chocolate

So long, Puebla – A wrap-up of the International Mole Festival

May 14, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A cemita from Cemitas Beto inside the Mercado La Acocota.

After two days of Puebla’s International Mole Festival, I came home to Mexico City with stars in my eyes.

I’d learned about mole and regional Mexican food from some of the top culinary minds in Mexico. I’d met some of Puebla’s top chefs, and watched mayoras make foods from their pueblos. And there was the food outside the festival, in Puebla’s markets and restaurants: cemitas stacked tall with shredded quesillo. The crispy crackery creamy guajolote, and the chipotle-guajillo soaked chancla. The little bowls of tart chipotle rajas everywhere. How had I not explored any of this before, living only two hours away?

I’m already thinking about my next trip to Puebla to eat more and hang out with new friends. And of course, I’m looking forward to next year’s festival. Seems like this one was a success.

Here are a few last highlights of my trip:

At the cemita stand: Con rajas o con chipotle guerita?

I fell in love with papaloquelite all over again.

Mole poblano at La Casita Poblana

A guajolote -- a typical Poblano antojito made of crispy-fried torta de agua bread, crema, salsa and shredded turkey

Making pipián verde from scratch at a private home in Cholula

Grinding toasted pumpkin and sesame seeds at the neighborhood molino

Cooking the pipián verde

Piping chocolate-mole truffles with Chef Ángel Vázquez of Cholula's Intro restaurant.

Dusting the truffles with ground-up, toasted corn tortillas

Placing each truffle in its own individual mole-themed box.

Grinding chocolate on the metate, the traditional Mexican way

August 6, 2010 by Lesley Tellez

Most people probably think of chocolate as being European, but the cacao bean itself — the bitter seed that gives chocolate its taste — is native to Mexico.

The Mayans were the first to domesticate the crop, thousands of years before the Spaniards arrived. (The name cacao actually comes from the Mayan word kakaw.) Later, Mexica priests and other upper-class Aztecs drank ground cacao as a beverage, mixed with water and spices. The Mexica venerated cacao so much, in fact, that they used it as a currency and imposed a cacao tax on conquered villages.

Yesterday at cooking class, Yuri told us we were going to make chocolate from scratch, in the traditional Mexican way. We’d each grind 1/4 kilo of cacao beans on our metates, drawing out the natural cocoa butter until the beans turned into a thick, glossy liquid.

In keeping with the way the nuns used to make chocolate in Mexican convents, we’d each receive a portable flame to place under our grinding stone. The flame would heat the stone and melt the cacao a bit, making it easier to grind.

I had no idea what lie ahead of me — a common theme in this cooking class — so I kneeled on my straw mat and began grinding with high spirits. The beans crackled and crunched under my metlapil.

We’d toasted the cacao beans in the last class, so pulverizing them produced this nutty, kind of toasted-walnut smell, mixed with aromas of intense dark chocolate.
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Mexican chocolate tofu pudding with homemade churros

June 10, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

I’ve been dreaming about Mexican chocolate tofu pudding since Crayton forwarded me the New York Times recipe a few weeks ago. It was my turn on our recipe exchange, so I ditched my Mexican chocolate ice cream idea and told everyone I was making dairy-free pudding. A few people were like, “Wait…. what?” None of us are vegan.

Last night, we feasted before the pudding-making even started. Alice whipped up a batch of pot stickers. Julie brought sweet bread from a Japanese bakery. Tricia brought mini-weenies in barbecue sauce, Joy H. brought spicy guac, and Jesica and Joy V. brought wine. (Which later resulted in extremely blurry churro pictures.)

Jesica graciously offered to let us use two chocolate bars she’d bought in Tabasco. She crushed them on my molcajete….

… and then we melted them in the microwave. They smelled like fresh-baked brownies.

Everything went into the blender, with a box-and-a-half of tofu and some spices.

The result was luscious. It was a creamy, thick, perfect pudding, that required all of five minutes on the stove.

This means a lot to me, because a few months ago I experienced the great Chocolate Pudding Disaster of 2009. I spent hours melting chocolate and worrying about the scalding the milk, only to end up with chocolate soup. I almost swore off chocolate pudding forever after that. But tofu, that wonderful, square-headed, plain block of soy, has saved me.

The churros weren’t as easy. I used a recipe from my 1944 copy of Elena’s Famous Mexican and Spanish Recipes, which called for a simple flour-and-water dough. Unfortunately, the tip on my cheap pastry bag came off as we were piping the dough into the oil. (Eeee!) We rigged up a Ziploc bag with duct tape, which worked marvelously. But piping dough got old after awhile. I was hot and sweaty. My house has no air conditioning.

Next time I might just buy churros from the dude on the corner.

The combination, when it was all done, was to die for, so it’s really worth having them both together.

Recipes and cooking notes after the jump.
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My second love, after my husband

January 29, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

Que Bo chocolate

The chocolates at Que Bo!, a shop in my neighborhood, are almost too pretty to eat. They look like marbles, almost.

One bite and it’s over. You want to eat all of them at one sitting, preferably with a big glass of wine.

Que Bo had a booth at the Chocolate Experience, and I happened to see the store on my way home from the supermarket today. I bought a slice of chocolate-dipped, chilied mango (how could I not?), and horchata, jamaica, mole, green tea and goat cheese chocolates. (I saved the saffron and red-wine flavors for next time.) They also sell gigantic brownies and chocolate cakes.

Since, you know, my glass of vino was already out, I went ahead and ate the horchata one while I was typing this. Creamy, sweet… mmmmm.

She is officially blissful.