The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

A Mexican meal in Madrid

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Tlacoyos and chipotle-cascabel salsa, prepared by yours truly in Madrid.

The last time I spent a substantive time in Madrid, in 1998 and 1999, the Mexican foods I missed the most were chips and salsa. I couldn’t even find tortilla chips in the grocery store, which boggled my California mind. When my mom came to visit, she smuggled me in a few bags, along with tortillas and canned enchilada sauce. One night we cooked enchiladas for my Madrid host mom, a loving, generous woman named Maria Rosa.

A few weeks ago I went back to Madrid, and I was lucky enough to stay with Maria Rosa for a few nights. I told her about Eat Mexico and showed her my blog. She said: “You’ll cook us a Mexican meal then!” I nodded vigorously. Of course I would.

Crayton looked at me like I was insane, because what woman cooks a huge meal on her vacation? But I couldn’t think of a better gift than cooking for this person who looked after me during a key period in my life.

So one afternoon, I went to the Mexican grocery store in Madrid called La Canasta Mexicana. I spent $25 Euro on masa harina, dried chiles, tortillas, queso fresco, canned black beans, chipotles enlatados, and canned whole cactus paddles. I went to a separate grocery store and bought cilantro, white onion, chicken and oregano. Then I came back to her house and cooked — chicken tinga, refried black beans, chipotle-cascabel salsa, and tlacoyos.

The latter gave me some trouble. I didn’t know how to use masa harina, and I didn’t follow the directions. I tried to remember how the tlacoyo ladies folded them but I couldn’t get it quite right. The dough was too thin in some parts, and beans spilled out. “The tlacoyos might be a toss up,” I told Crayton. (Which in itself was very Maria Rosa — she always used to worry that her dishes lacked salt or seasoning, when in all actuality they were fabulous.)

When it was time to eat, at the madrileño hour of 11 p.m., I plated the tlacoyos with their diced nopal, cilantro, onion and crumbled queso fresco. I heated the tortillas and wrapped them in a dish towel. Put the salsa in a little bowl, and the extra refried beans in another bowl. Maria Rosa uncorked a bottle of cava and I introduced each dish. Everyone was wide-eyed. Tla-whats? Tinga?

In the end I shouldn’t have sweated the taste, because I was surrounded by people I loved and it showed in every bite.

Do you ever have one of those meals where you feel like your heart is going to burst when you sit down? That was me. I wish I would have taken more pictures, because I don’t want to forget that meal.

A note to my younger self

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Me in front of Madrid's Palacio Real in 2002

In 2002, Crayton and I had just started dating, and I convinced him to take a trip to Spain with me.

I studied abroad there for two semesters in college and I think I won him over by telling him I’d show him around my old Madrid haunts — and that there was this thing called a botellón, a concept now outlawed, that enabled anyone to drink outside, anywhere.

We went for a week and botellón-ed and saw the sites. But it wasn’t a good trip. My Spanish had atrophied. I couldn’t understand anyone. I hated the madrileños’ brusqueness and their lack of patience with foreigners. The food, which I loved when I lived there, suddenly seemed complex and intimidating, and I hated that there wasn’t more variety.

The real problem was that I was terrified I’d become a failure. When I lived in Madrid, I thought I would graduate college and travel the world, and I’d have a job where I could use my Spanish every day. I would live in Mexico and be a freelance writer. Four years later, none of it had come true, and I wasn’t sure it ever would. I spent a lot of my time on that trip crying and willing myself to leave our hotel room, and tearfully asking Crayton if he’d go buy me McDonald’s. (I’m wincing as I type that.)

Last week, we went back to Spain together and the difference between then and now was astounding.

I wish I could have told the 23-year-old me who cried and thought she wasn’t good enough that everything was going to be fine. I will live in Mexico, and I will speak Spanish, and my next visit to Spain in 2012 will be when I’m happy and healthy and confident. I’ll order sepia and chocolate palmeras and pulpo with gusto, and take pictures of everything on my iPhone.

In 2012, I will love the guttural, garbled way Spanish men say “hasta luego” because it reminds me of a time when I was just stepping out in the world. I’ll love that they serve me a fork and knife with my pan tostado, because that’s what they did 14 years ago and they still do it now. I’ll love the shops piled with sweets, because they remind me of sweets in Mexico. And I’ll actually find myself looking up at my surroundings, not down at my feet, and realizing: whoa. Madrid has gorgeous architecture.

When I was 23, I wanted to be exactly where I am now — bilingual, happy and at peace. A woman in a job she loves, and who made the excellent decision to marry the man she went to Spain with in 2002.

The dreams will come true. It just takes time.

Eat Mexico’s newest food tours, in Puebla

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Slicing off grilled pork for tacos árabes in Puebla, Mexico

So I’ve been holding onto this news for a few weeks now, but I can finally tell you officially: Eat Mexico has launched culinary tours in Puebla!

We’re pairing up with All About Puebla, an English-language website that’s run by my friend Rebecca Smith Hurd. She’s an amazing Puebla resource and an all-around excellent person. Rebecca will be leading the tours.

As of now, we’re offering two routes — Chiles en Nogada and A Taste of Puebla. The former includes a visit to the Ex-Convento de Santa Mónica, where chiles en nogada were created, and a market visit to learn about the ingredients. It’s capped off with a chile en nogada cooking class with renowned Puebla chef Alonso Hernández.

The Taste of Puebla tour offers an introduction to Puebla’s more popular casual fare, including all the gorgeous goodies I blogged about a few weeks ago: pelonas, tacos árabes, cemitas and more.

You can find more details, including prices and reservation info, on our (sort of newly designed) Eat Mexico website.

If you or anyone you know is visiting Puebla, I’d love it if you kept us in mind. Note that the Chiles en Nogada Tour will be offered in August and September only, in keeping with the seasonality of the ingredients.

On a personal note, I am really excited about this collaboration and for stepping out beyond Mexico City with the food tours. My business turns two years old this month. Feeling like a proud mom.

Kicking off chiles en nogada season in Puebla

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chile en nogada

A chile en nogada from Mesón Sacristía in Puebla

The 2012 chiles en nogada season officially started last weekend in Puebla. I was lucky enough to visit the city just beforehand and score a chiles en nogada cooking class with Alonso Hernández, chef at Mesón Sacristía, one of the best restaurants in the city.

I’ve explained the chile en nogada process before, but cooking this dish at home — or anywhere — is painstaking. First you have to char, peel and seed the chiles. Then you have to chop a long list of sweet and savory ingredients, including tomatoes, onion, apples, pears and peaches. You have to peel walnuts BY HAND, because no walnut-peeling device has been invented yet.

I actually think you gotta feel a little like the nuns, or at least remember them, when you’re putting this all together. (The nuns of Puebla’s Santa Mónica Convent invented the dish in 1821.)

This chile is the equivalent of a baroque altarpiece in a church.

The chopped peaches, apples and pears, ready to go into the pot.

Gorgeous chopped tomatoes

Everything in the pot together, before it's spooned into the chile

Chef Alonso took us through the chopping and the preparing of the fluffy egg batter, called the capeado. Then, when it was time to fry the chiles, he placed one in the eggy cloud and brushed each side lovingly.

When it was our turn to do the same, he told us: “Slowly. Con calma.”

After the egg-dip, into the frying pan it went. There we bathed the chile just as lovingly with oil. It puffed up and sizzled.

Bathing the egg-dipped chile en nogada with oil

My first chile en nogada of the 2012 season:

Pouring walnut sauce on the chile en nogada

The finished chile en nogada

Where do you plan to eat a chile en nogada this year?

More on chiles en nogada and Mexican convent cooking:
Four Chiles, One Day: A marathon chile-en nogada tasting in Mexico City
How to make a proper chile en nogada
Where to eat chiles en nogada in Puebla
Desserts of the Spanish convents in Mexico

Beyond mole — Poblano food in pictures

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A pelona, or fried poblano sandwich stuffed with lettuce, crema and shredded meat

I was in Puebla this weekend visiting my friend Rebecca, who runs the excellent All About Puebla, an English-language online city guide. She’s a badass go-getter type of gal, so when the two of us get together it always feels like we can conquer the world.

She took me to some of her favorite places to eat, and interestingly, few involved corn. Puebla is full of savory breads: the pambazo (a plump, flour-dusted bread, not in any way similar to the Mexico City pambazo); the pelona (a fried roll); the chancla (a fried roll covered in sauce); the telera (a flat, soft roll used for tortas); the cemita (an airy, sesame-seed dusted roll), and the torta de agua (a crunchy, rustic bread). All are used in different sandwiches. The most Poblano of tacos, the taco árabe, is traditionally served on pita bread and not corn tortillas.

The two of us hit Puebla’s Centro last week for a food-fest, filling up on as many snacks as our stomachs could handle. (This may be why my stomach can suddenly only handle rice and applesauce. The travails of being a food researcher.)

Here’s a quick look at what we tried:

A taco árabe, or spit-roasted pork wrapped in pita bread. This tasted different than Mexico City's árabes -- much closer to shawarma.

We tried mole in sandwich form. (As an aside, I love how manageable Puebla's tortas are. Yay for not being as large as your head!) This torta de mole from El Girofle was excellent.

Chalupas, or little corn tortillas bathed in salsa and shredded meat. The red salsa uses chipotles, because poblanos love them.

I've technically eaten this same cemita once before, but it's so good (Cemitas Beto at La Acocota) that it has become my poblano requirement.

Did I really have room to squeeze in a fresh-baked concha after all of that food? Yes. Yes, I did.

I’ve got some exciting Puebla news to share in the next few weeks, so stay tuned…

Making mole and touring the Etla market with Seasons of My Heart in Oaxaca

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Chile de Agua

Chiles de agua at the Wednesday market in Etla, Oaxaca

I met Susana Trilling in New York a few years ago, at a culinary event given by Zarela Martinez. I was from Mexico (or visiting anyway), and so was she, so I boldly approached her and introduced myself. She was gracious and warm, and we ended up keeping in touch once I got back to Mexico.

A few months ago Susana invited me to visit Seasons of My Heart, the cooking school she runs in San Lorenzo Cacaotepec about 45 minutes from Oaxaca City. She gives an open cooking class on Wednesdays for $75 USD, which includes a visit to the Wednesday Market in the nearby town of Etla.

I finally took the tour a few weeks ago and I’m so glad I did. The market itself was worth the price of admission.

The Etla Market: A must-visit

We met Yolanda, one of Susana’s market guides for the past several years and a Oaxaca native, at a central meeting point. She spent the next 2 1/2 hours pointing out the ceramics and herbs, and giving us tastes of nicuatole, homemade smoky requesón, sesame-topped pan amarillo, nieves, tamales and more.

Pan dulce at one of the Etla market stands

Bags of nicuatole, a corn-and-sugar dessert

The tamales, sold from a stand near the back entrance, nearly swore me off of Mexico City streetside tamales forever. The squash flower-chepil variety (there was a squash-flower chepil variety!) tasted like the ingredients had been plucked from a garden somewhere nearby. And the coloradito amarillo. Oh god. These were the tamales to end all tamales.

The amarillo tamal

A black bean tamal wrapped in hoja santa

Returning to the Cooking School

Back at Seasons of My Heart — the school is tucked off a dirt road, nestled in the Etla hills — I volunteered for team tasked with making chichilo mole. My partner and I gathered at the outdoor wood-fired kitchen stove and toasted our chiles and tomatoes. We lit a tortilla on fire with a few spoonfuls of chile seeds and watched it burn.

It started to rain, and I finally had a chance to think about where I was and what I was actually doing — standing in front of the wood fire and a comal de barro, blackening a tortilla until it smoked, in the same way who knows how many women had done before me.

The tortilla started out like this...

... And then turned into this...

... And finally, once the flamed petered out, became this. This is what we'd crumble, soak in cold water and eventually stir into our mole.

Chichilo mole and rice at Seasons of My Heart in Oaxaca

Then, finally, it was lunch time. The food kept coming: nopales salad, pumpkin seed dip, corn soup, corn antojitos called tetelas, chichilo mole, rice. We stuffed ourselves and talked.

By the time the class ended and the van arrived to pick everyone up, the rain had started again, and thick swaths of dark clouds covered the mountains in the distance. I wanted to curl up in a chair with a blanket and a cup of tea and stay until the stars came out.

I’d highly recommend Susana’s class if you’re visiting Oaxaca. (You can reserve directly through the Seasons of My Heart website.) I’ll leave you with more photos of the Wednesday Market in Etla.

Tasajo, anyone?

It was all I could do to resist buying from these ladies.

Dishing up chocolate atole, a thick, warm drink made with chocolate and corn

Gorgeous avocado criollo

More criollo avocados (you eat the skin!)

The seed vendor, for growing your garden or farm

Yolanda poses with poleo, a Oaxacan herb used to treat an upset stomach

Agua de chilacayota, a piloncillo-squash drink

The clouds of Oaxaca

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San Agustín Etla

On the bus to Oaxaca

Entering Oaxaca City

Just outside Santa Catarina Minas, about an hour from Oaxaca City

The countryside between Minas and Ocotlán

Thank you to Joy Victory for reminding me of my cloud love affair.

Wandering through Oaxaca’s Central de Abastos market

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Oaxaca chile de agua

Chile de agua at Oaxaca's Central de Abastos Market

A few friends in Oaxaca warned me about how crazy-insane the Central de Abastos was. It’s huge. Don’t expect to see it all, they told me. You’re going to get lost and you have to be okay with it.

I’m a fan of Mercado de la Merced in Mexico City, so my eyes light up at this kind of talk.

I got to the market around noon, and my friends were right. I couldn’t see anything from where I’d been dropped off; clothing vendors, shoe sellers and people selling remote controls and batteries stretched on and on. I asked a young woman where the food was and she looked confused — it was like she’d never been there before. (Was this place really that big?)

Eventually I found the main market building and it looked pretty similar to what I’ve seen in Mexico City, with some extra additions: long, stringy tripas dangled from rods at the meat stands; chile vendors sold costeño and amarillo and three types of chile pasilla oaxaqueña, separated by size. The sweet bread vendors sold pillowy pan de yema and these oval-shaped breads with bubbly tops, sprinkled with pink sugar.

The real action was outside at the tianguis. The Central has a tianguis every Tuesday, which means vendors, many of them women, set up outside with their wares displayed on plastic tarps.

There were so many vendors, I couldn’t see where the line ended. They sold mountains of chiles de agua and baskets of heirloom tomatoes, and stacks of fresh basil, rosemary, poleo, chepiche. They sold pitayas and teeny cactus fruits called jiotilla, the size of kumquats. One group of vendors sold panela, unrefined cane sugar, in massive brownie-sized blocks. Further down about 30 women in aprons sat on stacks of newspaper and tied bundles of garlic together. Past them, perhaps a dozen more sat and tied bundles of spring onions.

In between it all, ambulant vendors hurried by, selling Oaxacan oregano and cal in rock form. “Quiere la cal, doña? Doñita, la cal!”

After about two hours, I’d loaded up two bags with purchases (there’s a clay artesanía section too, where I bought two comales de barro), and refueled with an empanada de coloradito. I scribbled down a few notes in my notebook and the last line was: “Just. Totally. WHOA.”

If you’re into food and you’re visiting Oaxaca City, you must stop by. My food friends in Oaxaca tell me Tuesday is the best day.

Heirloom tomatoes

Live maguey worms, perfect for eating in a taco or grinding in a salsa

Panela, the unrefined cane sugar that's known as piloncillo in DF.

Piloncillo coconut candy... this stuff is the bomb.

Mangoes in spicy piloncillo syrup.

How to get there…

Pitaya (organ-pipe cactus fruit) agua fresca

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Pitaya

For a long time, I thought I didn’t like pitaya. I thought it was the hot-pink fruit with white polka-dotted flesh. They’re gorgeous, but they don’t taste like anything.

Then I started seeing these things popping up at the markets. The vendors said they were pitaya, too, and that they were a cactus fruit from the órgano (organ-pipe) cactus in Jalisco.

Pitaya Mexico City

I finally tasted one at Mercado San Juan last week. The vendor cleared off the spines with a soft brush and cut the fruit open, revealing a deep ruby red flesh exactly the same color as the nail polish I wear on my toes in winter. (Remind me later to tell you about my Mexican-fruit nail polish-naming idea. Mashed capulín is my second fave color after this.)

With its delicate black sesame-type seeds, the pitaya was even prettier than a red prickly pear fruit. I bought a kilo and decided to make an agua fresca.

A few days later, the pitayas were going bad and starting to give me the evil eye, so I finally blended the fruit with water and sugar, and strained it. Served a pretty pinkish-red glass to my friend Rebecca and she loved it — “a cross between cucumber and watermelon,” she said. (I’m thinking now that some jalapeño-infused simple syrup and tequila might make a kick-ass cocktail.)

Pitayas taste sweeter than a regular prickly-pear tuna fruit, and the flesh is a little more crumbly and moist. If you have other ideas recipe ideas, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime here’s a neat article on other types of edible cactus fruits.

Pitaya agua fresca

Pitaya Agua Fresca
Makes 10 cups

1 lb. pitayas, spines removed
8 cups water
1/4 cup plus 1 1/2 tablespoons sugar, or sweetening agent of your choice
Juice of 1/2 lime (optional)

Cut the pitayas in half, and then in quarters. The fruit should easily peel back from the skin, if they’re ripe enough. Toss the flesh into the blender jar and discard the peels. Add about four cups water and half the sugar, blend until smooth. Strain into a pitcher and repeat. Taste for lime juice at the end. Refrigerate and serve cold, or over ice.

Hot-ass chile piquín salsa

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Chile piquin salsa

My only knowledge of chile piquín prior to Saturday was that it was sold two ways in Mexico City: as a wrinkly, small red chile, or in powder form. (The powder is often used in spicy cocktails here.)

Last Saturday, a stand at Mercado Medellín had little bags of fresh piquín — small, green pea-sized chiles with rounded tips. I stopped and stared. “Es chile piquín?” I asked the vendor. She said yes and gave me a quick recipe: “Los asas, y los muelas con limón y sal.” You toast them, then grind them with lime and salt.

Seriously — how good did that sound? Especially with this heat we’ve been having. So I bought a bag, not really knowing what they tasted like.

When I got to my friend Liz’s house, site of cooking activities for the afternoon, I popped one in my mouth. My brain yelled “FIRE!” so I spit it out. Oh my god. It was like chewing on a raw habanero, or what I imagine that to be like. Toasting them would reduce the heat a little bit, so I forged ahead with my salsa.

Chile piquín

Fresh chile piquín, after I brought it home

I toasted garlic, tomatillos and chiles on the comal, then ground everything in the molcajete with some coarse sea salt and a little water. I ended with a squeeze of lime juice, and then dipped my spoon in to taste.

The result was a firecracker: right on the line between acid and sweet, with a hum of citrus from the lime. And the heat packed a double-wallop — it hit your tongue, then softened, then came back as a warm rush inside your mouth. I was addicted immediately.

“Try the salsa!” I told Erik, Liz’s husband. He did and coughed and turn red. I kept telling Crayton to try it, and he put a few drops on his tostada. That was enough for him.

I, meanwhile, kept spooning little teaspoons on my tostada and then wiping my damp forehead.

Fresh chile piquín salsa
Makes about 1/2 to 3/4 cup

Note: I’ve been making a lot of salsas in the blender lately, and there’s a huge flavor difference in making one in the molcajete. If you’ve got a molcajete, please use it. I promise you won’t be grinding very long — I spent maybe 10 minutes.

Ingredients

1 medium garlic clove, skin on
2 medium-sized tomate verde (I’m referring to the larger variety of tomatillo sold in Mexico; if you can only find the small ones, use three or four)
1 tablespoon fresh chile piquín
Juice of 1/2 lime
Sea salt

To serve:
Tortillas or tostadas
Avocado

Directions

Heat a comal or nonstick skillet on medium-high. Place tomate in the center of the comal and the garlic at the edge, so it doesn’t burn. Toast both until soft and blackened in spots. Remove to a small bowl.

Lower the flame slightly and add the chile piquín to the comal. Move quickly with a spatula or heat-proof cooking utensil; anything plastic will melt, because a hot comal is a beast. (Mine heats my kitchen in the winter.) The chiles should blacken in less than a minute. If they start popping all over the place, lower the flame and stir them vigorously. Remove to the molcajete when done.

Peel the garlic and place in the molcajete with your chiles. Add about 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground sea salt. (I’m referring to the kind that goes in your salt grinder, the big kernels of salt.) Grind everything together with about a tablespoon of water. When you’ve got a thick paste — and it doesn’t have to be perfect — add the tomate verde one at a time. Grind some more, until the skins are mostly broken down. Add a little more water if you need.

Squeeze in the lime juice and stir to combine. Taste for more salt if necessary.

Serve on tostadas — I used teeny taquería-size tortillas that I’d crisped on the comal — topped with little wedges of avocado.