tianguis

A visit to the tianguis in Col. Santo Domingo

April 17, 2012 by Lesley Tellez

A mixiote taco from the tianguis on Coyamel street in the Col. Santo Domingo.

My friend Mojdeh does cultural tours in Mexico City, and for more than a year we’ve been planning for me to go visit her neighborhood south of town. She lives in the Colonia Santo Domingo near Metro Copilco, almost to the UNAM.

There are several tianguis (the Nahuatl word meaning outdoor neighborhood market) in Santo Domingo. The one near her house is on Coyamel street on Wednesdays.

She told me I was going to love it, and she was right. The Coyamel tianguis was larger than the two markets near my house, full of people eating and saying hi to each other and pushing shopping trolleys. Smoke billowed from a taco stand offering fresh cecina cooked on a wood-fired grill. Mojdeh and I waited 30 minutes, along with 15 other people, just for tortillas — one woman sold blue and white versions, plus sopes, tlacoyos and gorditas out of big boxes lined with dish towels. Her steamy, delicate blancas were worth the wait.

We ate and wandered, and ate some more. I bought some gorgeous tomatillos that the vendor told me were from Ixtlahuaca, past Toluca. I bought fresh requesón and homemade pan de pulque, and a white zapote, which tastes kind of like sweet avocado. And I spotted a quelite I’d never seen before — trébol de carretilla (medicago polymorpha).

A few photos:

Tomatillos from Ixlahuaca, in the State of Mexico

Spotted this unusual cinnamon bark. The vendor said he grows it in Tuxtla, Veracruz. It smelled much more intense than the usual Mexican cinnamon.

The cinnamon vendor

A big pile of trébol de carretilla

Serving tacos de mixiote from a gigantic steam pot.

A vendor makes cecina tacos, known as tasajo in Oaxaca, from a wood-fired grill.

A taco with grilled cecina and longaniza. This tasted even better with a few spoonfuls of crema on top.

Here’s a map to the location, in case you want to visit yourself someday (click to open in Google maps):

Cruising the markets of São Paulo, Brazil

December 2, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

The cajú fruit, pictured at São Paulo's Municipal Market.

On my second day in town I booked a tour with Around SP, a small company in São Paulo that offers tours of the city’s cultural sites. I told my guide, Luis, that I wanted a culinary tour, so we zoomed off in his car one morning with plans to hit some of the city’s markets, bakeries and dessert shops.

The Food Tour Begins

One of our first stops was a feira, or outdoor neighborhood market. It looked just like the tianguis: vendors had set up under plastic tarps, selling fruits and vegetables arranged into attractive piles. They called out to customers passing by. (This was no doubt the Portuguese equivalent of “We have papaya! 10 pesos a kilo!”)

The feira had things I’d never seen before: bulbous, thick squash shaped like a barbell; short spiky cucumbers; wild Brazilian cabbage known as couve, shredded and wrapped in plastic. Thick bulbs of garlic hung from ropes. Mounds of spices sat in large bowls — whole cumin seeds, peppercorns, dried chilies.

A big meat and seafood section lay beyond all the fruit, with the items displayed in neat rows inside plastic display cases. There were fresh sardines, calamari, and whole, fresh fish that I didn’t recognize. I was kind of in awe about how orderly this section was. In Mexico all the meat sits out in the open and kind of piled on top of each other.

The sardines, which I would've bought if I had a kitchen.

Whole cumin seeds at the São Paulo feira

They sell cinnamon just like in Mexico!

This is the couve. It's a garnish for feijoada, a typical Brazilian dish.

Dried herbs are sold bundled with red chiles.

The market prices are displayed on a clothesline.

The spiky cucumber (it has a tail, too) is known as maxixe.

Moving on: São Paulo’s Mercado Municipão

Toward the end of the day we stopped at São Paulo’s Municipal Market, a huge indoor place filled with fish, produce, sausages, nuts, dried fruits, spices, thick blocks of guava ate, and even cacahuates japoneses. (In Portuguese they’re called amendoim, and they come in barbecue flavor!)

It was pretty much a gourmet-food lover’s paradise. Bacalao, several varities, lay stacked maybe two feet high, next to linguica and soft cheeses, hard cheeses, olives. We tasted soft, spreadable catupiry cheese on crackers, and I looked at an oyster bar longingly, where people sat slurping and drinking beer. The market’s second floor has a food court, where you can supposedly find the best mortadella sandwiches in the city.

A view of São Paulo's Municipal Market from the second floor

I still wasn’t very hungry, so we walked around the fruit area. I tasted jabuticaba (pronounced jah-boo-chee-KA-bah), an oversize grape kind of like a capulín. And, best of all, I tasted cajú, the cashew fruit.

Didn’t know cashew came from a fruit, you say? I didn’t either. The weird thing is that the cashew lies outside the fruit itself, like a little hat. You have to open the shell and fish out the cashew. The flesh itself, on the main part of the fruit, was the strangest thing I’d ever tasted — rubbery, fibrous and juicy like a ripe peach. I think I laughed while I was eating it, because I didn’t know what else to do.

Here is a picture of the cajú, again:

The cajú fruit, pictured at São Paulo's Municipal Market.

And the jabuticaba, which is fantastic in a caiparinha. And it apparently grows on trees, literally on the bark itself.

Pão de queijo: The perfect end to a great day

We finished our tour with a piece of pão de queijo, a stretchy, dense cheese bun made with tapioca flour. As a sidenote, I think I had pão de queijo every single day in Brazil. I think it might be the world’s most perfect food.

Rio de Janeiro photos coming next!

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce

October 21, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

We like to buy trout from the organic tianguis that comes to the Roma every two weeks. A vendor sells it whole and in filets. The trout isn’t available all the time, so when we buy it, it’s a treat.

In the past, I’ve poached the fish and served it with a salsa verde (one day I’m going to post all these recipes for you, I swear). But lately I’ve been bored with poaching. I said to Crayton, who is slowly coming around to eating seafood, what would you like to do with this fish? Usually when I ask him what he wants to eat, he says meatloaf. This time he said, Why not fish tacos?

The idea zapped me, because I’ve never actually made fish tacos before. Salad tacos, peanut butter tacos, roasted carrot and banh mi tacos, yes. Fish tacos no.

The dream fish taco… and the reality

My favorite kind of fish taco is deep-fried: nuggets of bland white fish, sheathed in beer batter, puffed up in hot oil and served with shredded cabbage and a spicy cream sauce. The cream sauce is kinda half tartar sauce, half salsa.

For our meal at home, I wanted to make something healthier while keeping the idea of that sauce intact. The fish, because I would not be marinating it, needed a little zing.

So I pan-fried my trout filets. I made a sauce using the Oaxacan chile pasilla (I am obsessed), garlic, yogurt and mayonnaise. The result, thrown together in 30 minutes, was exactly what I wanted it to be: a simple taco that felt hefty because of the cabbage, and that wowed you with its smoky-creaminess. My friend Liz came over for dinner and moaned when she bit into these. “What is the name of this chile?” she demanded.

If you don’t have Oaxacan pasillas, you could substitute morita or chipotle.

Trout tacos with spicy Oaxaca pasilla cream sauce
Serves 4 with a few side dishes

For the sauce (makes about 1/4 cup):
1 Oaxaca chile pasilla, or any other intensely smoky, spicy chile
1 clove garlic
2 tablespoons plain yogurt
1 tablespoon mayonnaise

For the fish:
12 ounces trout filets
Vegetable or olive oil (or oil of your choice)
Six to 8 corn tortillas
Salt
Pepper

Garnish:
Lime wedges
Shredded cabbage

Directions

It’s a good idea to make the sauce first, so the flavors mix while you’re preparing the rest of the dish. Using kitchen shears or a knife, make an incision in the chile and scrape out the seeds and veins. Don’t use your fingers — it’s better to use a small spoon or a butter knife. Cover chile in hot water and let hydrate until the skin has softened, about five to 10 minutes. While the chile rests, you can slice your cabbage and let it sit in cold water, so it stays fresh.

Once the chile is sufficiently softened, add it to a blender with the garlic and just a little (1 or 2 tablespoons) water. Blend until as smooth as possible. Don’t worry if you see pieces of chile — that’s okay. Scrape or pour mixture into a small bowl, and whisk in mayonnaise and yogurt. Taste for salt and add if necessary. Store sauce in fridge until ready to use.

Wash and pat dry the fish filets. Season with salt and pepper. To cook, drizzle about a tablespoon of oil in a nonstick skillet and heat to medium. Add the fish when the pan is hot. Cook until golden brown on both sides.

To serve tacos, take a fork and shred a little bit of fish into a warm corn tortilla. Top with a spritz of lime juice, a spoonful of salsa and the cabbage.

Adventures in Mexican produce: Quelite cenizo

October 10, 2011 by Lesley Tellez

I’ve mentioned it several times, but I’m a big fan of quelites. The word is an umbrella term for any wild, native Mexican green, usually one that has small leaves (smaller than spinach or chard).

Mexico City supermarkets don’t sell them. I usually find them on the outer edges of the tianguis, where the vendors often come directly from farms. They set up directly on the sidewalk and sell gorgeous, non-uniform produce: round, plump squash with raised ridges; prettier than usual squash blossoms, tortillas, tlacoyos, and bags of these quelites.

In the past I’ve bought quintoniles, which have a purplish tinge. But last week I saw another type of quelite I’d never bought before — quelite cenizo. The name translates to “ash quelite,” because some of the leaves look like they’ve been dipped in ash. My batch was pretty much all green.

I’ve never paid more than 15 pesos (just over a dollar) for a kilo of quelites. They don’t cook down as much as spinach does, and they’re highly nutritious, so there’s really no excuse not to buy them.

What do you do with quelite cenizo?

As is the case with most quelites, you can stew them. In Mexico, this is known as “guisar.” The traditional preparation calls for washing the quelites very well beforehand — they tend to collect a lot of dirt — and them simmering them gently in a pot of water until tender.

From there, you can chop them up (or not, if you’re lazy like me) and sautee them in chopped onion and garlic. You could add a chile sauce, like tomatillo with serrano. But I like them plain. After cooking, you serve them with beans and tortillas.

Last night I used my quelite cenizo as an enchilada filling. Post on that to come. I’ve also mixed them with vegetables and served them over quinoa.

What does quelite cenizo taste like?

They’re mild and slightly sweet, similar to quintoniles and other quelites I’ve tried. The great thing about them is they don’t turn slimy once you’ve simmered them in water. All quelites I’ve tried, including one called nabo, hold their texture.

If you eat quelites, let me know below — what’s your favorite way to prepare them?

Not so scared of Montezuma anymore (and hoping he doesn’t smite me by saying so)

June 11, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

On my first visit to Mexico City in 2003, I didn’t eat any fruit or salads or street food because I was terrified of coming down with Montezuma’s Revenge. I didn’t even want to say the word, or think about it. Contracting… you-know-what… in a land where you can’t even throw your toilet paper in the commode? It sounded completely awful.

Now that I’ve suffered two bacterial infections and have learned the difference between “Montezuma’s Revenge Lite” and “intestinal hell,” I’m much more at peace with the idea of a little gastrointestinal stress as the price to pay to live here. Diarrhea happens. It’s a fact of life. This city has so much to offer in the realm of food and drink that you really can’t get mired down in the fear, because it’d take all the fun out of living here.

For instance, it’s pretty magical to eat a taco standing up and douse it with salsa from a plastic bucket, or to sample the homemade requesón (the Mexican version of ricotta cheese) from the lady at the tianguis. Or to drink a homemade agua de mango, or sip mezcal inside the fading, formerly opulent Bar La Opera, where Pancho Villa once rode in on his horse and fired a shot into the ceiling. I’ve never gotten sick once by doing any of those things.

Of course, one has to exercise caution. But I’ve slipped on that lately. I now brush my teeth with tap water, like everyone else I know. I disinfect only certain items from the tianguis, such as lettuce and tomatoes. Apples and carrots go straight from the market into my mouth. And it’s fine. I even bought chorizo verde from a tianguis dude last Sunday and fried it up last night. Who wants green sausage and eggs.

It’s just funny how things change. We’ve been here barely five months. My dad got a little sick when he came to visit last week, because his stomach wasn’t used to the spicy food. I tried to calm him down by telling him that at least he didn’t have giardia or salmonella.

“If you had that, you’d really be in bad shape,” I told him. “You’re going to be fine. It’ll clear up in a few days.” It did.

Why it’s a bad idea to shop at the tianguis while hungry…

May 18, 2009 by Lesley Tellez

…Because, after sampling everything the vendors hand you, including guanabana pulp and mamey and a big chunk of avocado, you STILL stop on the way out at the stand selling the world’s tiniest breakfast pastries, and you promptly purchase a whole bag of them, because they’re so little and cute.

You also ask the lady, “What’s that?” and point at what looks like a large chunk of bread. She says, “A borrachito — bread soaked in honey.” So you buy that too and gobble it on the way home, lack of antibacterial hand gel be damned.

And then, the morning after preparing a huge batch of chicken tinga, and eating four tacos stuffed with tinga and avocado and riquísimo panela cheese:

You eat said pastries with coffee, relishing in their butteriness, but really thinking, why did I purchase these again? I really bought a whole bag?

I’m spending like two hours at the gym today.