The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Archives for July 2010

Another big announcement

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Thanks so much for all of your wonderful comments and encouragement about cooking school. I wanted to share some other big news with you today: I’ve started a new business!

My friend Jesica and I recently launched Eat Mexico, a tourism company that offers informal, fun food tours of Mexico City.

Right now we’re offering a four-hour street food tour, a three-hour taco tour and tours of two Mexico City markets. Everything is completely customizable, so if you want to seek out the city’s best bakeries or the best vegetarian places, or you really just want to eat grasshoppers and ant eggs, we can do that, too.

The whole idea is to show people realize how vibrant and layered the food scene is here. Real Mexican food — and not just the food, but the history and the culture of eating here — deserves so much more recognition. I am really excited to be doing my part to help get the word out.

Please check out our website and let me know what you think. If you live in Mexico City, we will be having a launch party sometime in the next few weeks, so leave me a comment if you’d be interested in attending.

So yes: cooking school and culinary tourism. This is the summer of Making It Happen.

Roasted cabbage salad with garlic-chipotle vinaigrette

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I didn’t realize it until this week, but when you buy one head of cabbage, you’re gonna be eating cabbage for awhile.

One head of purple cabbage gave me and Crayton four days worth of meals. We had cabbage curry on Sunday night, whereupon I put a wee bit too much chili powder, causing Crayton to cough and sputter, “I can’t breathe.” (He was fine in the end.)

The cabbage continued into the next day, with leftovers for lunch and roasted cabbage salad with asparagus for dinner. Then came more leftovers for lunch the next day. And roasted cabbage salad with carrots for dinner that night.

I finished the final leftovers yesterday and was kind of surprised my skin hadn’t turned purple.

So yes: roasted cabbage. It’s so good you actually can eat it several days in a row, without feeling bored or wishing that the infernal cabbage would just disappear.

Although I came up with the roasting idea myself (thought process = roasted veggies with raw cabbage… roasted veggies with roasted cabbage, whoa), other Internet food bloggers love roasted cabbage, too. “Gets rid of cabbage funk,” says The Kitchn, in its drool-worthy recipe for roasted cabbage with bacon. “If you like cabbage at all, I’m guessing you’ll love it,” wrote Kalyn of Kaylyn’s Kitchen. There’s really no excuse not to roast cabbage. Especially when you’ve got so darn much of it.

Because roasting any veg brings out its naturally sweet notes, I decided to pair this salad with a spicy dressing. Had a lot of garlic sitting around, so garlic and chipotle seemed like a natural choice. I turned to Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday to make sure I had my salad dressing proportions right.

The result — crunchy, toasty cabbage drizzled with a sweet, garlicky, spicy vinaigrette — was pretty darn fantastic. In fact, I might even say that the dressing made the whole dish. Crayton specifically mentioned how good it was. Guess he’d forgotten about the chili-powder incident.

Recipe is below, in case you ever find yourself with a gigantic head of cabbage and no where to turn.
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