The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

La Cúspide: Way cooler than any U.S. mall

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La Cuspide

Last weekend, Crayton and I took a 20-minute cab ride to La Cúspide, a huge mall — locally known as a “sky mall,” but that reminds me too much of the airplane catalog — in Lomas Verdes, a Mexico City suburb. We’d planned to visit Idea, an Ikea knockoff store. And we did that. But wandering around the mall afterward was much cooler.

I felt like I was in a European-themed Vegas casino. The mall had a long, wide boardwalk, where couples strolled and packs of teenage girls looked for packs of teenage boys. At the edge of the boardwalk, all of Mexico City unfurled like a picnic blanket. (See photo above.) I swear we could probably see our house from there — and they had telescopes in case you wanted to check. Fountains sprayed water delicately into the air and people sipped coffee at “sidewalk” cafes.

I kept waiting to see roaming street musicians or caricaturists, but alas, no.

Of course there was a Chili’s.

chili's at la cuspide

The place was totally surreal, actually. And it’s the second Mexico City mall I’ve been impressed by. The first was Antara in Polanco.

If you’re wondering, Lesley, why are you spending all your time at malls? It’s because I have an apartment to decorate. And uh… one time I needed shorts suitable for climbing pyramids.

Montezuma’s mosquito revenge

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When I first moved to Mexico, I bragged to family members about how perfect the weather was here. “You can leave the windows open all night!” I’d said.

By comparison, in Dallas, you can leave the windows open for exactly one week, and then the heat gets so oppressive that you start googling “How to fry an egg on sidewalk.”

The Mexico City weather tricked me, though. Everything was breezy and fine until a few weeks ago, when suddenly I started waking up with mosquito bites.
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Procrastination, Vol. I: Spicy baked camote fries with creamy cilantro dip

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camote fries

So I’ve been writing this personal essay, and it’s driving me crazy. I don’t know whether I’m being relevatory enough, funny enough, honest enough, or whether the whole thing is just completely narcissistic, and why the hell would anyone care?

By around noon yesterday I wanted to tear my hair out. So I took a break to peel some potatoes.

I’d been eyeing The Tofu Cookbook’s spicy potato wedges or a few days. As a sidenote, I’d forgotten I’d even owned the Tofu Cookbook until last weekend — my mom had given it to as as a semi-joke wedding gift. Crayton hates tofu with the fire of mil demonios.

Even he would like these, though. Potatoes covered in cumin and cayenne pepper, served with a cool, creamy silken-tofu dip. I picked up some Mexican sweet potatoes at the supermarket — they’re white on the inside — and I chopped and marinated them, covered ’em in lime zest, roasted them in the oven. While they were cooking, I zapped the sauce in my food processor and added some cilantro because I thought that would taste good.

About 50 minutes later, I had crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside fries that were heavenly good. The sauce didn’t make me jump up and down. But it made a good, cool foil — a foil with protein! — to the spiciness of the potatoes.

Afterward, Lola arrived to clean, and we had a long chat about God’s grace, our weeks, swine flu boredom. (Stuff we usually talk about.) I offered her my extra batch of un-risen cinnamon rolls, which she accepted. By the time she left I felt much better about the essay. And by 7 p.m…. I’d actually come up with a draft I was happy with. Which is HUGE.

Maybe these fries will help you solve your writing problems, too. Or whatever else you need a break from. (They’re awesome with beer, by the way.) The recipe’s after the jump.
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Apple brown betty and homemade cinnamon ice cream

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Apple brown betty with homemade cinnamon ice cream

So, um, those cinnamon rolls…

They didn’t turn out very well. The flavor was fine. (Well, okay, I could have added more butter.) But they didn’t rise. And they were hard. Even with the cream cheese frosting…. it was like biting into a cinna-frisbee. Bleh. Maybe I boasted too much about kicking the dough’s butt?

So. With a bowl of cream cheeese frosting in the fridge, I probably should have made a quick bread or something and used up the leftovers. But no. I needed dessert redemption. I had to make something else, something that was not a bread. Something that had lots of butter and sugar and required little work. Something with the name “Betty” in the title.

Seriously: How cute is the name Apple Brown Betty? Even before the Cinnamon Roll Disaster of 2009, I’ve been wanting to make some. My friend Jesica was entranced, too, so today she came over, we cued up The Pioneer Woman and got to work.

Apple Brown Betty is basically a gooey, buttery, sweet apple casserole, with bread crumbs holding everything together. Pioneer Woman’s recipe called for cubes of wheat bread, but if I make it again, I’d probably use white breadcrumbs. Something about little chunks of wheat bread didn’t sit well with me.

None of that even matters, though, because the best part was the two scoops of love on top: Homemade cinnamon ice cream, y’all. (Insert swoon.) My mom got me the ice-cream-maker attachment for my KitchenAid mixer before I left for Mexico, and I finally unpacked it and put it to use. It was actually amazingly easy: Cook the batter (and ignore the massive amounts of heavy cream); chill it overnight; then pour it into the frozen mixer bowl and watch it churn. Thirty minutes later, done.

And when we stuck our spoons into the ice cream bowl…. man. Oh man. This was creamy, delicate stuff, whispering of cinnamon. Jesica even admitted that she wasn’t even that excited about cinnamon ice cream in the first place, but this stuff — it kind of socked you upside the head, you know? In a good way.

I promise, my dessert spree is over for the next few days. I’m dreaming of mamey ice cream, but I’m going to log 5 hours at the gym before I do it. The gyms re-open tomorrow, yay!

Wrist pain and the joys of high-altitude baking

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cinnamon buns

I’ve been dying to make cinnamon rolls for months, since before I even moved to Mexico. They’re kind of tedious, but when the recipe works — when the bread is light and chewy, and the buttery-sweet crumbles dissolve on your tongue — it’s as if the skies had opened up and chubby, fat-footed angels had started singing. God. I still remember the cinnamon rolls I made in seventh grade. The way the smell filled the house…

(Shaking herself out of her cinnamony reverie) Ok. Well. Anyway.

I’ve been drooling over Smiten Kitchen’s cinnamon roll recipe, so I decided to give it a go today. Everything was fine until I started kneading.

There my cute little ball of dough was, waiting for me to whip it into shape. But when I pressed my palms into the dough, but it wouldn’t give. The thing was as hard as a rock. I stopped and stared at it. WTF? Who does this dough think it is? I pushed harder, sweat droplets forming on my temples. The dough gave slightly. I think it smirked at me.

I wiped my hands and rushed to my computer, googling “tough dough to knead hard as a rock,” but mostly what came up was people complaining about kneading. That wasn’t me. I loved kneading. Usually.

Finally, after maybe 10 more minutes of searching (my dough resting, the little wimp), I realized that — even though I’d followed the recipe exactly — I’d added too much flour. High altitudes sometimes call for less flour when baking bread. Muffins, however, usually don’t need adjustments. (Which explains why my mamey muffins were fine.) It’s weird though, because I’ve also read the exact opposite — that high altitudes call for more flour in baking bread.

Really, what it comes down to is trial and error. And so, armed with my new knowledge, I placed the dough back in the mixer bowl, doused it with 1/4 cup of water and proceeded to mash the thing to smithereens. (Trying not to yell, “Ya like that dough?”) Soon its little doughy fibers unlocked, and the water seeped in, and it twirled around the mixer paddle and eventually formed a ball.

Minutes later, I placed the dough ball on the floured countertop and proceeded to knead. Ahhh yes. This was good. Much better. Oh so much better. It was softer. Lighter. Not a dough brick that made my wrists hurt.

And when I lifted up the kitchen towel after the first rise: Oh man. This looked awesome. It felt like silk. Like a smooth, elastic piece of silk waiting to be smudged with butter and sugar.

So. The rolls are on their second rise now. About half of them aren’t rising very well, so I don’t know what’s up. But I’m not panicking. I already know I’ve won.

Nevermind on toasting to Mexico City’s resurrection…

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Guess my “Back to Life/Back to Reality” party will have be postponed. El Universal is reporting that bars, dance halls and movie theaters will be closed indefinitely, until Mexico City reaches a sanitary-alert level of “yellow,” or medium-risk. We’re at orange, or elevated-risk, now.

Unfortunately none of the local newspapers have reported exactly what it’ll take to reach yellow. (Less deaths? An abundance of sanitary gel? The slow, mournful death of the cubrebocas?) The city did unveil this new Sanitary Alert System today, which could explain the lack of details. But someone, somewhere, could at least hook a girl up with an informational graphic. Oh well.

On the bright side, restaurants and cafeterias that serve alcoholic-free beverages can open again on Wednesday (I’m hitting El Caminero), and museums, libraries and religious centers can resume business on Thursday. Hopefully the Centro Budista is included in there, because I’ve been dying to practice yoga outside of my living room.

No one knows yet when the kids get to go back to school. Vendors in Tepito — who aren’t wearing face masks, and think this whole flu thing is a scam — have made a killing in recent days selling pirated copies of Monsters vs. Aliens.

From panic to cabin fever to… enjoying the quiet

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Parque Mexico

With the shops and restaurants still closed, a friend organized a picnic today at Parque Mexico.

It was a beautiful day to be outdoors. Not too hot, breezy. We ate sandwiches and orange slices atop two sheets we’d unfolded in a shade patch. Dogs ran around leash-less. A toddler in a pink dress scrunched up her face and tried to blow bubbles. Vendors offered us empanadas, alfajores, straw tote bags, candy. (The candy guy won with his infomercial-style pitch: “I’ve got the Peanut Package, containing salted and japanese-style nuts. I’ve got the Gum Package, containing Sponge Bob gum and other known brands. I’ve got the…”) We sat around for hours and talked.

For the first time in awhile the city seemed… tranquilo. Not shut-down and panicked. Just relaxed. People enjoying their time with each other, enjoying being outdoors.

All of us never would have gotten together if it wasn’t for the flu.

And actually, I may not have gotten together with friends on Friday night either, when I was feeling so cooped up, a Condesa friend — also feeling cooped up — invited me over to her house for dinner. It was fabulous. Flor de jamaica quesadillas, wine, digestifs. A big spread on their rooftop terrace, with tiki torches burning. On Saturday we had a friend over our house and there was more beer, and more good conversation.

The restaurants and bars open on Tuesday, and I’m hoping to organize a “Back To Life/Back to Reality” party at a local bar. I’m dying for everything to open up again, but I gotta say, I’ve enjoyed the recent human-to-human contact. Maybe this is what things were like before the Internet.

(Dear God, that was not an invitation to take away the Internet. Love, Lesley.)

Fleeing the flu with a weekend in Condesa

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About a month ago, Joy took pity on our water and Telmex situation (both of which seem so quaint now) asked if I wanted to house-sit for her this weekend. She lives in Condesa, which is pretty much the hippest neighborhood in the city.

“Wouldn’t it be fun?” she’d said. “You could go to all the Condesa bars and restaurants. And have water!”

Alas, after Influenza A(H1N1) hit — can I just call it “Ahini”? — almost all of the restaurants, and all the bars, are closed until next week. But it’s still nice to be out of my house. You can hear the birds chirp here. There’s lots of light. Half the furniture isn’t covered in plastic. (Ugh. Painting will be over soon.) And Joy’s place has some awesome Parque Mexico views:

Parque Mexico from Joy's patio

She also has adorable dog named Charlie. And an unopened bottle of tequila and a fridge stocked with beer, all of which — she assured me — are at our disposal.

Already cracked open an Indio. It’s vacay time, y’all.

P.S. Flu panic seems to be dying down. El Universal is back to putting dead car-wreck victims on its home page, or at least they did this morning. They’re also reporting that Time magazine has named Mexican drug lord El Chapo as among the most influential people in the world. That seems to have as much importance/absurdity value as flu news, at this point.

P.P.S. If you didn’t make it to last night’s bacon party, you missed out.