The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for July 2010

The Zen of bug-infested tortilla dough

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A few weeks ago, my cooking class instructor gave us our first major homework assignment. For the July 29 class, we were to bring one kilo of nixtamal, or dried corn that’s been soaked in a mixture of water and slaked lime. (Slaked lime is known in Spanish as “cal.”)

We could either soak our corn the night before class or do it Thursday morning. But the corn had to sit undisturbed for eight hours.

Luckily I already had my corn — I’d bought a kilo at the Central de Abastos about a month ago, before my cooking course even started.

I didn’t have time to make the corn Wednesday night. So at 9 a.m. yesterday, I padded into the kitchen, bleary-eyed, in my pajamas. I took out my corn from the pantry and poured it into a bowl.

I tweeted that I was about to make nixtamal. And of course I took a few photos.

Innocent-looking corn, before things turned ugly


The recipe I used, jotted down in class

I rinsed the corn under the faucet and shuffled the kernels with my fingers. And that’s when I spotted them: tiny black bugs, about the size of bread crumbs. My stomach dropped. There were bugs in my corn.
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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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Improvised tilapia pibil

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My husband is not a fan of seafood. Usually when I tell people that, they say, “Anything? He doesn’t eat any seafood?” And I say, “No. Nothing.” And then they persist: “Not even shrimp?” And I say no, not even shrimp.

Slowly, slooowly, I’ve been trying to introduce fish, because of its health benefits. But it’s been hard to find a fish that’s not overly fishy-tasting. (And it pains me to say that, because I love fish that’s overly fishy tasting.) A while back when we lived in Texas, I asked him if he wouldn’t mind tasting some tilapia. He agreed, and so I baked it in parchment and drizzled on some olive oil and lemon juice.

To my shock, he actually ate the whole thing. And he didn’t grimace, which is what he usually does when he doesn’t like a certain food. (The funny part is that he doesn’t know he’s grimacing. It’s pretty cute.)

We haven’t eaten fish in awhile, so yesterday I bought a few tilapia filets and decided to cook them in Yucatecan pibil-style spices. Pibil comes from the Mayan word “pib,” which means “cooked in an earthen oven.” The term generally refers to meat that’s been marinated in a mix of achiote, sour orange juice, garlic and spices. It’s wrapped in banana leaves and baked — traditionally in an underground pit — on low heat, until the meat is falling-apart tender. Cochinita pibil is perhaps the most famous dish made this way.

The pibil spices aren’t hot, in terms of chile peppers. The marinade is a combination of subtle flavors, with a zesty kick from the sour orange juice. It’s also pretty easy to throw together. If you don’t have sour orange juice, you can use half white vinegar and half regular orange juice.

I’m calling this “improvised” tilapia pibil because I baked it in aluminum foil, not banana leaves. (Not because I eschew banana leaves — I just didn’t have any on hand.) It worked fine. I need to keep banana leaves in the freezer though, because they impart a certain aroma that you don’t get with regular old foil or parchment paper.

By the way, Crayton enjoyed this. He ate the whole thing, again, with no grimaces. So we’re tilapia 2 for 2.

Recipe below.
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More Mexico City street sounds: The wailing woman who buys mattresses and stoves

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I’ve posted before about unique Mexico City street sounds. In our old place, the gas vendor yelled “Gaaaaaas!” every morning at 7 a.m., and you had to run downstairs and flag him if your gas tank was empty.

There was the pandulce guy who tooted his bicycle horn in the mornings, and the raspy-voiced tamales oaxaqueños vendor who came at night.

In the new place, the most common street sound is something I’d never heard before. It’s a woman who says over and over that she’d like to buy old junk — specifically washing machines, mattresses and stoves.

The weird thing is… she sounds scary. Like, she should be up in a haunted house somewhere, lamenting that she has no children to eat.

Jesica heard it for the first time a few days ago, while we were at my house working on Eat Mexico stuff. I’d assumed Jesica would’ve heard her before, since we don’t live too far from each other. But apparently the wailing woman does not make it to certain parts of Condesa.

“She sounds like La Llorona,” Jesica said.

I don’t know if the actual vendor is a woman, or even if it’s the same person every day. I’ve peeked my head out the window but I can’t see down to the street. All that wafts up to my window is that haunting yet eerily catchy voice.

I think this tune may have the power to displace the famous tamales oaxaqueños.

What do you think?

*Photo above is not of the wailing mattress woman, but another mattress-buyer spotted on Rio Lerma earlier this year.

When the Mexican bank takes two months to give you a debit card

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Crayton and I have both talked about the unique system of banking in Mexico.

Probably the biggest issue I’ve had to accept is that joint checking accounts don’t exist within our Mexican bank. There is one “titular,” or main name on the account, and a “co-titular,” or another person who has access but not complete control.

In our case, Crayton is the titular and I’m the co. This means I need his signature a lot.

It didn’t really bother me much until I came back from India. While I was gone, Crayton had canceled our old bank account and opened up a new one without me. (This was due to various only-in-Mexico reasons that I won’t go into here.) The point was: The bank now had no record of my existence. I had to get myself added to the account, and then solicit a new debit card.

So I signed a bunch of forms, and Crayton signed a bunch of forms saying, “Yes, I allow my wife to have access to my account, and to receive a debit card.” We waited. Three weeks passed. While we were on vacation in March in Arizona, the bank called and said oops, you need to sign just one more form.

We came back from Arizona and I signed the form, and Crayton signed the form that allowed me to sign it.

We waited some more. About 2 1/2 weeks later, already a month after I’d requested the original card, I came home and the doorman stopped me. “This is for you,” he said.

He handed me a tiny sticky note. A phone number for a man named Jorge was scribbled on it, along with the words “Ixe.” Ixe is the name of our bank. (If you’re unsure about why random sticky notes make sense in Mexico, please read my short treatise on scratch paper.)

I wasn’t sure what to do with the number. Should I call this Jorge person? While I mulled it over, the phone rang.

“I have your debit card,” a male voice said. Presumably this was Jorge.
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A Mexican wine tasting with Eat Mexico

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I’m pretty excited about the latest Eat Mexico tour Jesica and I are working on. It’s a preview of some of Mexico’s best-known alcoholic beverages: mescal, pulque, tequila and Mexican wine.

Sounds fun, no? I mean, I know I’m biased because I helped come up with the idea. But even if I wasn’t involved in this, I would be all over this tour like tomato sauce on Mexican rice.

A few weeks ago, we went on a test-run, dragging along some interested friends and two Danish students (friends of friends) who were visiting here on holiday. Our first stop was El Encrucijada, a cute wine bar in Condesa.

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Lessons in back-breaking Mesoamerican cooking: How to season a metate

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Yesterday I trucked down to Mercado Merced and bought my metate, the lava-rock tablet and grinding stone I need for my cooking class.

I was a little worried that I’d pick the wrong one. Would it have enough of a slope? What if I got the wrong-size grinding stone?

When I got there, most of the metates looked the same, and there wasn’t much of a selection to begin with. (“There’s not much of a commercial demand,” one vendor explained.) I ended up choosing one with only a slight slope and a surface that didn’t look too porous. It cost 370 pesos, or about $30 USD.

The vendor wrapped it in string y ya, I was done; I carried my new metate on the Metro all the way home. My friend Julie, bless her heart, came with me to help bear some of the weight.

Yesterday at cooking class, everyone sat down to use their metates to grind nixtamal, the corn treated with slaked lime that would eventually become tortillas. Yuri had one question before we could all proceed: “Is there anyone here who hasn’t seasoned their metate?”

I waved my hand in the air. Naively, I had no idea what was involved.
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Indulging in the “sobremesa”

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When I first moved to Mexico, I was annoyed, frankly, by the amount of time it took people to eat here.

At a typical restaurant, the waiter would drop off the menu and disappear. He would reappear to take our drink order, and then disappear again.

It was unnerving how no one, except me, cared about this. I’d be at a restaurant frantically trying to catch the waiter’s eye (should I stand up? should I go get him?) while every other Mexican looked happily oblivious. Lounging over their post-dinner coffees like they could have stayed there all night.

In Spanish this after-dinner lingering is called the “sobremesa.” An exact equivalent doesn’t exist in English, but it basically means chatting with friends after a meal and letting the food digest.

Basically, the sobremesa means that meals in Mexico — or rather, lunch, which is the biggest meal of the day — can stretch into two hours. Or even four, if you’re hanging out with your work buddies and throwing back tequilas.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever be one of these sobremesa, hanging-out-in-a-restaurant-all-afternoon types of persons. Patience is not one of my virtues, and after a meal I like to go home. But I’m happy to report that the change is underway.

Consider the evidence:

1. When I was in New York recently, I felt ambushed when the waiter appeared to take our order, five minutes after we sat down. Were we supposed to be reading our menus this whole time? Didn’t everyone else just want to have drinks and sit for awhile? It turned out, no. All the Americans were ready to order except me. I asked everyone nicely if we could please order appetizers first, and then decide later on our main plates.

2. We had lunch with Erik and Jesica recently, and the four of us hadn’t hung out in awhile. We met up at 2 p.m. at Barracuda Diner. At 3:30, we were still talking… at 4 p.m., still talking… and finally at 4:30, Crayton and I had to leave to pick up our friend at the airport. But I could have stayed longer. It was fantastic, this sitting after a meal without a care in the world except the company we were with. Two hours had ticked by, and I hadn’t once fretted about some task that had to be done at home.

3. I now love when the waiter drops off the drink menu and disappears. I think it’s classy.

What about you? Do you like lingering after a meal?

A weekend in Ixtapa and Zihuatanejo

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One of my best girlfriends from college came to visit last week.

I kept offering food to her and she kept eating, so over the course of a few days in Mexico City, she tried atole, tlacoyos, gusanos, mescal, pulque and tacos al pastor. After we had sufficiently ran around town and stuffed ourselves, we jetted off to the beach.

It fell to me as Mexico ambassador to come up with a good beach location. I didn’t have a lot of time to plan — been launching this thing called Eat Mexico — so after some quick thinking, I decided on Ixtapa/Zihuatanejo.
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A trip to La Nueva Viga, Mexico City’s main seafood market

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A few weeks ago as part an Eat Mexico tour, Jesica and I ventured out to La Nueva Viga, Mexico City’s biggest seafood market.

It’s also known simply as “La Viga,” which is confusing, because there’s another market in Mexico City — a smaller one — that sells seafood and is also called Mercado de La Viga. This Nueva Viga took its place.

I hadn’t been before, although I’d been to the Central de Abastos, which is directly adjacent to La Nueva Viga. The market sits a few streets over from the Central’s main fruit-and-vegetable complex, behind a long row of seafood empanada stands.

While the Central is a maze-like collection of tunnels and hallways, La Nueva Viga consists mostly of two long concrete rows with small booths carved out along the length. Shipments of seafood from all around Mexico and elsewhere are trucked in daily; El Universal says up to 2,000 tons a day. Buyers from restaurants and fondas around Mexico City flock there in the mornings to purchase their catch.

The market is open to the public, so if you want to buy even one piece of fish, you can bring a little cooler and do that. But get there early — a lot of the freshest stuff is gone by mid-day.

The great thing is that even if you’re only buying a half-pound of shrimp, the vendors are still really nice. They’ll explain where the shrimp came from and whether it was previously frozen, and any other different varieties they might carry.

It’s a fascinating, if smelly, place to visit. Slabs of fresh fish lie on ice, along with slippery pieces of octopus. Vendors troll about in white apron coats and rubber boots and yell the usual, “¿Qué le damos?” There is red snapper, bags of whole shrimp with their crispy heads still attached, crabs, frozen scallops, sole, and many other strange-looking ocean creatures that I didn’t know the names of.

In the center of the nearby parking lot, oblivious to the reeking-fish-guts smell, food vendors sell tacos and other snacks.

We visited on a cool, overcast day; I wouldn’t want to be near La Nueva Viga on a hot day. Thankfully, the fish itself, once we got up close, smelled of nothing. The pieces looked slick and wet and plump. I really wished I would’ve brought a little cooler, to take home some crab meat or huachinango. Or pulpo.

I’d highly recommend a visit there, if you’re looking for the best seafood the city has to offer.

Here are some pictures of the place. For more, check out this neat YouTube slide show. If you’ve been to La Nueva Viga and have any information you want to share, please do — couldn’t find much history on the place on the Internet. I’m especially interested in the history of the old La Viga, the seafood market that came before La Nueva.

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