Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border
I’m not sure if I mentioned this or not, but I’m in San Francisco this week, visiting a good girlfriend.
Of course, much to the chagrin of my now-tight jeans, I’ve been doing some fabulous eating. A few days ago, I took a food photography course with Penny de Los Santos, which gave me an excuse to wander around the hip Mission District and shoot everything that struck my fancy. Here are a few images from that day, and some of the other amazing things I’ve eaten while I’ve been here.
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I tend to favor pork, chicken or veggie tacos over red meat. But on Tuesday, my friend Ruth and I were ambling about town, and she had a craving for steak.
Ruth knows a thing or two about food, and I don’t want to deny her cravings, ever. So we stopped at Las Costillas, a taco joint on Pachuca and Juan Escutia that she’d been wanting to try.
It was a comfy, neighborhoody spot, with maybe five small tables, a cook and a waitress who was peeling vegetables for that afternoon’s menu. (The menu comprised three tacos, soup, rice and a drink for about 60 pesos.)
We ordered rib tacos to start and an order of black beans. Ruth also got some soup, which the cook graciously served even though it wasn’t supposed to be offered until after 1 p.m.
The tacos — which arrived in about four minutes — were smoky and flavorful, and Ruth said they weren’t greasy like so many tacos de costilla are. They also came with a bone, in case you wanted to gnaw on that for a bit.
After that, we ordered cecina de res tacos with grilled spring onion bulbs. Cecina is a salty, cured, thinly sliced cut of meat, and it was juicy and glistening and just gorgeous. The grilled onions were the perfect extra touch. Do you see those burnt bits? Yum.
Las Costillas also had quesadillas with mushrooms and cheese, made with pita bread instead of corn tortillas; and tacos with poblano, bacon, cheese and onion. (Getting those next time. Can you imagine all the gooey goodness contained in there?)
I didn’t see nopal on the menu, but the cook threw several paddles on the comal while we were there.
There was also a mirror tacked high up against the ceiling, so you could watch TV even if your back was to it. Very nice customer-service touch.
Lastly, they have a Lenten menu, so there’s no reason you can’t go on Fridays. Next time I’m in the area, I’ll definitely be back. Only downside is that they offer sodas only — no aguas frescas.
INFO
Las Costillas
At the corner of Juan Escutia and Pachuca, in the Condesa neighborhood of Mexico City
Open daily except for Sunday; I believe hours are 10 a.m. to midnight
Prices: Around 30 pesos for an order of three tacos
Lesley’s husband Crayton is guest-posting while she makes her way back from a trip to India.
So, after all those nice comments I got yesterday, I had to come back for an encore!
Just kidding. Lesley’s had some snags in her travel plans and is getting back to Mexico a little later than planned, so you’re stuck with me again today. But she’s doing just fine! Don’t worry.
This does give me the opportunity to tell you about my favorite Mexico City food: carnitas.
At the place where I work, eating these chopped pork tacos is a ritual so important that it has a name: Carnitas Wednesday, or Miércoles de Carnitas. Yesterday, just like every week, one of my co-workers took orders from the rest of the office and ambled out to the street to our favorite puesto. (Lesley has discussed the place before here (in her section on carnitas, where she notes it’s next to the pirated DVD stand on Rio Sena, just off Reforma in the Colonia Cuauhtémoc).)
We pay 10 pesos ($0.78) per taco, which includes the tip for the three people who work at the stand: the guy who chops up the meat with an enormous hatchet of a knife on a giant cutting board that looks like a slice of tree trunk; the lady who sits by his side, wraps up the to-go orders in foil and plastic baggies and handles the money; and the utility guy, whose main responsibility, I think, is to make sure the condiments (green and red salsas, limes, cilantro and onion) are all readily available. They run a pretty efficient operation.
My friend Carlos gave me lessons long ago on how to order carnitas: “de maciza, bien blanquita.” That means you want your meat really white and lean, without fatty chunks. A lot of Mexicans I know love the fatty chunks, but many Americans I know, including myself. find them icky. The risk you run with carnitas de maciza is that the pork is too dry, but our puesto does a pretty good job of keeping the meat moist. We’ve often found we get better meat if we show up before 2 p.m., when things get really busy.
The portions are generous, with tacos roughly the width of a can of cola on its side. Most of the time I can only eat two, though there are three-carnita days on occasion.
Our puesto just uses store-bought tortillas. If we feel like going all out, we buy some fresh-made tortillas and just order a bunch of meat from the carnitas stand.
Our puesto’s green salsa is fantastic, with an almost creamy consistency, not drippy. The mix of the spicy peppers with the sweet warmth of the meat… Wow. It’s gotten to the point where I wake up on Wednesday mornings already excited about lunch.
Yesterday's lunch
It took me awhile to warm up to tacos de canasta. They’re the soft, steamed tacos sold on the street, and they’re usually stacked in cloth-covered basket.
Unlike at the regular street taco stands, where the vendors are furiously chopping meat or dunking flautas in a fryer, nothing really happens at a tacos de canasta stand. A man, or woman, stands under an umbrella next to a basket. The end.
I didn’t try them for months, because the idea of eating food that’s been sitting in a basket all day sounded kinda gross. But then one day Alice mentioned that they were her favorite. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she described this specific tacos de canasta stand near the Chapultepec Metro. (“Oh my god, they are so good.”) I tried them for the first time shortly afterward, at a stand in Tlalpan.
I’d chosen an potato and rajas taco, and the vendor lifted up a section of the cloth and handed me an oily taco that looked nearly translucent in the middle. I was momentarily disappointed (is this going to taste like a mouthful of grease?) but then I bit into it. The potatoes and rajas had been stewed into this soft mixture that you barely had to chew. It was the taco equivalent of baby food. I loved it, because it was comforting and simple, and sometimes you need a break from all that chopped meat on the street.
I’ve eaten tacos de canasta a few more times since then. Last week, I finally visited La Abuela, a crowded tacos de canasta stand in my neighborhood. The vendor is an old man who wears a newsboy cap, and he stands underneath a red umbrella. He has this weathered, kind face, like the stereotypical grandfather character in the movies. Every time I walk by, I steal a glance at him and think: he’s so cute.
He’s not smiling here, but I promise, when he does, it’s kind of adorable.
La Abuela has a pretty extensive variety for a street stand. Crayton and I chose the frijol, papa, tinga, chicken with mole, and cochinita pibil.
All of them had been cooked in the way that I remembered: oily tortilla, stuffed with a soft, stewed filling.
The cochinita and the potato were the best — the former with just a slight whisper of spices, and the potatoes, mashed to smithereens so that they slid down your throat with this kind of slick earthiness. They reminded me of the potatoes my great-grandmother used to make. She would slice them and fry them in lard, and then let them drain on paper towels for hours and hours, until they were so soft you could practically mash them with a fork.
I would highly recommend La Abuela if you’re in the neighborhood. The stand is located at the corner of Rio Rhin and Rio Lerma in Col. Cuauhtémoc, and it’s open from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily. La Abuela also has other branches around the city, and they offer home delivery, if you’re having a party.
If you’re interested in making your own tacos de canasta, this site has pretty extensive instructions, including recipes for various fillings and how to properly line your basket to keep the warmth in.
They were as good as they looked. Interestingly, the process was a lot more orderly than I’m used to. We ordered from one person, who gave us a ticket, which we then handed to the taquero.
Most people also drove up in cars or SUVs. Some even ate inside their vehicles, which I personally think is blasphemy. Everyone knows that street tacos should be eaten while standing up, or sitting on a plastic stool.
One of my favorite beers in Mexico is Indio. It’s caramel-colored, and lightly malty. It goes down — not gonna lie to you — like wine.
Indio isn’t sold in the U.S., even though Femsa (the company that owns Indio) exports some of its other Mexican beers, such as Sol, Bohemia and Dos Equis.
Last night, I tried to go to spinning class at the gym next door, but it was canceled. So at 7:30 p.m. Crayton and I were looking at each other kind of guiltily. Do we stick to our fitness plan and go our real gym? (The spinning-class joint just offers classes — no machines.) Or, since it was already getting close to 8 p.m., do we stay in and order tacos and maybe drink a few beers? And… watch the last episode of Mad Men on iTunes?
The latter won. I called El Caminero and ordered chicken, bacon and onion for me, and chorizo, bacon, cheese and poblano peppers for him. When the food arrived, we sat on the barstools next to our kitchen counter — an area I’ve now deemed “The Taco Eating Space” — and opened the warm styrofoam containers. A stack of corn tortillas sat on top of the filling, keeping it warm. (How do the folks at El Caminero think of this stuff?)
While we were waiting for the taco man, Crayton went to Oxxo to pick up a six-pack. He came back with these really cool, art-styled Indio bottles. It’s apparently a temporary promotion. We got the “Pop Art” style label.
A shot of the cardboard packaging that came with our six-pack
The tacos were fabulous, by the way. We inhaled them and left the salsas in our wake. These two little guys are in the fridge right now, waiting for me to finish them off over lunch. (Do lettuce wraps with pure salsa filling sound weird?)
For the other female Indio-lovers: I present you with Indio bottle cap earrings.
A few days ago, while wondering what the heck we were going to eat for dinner, I had a moment of inspiration and made a quick version of a banh mi sandwich. I took a chunk leftover baguette, smeared it lime juice-spiked mayonnaise, and layered on cilantro, pickled carrots and jicama, and chunks of roasted chicken. (The latter leftover from the great huazontle disaster.) I placed it on a plate and served it with leftover quinoa, drizzled in a miso-honey glaze.
Crayton looked at it. “What’s this?”
“Banh mi!” I said, supremely proud of myself.
Of course the real banh mi is made with liver pate. Or, as Andrea Nguyen describes in her cookbook Into the Vietnamese Kitchen (a must-have, if you’re into Vietnamese food), it’s made with nearly any “boldly flavored” meat, such as five-spice pork or garlic-roasted chicken.
My chicken was plain, but the thing still tasted great. The mayo mingled with the French bread, which mingled with the cilantro and pickled carrots, creating this sweet-savory mess that you just wanted to bury your face in. I wanted to make them again the next day, but we were out of bread. So I got out my package of tortillas from the fridge.
I half-burned one on the gas flame, and then added the chicken, two heaping spoonfuls of pickled carrot and jicama, a handful of cilantro, and a dab of sriracha. The result was just about as good as the sandwich — except with less bread, I had direct contact with the hot sauce, which made my tongue swell up. I love it when that happens.
Really, the secret here is the pickled veggies, which add just the right note of tangy-sweetness. Alice gave me this bunch, but I can’t wait to make them on my own. They’re my new fridge staple.
Banh Mi Tacos
Serves 4
4 corn tortillas
1/2 cup pickled carrots and jicama (the NYT has a great recipe here; just swap out the daikon for jicama)
Two to three pieces leftover roasted chicken, or boldly flavored meat of your choice, cut into chunks
1 handful cilantro
Sriracha sauce
Heat up your corn tortillas on a comal or gas flame. (Or, if you don’t have either of those, wrap them in paper towels or a dish towel, and stick them in the microwave.) Zap your chicken in the microwave for 10 seconds, just to warm it slightly, and add it to your tortillas. Top with at least two tablespoons of pickled carrots and jicama, and add cilantro and a dollop of sriracha. (Note on the latter: A little goes a long way.)
For the miso-honey quinoa: For 1 cup of cooked quinoa, cooked according to the package directions — In a small bowl, mix 1 tablespoon of brown miso paste in a bowl with about 2 tablespoons of walnut oil. Add honey (I used agave because it was all I had on hand), and soy or worcestershire sauce to taste. I also added a splash of Chinese cooking wine for depth. Drizzle this mixture over your quinoa, and stir to blend.
Crayton’s co-worker Carlos is a huge Chivas fan, so on Sunday we trekked out to the Estadio Olímpico at UNAM to see Chivas play Pumas, one of their biggest rivals.
This was my second Mexican soccer game, and I gotta say, I’m becoming a fan. (As fan-ish as I can be. I tend to get very nervous during close games, and then my stomach starts flip-flopping, and then I can barely watch. So I try to stay low key about the whole thing.)
Compared to Estadio Azteca, Estadio Olímpico is on the small side, with two tiered sections of seats. But Pumas fans are notoriously rabid, and so it took us awhile to actually enter the stadium. First, an employee at our ticket gate shooed us away, saying that Chivas fans had to sit “in section 23.” When we walked to that section, we were told to go to another. At the third gate, the employee there told us we should go back to the first one we went to, where the girl had shooed us away.
We finally found seats — with the help of a high-up stadium employee with a walkie talkie — just after the game started. The seats were okay. They lay directly behind Pumas’ goal during the first quarter, meaning we didn’t have an aerial view of the field. But we were immersed in red-and-white, which was fun.
The guy behind me kept whining, “No maaa-mes!” whenever Pumas approached the Chivas goal. And there were several shouts of, “Dale Chicharo!”, urging on Chivas player Javier Hernandez.
My favorite part was the trash-talking. Pumas fans would launch into their traditional “Goya” cheer, which goes like this:
Gooooya!
Gooooya!
Ca-choo Ca-choo RAH-RAH
Ca-choo Ca-choo RAH RAH
Goooya!
Chivas fans would basically pee on it, singing it back and then tacking on a “Chíngala tu madre!” on the end. You can listen to an audio link of the original Goya cheer here.
A few more pictures from the game:
Starting to realize riot police on horseback are a typical sight for a Mexican soccer game
A sign tacked on the stadium gate, basically meaning: 'Don't worry Pumas, we won't turn our backs on you.' The Pumas haven't been doing too well this year.
A sea of red-and-white Chivas fans...
...compared to even more Pumas fans, probably all dying to toss cupfuls of beer on our heads.
Beer sales stop just after halftime, as written on the very helpful jumbo-tron.
This Chivas fan led the trash-talking Goya cheer.
GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLL! (Chivas ties the score, 1-1.)
After the game we went to El Charco de Las Ranas for tacos. Of course, afterward I also had to try a gaznate from the vendor out front. It’s a typical Mexican street-food dessert, comprising a tube of fried dough filled with a creamy meringue mixture. Been eyeing them for weeks, wondering how they were… but I didn’t like it. Too sweet and heavy. Oh well.
A close-up of the juicy tacos al pastor at El Charco de Las Ranas
The gaznate, which despite its good looks, I won't be trying again.
Ever since I fell in love with the spicy, sesame-studded Korean Fried Chicken chili sauce, I’ve been slapping it on everything. Hot dogs. Tostadas. Tacos. I’ve offered some to Crayton, but he just looks at me weird and continues eating his food.
The other day, I decided to roast some carrots with honey and olive oil. And because I stick everything in a tortilla, I thought: Why not carrot tacos? Out the sauce came from the refrigerator, in its little recycled peanut butter jar. I slathered it on a hot flour tortilla and added the carrots, blackened and sticky in parts, and some zucchini and shredded chicken.
One bite and — MAN. It was a flavor explosion. Something about the sweetness of the carrots mingling with the tangy sauce. It was just about perfect. At the time, I happened to be sitting with Crayton at the dinner table.
“You have to try this!” I begged him.
He politely declined, and continued eating his tacos. Living with a crazy food-obssessed person is probably not as fun as it sounds.
Recipe below. If you’re not a taco person, eat the carrots as a snack or a side dish. They’re that good.
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I’ve been fascinated with tacos de nana ever since my friend Jesica told me about them months ago. We were playing dominoes and everyone was a little tipsy, and the conversation drifted to all the weird things you can stick in tortilla here.
“Uterus?” I’d sputtered. “Uterus tacos?” My taco universe suddenly opened up. God had tipped his cards, and they were covered in gooey pictures of pig parts.
Interestingly, no one else seemed as excited as me. (This is starting to become a trend.) But then a few months later, I was chatting with Jesica’s business partner Martha, who mentioned that she had a carnitas taquero de confianza in Del Valle.
The concept of “confianza” is uniquely Mexican. It basically means trust, and it’s used in all sorts of situations. It’s important to have a cleaning lady “de confianza.” A locksmith “de confianza.” A plumber “de confianza.” I’ve even seen bakeries advertising themselves to be de confianza. I’d never heard of a taquero de confianza, but it made sense, and I begged Martha to let me go with her next time she trekked down to Del Valle.
So it came to be that last Sunday, the morning I was sweating away on my hamburger buns, Martha invited me out for a carnitas tacos breakfast. (Fried meat en la mañana — this is how Mexicans roll.) She drove me to the Mercado Lázaro Cárdenas in Del Valle.
It was about 10 a.m. and the mercado was mostly empty. A few women in checkered smocks sat out front in plastic chairs, tending to a flower stand. We walked inside, past empty stands selling fruits and vegetables, dried chiles. We turned a corner and there it was: a small restaurant with a sign reading “Ricas Carnitas y Desayunos.”
The place already had a line for table service, but we ignored it, because Martha never gets a table. Instead we walked straight up to the glass case stuffed with pig parts.
“This is Jorge,” Martha said, introducing me to the smiling man — and quite skinny, for a carnitas vendor — behind the counter. “Jorge, tell her. Haven’t we been coming here for a long time?”
Jorge related how Martha’s family had been customers for more than 70 years, since before the market was even built. Martha’s grandmother’s sister, in fact, discovered the place as a newly married woman who’d moved to Mexico City from the Yucatán. The stand has been there since at least 1935, Jorge said.
Martha, who used to eat 10 tacos in one sitting here as a kid — lately, she tops out around four — said she never actually orders specific kinds of tacos. She just lets Jorge choose whatever he wants.
“Is that okay with you?” she asked me.
Was that okay with me? I was living a dream. I think at this point my pupils had been replaced by two stars.
Jorge grabbed a few pieces of meat from inside the case, sliced them thinly and began chopping on a tree-stump like cutting board behind the counter. He chopped them so finely, they were almost minced. Then he sprinkled the meat in a corn tortilla hot off the comal, and drizzled on some salsa verde. He placed the tacos on two small plates, each lined with a square of paper.
“Trompa and lengua,” he announced. Snout and tongue.
Martha dug in. I did too, but not before wondering whether I would hate the tongue because of its bumpy texture.
Turned out I needn’t have worried. The meat was chopped so fine, I couldn’t really discern any strange textures. Only a slight meatiness of the tongue, and a smidge of fattiness from the trompa. And anyway, the seasoning had enveloped my brain: slightly tangy, salty. It married perfectly with the bright green salsa. I gobbled mine up in minutes, before I even had a chance to take a picture. So I got some of the glass case instead.
Next up: higado. I didn’t realize liver tacos were part of the carnitas oeuvre — nor did I know I even liked liver, until I tasted Jorge’s. He took a chunk of liver from the case and again, sliced it thinly. He added some cuerito, which are bits of fried pig skin. Then chop chop chop, toss meat on tortilla, drizzle with salsa. Fold and place in front of two hungry girls.
The liver had a stronger, gamier taste than the trompa/lengua combo, but it was gentler somehow. It did not have the table-pounding, “I am liver!” taste of liver and onions. This was beach-side liver. Liver you’d eat while sitting under an umbrella, curled up with a good book. I liked the contrast between the two tacos that came before it.
Next: the tacos de nana, my reason for coming. The meat sat in a big olla, under the glass. Most people would try not to look at it, but I wanted to take a picture. (As a sidenote, I also don’t get grossed out during the human-anatomy operating scenes on TV.) Martha asked a woman behind the counter if she wouldn’t mind, and so the woman took the camera and snapped this.
Once chopped up, the nana looked innocuous enough. I thought it would be like tripa — the thick, rubbery sheet that’s cubed and often eaten in menudo — but it wasn’t. The fatty parts were about the thickness of a fingernail. And they clung to bits of meat. It tasted even milder than the lengua, but blanketed in the same seasoning and salsa.
“How are they?” Martha asked.
I could only nod and widen my eyes. Then I ate the rest of my nana.
Lastly, we ordered a “sesadilla” — a mix of brains and chicharrón, which are crispy fried bits of pig skin. (Chicharron is cuerito, but deep fried, so that the skin has a fluffed-up appearance.) I’d had brains before, at Bar Belmont in Colonia Juarez and Cafe Tacuba. These brains were a bit different, though. They were creamier. I asked Jorge how he prepares them, and he said he whisks them in order to give them a softer texture. (He also said some other stuff I didn’t understand.)
The sesadilla was completely different than all the other tacos Martha and I had tried — it was so creamy and gloppy, with a meaty, kind of sour taste. I tried not to think of the words “sour brains” as I ate, and instead of something nicer, like pudding.
We ate four tacos each, and I had an orange-tuna fruit juice. Martha got two sodas. Total price was about $10.
We left feeling full, but not like we had to roll ourselves out the door. For some reason I felt like I’d eaten a light breakfast. Maybe it was because the meat was chopped so fine. Or maybe… part of me, the gustatory part, is actually becoming a little more Mexican.
A girl can hope.