The Mija Chronicles

Mexican food and culture, on both sides of the border

Lesley Tellez

Homemade strawberry tamales and Día de la Candelaria

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Look at that buttery masa. Don't you want to just eat it with a spoon?

February 2 is Día de la Candelaria in Mexico, a Catholic holiday that honors the purification of the Virgin Mary. It’s also an important day for eating tamales.

The holiday is a follow-up to Three Kings Day on Jan. 6, when families serve a Rosca de Reyes cake that’s baked with hidden figurines of the Baby Jesus. Anyone who finds a Niño Dios inside the rosca must make tamales for friends and family on Feb. 2.

It’s been interesting to watch the holiday unfold here — the markets have been filled with ceramic dolls of the Baby Jesus, many with long eyelashes and eyeliner. (Bringing said doll to mass is a big part of the Día de la Candelaria ritual.) However, I didn’t know until recently that Día de la Candelaria is a truly mestizo holiday. February 2 formerly commemorated the first day of the Mexica new year. Guess what the Aztecs used to eat to ring in the festivities? Tamales.

The Christmas tamale-making spirit passed me up this year, so I signed up for a Día de la Candelaria cooking course at the Escuela de Gastronomía Mexicana, where I take classes on Thursday nights. Yuri was teaching and he had a whole slew of tamales on the menu: strawberry, fig, pineapple, bean with chicharrón, corn with pork and epazote, cazón.

I’d wanted to make one of the sweet ones, but he relegated me to the corn group. But I snuck a few peeks at what the strawberry folks were doing.

When they came out of the steamer (as depicted above), I couldn’t believe how amazing the masa was. Made with butter and milk instead of lard and chicken broth like the typical savory tamal, this was almost like a spongecake. A lone strawberry gem lay inside, soft and tart.
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The wiles of the pambazo

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The pambazo never appealed to me until a few days ago, when I was puttering around Mercado San Juan Arcos de Belén, trying to brainstorm some new snack ideas for Eat Mexico.

Pambazos aren’t exactly snacks. They’re plump, bulging sandwiches stuffed with potato and chorizo. The roll — which according to Wikipedia was originally called “pan basso,” or lower-class bread — is drenched in a guajillo-chile sauce and then fried.

I’d always placed the pambazo up there with the torta de tamal. (A fine sandwich, particularly suited to laborers and other people who aren’t going to eat for five or six hours.) But how could I call myself a Mexico City food tour operator if I had not tried the pambazo? Plus I’d worked out four times last week.

So I got one.

The woman grabbed a roll off the stack, fried it briefly, then sliced it and placed it on the grill. Once the bread was dark-golden brown and toasty, she she slathered the chorizo-potato mixture on one side. Then came the crema on top: one spoonful. Two. Three.

She pressed the sandwich together, cut it in half, y ya. Done.

This was a simple, toasted torta. And it was fantastic, actually: the crema had oozed into the potatoes and chorizo, creating this comforting, warm potato salad. The bread, not greasy at all, crunched with each bite. I’d balked at the amount of crema involved, but the crema brought everything together. You could not have this sandwich without three spoonfuls of crema. Or could you?

I briefly wondered whether could make a healthy version at home. (Potatoes and mushrooms, maybe? Yogurt instead of crema?) But that would be blasphemous. The pambazo was perfect just as it was: crema, chorizo and potatoes, and crisp, salsa-dipped bread.

Have you tried pambazos? Did you have as rapturous as an experience as I did?

Cooking a homemade Oaxacan meal, metate and all, with Reyna Mendoza

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The ingredients to make a stellar mole

We arrived at Reyna’s house with two baskets full of produce. She unlocked the heavy gated entrance and we stepped through the doorway. In front of us was an open, tranquil courtyard with a dirt floor. This is where we’d cook and eat.

The kitchen lay just beyond the herb garden. Cooking utensils hung on the walls, and a bright red piece of oilcloth (called “charomesa” in Spanish) was draped on a blue work table. She had spatulas, metates, molinillos, clay ollas and a gargantuan tortilla press. At the edge of the kitchen sat a wood-fired stove, crowned with two clay comales.

This tortilla press weighs a ton -- it's the secret to a thin tlayuda.

On the other side of the kitchen, hundreds of corn cobs dried and crinkled under the sun. Across from them, rows of fat squash sunbathed, too, some with hunter-green mottled skins. Reyna’s dad grows the squash and the corn on a farm not too far from her house.

Corn cobs drying in the sun. They'll use the corn for tamales and tortillas, among other things.

I felt like Julia Child visiting the south of France for the first time. The splendor of the land! The fecundity! I lingered around the squash and asked Reyna: “Are any of these for sale?” She said after class I could pick out a few I liked.

We unloaded our provisions in the kitchen and she set about preparing chocolate to go with our sweet bread. I tried to pay attention, but I was overwhelmed by my new environment. I felt very lucky to be there. Even the plate of pan dulce looked like it came from a dream.

The crunchy, pretzel-shaped piece ended up being my favorite.


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A visit to the Teotitlán del Valle market, with Reyna Mendoza

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The highlight of my trip to Oaxaca was the one-day cooking class I took with Reyna Mendoza. She’s a Zapotec woman who lives in Teotitlán del Valle, a small town about 45 minutes from Oaxaca City. She’s been making Mexican food by hand since she was a little girl.

Mendoza has impressive credentials. She is heartily endorsed by Rick Bayless; she’s also worked with Ricardo Muñoz Zurita and Pilar Cabrera of Oaxaca’s Casa de los Sabores. I wanted a course in Spanish, and Reyna’s class seemed like a good fit for me. We’d get to cook in her outdoor kitchen, grind mole by hand on her metate and shop at the Teotitlán market.

I showed up at her house bright and early one weekday morning, around 9 a.m. (Just a few minutes late because I actually believed the “shorcut to the Teotitlán Centro” sign off the main road.) She grabbed her straw basket and we set off for the market, which was about five minutes from her house. We passed other women in aprons and braids and rebozos, their market baskets tucked under their arms, too.

Unlike the market in Tlacolula, the Teotitlán market seemed quiet and full of locals. I only saw one woman with European features; everyone else had mocha skin, inky hair, braids and rebozos.

The market comprised two to three large, open rooms. Chiles, purple ejotes, purple tomatillos, onions and other produce lay stacked on large concrete tables. Prepared food sat in another room, with bundles of flautas and pots of rice and black beans. In the room beyond that, vendors sold herbs and roots and piles of sweet bread.

The conchas that decorate my dreams.

I want to wake up to this basket every day.

The shoppers, almost exclusively women, loaded their baskets with everything they needed for the day. (Reyna specifically mentioned that to me: cooks here prepare everything fresh daily.) People talked and laughed and greeted each other in Zapotec. I made the mistake of saying “Buenos días!” to one vendor and she looked at me strangely. Reyna murmured to me: “People speak Zapotec here.” She taught me how to say “buenos días” in Zapotec: zac xtili. (I pronounced this Sock SHEEL-ee.)

Suddenly I longed for a market basket too, and I asked Reyna if she knew where I could buy one. We walked to a stand in the next room, where I spotted a grand, oval thing with a sturdy handle, perfect for carrying a day’s worth of provisions from my local tianguis. The price was steep — 250 pesos. Did I really need this basket? I tried to picture myself walking down the street in Roma, clutching the basket amid the street vendors and rumbling peseros. It could work, I decided. I bought it and didn’t try to bargain.

We bought sweet bread to snack on, and we picked up the tomatillos, cilantro and avocados we’d need for the salsa later. I bought some purple-tinged ejotes, just because they looked kind of like dragon’s tongues.

We walked back to Reyna’s house clutching our baskets. In front of us, three women carried their provisions on their heads.

I’ll get to the cooking portion tomorrow, but here are a few more pictures of the market.


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Where to eat in Mexico City: Dulcinea

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Several months ago, a new friend mentioned she had a favorite restaurant in Polanco. I pride myself on keeping up with the latest restaurants, but she threw out a name I didn’t know: Dulcinea.

The friend said it was kind of casual and cute, and she went there at least twice a week for fish tacos. She also said it was in Polanquito, which is the local name for the area south of Masaryk, encompassing Julio Verne, Oscar Wilde and Virgilio streets. It’s crammed with trendy restaurants and shops.

My friend Martin and I had lunch at Dulcinea a few weeks later, and I liked the place right off the bat. While some of the restaurants in Polanco seem a little too hip (like, could I even go here without my heels on?), Dulcinea seemed casual and chic, like a little bistro you’d find on the beach in Tulum. Sky blue cushions decorated the seats and a chalkboard menu hung on the wall. Homespun touches adorned the tables: napkins looked like tea towels, trimmed in blue. Thin pewter plates reminded me of the type we used to take camping when I was a kid.

Photo above by Martin de la Torre


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Two years in Mexico City

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At the end of January, we’ll have been in Mexico for two years.

I can’t believe it’s been that long. Seems like only a few months ago that I fretted about leaving my stocked pantry behind in Dallas, and I visited my first Mexican grocery store and ogled the lime-flavored mayonnaise. And now here I am. With another stocked pantry filled with Mexican beans, Indian spices, Mexican olive oil and various types of honeys. (The lime mayonnaise is in the fridge.)

Life in Mexico just feels more real now. There are plenty of things I hate about the city — the time it takes to visit the cell phone store or the bank, for example, or the crippling traffic at Christmastime — but overall I still feel really connected to this place. When I travel I look forward to coming home.

I love how the light blares through our windows every morning, promising 70-ish degree days and fresh food prepared on the streets. At sunset we can see the craggy silhouette of the mountains from our living room, when the smog isn’t too bad. A lot of evenings Crayton and I sit around and drink mescal from the gourds I bought at Mercado Sonora, or we walk to restaurant off Álvaro Obregón, my arm tucked into his arm, watching all the hipsters and couples and the vendors closing up for the evening, scrubbing their grills and pouring buckets of water onto the sidewalk.

I love that I eat a lot of corn, and I love that it’s not the mushy American stuff that bleeds sweet juice. DF corn is hearty, like a legume. I love the word for corncob: “mazorca.” I love the phrase that means “one and only”: mismísima. La mismísima Lesley Téllez.

I love that we ride our bikes everywhere and that I’m lucky enough to take tennis classes (for cheap!) at a local gym. And I just love the energy here, still. People come, people go. It feels like anything is possible.

I still have no idea how long we’ll be here, but here’s to another two years.

Continuing with the concha taste test: Matisse

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The last time I wrote about my concha taste test, some of you recommended Matisse as a good next stop. I hadn’t known, but the Condesa cafe is reknowned for its conchas — they’re highlighted pretty much anytime anyone writes about Matisse, on TripAdvisor, Chilango, Twitter and Four Square.

Last month I was finally able to go for breakfast. Matisse is a charming, cozy spot set in an art deco building on Amsterdam. Tables lie scattered about the house, tucked into nooks and small rooms. We dined on the patio next to several men in business suits.

The waiter delivered the sweet bread on a simple white platter. The vanilla concha embarrassed all the other pieces with its girth, which is exactly how I like them. (You show that puny oreja, concha!)

When I picked the concha up, though, it was heavy. Like fruit-cake heavy. Took a bite and it tasted almost as dense as it felt — chewy, doughy. And it shouted of butter. I love butter, but I wanted something light and fluffy. This was the concha equivalent of a guajolota.

I was planning to eat a real breakfast at Matisse, so I couldn’t fill up on the concha roll. So I only ate half. And then I enjoyed my eggs with nopal and orange juice.

Here’s my rating (on a scale of 1 to 5, the latter being the best):

Appearance: 3
While big and plump, the roll didn’t have a defined sugared crust. It looked like one smooth cap, instead of having pretty stripes, or even lumpy spots.

Taste: 3
As I mentioned, too dense.

Overall: 3
I loved Matisse’s ambience, and I’d definitely go back for breakfast. Just not specifically for the conchas. To all the Matisse-lovers, I’m sorry I don’t agree with you. I am willing to go back and try again… but later, after Rosca de Reyes season is over.

Here’s a quick wrap-up of the concha taste test so far:

Leaders: Bondy, DaSilva and Cafe El Popular.

Other conchas tried: Maque, Sak’s, Snob Bistro, Pastelería Gran Via, Panadería Elizondo, Casa de Pan, Sanborn’s, bike-riding pandulce guy, various other street conchas.

Next on the list: Panadería at Centro Comercial Las Lilas, a recommendation from a woman I met recently. She was kind enough to tell her friends about my quest and they told her: “Before, the best conchas were at Bondy. Now they’re at this place.” You can see why I might be excited by this news.

I’ll also be trying out Pastelería Suiza in Condesa, which I hear has amazing conchas. I tried to go there once but missed my window — the conchas weren’t coming out of the oven for another hour. I’ll also be trying all of the leaders again, just for calibration purposes.

Feliz Año and Happy New Year

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I’d originally planned to write this detailed, year-end blog post full of mouthwatering food photos. But then in December, Eat Mexico started booking lots of tours, and I got a few freelance assignments and didn’t have much time to blog. I really only came up for air a few days ago.

So I wanted to tell you: I’m so, so grateful to each of you for reading. And honored that you keep commenting. (Really — the Tlacolula comments made my entire week.) I’m just really glad that I have this space and that you’re a part of it. I hope you have a fantastic 2011, full of peace and good food.

Here is one mouth-watering photo, just to start the year off right. It’s a tlacoyo and a quesadilla de quelite (edible Mexican greens), from a street food stand off Rio Lerma.

Abrazos from el DF!

Sikil pak (creamy Mexican pumpkin-seed dip)

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I’ve made sikil pak three times in the past month, and each time I’d stare at the pile of pumpkin seeds in the bowl and think, “There’s no way I’m going to eat all this.” But then I would. Twice I split a batch with Crayton, and the other time I ate the whole thing myself with some tortillas I’d heated up on the stove.

Sikil pak has the comfort of an herbed cream cheese you’d spread on a cracker, and the meatiness of a mushroom or eggplant chutney. It doesn’t contain any dairy or even any major vegetables — just a few scoops of pumpkin seeds ground to dust, mixed with garlic, onion, water and some tomate verde. It’s great on tortilla chips, warm tortillas, cucumber slices, and (I’m imagining for next time) crusty slices of baguette.

I first came across sikil pak about a year ago while thumbing through Diana Kennedy cookbook, searching for things to serve at my tamalada. I hadn’t seen this dish anywhere in Mexico City, so I was intrigued. Kennedy’s directions sounded easy — toast the pumpkin seeds, grind them in a spice or coffee grinder, and add boiled tomatoes and spices. Unfortunately I added too many salted, unshelled pumpkin seeds and the dip came out too sharp and almost woodsy-tasting. Strangely, it tasted like it had meat in it.

A few months ago, I saw another sikil pak recipe in one of my Cocina Estado Por Estado magazines devoted to Campeche. Turns out Sikil Pak is typical to Campeche and the Yucatán, which explains why I hadn’t seen it locally.

This recipe called for using raw, shelled pumpkin seeds and roasted tomate verde, onion and garlic. I decided to make the dish in the molcajete, because my cooking instructors have drilled into me that it’s better.

The result was totally unlike the weird chunky red thing I’d made before. It was thick like hummus and glossy like mayonnaise. Grinding it by hand, I had much more control over the texture — were the seeds too dry and powdery? Did they need water? Pues ándale. I’ll add a few spoonfuls. I got to see how the dip changed with each step, and what gave it that creamy white color. (Water and the juices of the tomatoes.)

The next time I made sikil pak, I used the food processor because I was hungry and tired and didn’t want to spend 30 minutes grinding. The dip wasn’t the same. I was too scared the seeds would turn into peanut butter in the food processor, so I didn’t pulse them finely enough. Instead of hummus/mayonnaise, I had a chunky spread. Not bad, but not as good.

Plus… I don’t know. I missed being closer to the ingredients. To grind everything with my own hands, twisting the tejolete, ignoring the dull ache in my wrist — I was actively involved in preparing the food, and that meant something to me, because food was nourishment and our bodies depended on it.

So yesterday, with the Bears game on TV and both Crayton and I yearning for game-day snacks (well, more me than him), I took out the molcajete and put it on the coffee table. I ground the dip during the first quarter and we enjoyed it with tortilla chips I’d baked in the oven.

I didn’t enjoy every single minute — several times I looked down at the bowl crusted with chunks of half-ground pumpkin seeds and thought, “I just don’t have the wrist strength for this. This dip will never be done.” But in the end, I had my creamy wonder, and I was happy I stuck it out.

Recipe below.
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Being a conscientious tourist at Oaxaca’s Tlacolula Market

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My visit to Tlacolula made me think a lot about the type of traveler I am.

Now that I have a fancy camera, I bring it everywhere, so I can take pictures to show all of you people. (And to show my parents and friends.) But really, why is it so important for me to take pictures where I’m traveling? Is taking pictures ever exploitative, even when I don’t mean it to be?

The Tlacolula Market, held Sundays in the town of Tlacolula outside Oaxaca, has some interesting prepared foods and produce. But the people-watching is what makes Tlacolula an experience. Dozens of Zapotec women in colorful headscarfs and ribbon-wrapped braids walk around chattering in their language, selling bowlfuls of tejate, bunches of garlic with the stems still attached. They also buy and sell live turkeys.

I’d never seen anything like this before.

I desperately wanted to take portraits of these women, but I couldn’t work up the guts to ask. (The photos above were shot secretly.) Instead I took pictures of food. About half the vendors I dealt with seemed upset even by that. One woman called out to me — “Señora!” — after I took a picture of her roasted chicken from across the aisle. When I told her I couldn’t buy a chicken, she grumbled. So I offered to erase the photo.

At another stand, I bought a kilo of criollo corn. The man selling it gave me a curt nod and didn’t look at me when I asked if I could take a picture of it.

Crayton asked me: Why are you so upset? They’re vendors who make their livelihood off of selling food, and they’re annoyed with tourists who don’t buy anything.

“But I am buying stuff!” I fumed at him.

Except… not a metate. Seeing a line of them painted with flowers made my heart flutter, so much that I wanted a photo. I asked the vendor politely and she nodded and looked a bit annoyed. I wanted to give her something, but handing over 20 pesos seemed rude. I’m not sure she would’ve taken it.

What it came down to was, yes, I had a camera, but I didn’t like being treated like a rude tourist. Was I acting like one, just because I had a camera? Should I have not taken any pictures at all? I cared deeply about Mexican food and culture, and to arrive at Tlacolula and be treated like an outsider stung. But obviously I was an outsider. I didn’t speak Zapotec and I didn’t live in Tlacolula, and these people weren’t making a dime from me. To just tromp in and expect them to cater to me didn’t seem respectful either.

A handful of the vendors I spoke to were really nice. The woman who sold me dried beans and tamala squash seeds said I couldn’t Tlacolula without trying higaditos, which were a kind of egg guisado made with shredded chicken and tomatoes.

It didn’t have any liver, contrary to the name. Crayton and I shared a bowlful at a little fonda called “Juanita,” inside the big market building. We also split a chocolate atole, which was nothing like the thick, overly sweet champurrados of Mexico City. This one was fluffy and light, full of pieces of corn.

Higaditos literally means "little livers," but this dish is made with eggs. It's typical of Tlacolula.

A beautiful, foam-topped chocolate atole

We also tried tejate, which is a pre-hispanic drink made from cacao, corn, and ground mamey seed called pixtle. It was viscous and not very sweet, which I liked. I also liked drinking it out of a jícara, a traditional bowl made from a squash gourd.

Tejate at the Tlacolula market

A few days after my visit to Tlacolula, I visited the market in Teotitlan del Valle, another tiny town outside Oaxaca City. This time my guide was Zapotec — a fabulous local cook named Reina Mendoza. The difference was noticeable: every vendor smiled at me, and one woman laughed when I said “thank-you” in Zapotec. (Reina told me how.)

So my question for you is: What’s the answer here? Is it a matter of not bringing the camera at all, and not writing this blog post out of respect for the people who sell their food and don’t get paid directly by Internet attention? In a perfect world, I could’ve hired a Zapotec guide to take me around Tlacolula. Or paid some type of photo fee to take pictures. But neither of those things were options.

What would you have done?

Auto-rickshaws were a popular mode of transport around the market.