Lesley Tellez

Back from America, and halfway Mexican again

August 24, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

We got back from our USA vacation last night, and I’ve realized there’s some sort of sign on our heads saying, “Search our luggage!”

When we went through Mexican customs, I pressed the button and the light turned red, which means the customs agent pulls you over to the side and makes you unzip everything. (This has happened to us four out of five times.) Luckily it was a cursory search. The agents looked under our clothes and then waved us on.

“You could have brought quinoa!” Crayton said.

“Eh,” I said. “I’ll just appreciate it more the next time I eat it.”

We did bring back a ton of goodies, though. Among them: good ol’ Kentucky-made bourbon, which you can’t buy in Mexico.

And dark chocolate M&Ms, which I promptly demolished when we got home. Notice the sexy lady M&M on the cover — I felt a little pang of nostalgia remembering how ferociously dark chocolate is marketed to American women.

Ghiradelli chocolate squares are impossible to find in Mexico City, if you don’t have a car and time to spend hours looking for them. So we bought them at duty free.

And I trucked back some crystallized ginger, for salads/breads/stir fries or chocolate-dipping experiments.

Among my other U.S.A. booty: wax paper and parchment paper, which none of the grocery stores I visit ever seem to have; discount designer jeans from Nordstrom’s Rack; a grill brush; lots of cookbooks and a few crime novels. Also snagged two cookbooks from my grandmother’s old stash, and I can’t wait to go all Betty Draper on them. (Sweet potato ham puffs, anyone?)

When we were coming back, I couldn’t decide whether our visit was too short or just right. The day before we left, I was sitting in my friend’s car in Seattle and staring out the window at the trees, and the light rail, and the nice grocery stores. I commented something along the lines of, “I don’t want to go back!” Although, of course, I did. I just didn’t want to leave the friends we only see once a year. They cheered while Crayton and I sang Sussudio at karaoke. They loved our jamaica flower quesadillas. And they were very patient and curious with all of our Mexico stories. I’m sure I’d get bored hearing them after awhile. (“And then we woke up without water… again.”)

It’s interesting, though. Finally, after seven months of living here, I’m not as conflicted about where my home is anymore. I live in Mexico. I’m a cuidadana here. The U.S. is a great place to visit, but that’s not where my heart is right now.

Today — with my tiny washer/dryer whirring, and clean dishes drying in my dish rack, and the cars occasionally honking outside the window — life seems just as it should be. Especially now that I have those Ghiradelli chocolate squares.

Burgers, fries and pies

August 19, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I may gain five pounds on this trip, but I don’t care. Sometimes a girl needs a cherry milkshake. With real flecks of cherry in it.

Got one yesterday at Big Tom’s Drive-Inn in Olympia, and it was everything I hoped a cherry milkshake would be. Sweet. Tangy. Creamy. Difficult to slurp through the straw.

Oh, and I got a burger and onion rings, too. It came with a side of “goop,” a mix of mayo and mustard and sweet relish. It’s the yellow stuff below.

Then I made cherry pie later.

Today I’m doing bikram yoga for the rock-bottom American price of $15 (it’s $22 in Mexico), and hopefully I will sweat out all the toxins from yesterday.

But when I come back, I’m having a slice of the blueberry bread that’s in the oven right now.

How to feel American again, in less than 24 hours

August 17, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

First: fly to Dallas and drive to Eno’s for American microbrews — an organic Mothership Wit, a Brooklyn Lager, and a Dale’s Pale Ale.

Chow on some thin-crusted, gooey, mozzarella and basil pizza.

Drive past old sites, and see old friends….

Stumble home to Ian’s house at 12:30 a.m., while contemplating the greatness of the American dirty martini, and the Sex with Jackson shot.

Drift off to sleep. Wake up at 5:30, and have your husband surprise you with a first-class flight to Seattle. (!) Have a bloody Mary, because it’s free.

Feel grateful for the existence of the American biscuit.

Later, once in Olympia, meet up with more old friends and drink more microbrews. And eat more pizza.

Off to Los Estados

August 14, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Just a heads up that I’m heading back to the USA starting tomorrow — Crayton and I will be in the Seattle area for a week, visiting my mom and good friends.

On the recipe list is a sour cherry slab pie, because my mom is the coolest ever and bought some Washington State sour cherries for me. (I’m drooling at the thought. With ICE CREAM!) We’ll also be in Dallas for a night tomorrow, where we’ll hopefully be eating at Eno’s and drinking at Cosmo’s.

Can’t wait to see old friends again. And drink American microbrews.

Bringing an extra suitcase for all the cookbooks, clothes, shoes and the CHICAGO BEARS GRILL COVER we’re bringing back.

See you soon!

Roasted carrot tacos with zucchini, and sweet n’ spicy Korean chili sauce

August 14, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Ever since I fell in love with the spicy, sesame-studded Korean Fried Chicken chili sauce, I’ve been slapping it on everything. Hot dogs. Tostadas. Tacos. I’ve offered some to Crayton, but he just looks at me weird and continues eating his food.

The other day, I decided to roast some carrots with honey and olive oil. And because I stick everything in a tortilla, I thought: Why not carrot tacos? Out the sauce came from the refrigerator, in its little recycled peanut butter jar. I slathered it on a hot flour tortilla and added the carrots, blackened and sticky in parts, and some zucchini and shredded chicken.

One bite and — MAN. It was a flavor explosion. Something about the sweetness of the carrots mingling with the tangy sauce. It was just about perfect. At the time, I happened to be sitting with Crayton at the dinner table.

“You have to try this!” I begged him.

He politely declined, and continued eating his tacos. Living with a crazy food-obssessed person is probably not as fun as it sounds.

Recipe below. If you’re not a taco person, eat the carrots as a snack or a side dish. They’re that good.
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Wild times at the Mexico-U.S. soccer game

August 13, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Okay, so yeah. We didn’t win. But that’s okay — going to the game yesterday was probably the coolest thing I’ve done here, even if I did get doused with beer. And who knows, we might have been doused with other things, if we would have worn U.S. jerseys. Instead Crayton and I wore red-and-white striped Chivas shirts and kept quiet.

It was a spectacle, though. Thousands and thousands of fans, almost everyone wearing green Mexico jerseys, blowing into horns that made them sound like an angry mass of bees.

Here’s a short video I took that shows what it was like walking in.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyyNxoikO64&hl=en&fs=1&]

And a few more pictures…

The bomb squad was there, just in case.

We sat in the middle section, behind the American goal in the first half. A helpful Estadio Azteca seat-finder led us to our spot and then asked for a tip.

Then my vocabulary lesson began. When the American goalie kicked the ball across the field, everyone stomped in their seats and yelled, “Ahhhhh….. puutoooooo!” And the guy behind me grumbled: “Putísimo.” (For the non-Spanish speakers, puto basically means “whore.”) Also heard a lot of, “El otro lado, cabrón!” and “Síguela, guey!”

It was weird to not be vocally rooting for anyone. But when Mexico scored their second goal, the whole stadium erupted. Cascades of beer fell from the sky. The guy in front of us, with “Cuau” painted on his back (an abbreviation for Cuauhtemoc Blanco, number 10), kicked his beer cup into the air, an arc of cerveza falling on the folks in front of him. Everyone hugged and laughed and yelled.

Just so you know, I captured a video of this, too, but my Internet connection is so slow that YouTube estimates four hours for it to upload. Ugh. More pictures for you instead:

We left the stadium a little early, not wanting to get caught in the rush of drunk fans. (Did I mention they don’t sell water at this stadium? Only beer, Coke and Fresca.) Got home, exhausted, around 8 p.m. The city had closed off Reforma, a gigantic boulevard near our house, for the celebrating fans.

Experimenting, and kind of failing, at no-knead bread

August 12, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

You may already know this, but you can actually make bread without kneading it. It is a big, gloppy mess, but still — you don’t have to stick your fingers in there, or do any work.

People love this idea. There’s actually a cult of no-knead bakers out there, inspired by a New York Times article that hit the Internet in 2006 that called for making a bread dough, and leaving it untouched for 20 hours. If you google “no-knead bread,” you’ll find videos about how easy it is. Blog posts. Even one set of photos where the bread’s made by a 4-year-old boy. (Who is extremely adorable.)

I never really got into the idea — not kneading takes all the fun out of baking bread, for me — but recently, after Crayton and I made grilled cheeses with the hangover potato bread, I started thinking. What would be the perfect grilled cheese bread?

No-knead bread is a crispy, almost artisan-style loaf, because it’s baked in a pot. So, envisioning gooey cheese stuffed between two dark-brown bookends, I called my friend Julie, owner of a large, 6-quart Le Creuset dutch oven. “Do you know about no-knead bread?” I asked her. “Huh?” she said. She’d never baked bread before, but being a curious, cool woman, she was in in a heartbeat.

Later I realized that 20-hour bread is probably not the best choice for two girls with busy schedules. We let the bread rise overnight, and in the morning, we plopped it into the pot and let it rise again, while we took a quick trip to Costco. Costco segued into Chedraui, and a quick trip turned into a three-hour tour.

I fretted a little over the bread — what if it had risen too much? What if it had fallen back on itself, and we’d have a dense rock of a loaf? — but I had no control over it, so I tried to put it out of my mind.

When we got home, the bread looked bigger, but not necessarily taller. It had swelled across the pan, like I imagine my hips will do by the time I’m 45.

We’d wrapped the bread in a floured kitchen towel, and planned to turn it out into the pot and bake it, like the recipe said. However, when we tried to unwrap it, the top portion of the dough clung to the towel. I hadn’t used enough flour.

Finally we got the bread in the oven, and about an hour later, we had a nice, dark-golden crust. But the loaf hadn’t risen much. It looked like a lumpy chair cushion, maybe twice the thickness of your average focaccia. As for the taste — not bad. Lots of air bubbles. Chewy crumb. Crisp crust. If only it was thicker, it’d make a hell of a grilled cheese.

There were lots of things that could have gone wrong here — I’d left our window open overnight, accidently, during the first rising in the oven, which could have made the house too cool; we’d been at Costco for hours and the bread could have risen too much; the whole floured kitchen-towel debacle, which killed about 1/4 cup of our bread dough.

I have learned, however, that I’m sticking to the kneading in the future. Why spend two days making bread, when you can do it in three or four hours?

My grilled-cheese bread quest isn’t over.

Hiking in the Nevado de Toluca

August 11, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’m kind of ashamed to admit it, but I’m not a very outdoorsy person. I really want to be. I want to be that woman who camps, and hikes, and owns like, three polar fleece shells, and can find her way around the forest with a compass. The sad reality is that I’m scared of bugs and snakes. And sometimes eating trail mix and beef jerky in front of the TV sounds much better than walking outside for five hours. (I’m wincing as I’m writing this. Oma and Bpa, if you’re reading this, I promise I really do love the land.)

However, on Saturday, our friends Julie and John invited us to go hiking on Sunday at the Nevado de Toluca. It’s a volcano and accompanying crater set up at about 15,000 feet, and visitors can climb into the basin and walk around. I’d seen pictures of the place and it had looked amazing: empty and pristine, with ribbons of snow covering the ground. Two lakes lay inside the basin, too, which just seemed eerie. Lakes on top of a volcano?

So, early Sunday morning, our tote bag packed with extra sweatshirts and our very outdoorsy Sigg bottles, we set out for the Nevado, located about 50 miles west of Mexico City. The weather was a bit overcast. We drove for awhile, and as soon as we got up into the mountains, the car’s temperature reader started dropping. 55 degrees. Then 50. Then 45.

When we finally made it to the parking area at the base of the volcano, we opened the car doors to a stiff, icy wind thick with mist. We scrambled to the trunk to put on more layers. Then we took a picture of our zipped-up selves.

Interestingly, there were a lot of Mexican families there. Some wore light jackets, and had wrapped themselves in blankets. A few people even carried their dogs. I love how Mexicans are always getting out and doing things, weather (or money) be damned.

Off we went on our trek to the rim. Since it’s so high up, there wasn’t much oxygen, and I had to take short steps. I started to feel a little light-headed.

“Does anyone else feel drunk?” I called to my four hiking companions, who were walking way ahead of me. No one said anything.

The view was just breathtaking, though. Clouds hovering over mountains. Floppy tufts of Cousin-It grass lay scattered along the trail. And these weird thistle-like things…

Several minutes of heaving breaths later, we’d finally made it to the rim. Unfortunately, the clouds were so thick, we couldn’t see anything.

But two stray dogs suddenly appeared out of nowhere, begging for some of our string cheese.

We decided to hike down into the basin anyway, on the off chance that maybe some of the clouds would clear. We hiked for about 15 minutes, the only sounds being the soil crunching under our feet, and our own breathing.

We came across a small pond. With the mist curling around the water, and air tightening in our throats, and the strange foilage poking out of the soil, I suddenly felt like I was on the moon. Or at least the next episode of Lord of the Rings. We all just sat around in silence, and stared.

The clouds hadn’t lifted much, so we walked all the way back to the car, dreaming — well, me anyway — of what we would eat for lunch. When we were almost to the car, the sun finally came out, uncovering a panoramic view of the city.

I’m sure we’d go back. The question is how to predict sunny weather, so we can actually see something besides the Cousin-It grass.

From the Recipe Exchange files: Korean Fried Chicken

August 10, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’m sorry I don’t have a better picture of the Korean Fried Chicken we whipped up last week. It was so good — crispy, and sticky, and sitting under a warm Mexico City sun just begging to be eaten — that I only managed to snap one photo before digging in. And then licking my fingers. And then wondering: what the heck else can I put this sauce on? (It turns out, it also goes fabulously with grilled hot dogs.)

So yeah. Korean Fried Chicken. Crayton first told me about it last year, gushing when he got back from one of his New York City trips that he’d tried the best chicken ever. I vowed to search for it in Dallas, but promptly forgot about it, obsessing over quinoa and homemade bread and all the other things that fill my brain on a given day.

Then, a few weeks ago, I saw a Korean Fried Chicken recipe on the excellent Viet World Cooking blog. The chicken — thick chunks of thigh meat, fried until crispy, and then mopped with a sweet-and-spicy, sesame seed-studded sauce — sounded heavenly. It was my turn to host our recipe exchange anyway. I hit the Korean markets intending to buy two ingredients: red chile paste and toasted sesame seeds. I ended up buying both and a wee bit more.

So, the girls arrived last Wednesday afternoon and everyone brought something. Julie brought a warm spinach salad with goat cheese and balsamic dressing. Tricia brought a truly sinful brownie pie with Reese’s crumbles on top. Alice brought pickled cucumber and daikon. Daniela brought a fabulous green veggie dip with yogurt and cilantro, which I need to get the recipe for. And there was Rosé. And melty camembert drizzled with honey and topped with almonds. And Korean snacks that tasted strangely like cereal.

I’d already marinated the chicken for a few hours in grated onion and garlic, and so we munched and talked, and eventually created the thick, gluey batter. A few others made the chili sauce, using the paste, ketchup, sugar and lemon juice. (The lemons, a rarity in Mexico City, had been discovered that morning at Mercado San Juan.)

When it came time to fry it all up, Alice manned the pot of hot oil. Daniela oversaw batter-dunking responsibilities. The rest of us watched and ate more Camembert.

By the time the chicken was done, Alice and Daniela were sweating, and we’d set up our folding table outside, to eat on the terraza.

When we sat down — a platter of warm chicken in the center, and a big bowl of salad, and each of us with a small glass of Rosé — Alice said: “I feel like we’re on a cooking show!”

And that was really the nicest thing she could have said, because I did too. You know that part at the end of the show where everyone sits down and eats, and laughs and talks? I always feel a teensy bit jealous during that part, because it’s one of life’s pleasures to cook something in your own kitchen and then eat it surrounded by friends. Yet here we were. Each of us contributing, and each of us bringing something valuable to the world in our own way. I felt blessed to know so many smart, cool women.

Thankfully, the chicken was pretty darn amazing, too: spicy, with just a hint of sweetness. And covered in a thick, crackly crust.

Recipe below, if you’re interested.
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Remember the smiling chicken lady?

August 7, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Here she is.

“You remembered me!” she said, when I went back on Tuesday to buy eight chicken thighs.

“Of course!” I said. “This time I’m making korean-style chicken.”

Her eyes widened. “Is that sweet or spicy?”

“Both.”

She smiled. “Ay, que rico….”

We chit-chatted some more, and she told me her name. It’s Lourdes, but most people call her Lulu.

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