday, my friend Ruth and I were ambling about town, and she had a craving for steak.

Ruth knows a thing or two about food, and I don’t want to deny her cravings, ever. So we stopped at Las Costillas, a taco joint on Pachuca and Juan Escutia that she’d been wanting to try.

It was a comfy, neighborhoody spot, with maybe five small tables, a cook and a waitress who was peeling vegetables for that afternoon’s menu. (The menu comprised three tacos, soup, rice and a drink for about 60 pesos.)

We ordered rib tacos to start and an order of black beans. Ruth also got some soup, which the cook graciously served even though it wasn’t supposed to be offered until after 1 p.m.

The tacos — which arrived in about four minutes — were smoky and flavorful, and Ruth said they weren’t greasy like so many tacos de costilla are. They also came with a bone, in case you wanted to gnaw on that for a bit.

After that, we ordered cecina de res tacos with grilled spring onion bulbs. Cecina is a salty, cured, thinly sliced cut of meat, and it was juicy and glistening and just gorgeous. The grilled onions were the perfect extra touch. Do you see those burnt bits? Yum.

Las Costillas also had quesadillas with mushrooms and cheese, made with pita bread instead of corn tortillas; and tacos with poblano, bacon, cheese and onion. (Getting those next time. Can you imagine all the gooey goodness contained in there?)

I didn’t see nopal on the menu, but the cook threw several paddles on the comal while we were there.

There was also a mirror tacked high up against the ceiling, so you could watch TV even if your back was to it. Very nice customer-service touch.

Lastly, they have a Lenten menu, so there’s no reason you can’t go on Fridays. Next time I’m in the area, I’ll definitely be back. Only downside is that they offer sodas only — no aguas frescas.

INFO

Las Costillas
At the corner of Juan Escutia and Pachuca, in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City
Open daily except for Sunday; I believe hours are 10 a.m. to midnight
Prices: Around 30 pesos for an order of three tacos

Where to eat in Mexico City: Casa Mexico

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I first went to Casa Mexico maybe three months ago, after reading about it on Good Food in Mexico City. Crayton and I weren’t immediately drawn to the place, to be honest. We were on our way to another restaurant in Roma when we walked by Casa Mexico, an empty, open restaurant with white tablecloths. It looked out of place amid the Zona Rosa’s fast food joints and cheap-beer bars.

Two uniformed waiters stood out front, as they are wont to do in Mexico. They looked bored, as if their only wish was for us to come and check out the menu.

So we stopped. I was kind of astonished at the prices. Forty-five pesos for a starter? Whoa. You don’t see that at an upscale place in Mexico City. Normally they’re at least 70 and above. Plus the menu looked interesting: organic chicken with two types of pre-hispanic sounding mole sauces; itacates (no idea what those were) with quelites. I’m a sucker for quelites, so we ditched the Roma restaurant idea and decided to stay there.

I didn’t regret it. Two very attentive waiters took our drink order almost immediately and walked us through the menu. (One complaint: the menu has no descriptions.) Many of the items ended up being regional, comfort-food Mexican dishes I’d never heard of before: itacates were corn-husk wrapped packages of steamed greens, sprinkled with goat cheese; tacos de chan chan were a piquant mix of fish with lime juice and adobo spices.

They also had sopa de milpa, a traditional, farmer’s-style soup with corn, epazote, squash and squash blossoms, poblano peppers, and chicken stock; and pellizcaditas de tuétano, a Veracruzan antojito comprising a type of masa-and-lard sope with pinched edges, topped with bone marrow.

We ordered the itacates; soap de hongos, or a mushroom soup thickened with masa; chilaxtle de cerdo, a chunk of roasted pork in a red toasted-chile seed sauce, and a green-bean salad with sesame seeds. (The latter was for me, attempting to keep the ol’ waistline in tact.)

Crayton also ordered a mezcal, which came with sliced grapefruit, oranges, chile powder and a few chapulínes.

The itacate, topped with crunchy fried tortilla strips

The green bean salad with grilled baby corn and tomatoes

Chilaxtle de cerdo, or pork in a red toasted-chile seed sauce

Chocolate mezcal cake

Everything was exceptional, save for the somewhat bland mezcal cake. The prices were extremely fair, and the service was probably the best I’ve gotten in Mexico, although I daresay the waitstaff might have hovered a wee bit too much. But that was a tiny complaint.

About two weeks later, Crayton and I went back with his parents who were visiting Mexico City for the first time. We weren’t as wowed as we were during our first visit — this time, the service was a bit more disorganized, and our waiter insisted on speaking English even though he couldn’t translate the menu as well as he thought he could. The waiters hovered much more.

Still, though, it was an above-average experience. Some things were brilliant: the pollo en alcaparrado oaxaqueño was probably the best chicken dish I’ve had since living in Mexico City, with tender meat covered in a luscious, tangy-sweet mix of capers, tomatillos, chiles and raisins. I also loved Crayton’s pollo al chilmole, a leg of chicken that’d been smothered in an ashy, carbony mole sauce.

I’ve since recommended Casa Mexico to two friends. One liked it, and the other said it was good, but the food was a little inconsistent. I still think the prices and the regional dishes make it a strong contender. There aren’t many places in this city that offer this kind of off-the-beaten-path Mexican food, in an imaginative yet unfussy way.

More info below if you’d like to check it out.

INFO

Where: Casa Mexico, Genova 70 between Londres and Liverpool in the Zona Rosa
What to order: Definitely get the itacates and pollo en alcaparrado oaxaqueño.
Prices: Appetizers start at 44 pesos; main plates range from 90 to 152 MXP. The wine list is also very reasonable, with several Mexican bottles in the 300/400 peso range.

MORE

Read the Washington Post’s take on Casa Mexico.
Download Casa Mexico’s menu in PDF here.

UPDATE: Casa Mexico has closed as of spring/summer 2010.

Homemade black bean burgers with cilantro-chipotle mayo, and ginger-carrot slaw

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My local grocery store doesn’t sell frozen veggie burgers. So if I want one, I have to make them from scratch. (Insert groan here.)

Really, I hadn’t craved them until recently. Who wants a veggie burger when you can have a warm carnitas taco? But then my pants starting getting a wee bit too tight. And I thought, well, maybe it’d be nice to have some more veggies in my life. (This from the girl who used to eat salads every day in the U.S., and whip up a frozen veggie burger at least twice a week. Sometimes I don’t know who I am anymore.)

I’d made homemade veggie burgers once before when I lived in Dallas, and I remember it being an intensive process, and one I didn’t necessarily want to repeat again. Then, a few months ago, I was flipping through a copy of Cooking Light that my mom had sent me in the mail, and I saw a recipe for a quick black bean burger. It called for mixing beans with onions, spices, some egg and breadcrumbs. Sounded easy enough.

A few days ago, I whipped some up for dinner, adding my own Mexican-ish tweaks — bolillo roll for the breadcrumbs, a serrano pepper for spiciness, and a good slather of cilantro-chipotle mayo on top. (Cilantro-chipotle mayo tastes good on just about anything.) Paired the burgers with a gujarati grated-carrot salad, a warm, gingery, toasty side dish that comes together in a snap.

Found the carrot recipe in a charming cookbook called Cooking Com Bigode, which my friend Jesica gave me a while back. The book, whose name is Brazilian Portuguese for “Cooking With Moustache,” doesn’t so much offer specific measurements as loose instructions designed to empower the home cook. It was written by Jesica’s bohemian friend Ankur, an Indian guy who camped out in Brazil for awhile.

If you don’t have carrots, you can pair the burgers with any other salad you want. I think something mild might be best, as to not overpower the gooeyness of the cilantro/chipotle mayo and spicy black beans. Maybe tomatoes with queso fresco and black pepper. Or even jicama with a spot of lime juice.

A quick note: These burgers don’t have a typical “burger” consistency. They’re soft and kind of creamy, but crunchy on the outside from a nice sizzle in the frying pan. Ergo, I wouldn’t pair them with a traditional bun. I didn’t use any bread at all and didn’t miss it (I was too busy wow-ing over the mayo), but if you’re dying for bread, I would try a thinly sliced, toasted white or wheat bread.

Crayton, who loves a good carnitas taco, really liked these. Although he was a little alarmed by the mound of carrot salad I put on his plate. He said, “That’s too much,” and so I took some off. (I thought: How can one have too much carrots? They’re carrots!)

I know he’s very excited for all the other vegetarian recipes I have planned in the future.

Recipe below.
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Adventures in Mexican produce: The granada china

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I first bought a granada china — literally, a “chinese pomegranate” — a few months after moving to Mexico. I had no idea what it was (I’d been suckered by a tianguis vendor, oh naive extranjera that I was), and so I asked my Mexican landlady.

She said it contained a mucous-like sack of seeds. You cut the fruit in half and suck them out with your tongue.

The mucous idea scared me. The china slowly rotted in the fridge, and I never bought one again.

In India, we ate passion fruit right off the tree. The granada china bears a striking resemblance to passion fruit — actually, they’re related — and so at the tianguis a few weekends ago, I confidently asked for “dos maracuyá.”

A man behind the table laughed. “That’s not a maracuyá,” he said. “It’s a granada china.”

I bought a few anyway. Came back, sliced them in half — they opened with a satisfying crack — and dug into the gelatinous center with a spoon. It tasted similar to a passion fruit, but a little more musty — sweet, but without the bright, lemony, mangoey notes you sometimes get with passion fruit.

Eating it was so much fun. I used a wee spoon, and scooped out the soggy flesh from each half. We still have some Leblon Cachaça left, so when I feel better, hubby and I must try granada china caipirinhas on the patio.

Searching for the best concha roll at Snob Bistro

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I was itching to get out of the house last weekend, so on Sunday morning I told Crayton: “We’re going to breakfast.”

Didn’t feel like taking a cab anywhere, and I wasn’t in the mood for Sanborns or Bisquets Obregón. So we settled on Snob Bistro, an upscale-ish breakfast and lunch place in the Zona Rosa, about a 10-minute walk from our house. The online menu sounded appetizing enough — it had the typical Mexican chilaquiles and huevos, plus a yummy-sounding eggs with goat cheese in a pasilla chile sauce.

Plus, it was just kind of funny to visit a place called Snob. The website proclaims, “Are you a snob? Us too!” (The Zona Rosa, incidentally, has quite a few of these oddly named shops. I’ve also noticed a lingerie boutique called “Mom.”)

At around 11 a.m., Snob was empty, except for one table of about six people. (Bad sign?) We ordered coffee, and I asked for a concha roll, which was presented in a small basket with a croissant and a cinnamon roll. Wasn’t expecting much, since it was 11 a.m. and past the normal concha-baking hour. But the roll was surprisingly good. The breakdown:

Crumb: Above average — moist, but not so saturated with butter that it leaves an oil slick in your mouth.

Sugary crust: Decent. Stayed on the roll nicely (no loose-sock effect), and tasted faintly of orange blossom water. It seemed like it was missing something, though. Maybe a touch of cinnamon. Or maybe I just prefer chocolate.

Overall: Three stars out of four. I’d buy conchas here if I was organizing a brunch party, and needed to pick up something quick from the neighborhood. Still haven’t tried the rolls from Sanborn’s, though, which is technically closer to my house.

On Snob’s food: It was fine. I got the eggs with goat cheese, and they were tasty enough. Crayton got the huevos divorciados and liked them, too. I’m not sure I’d go back though — the service was quite slow, even for Mexico standards, and the juice didn’t taste fresh-squeezed. (I sound like a yuppie, but seriously: if you cannot get fresh-squeezed juice at a place that calls itself “Snob Bistro,” then what kind of world are we living in?)

The food also needed to be a bit more fabulous for the prices. The corn tortillas that came with my meal had the bitter taste of too much slaked lime. The goat-cheese eggs cost 70 pesos (~$5.50 USD), which is on the high side for one breakfast plate in Mexico. On the way there, we walked past a restaurant advertising an entire paquete — juice or fruit, roll, plato fuerte and coffee — for 54 pesos. Think we may try that place next time.

Snob Bistro
Londres 223 between Praga and Varsovia
tel. 5207 8963
Other branches located in Polanco, Interlomas and elsewhere

Spicy oatmeal with peanuts, cilantro and ginger

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One of the things I learned at the ashram was that I eat way too much sugar for breakfast.

If I’m not making mamey muffins while Crayton is rolling out of bed, I’m dreaming about making them, or flagging down the bicycle-riding pandulce guy. The problem with this — besides calorically speaking — is that I’m usually hungry again a few hours later. And sometimes kind of shaky from the careening dip in my blood sugar.

This issue could be solved by eating more protein-rich breakfasts, but the healthy ones, such as egg whites, don’t taste as good. (I know I sound like a six-year-old, but I don’t care.)

We ate savory breakfasts almost every day at the ashram. I loved all of them, because they were packed with spices, and they made my nose run. Most involved some combination of grains or starches (wheat, rice, noodles) tossed with fried mustard seeds, chile powder, sauteed chilies, ginger and onion. Usually I had two servings and I wasn’t hungry again until lunchtime.

My favorite of all was upma, a spicy porridge of semolina grains, spices and vegetables. To make it, you fry the spices and veggies, toast the grains, and then let the whole thing steam in the veg’s spicy-oily goodness. It’s served with coconut chutney.

In pictures on various food blogs, upma looks very prim, scooped into a little mound. This is not how we ate it at the ashram. Our upma was messy, and scattered around our plate in various lumps and valleys. We’d pick up a piece with our hand, swirl it in some chutney, and pop it in our mouths. The taste lay somewhere between Mexican rice and couscous, but with ginger and mouth-warming heat from the chili powder.

One day, the ashram’s cool chef/philosophy teacher told me that upma can also be made with oatmeal. A little thrill surged through my heart. Semolina isn’t easy to find in Mexico, so that meant that I could make upma when I got home!

A few days ago, I did. I used the the mustard seeds I’d bought in India, one of the items that the overzealous Mexican customs lady didn’t take. Added some dried curry leaves gifted by Alice; tomatoes, because they were plentiful at the local market, and cilantro, because I have two bunches of it in my fridge. Chopped a little onion and some ginger, and half of a serrano chile.

Traditional upma calls for frying a spoonful or two of lentils, but I used peanuts instead, because I had a bunch on hand.

The result was a hearty, spicy bowl of cooked grains, bright from the addition of the tomatoes, and nutty from the fried mustard seeds and the peanuts. Even Crayton liked it. He took a bite and said, “Hmmm…. gingery.”

I served this with a few spoonfuls of sliced bananas, dates and honey. Hey, the point isn’t giving up sugar entirely — it’s knowing that I can still be creative in the mornings without it.

Recipe below.
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Three things I learned at an ashram in India

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It’s not so easy to pick an ashram in India, especially if you’ve never been to India, and you’re not entirely sure what you’re looking for. I knew I wanted to study meditation, and breathing, and learn how to quiet my mind. But how could I even begin to choose a place? What if I chose poorly and ended up sleeping on a straw mat with mosquitoes biting me all night? (I was willing to do whatever for enlightenment’s sake, but with the least amount of misery possible.)

Nobody I knew had visited an ashram before. Ashram-review websites (“Check out the Top 10 ashrams in India!”) don’t exist. In fact, on the sites where people did share their ashram experiences, most people didn’t want to name the place, because everyone’s experience is different, and no one wants to unduly influence anyone.

I don’t want to unduly influence anyone either, but I’ve found so many people are truly curious about what the experience is like. So I’m going to share.
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The food of Bombay

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We spent 3 1/2 days in Bombay, and I ate like a glutton the entire time. This probably explains why my once-comfortable dark denim jeans can now barely fit around my waist. (Eating huge plates of rice for lunch at the ashram, and then falling asleep for two hours probably didn’t help either.)

But really: when was I going to be in Bombay again? It wasn’t even up to me. I had to have that crispy calamari with basil from Vong Wong. Had to try a few handfuls of the Indian-spiced snacks at the rooftop bar at Dome, while sipping my singapore sling. (A drink I’ve never ordered before, but hey, I was in Bombay.)

Check out the visual journey below. First up: idlis, fluffy, steamed cakes made from rice flour, and upma, a savory semolina porridge served with coconut chutney. Both came from Bombay’s Cafe Mysore.

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Indo-Mex fusion, and Jaipur’s lone Tex-Mex bar

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Quesadillas at an Indian Tex-Mex bar in Jaipur

It didn’t take long for me to start thinking about how to fuse Mexican food with Indian. Both use similar ingredients (chile peppers, onion, cilantro, flat breads), and both rely on a variety of salsas and sauces to compliment each meal. While slurping coconut chutney at Sagar on my second day in town, I thought: Why not coconut chutney on a taco? Why not a spicy sambar as a first-course sopa? With maybe some fideo noodles? There aren’t any rules that say we can’t do this. El mundo is our mariscos shell.

This type of thinking is dangerous for me, because I get really excited and then I start yammering on to Crayton, and then it becomes all I can think and/or talk about, and no doubt Crayton starts wishing that I’d move on to something else.

By the time we made it to Jaipur, the next leg of our journey, I was eager to share my Indo-Mex vision with someone else — namely, our friend Vikas, who lives in Bombay and planned to meet us in Jaipur. Jaipur is about three to four hours by train from Delhi, and the weekend we arrived happened to coincide with the Jaipur Literary Festival, a happening event that draws writers from all over India, and the West.

The festival was great. I bought a rose-printed kurta with red sequins that reminded me of Mexico, and we watched Tina Brown, Steve Coll and Vikram Chandra discuss whether the Internet has killed books. I was exhausted by 5 p.m. on the first day, but I couldn’t go to sleep, because then I’d be up at midnight, wide awake. So Crayton proposed pre-dinner drinks and apps at Amigo’s, a Tex-Mex bar he’d read about in our guidebook.

Vikas was skeptical. (He’s always skeptical.) But we convinced him in the end. (“C’mon! Three former Dallasites at a Tex-Mex bar in India! What could be better?”)

The place lay in the Om Tower Hotel, a somewhat shabby-looking cylindrical building guarded by a man wearing a Rajasthani turban. We took the elevator up several floors and exited into a dark tunnel, lined with rough rock. (Very old-school Space Mountain.) I’d expected sombreros and serapes, but the main room had been thoroughly blanketed in Western kitsch. Ceramic reclining cowboys supported glass-topped tables. There were ferns, and cactus, and mud-brown walls.

Interestingly, this place was marketed as upscale and trendy. We ordered vodkas mixed with lime juice, green chili and soda, a concoction Vikas suggested. They did have a few types of tequila, but both were strange brands that none of us had heard of. We also ordered quesadillas.

I wasn’t sure it was possible to create an Indian quesadilla, but that’s what we had. Two tortillas arrived covered in a béchamel-y white sauce, filled with a mildly spiced chicken (cumin-y, vaguely cinnamony), studded with a few bits of cilantro. There wasn’t any cheese, which was probably more authentically Mexican than they realized.

Over our drinks and quesadillas, I effused my vision of Indo-Mex fusion. The three of us threw out ideas: Potato masala tacos! Coconut chutneys as salsas! Tacos on chapati bread! At that moment, I desperately wanted a kitchen of my own in Jaipur so I could attempt to make some of this stuff. But alas, we were staying at a heritage hotel that didn’t include one.

It was a lovely night. After that, Indo-Mex fusion was my obsession on the trip, until I went to South India and became obsessed with upma and uttapam and savory breakfasts, and how to cook them using ingredients I can find in Mexico. I’ll get to that stuff later — I’ve already got a few recipes I want to share with you.

A few other things I enjoyed while in Jaipur:
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Delhi in a day

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The Baha'i Temple in Delhi

When we were planning our trip, we didn’t necessarily want to just spend one day in Delhi. What can you see in one day? It’s kind of a disgrace, especially if you think of yourself as the adventurous, special breed of traveler who has made it all the way to India. (As the guidebooks say over and over, India — with its poverty, and crowds, and traffic, and inefficiencies — is not for everyone.)

But Crayton and I only had two weeks together in Rajasthan and Mumbai, and we hoped to make it west to Jaisalmer, by gum, if our lives depended on it. That meant breezing through Delhi right after our plane landed. Delhi was a way-station — the place where our plane dropped us off, and where we refueled and reinvigorated before moving on to the next spot.

“Invigorating,” in the end, was not the correct word to describe Delhi. The place was loud. Polluted. Crowded. (Did I mention loud?) Men on bicycles, rumbly auto-rickshaws, cars, and pedestrians carrying bundles on their heads swarmed the streets. Every person with access to a horn honked it, as often as they could. I thought I knew horn-honking, but no. These people rarely paused. Just honk, after honk, after hooooooonnnnk…

When our plane landed at 9:30 p.m. on a Wednesday night, the entire city lay smothered with fog. As we taxied to the gate, outside it looked like we were still flying through the clouds. How did the pilot even find the runway? Later, I pondered the same thing about our cabbie, who attempted to drive us to our bed and breakfast with about two feet of visibility. Luckily we got there safely.

So yeah. We did not have much time in Delhi, and overall, I didn’t like it much. Not exaggerating when I say that when we left, I felt like I’d swallowed three liters of exhaust.

Negative Nelly-ness aside, there were a handful of things I did enjoy about Delhi. Our homestay, Delhi Bed and Breakfast, couldn’t have been more comfortable or quaint, and I’ll never forget slathering up potato parathas with butter and curd at breakfast, the kick-ass evening toast and tea, and sipping chai in the mornings.

I enjoyed our five-hour city tour, and winding through Old Delhi’s narrow streets on a rickshaw. And I loved my first introduction to South Indian food at Sagar Ratna, a dosa joint in Defense Colony.

I’ve listed each in more detail below, with photos. (Warning: Lots of photos. You may need a few minutes to scroll through them all.)
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