The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

quesadillas

Rustic quesadillas de xocoyol, in the Estado de México

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A xocoyol quesadilla, made from a plant in the Estado de Mexico

A xocoyol quesadilla, made from a plant in the Estado de Mexico

This past weekend, I visited some new friends at their home in Xalatlaco, a small city in the State of Mexico. For breakfast — a late breakfast for me, around 11 a.m. — they made quesadillas de xocoyol. The plant, which grows in nearby corn fields in June and July only, has a sharp, citrusy, sour taste, as if the leaves had been dipped in lime juice.

My friends, three women, mixed the greens with curls of white onion and a few thin veins of chile de árbol. They made blue corn tortillas from fresh nixtamal.

They laid the tortillas on the comal in thin sheets, then, once the tortillas had cooked, topped them with big handfuls of the xocoyol mixture, sprinkled with salt. There was no cheese. Everything steamed under the hood of the blue corn tortilla, and eventually, after several minutes, we had a soft, soft mixture without a single drop of oil.

“Te enchilaste?” one woman, Sra. Rosa, said after I took a bite. I shook my head. The quesadillas were lovely. Sort of like nopal in terms of the acidity, with a little punch of heat.

Apparently you can find xocoyol in Tlaxcala and the State of Puebla, too, although I’m not sure it’s the same plant. Does anyone out there know it?

Crispy quesadillas with rajas, chicken and cheese

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quesadillas

For the past few weeks, meal-planning has made me anxious.

I couldn’t think of any dish that would make me feel how I used to in the kitchen — relaxed, happy, a gusto. This is probably because our temporary kitchen had dull knives, no blender and two tiny pots that held four cups of liquid max. One can only make so many two-pot soups before wanting to throw herself into a heap on the floor.

Grocery shopping stressed me out, too, because everything in New York is so damn expensive. I read labels and checked prices, but still felt like I didn’t know what American food meant anymore, let alone American food that stretched my dollar.

Eventually — the kicker — I found good corn tortillas. My friend Allison took me to Hot Bread Kitchen in Spanish Harlem, where I bought a dozen wrapped in a vacuum-sealed bag. At Whole Foods, I bought poblanos, good-quality Monterey Jack cheese and some dried black beans.

Back in our tiny kitchen last week, I made the black beans and leaned over the pot, letting the steam envelope my face. I was about to char the poblanos in a nonstick skillet when I realized, holy cow — I have a real gas flame now. So I put the chiles directly on the fire to make rajas.

With the beans simmering and the chiles blistering, it felt like my old life again. Even rubbing the skin off the poblanos — a job I usually hate — was fun, because the poblanos were so much firmer compared to how they used to turn out on my old electric stove in DF. I made the quesadillas just like I used to, on the stove, folded half-moon shapes, letting the tortillas crisp as the cheese melted.

The funny thing was, this quesadilla actually tasted better than the ones I’d made in Mexico. The cheese, made in Wisconsin, oozed out in drippy, creamy strings.

I didn’t have any salsa but that was okay. For the first time in almost a month, things felt normal and right. I allowed a small part of myself to believe that some parts of my new life — even Mexican things — may be even better here.

We’ve since moved into our new apartment in Elmhurst and I’ve been eating quesadillas almost every day. They are cheap and delicious, so my what-to-eat problems have been solved, especially since my new friend Girelle introduced me to the kick-ass red jalapeño salsa from Tulcingo in Corona.

Chicken quesadillas with rajas and cheese

Note: These are really designed to use whatever you have in the refrigerator, so I’m not listing exact portions. They’re great with any leftover roasted chicken, or any leftover vegetables that can be sliced somewhat small and fit inside a folded corn tortilla. They don’t even have to contain cheese! Chilango quesadillas often leave it out. (That said, I used cheese because I was craving it… and I don’t live in Mexico anymore.)

Ingredients

2 Poblano peppers
Cheese of your choice, sliced
One piece leftover roasted chicken
Good-quality corn tortillas

Directions

To prepare the rajas, place chiles directly over the gas flame and let cook until black and blistered in spots.

If you have an electric stove, you can char the chiles in a comal or a nonstick skillet, WITHOUT oil — note they take longer and will not be as firm if you do it this way. But the taste is still more than acceptable. I don’t recommend using the broiler, because I think that’s too much heat, and you’d be sacrificing flavor.

Once chiles are about charred all sides, remove them to a clean kitchen towel and wrapped them up into a little bundle. Let them sit for 20 minutes, to loosen the skin and make it easier to peel. Peel the chiles as best you can using the pads of your fingers or a paper towel. Once peeled, cut open and scrape the seeds into the trashcan. Cut the chiles into strips about a quarter- to a half-inch wide. Set aside.

Warm up your leftover piece of chicken in the microwave or on the stovetop, and shred it into small pieces with your fingers or a fork.

Heat corn tortillas directly over the gas flame or on a comal. Once the tortilla can be folded over without breaking, remove it from the heat and place it in whatever pan you’ll use to make the quesadillas. (This can be the same comal, or you don’t have one, a skillet works.) Add a few little slices of cheese onto one side, plus the rajas and the chicken. Fold the other half over and let cook until you just see the cheese beginning to melt. This should only take maybe 30 seconds to a minute on medium heat.

Flip and continue cooking, until cheese is creamy and oozy. Serve immediately with salsa on the side.

Mexico City Street Food

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I’m helping out my friend Penny de los Santos with her photography workshop this weekend. I’ve been leading folks around, taking them to markets and street food stands, and encouraging them to try pulque and mezcal.

In return they’ve encouraged me to take out my camera from its lonely hiding place. It’s not that I haven’t been taking pictures — I have, but in the comfort of my own kitchen and not on the streets.

Here’s just a small set of what I shot, of Mexico City street food. (I’m ignoring the little voice that’s telling me that several of these could’ve been better.) I’ll have more over the coming days, and a little more about what I learned while hanging out with Penny.

Baked, sugar-dusted sweet potato with condensed milk

Palomitas, chicharrones and more for sale on the sidewalk

A carnitas taco

Roasted elote, served with cheese, chile powder and lime juice

Sprinkling salt -- or is it cheese? -- on the roasted corn

Papas, or potato chips, with Valentina sauce

Late night tacos al pastor... more to come on this stand later.

Street-side Mexican quesadillas

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One of the most uniquely Mexican things to do in this town is to watch a quesadilla being made on the street and then bite into it while it’s still hot.

The women — it’s almost always women making quesadillas — slap a ball of masa into shape, or press it inside a tortilla press. The tortillas cook on the comal until they’re golden and crisp. And then, once the tortillas are firm but not overdone, the fillings are spooned (or tossed with one’s fingers) inside: anything ranging from squash flowers to huitlacoche to chicken tinga. The first few mouthfuls of a street quesadilla might be tortilla-only, and then the filling comes on like a little gift, warming your tongue.

I used to have a quesadilla lady in my old neighborhood whom I liked a lot. But I didn’t know what was available in my new ‘hood until a few days ago, when Jesica and I were poking around in Condesa for possible tour stops.

We asked a newsstand vendor if there was a place to buy quesadillas around here, and she motioned to some blue plastic stools that I could vaguely see in the distance. “Son muy ricos,” she added.

And man, as we got closer, we could see they definitely were ricos: maybe six or seven people sat on the stools, eating quesadillas. A few more were standing up and eating, and yet a few more folks were placing their orders. This place was slammed.

A team of three employees kept things moving. One woman grabbed handfuls of masa and pressed them into shape. Another woman hovered over the buckets and filled the cooked tortillas, somehow without burning her hands. The lone man of the bunch clutched a long spatula and flipped the quesadillas as they cooked, occasionally drizzling them with oil.

I think I may have murmured “Órale.” (I’m starting to get a lot better at using that word.)

We ordered one with half huitlacoche, half rajas with potatoes. We didn’t specifically ask for cheese and so because this is Mexico City, the quesadilla arrived without it.

After we turned in our plate and paid, we had to ask: How long has this place been here?

The answer was more than 40 years. Now that deserves an órale.

If you’re interested in going to this stand, it’s at the corner of Juan de la Barrera and the Viaducto, where it intersects with Avenida Chapultepec. In addition to huitlacoche and rajas with potatoes, they also had chicken tinga, mushrooms and maybe three other options that I can’t remember.

More photos below.
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Deliciously smutty huitlacoche quesadillas

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While in Xochimilco a few weekends ago, I picked up some fresh huitlacoche from a stand outside the market. Huitlacoche means “corn smut” in English (ha!), and it’s a fungus that grows on corn in blue-black, mushroomy clumps. People like to call huitlacoche “the Mexican truffle,” but I’m not entirely sure how true that is, given that corn smut is pretty cheap and eaten by the mouthful, while truffles are insanely expensive and shaved onto fancy pasta dishes. Anyway.

I’ve had huitlacoche quesadillas at markets in Mexico City, and to be completely honest, I haven’t always liked them. Sometimes they have an intensely earthy taste, like mushrooms on steroids. And they can be very slimy. The good news is that huitlacoche is actually packed with vitamins, according to a recent Associated Press report. It has the same types of soluble fibers as oatmeal, the same ones that have been found to lower cholesterol.

I had never bought fresh huitlacoche, because I wasn’t totally in love with the taste. But they looked so pretty sitting on the Xochimilco tabletop. They had this kind of iridescent bluish color, and they were these round, spongey tufts. I just wanted to touch them. Ruth, ever my culinary door-opener, told me huitlacoche was easy to cook — just mix it with some onion, corn kernels and chicken stock, and simmer for about 20 minutes.

So that’s exactly what I did.

And Ruth was right — it was easy.

By the way, there are lots of debates going on right now about whether “fast and easy” is the death knell of American culinary culture. I tend to believe that fast and easy shouldn’t be the top priority in the kitchen; the most important rule is to cook with fresh ingredients. So yes, this dish was fast, but my first rule was met: I had fresh huitlacoche and fresh corn.

I heated some oil in a skillet, and then added the onion, smut, corn kernels and stock. Simmered everything for about 30 minutes, until the plump bits of huitlacoche had deflated a bit and turned black and slimy. Added more stock whenever the mixture looked too dry.

It looked like of like a pile of shredded, motor-oil soaked rags when it was done. (Oily rags dotted with yellow corn.) But the taste was unlike any other huitlacoche I’ve tried. It was only delicately earthy, not knock-you-over-the-head earthy. Moreover, combined with the cheese, it was almost decadent — a soft, cheesy pile of vegetables, whispering of mushrooms and corn. Gave some to Crayton for lunch two days in a row — a rarity for me, because I like to mix it up — and he loved it.

Huitlacoche is apparently very abundant in Mexico’s rainy season; for more recipe ideas, check out the wonderful Karen Hursh Graber at MexConnect. My simple little recipe is below. This is great as a light dinner, or as an appetizer.
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Indo-Mex fusion, and Jaipur’s lone Tex-Mex bar

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Quesadillas at an Indian Tex-Mex bar in Jaipur

It didn’t take long for me to start thinking about how to fuse Mexican food with Indian. Both use similar ingredients (chile peppers, onion, cilantro, flat breads), and both rely on a variety of salsas and sauces to compliment each meal. While slurping coconut chutney at Sagar on my second day in town, I thought: Why not coconut chutney on a taco? Why not a spicy sambar as a first-course sopa? With maybe some fideo noodles? There aren’t any rules that say we can’t do this. El mundo is our mariscos shell.

This type of thinking is dangerous for me, because I get really excited and then I start yammering on to Crayton, and then it becomes all I can think and/or talk about, and no doubt Crayton starts wishing that I’d move on to something else.

By the time we made it to Jaipur, the next leg of our journey, I was eager to share my Indo-Mex vision with someone else — namely, our friend Vikas, who lives in Bombay and planned to meet us in Jaipur. Jaipur is about three to four hours by train from Delhi, and the weekend we arrived happened to coincide with the Jaipur Literary Festival, a happening event that draws writers from all over India, and the West.

The festival was great. I bought a rose-printed kurta with red sequins that reminded me of Mexico, and we watched Tina Brown, Steve Coll and Vikram Chandra discuss whether the Internet has killed books. I was exhausted by 5 p.m. on the first day, but I couldn’t go to sleep, because then I’d be up at midnight, wide awake. So Crayton proposed pre-dinner drinks and apps at Amigo’s, a Tex-Mex bar he’d read about in our guidebook.

Vikas was skeptical. (He’s always skeptical.) But we convinced him in the end. (“C’mon! Three former Dallasites at a Tex-Mex bar in India! What could be better?”)

The place lay in the Om Tower Hotel, a somewhat shabby-looking cylindrical building guarded by a man wearing a Rajasthani turban. We took the elevator up several floors and exited into a dark tunnel, lined with rough rock. (Very old-school Space Mountain.) I’d expected sombreros and serapes, but the main room had been thoroughly blanketed in Western kitsch. Ceramic reclining cowboys supported glass-topped tables. There were ferns, and cactus, and mud-brown walls.

Interestingly, this place was marketed as upscale and trendy. We ordered vodkas mixed with lime juice, green chili and soda, a concoction Vikas suggested. They did have a few types of tequila, but both were strange brands that none of us had heard of. We also ordered quesadillas.

I wasn’t sure it was possible to create an Indian quesadilla, but that’s what we had. Two tortillas arrived covered in a béchamel-y white sauce, filled with a mildly spiced chicken (cumin-y, vaguely cinnamony), studded with a few bits of cilantro. There wasn’t any cheese, which was probably more authentically Mexican than they realized.

Over our drinks and quesadillas, I effused my vision of Indo-Mex fusion. The three of us threw out ideas: Potato masala tacos! Coconut chutneys as salsas! Tacos on chapati bread! At that moment, I desperately wanted a kitchen of my own in Jaipur so I could attempt to make some of this stuff. But alas, we were staying at a heritage hotel that didn’t include one.

It was a lovely night. After that, Indo-Mex fusion was my obsession on the trip, until I went to South India and became obsessed with upma and uttapam and savory breakfasts, and how to cook them using ingredients I can find in Mexico. I’ll get to that stuff later — I’ve already got a few recipes I want to share with you.

A few other things I enjoyed while in Jaipur:
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The oh-my-god greatness of flor de jamaica quesadillas

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My friend Jesica and I started a recipe exchange a few weeks ago. The idea was to share a little bit of our cooking knowledge — mine: baked desserts; hers, Mexican vegetarian food — and then eat our fabulous creations at each others’ houses. Last week, for the first installation, we made apple brown betty and homemade cinnamon ice cream; this week, it was Jesica’s flor de jamaica quesadillas and pasta al ajillo.

I don’t know if I can accurately convey my love for these quesadillas. They’re crispy. Savory. Tangy. The flowers, boiled in water and tossed in butter and olive oil, have a slightly crunchy, toothsome texture that almost reminds me of calamari. And they’re just so pretty: A deep purpley-pink color, like you’d see splashed on a quinceañera dress in a window here.

Flor de jamaica quesadillas

I seriously think I could eat them every day for the rest of my life.

And because they are so easy, you must make them. And the pasta too: It’s garlicky and spicy, and not too heavy. The mushrooms are tender and soft. Mmmm.

Pasta al ajillo

We made our own pasta because Jesica rolls like that, but store-bought would be just fine. And if you really want to make the most out of this, you could invite a few girlfriends over and share a few bottles of wine. Then, giggly and light-headed, you can take a cab home and fall asleep for two hours, happy to be alive to eat such amazing food and to know such great people.

Recipes after the jump.
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