The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Photography

Instagrammers I love: Mexican Food Porn

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Tacos Leo in Los Angeles. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Tacos Leo in Los Angeles. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Mexican Food Porn’s photos make me ache for Mexico City.

His images — shared both on Tumblr and his Instagram account — capture Mexican food’s rich colors and layers, and sometimes its chaos. Chilaquiles bask in a messy lagoon of cream; a shrimp taco with a harsh sheen of cheese shines a little too brightly under white lights. (Haven’t we all eaten that shrimp taco, maybe a little too late at night?)

The owner of the account is a 27-year-old Mexico City resident, who spent five years living in California’s Bay Area. He was born in Monterrey, Mexico.

MFP agreed to answer some questions for me via email, but he said he preferred to remain anonymous, as he’s actively pursuing other interests unrelated to photography and food.

Here’s more from him. (Disclaimer: he sometimes uses stronger language than I generally do on this site.)

Q: Why Mexican food and not some other kind of food?

Tacos guisados in Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Tacos Guisados in Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Ask any Mexican who leaves the country for any period of time, what do you miss the most? Politics? Traffic? No… people miss their food. The blog was formed in San Francisco, basically because of my nostalgia for Mexican food and culture. During my five years in SF, I noticed that while the Bay Area has some decent Mexican food spots, I was always longing for more authentic stuff.

While exploring, I realized that Mexican food, or any food really, is marked by geography and culture. A taco in L.A. is way different from the ones in S.F. A burrito in SF is way different than in San Diego. The possibilities are endless, and I tried to embrace everything. One of my favorite burritos? Señor Sisig California burrito. A fusion between Filipino and Mexican/Californian, stuffed with French fries. Is it “authentic”? Nope, but who cares? It’s a niche on its own.

Also, Mexicans tend to “Mexicanize” anything in their way, especially food. Go to a Japanese restaurant in Mexico and it’s not uncommon to see bits of jalapeño in your soy sauce. Hot dogs? Wrap them in bacon and top them with grilled onions and serrano peppers. Fettuccine with creamy chipotle… so what is truly Mexican cuisine?

Fettuccine with creamy chipotle sauce. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Fettuccine with creamy chipotle sauce. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Finally, more than Mexican food I want to emphasize one of life’s greatest pleasures: sitting down, ordering drinks and enjoying a meal with loved ones. Doesn’t matter if it’s Chinese, high-end Indian or drunk greasy tacos at 4 a.m.

Q: What was the best thing you ate recently? 

A barbacoa taco with avocado cream, from Pujol, Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

A barbacoa taco with avocado cream, from Pujol, Mexico City. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

Pujol in Mexico City. I went for the first time a couple of weeks ago and it was simply amazing. The food, the decor, the concepts. It was a great experience. From that entire meal, the barbacoa taco with a tortilla made with poblano peppers and the Mole Madre were fucking unreal. I forgot I was sitting in a fine dining establishment. Enrique Olvera is redefining our cuisine in amazing ways.

Another amazing spot? La Panga del Impostor in Guadalajara, a little informal hip seafood joint run by Chef Antonio de Livier and restaurateur Javier Rodriguez. Everything in the menu is jaw-droppingly good. You happen to be in Guadalajara and have a near-death hangover? Go there.

A scallop, octopus and shrimp tostada from La Panga de Guadalajara. Photo by Mexican Food Porn.

A scallop, octopus and shrimp tostada from La Panga del Impostor.

Q: You’re stranded on a desert island and can only take 3 antojitos. What are they?
This is a cruel question. Only 3? 

– Guacamole with pork cracklings to scoop 
– Tacos de carnitas
– Tortas – Cemitas 

It’s interesting, because seafood isn’t considered to be in the antojitos realm, but I think they totally should. And since I am in a deserted island: 

-Aguachile 
-Coctél Vuelve a la Vida 
-Oysters. Oysters and more oysters. 

Extra points: 
-Mezcal, tequila and ice cold beer. (Better be hydrated.)

Q: Do you cook?
I try to as much as I can. I tend not to measure things, I just throw things around, scoop with my finger to taste. For me cooking has been lately some sort of laboratory-style therapy. Chopping things, letting things simmer, smells… just simply engaging all the senses and testing. It’s pretty relaxing. That said, I don’t think I would last 3 minutes as a line cook, but I can feed a small group of people.

Mexican Food Porn's homemade tomatillo salsa.

Mexican Food Porn’s homemade tomatillo salsa.

Q: Have you found any Mexican food dishes particularly hard to photograph? 
Not really. As of now most of the food pictures I take are with my iPhone. I guess the challenging part is to have a good angle and right lighting. At times it’s hard to just whip out the phone and take pictures. You know, just holding your plate of tacos, or at a restaurant. Moving around the plate and other eaters. I’m getting better dealing with the “what the fuck are you doing?” looks.

Q: Chile de árbol or habanero?
Lately I have been eating a lot of habanero. But how can you say no to chile de árbol? 

Mexican foods I love: Tlacoyos

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Tlacoyos are small, flattened masa pockets that are stuffed with either beans, cheese or fava beans and then grilled on a comal. They’re a Mexico City street snack made almost exclusively by women, and usually you can find them near any subway station, market or tianguis.

A well-made tlacoyo has a crisp exterior, creamy innards and a tang from a drizzle of salsa and a handful of diced nopales on top. They’re also healthy, since most tlacoyeras don’t add oil.

I have enthused about them before. But I’m not sure if I’ve ever made it clear that tlacoyos are actually my favorite Mexico City street snack. A freshly made tlacoyo is — as I have just learned in my slightly vulgar Mexican slang dictionary, purchased in the Centro Histórico — chingonométrico.

Here are some of my favorite tlacoyo photographs that I’ve taken over the years.

A three-bite sized tlacoyo, on an Eat Mexico tour.

A piece of a bean tlacoyo topped with green salsa, on an Eat Mexico tour.

A tlacoyo de requesón.

A tlacoyo de requesón.

A tetela, similar to a tlacoyo but smaller and triangle-shaped. We made this one in Oaxaca.

A tetela, similar to a tlacoyo but smaller and triangle-shaped. We made this one at Susana Trilling’s cooking class in Oaxaca.

Folding tlacoyos -- these were called "tlayoyos" -- at the Mole Festival in Puebla in 2012.

Folding tlacoyos — these were called “tlayoyos” — at the Mole Festival in Puebla in 2012.

Tlacoyos filled with alberjón, a type of garbanzo, and avocado leaf, at the Mole Festival in Puebla 2012.

Tlacoyos filled with alberjón, a type of garbanzo, and avocado leaf, at the Mole Festival in Puebla 2012.

Small blue-corn tlacoyos, also at Puebla's Mole Festival.

Small blue-corn tlacoyos, also at Puebla’s Mole Festival.

Tlacoyos cooked on a clay comal at the Corn and Nixtamal Fair near Xochimilco, Mexico City.

Tlacoyos cooked on a clay comal at the Corn and Nixtamal Fair near Xochimilco, Mexico City.

A tlacoyo from the same Corn & Nixtamal Fair.

A tlacoyo from the same Corn & Nixtamal Fair.

Tlacoyos from Tlaxcala.

Tlacoyos from Tlaxcala.

My very own homemade tlacoyos, made in Madrid, Spain in the summer of 2012.

My very own homemade tlacoyos, made in Madrid, Spain in the summer of 2012.

Felices fiestas!

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I hope you’re enjoying a lovely day with family, friends and lots of good food.

Here are a few Christmas-inspired photos culled from The Mija Chronicles’ archives.

A big ol’ pot of bacalao, at Mercado de Medellín

Ensalada Nochebuena, a mix of beets, oranges, jicama and peanuts

First-ever Christmas tamalada, December 2009.

Sweet corn tamales

Chaya-wrapped tamales, at the Fundación Hérdez in January 2012.

Photos of Xico’s Fiesta de la Magdalena

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We arrived in Xico just in time for the Fiesta de la Magdalena. Mary Magdalene is the town’s patron saint and she’s celebrated yearly in July.

I wish I would’ve known more about the festival, but unfortunately all we could do was watch without really knowing what was going on. After lunch, we saw a group of young people carry a costumed statue of Mary Magdalene on their shoulders, singing hymns as they walked toward the other side of town.

Once arriving in the main square, the site of Xico’s largest church, a crowd of children danced in brightly colored costumes.

Here’s a few more of the photos I took, both of the processional and the children dancing.

Another processional, this time leaving Xico's main church

If anyone out there knows a little bit more about the festival, and the significance behind the processional and the costumes, I’d love to hear it!

Mole xiqueño — it’s worth the trip to Xico, Veracruz

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Mole xiqueño at El Campanario in Xico, Veracruz

The first time I had mole xiqueño — mole that’s made in the style of Xico, a town in the state of Veracruz — was at El Bajío in Polanco. I didn’t know much about it, so I had expected something heavy and sweet, like a mole poblano. The dish ended up being more complex: delicately sweet like a slice of fruit, and slightly bitter, with hints of smoke and ash.

When Crayton and I decided to take a trip to Xalapa, I told him we had to go to Xico. I really wanted to try this mole at the source.

Roy drove us from Xalapa. Coffee plants and banana trees lined the road. We pulled over at a little factory that advertised homemade mole, and they gave us a scoop of paste stuck to the end of a tortilla chip. It was delicious — a mix of chiles, spice and dried fruit.

One of the jars I bought to take home.

We entered Xico proper a few minutes later. We’d happened to arrive during the Fiesta de la Magdalena, Xico’s biggest yearly festival that celebrates the town’s patron saint. Strands of papel picado hung between the streets. The town looked like it ran directly up into the mountains — behind all the buildings, you could see them there in the background, covered in thick clouds.

Before we could get to lunch at El Campanario, the restaurant I’d painstakingly chosen as my primary mole xiqueño experience,
a woman on a side street waved us over. She was selling toritos, a milky drink full of a boozy, rum-tasting liquor. She gave us little shots through the passenger-side window: piña colada, strawberry, peanut, coconut. At this point I was loving Xico.

Then, finally, we arrived at El Campanario for lunch. While we mulled over the menu, the waitress dropped off a plate of fresh corn tortillas, drizzled with melted lard and a scoop of chunky tomato sauce.

We ordered a few of the house specialities: sopa xonequi, made with a wild green that grows in Xico, and of course the mole.

Then the food came…

An airy Veracruz-style gordita.

Sopa xonequi

Enchiladas de nata, filled with pork, apples, plantain, almonds, raisins and tomato.

A shrimp molcajete

The mole wasn’t like anything I’ve ever tasted. It was much fruitier than the mole I’d tried at El Bajío, with these lingering hits of apple and banana and blackberry-ish chile ancho. And it had texture: you could feel the spices under your teeth. The last thing I got before swallowing was a sense of balance — it was tangy, toasty, sweet, charred. I wanted to keep eating more, just to see what else I could detect.

Thinking about it now, I should’ve tried to interview some of the restaurant staff to find out how they make it. Instead we left the restaurant happy, and off to wander Xico. We caught part of a procession as we were walking.

There are several restaurants that specialize in mole xiqueño — the ones that were on my list, but I didn’t try, were El Xicoteco and El Mesón Xiqueño. If you’re planning a trip and you want to eat well, I also found Karen Hursh Graber’s MexConnect article on Xalapa, Xico and Naolinco super helpful.

I’ll post the rest of my Xico pictures in the next post!

A weekend in Xalapa, Veracruz

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Dancing to huapangos at Xalapa's La Casona del Beaterio

Crayton and I have a friend, Chris, who works as a biologist outside Coatepec, Veracruz. Last month we finally had a chance to visit him. Originally I’d wanted to combine a trip to Veracruz City, too, but a helpful email from Leah at In Veracruz cleared that up — traveling to Coatepec and nearby Xalapa was enough for one weekend.

We caught an early-morning bus from Mexico City’s TAPO terminal and arrived bleary-eyed in Xalapa at about 11 a.m. We decided to use Xalapa as our homebase because friends had told us great things about the city. One friend compared it to Seattle, with its drizzly weather and coffee shops. On Lonely Planet’s Thorn Tree forum, though, people weren’t as nice — some said it was ugly and urban, and not worth spending even a day there.

In the end, Xalapa was just okay. It’s a little too gritty to be Seattle, and the coffee shops weren’t as abundant as I thought they’d be. Also, I expected the people to be a little nicer. At the market one day, two vendors brushed me off when I asked what type of chiles they were selling. “No sabría decirle,” they said, which roughly translates to, “I wouldn’t know.”

I also had trouble hunting down good regional food. Taxi drivers pointed me to an al pastor stand and a grilled meat place. I thought there’d be something more specifically Xalapeño. Maybe I didn’t ask the right people.

I did take a really cool bike tour in Xalapa, though. And I enjoyed the Anthropology Museum. In the end, I’d recommend stopping in Xalapa for a day and a night, and then moving on to some of the smaller villages in the area — specifically Xico.

Here’s a list of a few things I liked in Xalapa. The Xico post is coming in a few days, with lots of gorgeous food.
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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?

Scouring Mexico City’s food stalls with Penny de los Santos

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Penny de los Santos was in Mexico City this week on assignment. I’ve written about her before — she gives photography workshops and works often for Saveur, and is generally always doing a million cool things at once.

We’re friends, so I sent her a little note suggesting we get together if she had time. She responded with a better offer: Would I mind being her assistant? The payment would be street food.

Dude. Would’ve done it for palomitas.

I didn’t really know what being a photo assistant meant, but it turned out to be a lot of hanging out (looking for “moments,” as Penny says), and holding the light reflector and flash bulb. The flash duties ended up being a lot of fun — I squeezed with Penny into a cantina booth and aimed the light at a serenading musician’s face, and then later captured a churro-maker in the Centro Histórico. I’m a timid photographer generally, but this flash stuff was liberating. I suddenly didn’t care if anyone yelled at me.

Really, the best part of the gig was watching Penny. She has this unbridled enthusiasm for her job. If she liked a certain fonda or a certain scene, she’d just stand there dumbfounded for a second and then exclaim, “This place is freaking awesome!” with a smile like she couldn’t believe this place existed, that the world could even come up with a place like this. And then she’d squeeze her way in, walking behind the kitchen counter to snap photos of pots bubbling on the stove, or standing on a chair, or walking up to a group of people eating to stick her lens between their shoulders.

It’s funny, because people seemed to forget about her after a few seconds. That seems like the real gift — how do you arrive on the scene as a photographer and then disappear?

I brought my own camera with me on these trips, but it stayed in my purse most of the time. Finally, on the third day, I got a little bolder. I even asked Penny how to adjust my white balance. She gave me a sort of pained look, like, “You really don’t know how to do that?”

Penny’s giving a workshop in Mexico City in July, if you’re interested in catching her next time she’s in town. I’ll be helping her out as a guide.

Here are a few shots I took when I finally dragged my camera out of its hiding spot.

Verdolagas con puerco at Fonda Margarita

The famous refried beans, creamy with lard, at Fonda Margarita

A plate of warm conchas from El Cardenal

Pork heads at the Xochimilco Market

Squash flowers at the Xochimilco Market, almost too pretty to be real


Fava bean salad at the Xochimilco Market

How to make a proper chile en nogada

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Every year in late summer and early fall, the chile en nogada makes its brief run through Mexico.

The star ingredients, walnuts and pomegranate seeds, are not available any other time of the year. So it’s a festive time. Restaurant storefronts become festooned with “We have chiles en nogada!” banners. Pomegranates glitter at the tianguis. Mexican Independence Day is right around the corner (on Sept. 16), and the dish is pretty much the culinary centerpiece of the celebration.

To me, the most interesting thing about chiles en nogada is that it’s a living piece of Mexican history. Puebla nuns invented the dish in 1821, to honor a visit by Mexican General Augustín de Iturbide. The dish featured the colors of the Mexican flag: a poblano chile stuffed with dried fruits and nuts, covered in creamy walnut sauce (white) and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds and parsley (red and green). The Mexican flag was unveiled around the same period, so you can imagine the patriotic fervor.

Today, the chile en nogada sounds awfully baroque. Fruity meat? Pomegranate seeds? Who would eat that? At the time, however, nogada sauce was popular. And so was the idea of combining dozens of ingredients to create a complicated, tedious dish. (The Pueblan nuns also invented mole.)

Chiles en nogada is not an easy dish, and it’s not meant to be. That’s part of the tradition. Walnuts must be peeled. Spices assembled. Raw and dried fruit, chopped. Even after assembling your chile, you must dunk it in egg batter and fry it.

In the olden days, the nuns didn’t have blenders, so they ground the walnut sauce on the metate. As someone who has done her fair share of metate-grinding, I can tell you that it had to take entire days of grinding to get the texture they wanted. Let me repeat that: days of grinding.
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