The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Reflections

Lessons in pineapple atole

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I haven’t written about my cooking class in awhile, mostly because I was starting to feel really comfortable there.

I’d figured out the answers to the nagging doubts that used to send me running to Yuri or another classmate. Chile water thins out a thick salsa. The mole is done when little pools of fat form on top. When in doubt, blend a sauce extra-fine, especially if it’s going to be served with meat. Overall, I had finally learned to relax. Mexican cooking doesn’t leave that much room for error. If I made a mistake, I could fix it.

Then last week, that familiar, scared-of-messing-up-because-I’m-a-gringa side came back. I’d been gone for awhile — I had to take another trip to the States, which meant I’d missed several classes. My Spanish had gotten rustier. The theme of the class was tamales, but I didn’t feel like doing any metate-grinding (for once) so I signed up to make pineapple atole. It was a traditional atole made with masa and sugar.

Yuri had told us to dilute the masa first in water, so I put a big pot to boil on the stove and tossed in the lump of dough. Stirred it around a bit so it would dissolve.

Patty, one of my classmates, looked up from cleaning verdolagas (did you know there are sweet tamales made with verdolagas?) and she peered into my pot. “What did you put in there?”

“Masa and water.”

She shook her head. “No…”

Ana, another classmate, looked up. “Did you put the masa in there?”

What was the big deal? Yuri had said to dilute it.

Ana looked pained. She said we had we had to take the masa out right now, and she sped to the other side of the kitchen for a bowl and a strainer. While she was gone, Patty told me that I can’t just put the masa in the atole pot like that. I’d end up with hard bits of masa in my drink, or worse, a layer of hard masa stuck to the underside of the pot.

“You have to dissolve the masa like this,” she said, fishing out a lump of dough. She placed it in a bowl, added water and mushed the masa together with the tips of her fingers, until she had a think paste. “See? This is what I always do when I make my atole.”

Of course she does. And if I’d made atole before, I would’ve known that too. But I haven’t made atole before!

Feeling like a lame gringa, I strained the masa out of the pot and poured the yellowish, cloudy water back on the stove. I was still worried that I’d ruined the drink. The lump of masa and the water had already touched. Did that mean something? I asked Ana and she shook her head. (I thought I detected a “that was a dumb question” look in her eyes, but perhaps I was projecting. Ana is really nice.)

Patty told me to strain the paste to make sure there weren’t any hard bits hiding inside. Just as I was doing that, Yuri walked up. He looked at me and raised his eyebrows. Straining wasn’t part of our instructions.

“I know you didn’t say to do this,” I started, “but it’s that, I was wrong, I added the masa at the beginning, it was too early, I had to take it out…”

He stared at me. His eyes said, Foreign girl, what the hell are you talking about?

“You don’t have to strain the masa, if you diluted it well,” he finally said. He mentioned something about the pineapple pieces that I didn’t quite catch, and then he walked away.

Once my cloudy water had boiled, I poured in my masa paste, stirring vigorously so any hard bits could break down. Eventually the water looked smooth. I added the pineapple that Ana had blended and strained, and then the pineapple cubes. I added a little sugar and tasted as I went along, not wanting it too sweet. I stirred and stirred, trying to make sure the atole wouldn’t stick to the bottom.

Yuri wandered by again. “It’s better to use a wooden spoon. You can really scrape the bottom.”

Finally, about 40 minutes later, the masa had bubbled and thickened, and it was done. I tasted a bit — it was sweet but not too much, and faintly pineappley. The masa added this hearty, rich flavor, much more complex than the cornstarch atoles you usually get on the streets here.

A few students came up to me while we were eating our tamales. “Did you make the atole?”

“I helped,” I said. I couldn’t take credit — I’d almost ruined the drink.

“Está rico.”

I allowed myself to feel just a little proud. I was the one who added the sugar and scraped the pot, after all.

I’m sorry I don’t have a photo to show you, but I was too busy slurping it up. Recipe to come soon, once I make it at home.

On coming home to Mexico, again

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Mexico City, as seen from the top of the Torre Latinoamericana

I was recently in the States for an extended stay — that’s part of the reason why I wasn’t blogging so much. When I was on the plane coming home, for the first time I thought about Mexico City with the teensiest bit of dread. The thought scared me. Did this mean I didn’t want to live here anymore?

I pictured myself in the cab heading home from the Mexico City airport, bumping over the potholes, all the crumbling, graffiti-sprayed buildings lined up on the side of the highway. There would be trash in the medians, and the air would be thick and warm and slightly sewer-smelling. The U.S. didn’t smell like a sewer. Cities there were clean and had zoning laws.

When I eventually found myself in a cab headed back from the airport, at 10:30 p.m. on Sunday, Mexico City looked much cleaner than I’d remembered. In fact, it reminded me a lot of California. (I’ve been thinking about California a lot lately — I don’t know why.) There were street lights that worked, and palm trees, and twinkling lights in the hills, and windows that glowed on apartment buildings. People lived here. I lived here. The polite cab driver steered us down the Viaducto, through a few tunnels and past the Liverpool department store. Everything felt comfortable and right.

The next day, it was a stack of corn tortillas that made me feel like I was officially, truly happy to be home. They were from Superama (not my first pick, when it comes to tortillas), but they were warm and damp inside their paper wrapping. I dug into the stack like a girl who’d been shipwrecked for the past three weeks. One taquito de sal. Two. Three.

For lunch — yep, I had lunch after my corn-tortilla snack — I went a little crazy ordering tacos from El Faraón. Two al pastor, one rib eye, and an order of aguacate and nopales con queso. The sight of two voluptuous avocado halves sitting in their styrofoam container made my heart leap. I scraped some out with my knife and spread it inside my rib-eye taco, with a drizzle of red salsa.

It’s funny, because whenever I come home from an extended stay in the U.S. I find myself examining my thoughts, searching for some sort of sign that would tell me how much longer I want to stay in Mexico. My mind says at least two more years. But whenever I’m eating Mexican food after a long trip away, I don’t ever want to leave this place.

What are the foods you find yourself eating, and missing, when you come home after a long trip? What tastes like home to you?

Not a Spanish speaker, or an English speaker either

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Lately when I’ve been talking, my brain’s had trouble deciding which language to use.

Twice now I’ve said “exactlo” instead of exactly. (A hybrid of exacto + exactly.) I’ve used the phrase “por lo minimum.” With Spanish-speaking friends, I’ll switch to English without even realizing that I’m doing it. And then I’ll look at them and they’ll look at me, and I feel kind of like an idiot. This has happened to me in cooking class in the past few weeks. I’ve been calling out to my partners about whether they need a pan, or if they’ve seen the sugar. Pero en inglés.

The annoying thing is that I have no control over any of it. It’s not that I’m pausing and searching for the right word — I’m just speaking normally and then boom, out comes a word in another language. But I’m guessing this is a step forward in my Spanish journey, right? I was embarrassed of my Spanish when I moved here, and then I gained more confidence and didn’t care if I messed up. Then slowly — poco a poco, as they say — I added a few choice slang words, and started noticing people’s cadences and accents. Lately I’ve also begun wondering if my cadence is “fresa,” although I’m still not entirely sure what that sounds like yet.

Just a few weeks ago I interviewed a prospective guide for Eat Mexico on the phone. He told me later, after we met in person and had a much longer talk, that he had originally assumed from our phone conversation that I was Mexican. I took it as compliment, but it’s just weird to think about. Sounding Mexican is something I’ve wanted since I was in my early twenties. How could it be that I’ve accomplished this already? There are so many nuanced cultural things I still don’t get, like how to end a phone conversation with “ándale pues” and who gets an “un beso” and who doesn’t.

Has this happened to you, where you find yourself in this weird, hybrid-language zone where the words just come out without knowing which language you’re speaking? I guess this is a form of Spanglish, but it’s not like any Spanglish I’ve ever known. I’d defined Spanglish as something conscious — the act of physically latching onto whatever word pops up in my head first. Not creating new words faster than my mind can keep up.

Spanglish

Photo from Flickr user Satanslaudromat

Two years in Mexico City

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At the end of January, we’ll have been in Mexico for two years.

I can’t believe it’s been that long. Seems like only a few months ago that I fretted about leaving my stocked pantry behind in Dallas, and I visited my first Mexican grocery store and ogled the lime-flavored mayonnaise. And now here I am. With another stocked pantry filled with Mexican beans, Indian spices, Mexican olive oil and various types of honeys. (The lime mayonnaise is in the fridge.)

Life in Mexico just feels more real now. There are plenty of things I hate about the city — the time it takes to visit the cell phone store or the bank, for example, or the crippling traffic at Christmastime — but overall I still feel really connected to this place. When I travel I look forward to coming home.

I love how the light blares through our windows every morning, promising 70-ish degree days and fresh food prepared on the streets. At sunset we can see the craggy silhouette of the mountains from our living room, when the smog isn’t too bad. A lot of evenings Crayton and I sit around and drink mescal from the gourds I bought at Mercado Sonora, or we walk to restaurant off Álvaro Obregón, my arm tucked into his arm, watching all the hipsters and couples and the vendors closing up for the evening, scrubbing their grills and pouring buckets of water onto the sidewalk.

I love that I eat a lot of corn, and I love that it’s not the mushy American stuff that bleeds sweet juice. DF corn is hearty, like a legume. I love the word for corncob: “mazorca.” I love the phrase that means “one and only”: mismísima. La mismísima Lesley Téllez.

I love that we ride our bikes everywhere and that I’m lucky enough to take tennis classes (for cheap!) at a local gym. And I just love the energy here, still. People come, people go. It feels like anything is possible.

I still have no idea how long we’ll be here, but here’s to another two years.

Feliz Año and Happy New Year

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I’d originally planned to write this detailed, year-end blog post full of mouthwatering food photos. But then in December, Eat Mexico started booking lots of tours, and I got a few freelance assignments and didn’t have much time to blog. I really only came up for air a few days ago.

So I wanted to tell you: I’m so, so grateful to each of you for reading. And honored that you keep commenting. (Really — the Tlacolula comments made my entire week.) I’m just really glad that I have this space and that you’re a part of it. I hope you have a fantastic 2011, full of peace and good food.

Here is one mouth-watering photo, just to start the year off right. It’s a tlacoyo and a quesadilla de quelite (edible Mexican greens), from a street food stand off Rio Lerma.

Abrazos from el DF!

Desserts of the Spanish convents in Mexico

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The kitchen inside Puebla's Convento de Santa Rosa, where mole is thought to have been invented. Photo by Jesus Guzmán-Moya via Flickr

Spanish nuns arrived in Mexico in the 16th century. Over the next 300 years, they’d play a big role in shaping modern Mexican cuisine, creating dishes that combined both Spanish and indigenous ingredients. Several of the convent-era dishes are still eaten today, including mole, chiles en nogada, rompope and several other candies and desserts.

We’re studying desserts of the convents in cooking class right now, and it’s been eye-opening to learn what the nuns created. The ingredients are humble compared to what we’d use today. One simple biscuit called a tlaco combines pulque and lard. A stovetop pudding called manjar blanco calls for boiling chicken, grinding it until smooth, and then mixing it with sugar, ground rice and milk. (Everyone in the class hated that dessert. One student called, “Who wants a licuado de pollo?”) Wikipedia says the dessert came from Spain, but using ground rice as a thickening agent is an Arab technique.

Butter is rarely included in the convent desserts, or heavy cream. Both were too difficult to store and too expensive. You don’t see any chocolate either, except as a beverage to accompany a bread.

Ladling out bienmesabe, a pudding made from ground almonds, rice and coconut, mixed with milk and sugar

While I was impressed by the nuns’ ingenuity and resourcefulness — I personally loved the licuado de polla idea, even if the taste was a little odd — I was absolutely smitten with how the nuns named their creations. “Bienmesabe,” for instance, is a rice, coconut and almond pudding that means “tastes good to me.”

Ring-shaped cookies flavored with anise seed, dipped in piloncillo syrup and sprinkled with powdered sugar are “rosquetes impregnados del espíritu del anís.” (Rosquete cookies impregnated with the spirit of anise.) Last week we made “empanadas de la concepción,” or conception empanadas, flaky lard pockets filled with pastry cream.

I ate those for breakfast over three days, slicing off little slivers with a knife.


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Peanut butter tacos, and other secret tortilla behaviors

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The New York Times had an article on spaghetti tacos awhile back. Did you see it? It was about how popular spaghetti tacos have become among kids. The tacos are exactly what they sound like, by the way: spaghetti noodles and tomato sauce, stuffed inside a tortilla.

It got me thinking about all the stuff I used to put in tortillas as a kid. We didn’t always have bread in the house, but we always, always had a package of flour tortillas in the lunch meat drawer. One of my favorite after-school snacks was a hot dog wrapped in a tortilla. Or a slice of bologna in a tortilla. Loved a tortilla with a smear of crunchy peanut butter, or layered with Kraft singles and microwaved until the cheese bubbled out the sides.

These days, my tortilla preference has switched to corn, but I still eat corn tortillas with peanut butter all the time. Sometimes I even add a little jelly. (PB&J in a tortilla! Yes, I’m fully admitting that’s weird.)

I’m curious: What is your favorite odd filling to put in a tortilla? What about when you were a kid?

Hug or handshake? The proper American goodbye

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A weird thing kept happening to me in New York.

Whenever I’d meet someone new, if we talked for more than five minutes, I took this to mean the person deserved a hug goodbye.

In 90 percent of the cases, I was wrong. My new friend would stick out a hand for a goodbye handshake, while I charged ahead with my arms open, like Vince Vaughn in Wedding Crashers. A fleeting “what are you doing?” look often crossed their eyes. I tried to ignore it, but after like the third time this happened, I started wondering — am I missing something here? Did I forget the proper way to say goodbye?

I talked to Crayton about this last night, and he says I’ve always been a hugger.

“You’re from California,” he said.

I don’t know. To me, I was misinterpreting these goodbyes, which meant that I’d lost a teensy bit of my American-ness. Before I moved to Mexico I could easily discern who got a hug and who didn’t. But now, as an expat who’s been gone for 1 1/2 years, it never even crossed my mind to shake someone’s hand goodbye. Handshakes were so sterile! A hug conveyed warmth, and was still impersonal.

It’s funny because before I noticed the hug thing, I was actually proud of myself for ignoring my urge to kiss folks on the cheek. Kissing is a common Mexican greeting. It’s way too intimate for the States. And I guess hugging is, too.

What about you? Are you a hugger? Do you ever feel like you have to adjust how you greet people when you travel?

Five things I’ll miss about New York City

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I’m finally back in Mexico City! We got in from New York late Sunday.

I meant to post some of these photos during my trip, but I was too distracted and busy. People kept asking me while I was in the city, “So what have you seen, where have you gone?” And I realized I hadn’t actually seen too much, besides that one time I went to MoMA for the Abstract Expressionist exhibition. I was eating most of the time. And relaxing.

Here are some of my favorite things I ate and saw while I was in NYC.

1. Fresh Maine Lobster Roll from Lobster Pound in Red Hook, Brooklyn

I took a bus to Red Hook by myself, just because I was really craving a lobster roll. It was 3 p.m. on a Saturday and the streets were practically empty, which felt kind of surreal. (No people in New York? Where am I?) I ate on a bench outside the restaurant, because I didn’t realize there were chairs next door. (I was actually prepared to eat standing up, until a bench seat opened up.) The lobster roll was just what I wanted it to be: chewy, messy and bursting with these thick, robust pieces of lobster. The only thing it needed was pickled jalapeños. Or Valentina sauce.

2. Jewish deli sandwiches

I would like to point out that the above photo only depicts half a sandwich. My dad ordered this for dinner one night, while we were staying at a hotel and decided to order in. It’s a pastrami, corned beef and tongue sandwich from Ben’s, a Jewish deli on W. 38th Street. I tried to be healthy and order a salad and hummus from another place, but I kept sneaking nibbles of my dad’s corned beef because it was absolutely fantastic. Paper-thin slices of tender, salty meat, taken up a notch when dipped in spicy mustard. My dad is still talking about this sandwich. I think there might be a future in corned beef or pastrami tortas.

3. Real American french fries. Real American potatoes.

You can’t get good potatoes in Mexico City, so when I saw “homemade french fries with curry mayo” on the menu at The Farm on Adderley, a Brooklyn restaurant where I went with my lovely new friend Gaby of Gabriela’s Kitchen, I absolutely had to order them. The french fries were good, but the main dishes were spectacular — I got roast chicken with buttery purple cabbage that was pretty much most succulent roast chicken I’ve eaten, ever. (Sorry no photo, it was too dark.) Everywhere I went, though, the french-fry craving followed me. Usually I just relied on Crayton to order them and then I’d steal off his plate. Thanks honey.

4. The view on the High Line

Multiple New Yorkers recommended that I check out the High Line, a new elevated park that traces an old railway route on Manhattan’s West Side. I wandered over by myself one weekday afternoon, and there were lots of tourists taking pictures, and people just sitting in chairs and zoning out. It’s a pretty place — you get to gaze out at New York from a perspective that’s two- to three-stories up. And there are interesting art installations to see along the trail. I highly recommend a stroll there if you’re ever in New York.

5. A wonderfully serene East Village apartment (thank you, Peter and Jonathan) and its equally serene kitchen:

I made an apple pie in this kitchen. And kale-and-corn tacos with homemade tomato salsa.

Other things that I’ll miss, that I didn’t get pictures of: Strictly Roots, a fantastic vegan soul food restaurant in Harlem (get the collard greens, and the stewed pumpkin); American cookies, which I ate with wild abandon (I especially missed anything with white-chocolate chips); and quiet, early-morning moments in the city. And of course my family and friends, who, I don’t care if I’m being hyperbolic, are just the best ever. Thanks, you guys.

It’s good to be back.

Making homemade concha rolls for the first time

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I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m a big fan of conchas — they’re round, fluffy Mexican sweet rolls covered in a quilted or striped sugar topping. When I first moved to Mexico City, I was so amazed by them (they’re sold in the U.S., but are rarely any good there) that I lauched a concha taste test to identify the best concha in Mexico City. The test is still ongoing.

A few weeks ago, I was rushing in late to cooking class when I realized that our guest instructor for the day was a professional baker. He casually mentioned that we were going to make conchas, which made me feel like being on The Price is Right and watching the door open to reveal a new car. We were going to make conchas! For the first time!
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