The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Reflections

Southern California in pictures

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I’m back from vacation. Spent last week trying to catch up on emails and tour requests, and ignoring the nagging voice whispering, “You haven’t updated your blog!”

We had a nice time. In California, I made salsa for my grandma. It was the first time I cooked for her and she was wowed — she kept saying “I didn’t know chile could taste like that.” We also sipped strawberry margaritas by the pool. Penny had commanded me to visit La Casita Mexicana in Bell, so my dad and I went and stuffed ourselves with queso fundido, mole and chile en nogada. (My first of the season! It was fantastic.)

In Arizona, Crayton and I lazed by the pool, and I read three books on my Kindle: The Butterfly Mosque, Stillwater Saints and A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion. I also got to meet Chef Silvana Salcido Esparza — she’s the chef at Phoenix’s Barrio Café, and a firecracker of a woman. If you’re in Phoenix, you should go to her restaurant and save room for the cajeta-filled churros.

A few photos from my trip:

Watering my grandma's lawn at sunset

Chips and mole from La Casita Mexicana in Bell

Mole made with tuna roja, anchos and guajillos at La Casita Mexicana

La Casita Mexicana's luscious chile en nogada. If you live in Southern California, you MUST try it.

Charring the purplish-green miltomates I found at the Mexican grocery store in Pico Rivera

Blending the salsa. My dad took this picture, which was very sweet of him. (He actually took several of me making salsa.)

My roasted tomatillo and chile de árbol salsa. Grandma loved it.

Salad, grilled nopales and chicken

The famous strawberry margaritas

My grandma's backyard at sunset

Lesley and Chef Silvana of Barrio Café

Off to L.A. and Phoenix

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It’s been quieter around here than I would’ve liked this week. I’ve been running around like a crazy woman, finishing up last-minute errands. I’m headed to L.A. for a few days to see my grandma and my dad, and then it’s off to Phoenix to see my suegros (in-laws).

I’m purposely not taking my computer so this feels more like a vacation. Have I mentioned to you how much I need a vacation? I’m already envisioning the frosty margarita I’ll be sipping poolside at my in-laws’ place in Phoenix.

Hope you have a great week!

Would you eat this? Rethinking the role of the food stylist

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We’ve been learning about food styling in my cooking class lately — specifically how to dress up a dish for a photograph, even if that means using something no one would ever eat.

That ice cream you see above is really a mix of lard, sugar and chopped chocolate chips. In other classes we’ve made fake margaritas, fake beer, and fake coffee. (Jugo Maggi was key.) Next week we’re making mole that’s not really mole.

As someone who loves cooking and photographing real food, this whole thing makes me feel a little weird. I understand the role of the food stylist. He or she is needed to make sure the food photographs well, and to know what happens to food under certain conditions. If I owned a business that produced an unappetizing (but tasty) product, I’d want a food stylist to make the item look its best.

But… haven’t the rules changed, as far as fake food goes? We’re in an era where natural is in. Messy plates. Crumbs. Imperfections, to me, mean the food was made with love. It feels disingenuous to me that we should be promoting food, and at the same time giving off the message that it’s too ugly to photograph.

I have no idea how many magazines and newspapers continue to use fake food. But these classes really got me thinking about how traditional media and blogs continue to move in two different directions. It would be blasphemous for a food blogger to post a photo that wasn’t the real deal. So why is it okay with the rest of the media at large? Is it naive to think that food stylists should use real food, instead of fake?

The question of huevos

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On my way home from the cleaners today, I saw a taxi driver cut off a pedestrian. The walker was an older gentleman, and he yelled “Huevón!” as the car drove past.

I’m sure it was some sort of insult, but I don’t know exactly what. In fact, the whole scenario reminded me just how many ways the word “huevo” is used in Mexico and how I’m still clueless on about most of them.

The only instance I’m familiar with is vulgar. Huevos is considered another word for testicles. I’m almost sure there were some huevo jokes in my cooking class when we made rompope, because we used more than 30 eggs.

I’ve also heard people use the phrase “Qué hueva!” and just plain old “hueva.”

Any out there kind enough to translate?

A morning at Mercado Merced, and being a tourist again

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Banana stalks, trimmed of their leaves, bunched together at Mercado Merced

Mercado Merced is one of the biggest markets in Mexico City. Up until recently, I wasn’t a fan. I did my shopping as quickly as I could and got the heck out of there, before the crowds could swallow me up. The place felt like the subway during rush hour. Except with offal just a few inches from my face.

Penny said she wanted to visit Merced for her photography workshop, the one I was helping her with as her guide and fixer. I tried to dissuade her.

“I’m overwhelmed every time I go, and I live here,” I said.

“I think it’ll be okay,” she said.

I still wasn’t convinced, but Penny enticed me with conchas at El Popular. So off we went one Saturday, after breakfast, the five of us, all women: Cindy, a photographer from San Francisco; Susan, a photographer from Washington state; Penny and I, and Averie, a blogger from San Diego.

At 8:30 a.m., Merced was the quietest I’d seen. The dude advertising anti-fungal medicine was there on the Circunvalación, blaring his ad full blast. (“Do you have problems with fungus? On your fingernails? Elsewhere?”) People bustled about the streets, getting on and off the peseros. The clothing and shoes vendors, the ones directly in front of the produce building, hadn’t opened yet. That meant we could walk in peace. No loud music, no taco vendors yelling about diez por diez, and nobody heaving gigantic bags of merchandise into our elbows and shoulders.

Mercado Merced is not just one market. It’s a complex of several buildings ringed with dozens (hundreds?) of open-air stands. These vendors sell anything from blenders to scrubbing brushes, to strainers for your tomato caldillo. To get to the meat and produce, you must walk past these vendors first. Or you can take the metro, which exits directly into the fruit-and-vegetable building. The most confusing thing to do is to take a cab to Merced, because it’s impossible to see anything but a sea of tarps. (We took a cab, but only because I knew where we were going.)

I hadn’t looked at Merced with a tourist’s eyes in a long time. The market awed me when I first moved here, with its dried chiles stacked over my head and its energy. I wanted to bring my camera several times. But that urge gradually faded away. I wasn’t a gringa tourist anymore, I was a chilanga who actually bought her dried corn and tamale flour here.

Since I had to leave fairly soon, Penny offered to walk around with me and help me with my camera settings. This meant I had to take photos and look for moments — moments meaning people. The idea scared me. What if the subject got mad and yelled? What if they glared at me? Penny said that if anyone didn’t want their picture taken, no pasa nada, I should just move on.

After a few minutes, I found my first moment: a guy tearing banana leaves off the plant’s long stalks. I liked that he was framed by bunches of plants that he’d already cleaned. I took out my camera and hesitantly started taking a few photos.

“Get closer!” Penny urged.

I got a little closer, and the guy gave me a funny look.

“Keep going. Stay there. Ignore him,” Penny said.

I stayed where I was and kept snapping.

The pictures were not particularly fantastic. But I felt like I’d crossed a line. It was like that first time I rode across Chapultepec Avenue on my bike, pedaling furiously, worried that someone would hit me and I’d get in an accident. Halfway across I realized it was a beautiful, breezy day, and all I had to do was forget about the traffic and relax and feel the wind in my hair. The banana-leaf guy probably thought I was a weirdo, but once I stopped thinking about him, I could concentrate on what he was doing: running a knife down a smooth, green leaf, folding its ends over each other, quickly, expertly. Watching him without fear — this is where the magic was.

My heart pounding (I took a picture of this guy and he didn’t get mad at me!) I told Penny I wanted to hit the meat market. I’d wandered around there on a recent shopping trip, gawking — I know I’m supposed to be a chilanga, but I couldn’t help it — at the chicharrón prensado stacked up eight and nine rows high. Do you know how insane that is? Mountains of chicharrón prensado, destined for the city’s gordita stands. The meat market stood for so many things I loved about Mexico City: the chaos, the absurdity, and all of its glorious pig parts used in so many different ways.

This time I was a little more bold.

A vendor chopping chicharrón prensado

In all, I spent about 40 minutes in the market before I had to leave. But it was enough to make me feel giddy — and just the teensiest bit guilty. Where had I been this past year or so? Why hadn’t I taken more pictures? I lived in one of the greatest food cities in the world, and I have all of this at my fingertips. I needed to remember that more.

For some amazing pictures of Mercado Merced, and Mexico City street food, you should visit Susan’s blog.

You’re now in the presence of a Top Global Culinary Guide

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I’m humbled and honored to announce that Travel + Leisure magazine named me one of their Top Global Culinary guides in the July 2011 issue! My name is listed in a small section near the back, in stellar company with guides including Robyn Eckhardt and Annisa Helou. I’m also featured on a slideshow on the T+L website.

I’ve worked really hard over the past year, both in giving tours and striving to create a top-notch product with Eat Mexico. Things like this — and our continually satisfied clients — really make it all worth it. I feel like a lucky girl.

Thanks, T+L!

Morning rituals

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Every morning I get up and head into the kitchen. I turn on our little Internet kitchen radio, which streams NPR from the States, and I set a teakettle to boil on the stove. Then I wash the rest of the dishes from last night, clean the counters, wipe the stove. All of this relaxes me. So does throwing in a load of laundry.

Once my tea is ready, I take it into my office and turn on my desk lamp, which throws a little bit of warm light on everything. Then I start my day.

We all have little things we do that relax us.  What’s your morning ritual?

 

 

The long, drawn-out, telephone goodbye

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Whenever I’m on the phone with a Mexican person and we’re about to hang up, they linger, as if they really don’t want to say goodbye.

Me: “Bueno, te dejo.” Well, I’ll let you go.

Them: “Sale pues.”

Me: “Este… sí.”

Them: “Nos vemos.” See you soon.

Me: Silence.

Them: “Un beso.” A kiss.

My problem is that I don’t have enough of these goodbye-filler words in my arsenal. (I don’t know what “sale pues” entirely means, for example.) In the U.S., we generally say “Ok, I’ll talk to you later, bye” and hang up. Most Mexicans I’ve talked on the phone with don’t do this, and I end up hanging up too quickly, which seems rude.

I use cuídate and nos vemos. Part of me wants to throw in ándale, too, as a type of “Okay then, sounds good.” But I’m still unsure whether “un beso” works for male and female friends, and how to say goodbye when I’m talking to someone in a professional context. Cuídate seems too personal then, no? Maybe just a simple gracias, hasta luego.

Any Spanish-speakers out there have any guidance?

On a clear day, it’s a whole other city

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The view today outside my office window, looking west

Mexico City lies in a basin, surrounded by mountains. Usually you can’t see them because they’re wrapped in smog, but every now and then, cool breezes sweep through and unmask everything.

It’s rare for this to happen without rain. (Think the equivalent of warm spring days in Boston, or a humidity-free summer day in New York.) For the past two days, though, Crayton and I have woken up to find the mountains peeking out over the rooftops, like these ghostly creatures that have suddenly developed an interest in studying our chaos and traffic.

It’s almost spooky. Where did these aliens come from?

Their other-worldliness makes me think of a line I read in The Conquest of Mexico, about how seemingly normal events used to freak out the Mexica. A rabbit running into a house wasn’t just a rabbit running into a house — it meant something, it was a sign, it had to be studied.

I hope the mountains’ arriving amid an otherwise hot, dusty and sweaty June means it’s going to rain soon. So far we’ve only gotten sprinkles. It’s almost July. Rainy season, where are you?