The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

How dried corn becomes masa, or nixtamal

by

Nixtamalized corn, ready to be ground, at a mill in Mexico City. Photo by Keith Dannemiller.

Nixtamalized corn, ready to be ground, at a mill in Mexico City. Photo by Keith Dannemiller.

One of my favorite places in the Centro Histórico is an old corn mill on Calle Aranda. It’s one of the few places left in the neighborhood that still grinds dried corn into nixtamal, the dough that forms the base of tortillas, sopes, huaraches, tlacoyos, gorditas and countless other Mexico City street foods.

Nixtamal is made from dried corn that’s soaked in a mixture of water and a mineral called calcium hydroxide. The mineral, which can be white and powdery or rock-shaped depending on where you buy it, adds important nutrients to the corn and better enables our body to digest it. Upon contact with the kernel, the calcium hydroxide pulls at the kernels’ hard outer skin, which eventually sloughs off and makes the corn smoother and easier to grind.

Because of the fluctuating price of corn — and the unpredictable nature of a Mexico City mill, which may or may not have the nixtamal ready by the time customers want or need it — many tortillerías in the capital now use packaged nixtamalized corn flour, like Maseca or Minsa. When I lived in DF, I’d always ask before approaching a new tortillería: “Es de maiz maiz, o Maseca?” If they replied “Cien por ciento maíz”, I’d buy there.

A lot of people are increasingly worried about processed nixtamal flour completely supplanting real corn tortillas someday. To be honest, I’m not entirely sure where I stand, considering that Maseca and Minsa both provide cheap, quick alternatives (and nutrients) to families that may not have time to make their own tortillas daily. I prefer the taste of real corn tortillas, so I seek them out. Most mills in Mexico City still use thick discs made of volcanic rock to grind the corn, so that adds an extra layer of flavor.

The last time I was in Mexico City, I passed by the mill and caught a quick video of the grinder in action. A trickle of water from the faucet makes the dough come together into a solid mass. The bicycle wheel in the bottom-left corner of the frame shows how the workers distribute the masa to fondas and taquerías throughout the neighborhood.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYYO5V2dC_I

Mexico City chef Margarita Carrillo on her new restaurant, Turtux, and saving forgotten tamale recipes

by

Today’s post marks an occasional series I’m launching on this blog called “Tastemakers.” It’ll be a series of Q&As with people doing inspiring things with Mexican or Latin cuisine, in Mexico, New York and elsewhere. If you want to nominate someone, email me.

Chef Margarita CarrilloMargarita Carrillo Arronte is among the most well-regarded chefs in Mexico. She’s traveled the world and cooked Mexican cuisine for dignitaries and government officials, and her restaurant in Los Cabos, Don Emiliano, is well-respected and well-regarded. I met her for the first time a few years ago at a Slow Food dinner focusing on tamales, and she wooed the crowd (and me) with her tales of researching tamales in far-flung pueblos for her upcoming book.

She seems busy enough — did I mention she also hosts a travel show about Puebla on Mexican TV? — which is why I was surprised to find out several months ago that she’d left Don Emiliano to open a new restaurant in Mexico City, Turtux.

Traditionally, upscale restaurants in the capital have leaned toward the dramatic side, with chefs adding vanguardist touches to traditional Mexican ingredients. The food at Turtux isn’t like that. It’s soulful and still surprising; dishes like pistachio mole, or borrego slow-simmered in a pulque sauce, or ribs rubbed with guayaba and chile pasilla oaxaqueño satisfy deeply, yet somehow have an elegant touch. A comalera also makes heirloom-corn antojitos to order on the back patio (try the bone-marrow sopes), making Turtux one of my favorite new restaurants in the city.

Carrillo’s new cookbook, Tamales y Atoles Mexicanos, is a must if you’re a Mexican food fan and you can read Spanish. The book breaks tamales down by technique and texture of the masa, and includes recipes that Carrillo says have not previously been published. A few months before I left Mexico City for New York, she was gracious enough to talk to me about her new adventure, and how she gets it all done.

I read that you’ve been in the culinary world for more than 30 years. How did you get your start?
Well, I come from a very, very traditional Mexican family in which cooking was part of family values and family tradition. I grew up cooking with my mother, my grandmother, my aunts. I wasn’t conscious that I was learning. We just cooked. I grew up like this. I went to university to study education, and then I went back to university to study culinary arts.

What is it about Mexican food that you find so interesting?
It has a lot of unique techniques and ingredients. And it’s been there for hundreds of years, for centuries. And we still, many dishes, we still eat exactly the same. Mexican cuisine is not just a group of recipes. It’s completely mingled with religion, traditions and of course our culture. I love it and I find it very sophisticated and very simple at the same time. Wherever I’ve been cooking Mexican food, it’s surprising, people don’t expect this quality of food.

You were in Los Cabos for so long. Why didn’t you just retire and live on the beach?
No, no. (laughs) I was very happy there. But I never lived there full time. It was my son who lived there full time and I went there once a month. I had my house, my husband, the rest of my family here. And I love Mexico City. Although the restaurant was my reason to go there, I loved going there, but I’m not a watersports person or beach person. I’m allergic to sun.

What are trying to achieve with Turtux? Why Turtux and not a second branch of Don Emiliano, for instance? This is much more work.
Well. One of my missions in life is to spread the world about real Mexican food. And for me, I loved the restaurant in Los Cabos and I wanted to continue with its activity. I found this group of businessmen who believed in me, and who wanted to continue with my work, to help me to achieve my mission, and that’s why we’re here.

Did you find it harder to take on this task now?
Of course. I’m 10 years older. But I love my work so much. And at this moment in my life it’s harder because it’s a lot of work to open a restaurant in Mexico City. It demands 24 hours a day from your life. But it doesn’t matter. I’m very happy and I’m glad I did it. And I thank god for the opportuity.

The menu seems so personal, which really stuck out to me. I’m not sure if you ate any of these things when you were younger, but it seems like you would have.
Of course! It’s the way I am. I have to put my heart into my work. I grew up cooking, always in my house. We were six kids plus all the extras we always had. We were 20 people to eat every day in my house. Every day was a party. …My father enjoyed it a lot. He loved his Sunday gatherings, with this elegant table wth linen tablecloths and nice china, and glassware, and always my brothers with a suit and a tie, and my mother and sisters and I always nice-looking. It was an event, every Sunday. So we grew up eating food, and the importance of the bond, the family bond. I can tell you that the kitchen in my childhood house was a huge kitchen. We could go inside the kitchen with our bicycles.

What was your favorite dish growing up?
There were so many. But my father’s birthday was on the 20th of November, it’s Revolution Day, and my mother always made — from scratch — the traditonal mole. And I loved it. And my aunts, my father’s sisters, during the whole year criaban turkeys, so we could eat them on that particular day.


Wow.
And my mother always cooked them. She made the mole and our maids ground it on the metates, and my aunts cooked one turkey in a cuñete, cold, and the other in mole. I remember all the ceremony of roasting the chiles, and the almonds and things, and I remember the smells of things — I loved helping my mother, since then. She started allowing me to help her little by little. One day she said, “Now I’m very tired, you take over. I will keep an eye on you.” I was maybe 17 or 18. She said, “Now you’re ready, you do it from now on.” And I started to do it — I started to make the mole every year on the 20th of November. And when she died, I stopped making mole for five years.

Why was it so important to focus on tamales in your book?
I found out in the U.S. there are a lot of books on tamales. And I discovered, I realized in Mexico we hadn’t any, because tamales were so familiar to us. They’re always there for every celebration so we never thought, we need to write a book on tamales. I decided that I needed to write a book becuse it was our culture, our food. …It took me a long time to decide which ones I would include and which ones I would take off, but in the end, I think it worked out very, very nicely.

Was there one tamal you found particularly surprising in your research?
Oh yes, several. But one was the raw meat tamal from Guerrero. It was very surprising, and it’s so good. One recipe that’s almost lost is tamal de espiga, it’s a corn espiga, not the traditional wheat. I went this little town and looked for the lady who I knew made these tamales, and I was with her for three days, and we went to the fields and she taught me how to cut the espiga, and make the tamales in this tradition. It was rescuing this recipe that nobody makes anymore.

It seems like you’re always super busy?
Yes. (laughs) I wish I had more time to sleep.

How do you do it all?
Well the truth is, short hours. And I have a lot of people who help me. A lot of people around me who are kind to me, and help me finish my work, and in many things I give the idea and they help me with the mechanical work. I have my son, my daughter-in-law, my kitchen staff here in Turtux, and my friends who help me. But the truth is very short hours.

Meaning you get everything done in a small amount of time?
Yes. When you have to, you have to. I think like the rocker Bon Jovi: I’ll sleep when I’m dead. I don’t sleep enough but I try to make the most of my day. I sacrifice some things but it’s worth it. One thing that is very important for you to mention is, I could do all this — have three boys and do a lot of my social life and everything — because the back-up was my husband, always. He was there with the kids when I was going to school. And he was a great, great support for me. I couldn’t do everything that I could do in my life without his support.

Crispy quesadillas with rajas, chicken and cheese

by

quesadillas

For the past few weeks, meal-planning has made me anxious.

I couldn’t think of any dish that would make me feel how I used to in the kitchen — relaxed, happy, a gusto. This is probably because our temporary kitchen had dull knives, no blender and two tiny pots that held four cups of liquid max. One can only make so many two-pot soups before wanting to throw herself into a heap on the floor.

Grocery shopping stressed me out, too, because everything in New York is so damn expensive. I read labels and checked prices, but still felt like I didn’t know what American food meant anymore, let alone American food that stretched my dollar.

Eventually — the kicker — I found good corn tortillas. My friend Allison took me to Hot Bread Kitchen in Spanish Harlem, where I bought a dozen wrapped in a vacuum-sealed bag. At Whole Foods, I bought poblanos, good-quality Monterey Jack cheese and some dried black beans.

Back in our tiny kitchen last week, I made the black beans and leaned over the pot, letting the steam envelope my face. I was about to char the poblanos in a nonstick skillet when I realized, holy cow — I have a real gas flame now. So I put the chiles directly on the fire to make rajas.

With the beans simmering and the chiles blistering, it felt like my old life again. Even rubbing the skin off the poblanos — a job I usually hate — was fun, because the poblanos were so much firmer compared to how they used to turn out on my old electric stove in DF. I made the quesadillas just like I used to, on the stove, folded half-moon shapes, letting the tortillas crisp as the cheese melted.

The funny thing was, this quesadilla actually tasted better than the ones I’d made in Mexico. The cheese, made in Wisconsin, oozed out in drippy, creamy strings.

I didn’t have any salsa but that was okay. For the first time in almost a month, things felt normal and right. I allowed a small part of myself to believe that some parts of my new life — even Mexican things — may be even better here.

We’ve since moved into our new apartment in Elmhurst and I’ve been eating quesadillas almost every day. They are cheap and delicious, so my what-to-eat problems have been solved, especially since my new friend Girelle introduced me to the kick-ass red jalapeño salsa from Tulcingo in Corona.

Chicken quesadillas with rajas and cheese

Note: These are really designed to use whatever you have in the refrigerator, so I’m not listing exact portions. They’re great with any leftover roasted chicken, or any leftover vegetables that can be sliced somewhat small and fit inside a folded corn tortilla. They don’t even have to contain cheese! Chilango quesadillas often leave it out. (That said, I used cheese because I was craving it… and I don’t live in Mexico anymore.)

Ingredients

2 Poblano peppers
Cheese of your choice, sliced
One piece leftover roasted chicken
Good-quality corn tortillas

Directions

To prepare the rajas, place chiles directly over the gas flame and let cook until black and blistered in spots.

If you have an electric stove, you can char the chiles in a comal or a nonstick skillet, WITHOUT oil — note they take longer and will not be as firm if you do it this way. But the taste is still more than acceptable. I don’t recommend using the broiler, because I think that’s too much heat, and you’d be sacrificing flavor.

Once chiles are about charred all sides, remove them to a clean kitchen towel and wrapped them up into a little bundle. Let them sit for 20 minutes, to loosen the skin and make it easier to peel. Peel the chiles as best you can using the pads of your fingers or a paper towel. Once peeled, cut open and scrape the seeds into the trashcan. Cut the chiles into strips about a quarter- to a half-inch wide. Set aside.

Warm up your leftover piece of chicken in the microwave or on the stovetop, and shred it into small pieces with your fingers or a fork.

Heat corn tortillas directly over the gas flame or on a comal. Once the tortilla can be folded over without breaking, remove it from the heat and place it in whatever pan you’ll use to make the quesadillas. (This can be the same comal, or you don’t have one, a skillet works.) Add a few little slices of cheese onto one side, plus the rajas and the chicken. Fold the other half over and let cook until you just see the cheese beginning to melt. This should only take maybe 30 seconds to a minute on medium heat.

Flip and continue cooking, until cheese is creamy and oozy. Serve immediately with salsa on the side.

My first cookbook

by

My first cookbook

While going through some old stuff from high school and college last weekend at my dad’s, I found this book, which I thought I’d thrown out.

I opened it and saw that I’d written on the inside. “This book belongs to: Lesley Téllez 6/26/91.” I was 12 years old.

I loved this book. Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls (a 1970s/80s-era update of the original 1957 version) was my first real cookbook, and I adored the hamburgers with smiley faces on the cover, and the baked bologna-and-egg cups, and the cool picture of a star-shaped watermelon-and-cottage-cheese salad. Granted, the “crater ham loaf” never looked appetizing, but the mashed potatoes — which I underlined and wrote “YEAH!!!” over the top — certainly did. And, I’m going to be honest, so did the hot-dog pizza. Mostly because it was real, homemade pizza.

Apparently I used to go through this book and make little check marks next to recipes I liked.

Bologna and Egg Cups

Watermelon and Cottage Cheese Salad

Crater Ham Loaf

Polka Dot Pizza

Crayton said I should launch a blog and make every recipe, but I don’t have time for that. (If I didn’t do it when I bought the EZ-Bake Oven Gourmet cookbook, I won’t do it now.) Instead I’m going to keep it on my shelf, and maybe my 9-year-old neice will cook with me when she comes to visit. I can already see myself: “Doesn’t this pink meringue pie look interesting? Let’s make it!”

What was your first cookbook?

1970s Tacos for Dinner

Stuff to Snack On

Corn tortilla taste test: Mi Rancho

by

Mi Rancho tortillas

It’s been 17 days since I had a corn tortilla, and finally, today, I gave in.

I bought these Mi Rancho tortillas because they were the best I could find. (I’m in San Diego visiting my Dad this week.) They did not contain wheat or a long list of weird chemicals. (By the way, what’s up with corn tortillas containing wheat? That’s so strange, especially with so many people who are gluten-free.)

I thought it’d be fun to start a series of American corn tortilla taste tests, so here are my thoughts on this one.

Pros: Loved the phrase “real tortillas are made from real corn” on the package. I also liked that the color was a nice, normal yellow, and not paper-white and gummy, like the other packaged corn tortillas I’ve seen. The smell wasn’t too off-putting either — it was mineral and slightly bitter, like leftover cal-water.

Cons: Very chewy, even after a thorough heating on the comal. The taste doesn’t much resemble corn (it’s got that bland, floury taste that comes from tortillas made from masa harina), and I would not enjoy eating a plain one sprinkled in salt.

OVERALL: Not corn tortilla perfection — does it exist among the packaged thousands? — but not bad. I would buy these again if homemade was not an option.

If you have a favorite corn tortilla brand, let me know. My Nixtamatic doesn’t arrive until early March.

New York luxuries

by

I’ve forgotten how easy it is to live in the United States. In the past 11 days, I have:

— Thrown the toilet paper in the camode, not the trash can
— Received emailed instead of paper receipts
— Ordered takeout Indian and Thai takeout online with my credit card
— Turned on the hot water and received actual (scalding) hot water in two seconds, instead of waiting and letting the tap run for two, three or four minutes.
— Purchased a cell phone plan in 30 minutes, from the man who greeted us when we entered the store (instead of a surly employee at a window)
— Ridden in climate-controlled subway cars with passengers who follow rules, such as not blaring music, not eating, and not smoking
— Experienced the glory of buying multiple things in one store, including paring knives, coffee filters and earphones.

On the second day we were in town, Crayton and I pretty much got our new lives together. We bought new winter coats, went grocery shopping, got flu shots, bought new gloves, investigated two cell phone plans and purchased one. At the end of the day, we realized all of this would’ve taken at least two days — at least — in Mexico City.

So far my only mishaps have been not walking fast enough (New York pedestrians are like chilangos behind the wheel of a car), and taking the wrong subway train, or walking west when I should’ve been walking east.

And not to jinx it, but… I think we may have found an apartment. In Queens. Signing the lease tomorrow. I did a Google maps search for “restaurants” (another New York luxury) near our new place, and was shocked at all the excellent Thai and Chinese options that popped up. We’re going to have a fabulous time.

Packing up a pantry, four years later

by

A few items from my pantry, ready to be packed in my suitcase

A few vacuum-sealed items from my pantry, ready to be packed in my suitcase

My first post for this blog — almost four years ago to the day — was a lament on how I couldn’t take any of my American pantry goodies with me to Mexico City.

Four years later, I run a food tourism business in Mexico (can you believe it?) and my pantry has become an extension of my new passions: dried chiles that smell like campfires, dried corn ready to be nixtamalized in my table-top grinder, indigenous salts, Mexican herbs, hand-ground chocolate picked up on side trips to Oaxaca. My cooking style, more and more, ignores the stuff I grew up and instead relies on using Mexican products in ways that make sense to me. Sprinkling homemade chile morita powder on my mother-in-law’s traditional creamy Thanksgiving mushrooms, for instance, sounds completely practical to me, and it turns out its awesome. (The morita adds a touch of smoke and the right kick of heat.)

The movers told us that they wouldn’t take any food to New York. So I went to Costco and spent $100 on a vacuum-sealer.

Two days ago I picked through my pantry and vacuum-sealed bags of chile pasilla oaxqueño, and a kilo each of dried white and red corn. I vacuum-sealed my Oaxacan oregano, and my pimienta gorda, and my dried cacao flowers, which still smell heavenly even though I bought them in Oaxaca in August.

I vacuum-sealed some chile mulato, just in case I’m going to make a mole from scratch (you never know), and a few handfuls of pumpkin seeds, which are meatier and more flavorful than the pumpkin seeds they sell in the U.S. I’m not sure how much of this stuff will make it through customs, by the way. The first trip on Sunday will be a learning experience.

All the vacuum-sealing isn’t entirely about whether I’ll be able to find Mexican ingredients in New York. Deep down — really deep down — I’m terrified that once I move, I’m going to forget everything I learned and tasted. I didn’t speak Spanish fluently or even know what a tlacoyo was until four years ago. What if in New York I lose my Spanish and my newish longing for the smell of fresh masa on the comal? What if what fed my passion was this crazy, insane city, and once I leave I’m just a regular old American again? These ingredients, carrying them in my suitcase, makes everything feel real. This did happen. It wasn’t a dream.

Hopefully in New York I’ll have the best of both worlds. I’ll have the Mexican ingredients I love, and the American and ethnic ingredients I love, and we’ll be able to order Thai takeout from our phones. (Dude. Living in the future.) What I’m not sure about yet is this budding Mexican part of me, and how it’s going to do in Nueva York. Supongo que verémos.

UPDATE: Everything made it through customs. I asked the customs officer whether I could bring cheese the next time around, and he said yes. The only prohibited items were meat, fresh vegetables, plants and seeds for growing plants.

On taking pleasure in food

by

“O Lord, refresh our sensibilities. Give us this day our daily taste. Restore to us soups that spoons will not sink in, and sauces which are never the same twice. Raise up among us stews with more gravy than we have bread to blot it with, and casseroles that put starch and substance in our limp modernity. Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true men — to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand.

Drive far from us, O Most Bountiful, all creatures of air and darkness; cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition; and set us free once more in our own land, where we shall serve thee as thou hast blessed us — with the dew of heaven, the fatness of the earth, and plenty of corn and wine. Amen.”

— From Supper of the Lamb: A Culinary Reflection by Robert Farrar Capon (first published in 1967)

On leaving Mexico City

by

I have some pretty big news to share: after four years in Mexico City, we’re moving to New York City.

Crayton got a promotion, which is the reason for the move. We’ll be there in mid-January. I’m not getting all nostalgic about eating my last taco and visiting my last market — which would be too painful — because I already know I’m coming back often. I am going to be the gal who splits her time between DF and NY, or at least that’s the plan. I already bought a ticket to come back in March.

My plan is to continue Eat Mexico, continue this blog, and keep writing. And just remain open to whatever opportunities the universe decides to pass my way.

I read a line in a powerful story by Alfredo Corchado several weeks ago:

Do I belong to the United States, this powerful country built on principles of rule of law, yet still faced with contradictions—the insatiable appetite for guns, cash and drugs, or do I belong to Mexico, the country of my roots, where my umbilical cord is buried, where we use nationalism and patriotism to more often than not mask our corruption, our poverty and inequality?

I wasn’t born in Mexico like Corchado, but I do feel like my umbilical cord is buried here — in Mexico City, underneath the mountains and the smog, the pesero buses that nearly run me over, and the street stands with homemade tortillas inflating on the comal. I can’t leave this place.

And in my heart I won’t, but I will be open to the awesomeness of New York. I will buy a winter coat and clothes I can layer, things I haven’t bought since college. We will order things online again. We will hear hip-hop and R&B at bars, and we’ll stuff ourselves with Thai, Indian and Vietnamese food. Maybe we’ll jet off on the weekend to some cute upstate New York B&B. (Or maybe we won’t, because those things are expensive.) We will most definitely be hanging with our family there, and our friends.

Who knows if we won’t permanently be back in DF someday in the future? It might be when I have gray hair and grandkids. But this city will still feel like home to me.

Thank you for joining me on this journey for the past four years. I hope you’ll be there with me for the next chapter.