Here’s the recipe from yesterday’s post. You’ll notice we used a small amount of beans in the recipe — it’s because we only filled three of the chiles with beans and cheese; the rest were cheese only. Enjoy!
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How to make chiles rellenos, Mexican-grandmother style
My friend Lizzie lives with a real Mexican grandmother. Her name is Juanita and she just turned 90 years old. I’m not sure what her secret is, but she’s very active — she cooks big meals every day at lunch, and she shops at the tianguis, where she knows all the vendors. Plus she still does her hair every day, wrapping it in various braids and twists that are bobby-pinned to her head.
I’ve been hearing about Juanita and her cooking for a few months. (And envying Lizzie from afar for her housing arrangement.) Finally, it worked out yesterday that I could come over for lunch. Juanita would make chiles rellenos and white rice, and I could take pictures and notes. I was super excited. How fun was this going to be?
I arrived around 11:30 a.m., right when the trash man was stationed outside Juanita’s yellow apartment building, ringing his bell. (This is the universal sign meaning, “Neighbors, come outside and bring your trash, because the trash people are here.”) I walked through a small atrium and up a set of Art Deco-looking steps.
Juanita’s apartment was comprised of several small, cheery rooms. In the kitchen, a half-wall separated the area into two spaces: one held the fridge and a small, three-seater table; the other hosted the sink, stove and a few cabinets.
It wasn’t a cocina integral, and there was exactly one counter to chop things, if you didn’t count the kitchen table. But it worked. Juanita zipped around in her white nursing-style shoes, opening drawers, washing dishes, digging through the fridge to make space for a container of arroz con leche. Everything had its place.
We started on the chiles right away. First step: toasting the chiles on the comal.
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The Mexican craft beer revolution
It’s tough to find a beer in Mexico City that isn’t produced by one of the country’s two giant beer companies. With few exceptions, restaurants and bars serve the same four or five beers — the only question is whether an establishment will carry FEMSA brands (Sol, Indio, Bohemia) or Modelo (Victoria, Pacifico, Negra Modelo).
That’s changing lately. A Mexican craft beer trend is sweeping the city, with independent, non-monopoly produced brews suddenly popping up in bars and restaurants. Many of these beers are made in Guadalajara, but some are produced in Mexico City. While craft brews have been popular in the United States for a while, this is staggering news for Mexicans and expats. More brews mean we have a choice now. A choice!
Probably the best new craft-beer bar is El Depósito, which opened a few months ago in Condesa. They stock around 140 beers from around the world, including Shiner Bock. I think my heart stopped beating when I saw Shiner’s distinctive yellow bottle — Shiner was the nectar of my 20’s, along with Silk Panties shots at Cosmos in Dallas.
El Depósito also sells Belgian lambics, smoked German Rauchbier and other bottles that are hard to find in Mexico. And they carry eight artisanal Mexican brews, including Cucapá, Poe, Malverde and Minerva.
Crayton and I snagged the last table a few Fridays ago, around 8 p.m. It’s an open, airy place, with shelves of beer and fridges on one side, and a bar on the other. Music videos played on mute on flat screens. Guns’n’Roses “Don’t Cry” swept out of the speakers, launching us into a discussion about the great power ballads.
At the register, I ordered a Cucapá Clasica for me and a Poe for Crayton, both of which are Mexican brews. We munched on popcorn and people-watched. (If you’re hungry, El Depósito also sells burritos.)
The super-hip waitress reminded me of the chola girls who used to intimidate me in junior high — feathered bangs, straight hair, big hoop earrings, heavy black eyeliner. Funny how things change because now I liked her look. Everyone else was in jeans and T-shirts.
We each had two beers and then had to move on to meet a friend for dinner. But I’d definitely go back. It’s a casual place without any of the pretentiousness that sometimes comes with Condesa. Plus it’s great to see a place that supports the independent beer scene in Mexico. If you’re in favor of opening up the Mexican beer market to something other than Victoria or Indio, you must pay them a visit.
You can even pick up a six pack to go — the price is slightly cheaper than drinking it there.
INFO
El Depósito
Baja California 375, near Benjamin Franklin
Phone: 5271-0716
Check them out on Facebook.
Update: Casa Mexico now closed
My friend Nick Gilman tells me that Casa Mexico — the restaurant I raved about earlier this year for its unique, regional Mexican dishes — has suddenly closed. Apparently the head chef, Enrique Briz, left sometime back and the restaurant slowly went downhill from there.
It’s too bad. I really liked that place. Shame that they were only open for less than a year.
Millet risotto with leeks, chilacayote and melted gruyere
When we moved a few weekends ago, I found a bag of millet that I’d forgotten about, wedged into a corner of my three-drawer pantry-on-wheels.
Millet is a nutty, whole-grain that’s produced mainly in Asia. I bought some last year at the Korean grocery store, not knowing exactly what I’d do with it. Fast forward 10 months later (cannot believe my Korean grocery store trip was already almost a year ago), and I’d done exactly nothing with it. Except stumble upon it and toss it into a moving box.
At our new apartment, living amid all the cardboard and dust was making me crave something homemade and comforting. A risotto. Mind you, I’ve never made risotto before. But how hard could it be? (Heh heh.) I consulted the Internet, and it confirmed — there were several recipes for millet risotto out there. Although the American blogosphere millet looked different than mine. Theirs was yellow; mine was white with brown speckles. (Perhaps mine was one of the “minor millets” mentioned in this Wikipedia article.)
Years ago, I made big pot of buttery polenta with leeks, and it was so fantastic that I knew I had to have leeks in my millet risotto. Found a leek at my local mercado, and also decided to throw in a few veggies that were ripening in the fridge: chilacayote and a serrano pepper. Chilacayote is a round, mildly sweet squash that’s native to Latin America. They look kind of like mini watermelons, with a thin skin instead of a rind.
I didn’t have any Parmesan (the go-to cheese topper for a risotto), but I did have gruyere. And although I didn’t have white wine, I did have Chinese cooking wine.
Exhilirated and flying by the seat of my pants, I whipped up my risotto over the course of an hour. It turned out great: nutty and full of texture (just slightly harder than your usual rice), with this intoxicating, light boozy smell, and of course, covered in cheese. I sat and watched our newly installed cable and was perfectly happy with life, even if my life at the moment happened to be cardboard-filled and dust-covered.
Recipe below.
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Mexican food the old-fashioned way at El Bajío
Chef Carmen “Titita” Ramirez walks a straight, firm line when it comes to Mexican food traditions. She scoffs at chefs who think carnitas can be made with Coca-Cola and milk. Or any chef (even if he is American and famous) who promotes such a thing as “Mexican chimichurri.”
Mexican food has a base and that base should be followed, says the chef, who runs the El Bajío restaurants in Mexico City.
“This idea of fusion, it’s confusion,” Ramirez said in Spanish, while hosting a four-course meal at her restaurant’s Polanco location. “Yes, I’m a purist. Yes.”
Ramirez learned her recipes from her mother and her nanny, while growing up in a small town in Veracruz state. I was lucky enough to try some of the food last Sunday, as part of the Ruta Aromas y Sabores tour. The tour runs through June 10 and is specifically for food writers, chefs and photographers from all over the world. It’s sponsored by various arms of the Mexican government, and organized by Izote chef Patricia Quintana.
The idea here is to show off Mexico’s culinary history and culture, and its wide variety of regional dishes and flavors. The tour started in Mexico City on May 29; today it moves onto the state of Mexico, and then Guanajuato and Michoacán.
I was originally scheduled to attend the whole thing, but unfortunately I had to cancel. My health hasn’t been top-notch lately and I’m dealing with our recent move. But it was really neat to attend even one event. At El Bajío, our group of about 10 included writers and photographers from Mexico, Spain and Germany. Titita sat with us the whole time and answered any questions we had.
I’d eaten at El Bajío once before and thought the food was okay. Guess I ordered the wrong thing back then, because this meal was among the best I’ve had in Mexico. Everything tasted like it had been prepared carefully and lovingly, from the homemade corn tortillas in the basket (Maseca has been the downfall of tortillas, Titita says) to the sweet potato pudding with pineapple, to the agua de guayaba speckled with bits of pulp. I really wished I could follow Titita for a day, watching her prepare some of these things that she’s so passionate about.
Some photos of the meal…
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Homemade chicharrón, and puebleando
A few weeks ago, Crayton and I went puebleando for the first time. “Pueblear” is a Mexican word meaning “to travel to little towns and hang out.” There isn’t really an intinerary with you’re puebleando — you just get in the car and go. When you get to a town, you sit and hang out. Maybe buy an ice cream and people-watch in the square. There is absolutely no pressure to do anything.
We ended up in Zacatlán de las Manzanas, a pleasant, colonial-style town in the northern part of Puebla state. Accompanying us were our friends Jesica and Erik, and Jesica’s parents. They’d been to Zacatlán several times before, and so our first stop was at a panadería to buy some special pan de Zacatlán. They’re soft white rolls or empanadas stuffed with a crumbly, savory, almost cottage-y cheese. (This is also one of my new favorite phrases, because it has so much rhythm. Try saying it: PAHN de zah-caht-LAHN.)
I loved trying the bread — and to be honest, we bought a wee bit more than the local bread; also donuts and conchas and a muffin stuffed with cream — but the best part of the trip happened while we were walking to the church. On a little side street, a man stood in front of a huge cauldron of bubbling pork fat, making homemade chicharrón.
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A Mexico City taquería, in pictures
The first time I saw Taquería Jalisco, it was right after we moved to Cuauhtémoc, and Crayton and I were walking down Rio Lerma at night, checking out our new environs. (Or “rumbos,” as Mexicans say.)
Taquería Jalisco looked charming: it was a tiny fonda-slash-puesto, half indoors, half out, situated next to a parking garage. A few plastic tables and chairs had been set up near the driveway. Four orange stools, accented with chrome, stood in front of a small counter area. A big bunch of greens sprouted from a tin can.
Steam wafted about about the taqueros heads as they moved about, chopping and scooping and slicing. I was across the street, but I could almost smell that greasy meat smell. I wanted that greasy meat smell.
Taquería Jalisco offers several types of tacos, but my favorite is their suadero, a tender, fatty cut that comes from the area underneath the cow’s skin. (The definition from Ricardo Muñoz Zurita’s Mexican gastronomic dictionary.) When suadero’s cooked, it’s greasy, crisp, meaty. Topped with a spritz of lime juice and a spoonful of red salsa, it’s very hard to eat just two, which is my usual limit with street tacos. Last time I visited Taquería Jalisco, I ate four.
Really, it’s not just about the taste for me, but the way taco-making works in Mexico. The precision of it, the efficiency. The taquero tosses a handful of meat onto the comal, and watches the fat bubble and sizzle. He palms a few barely silver-dollar-sized corn tortillas, scoops up the meat, and tosses it, meat-side up, onto a plastic plate that’s lined with a square of paper. He asks: “Con todo?” and that’s a shortened code for “Do you want cilantro and onions?” The whole transaction — the making of the taco itself, whether you’ve ordered one or four — is done in under 30 seconds. It’s like this everywhere.
My pictorial tribute is below. Oh, and here’s the info on the place, should you ever be in the ‘hood:
Taquería Jalisco
On Rio Lerma, between Rio Sena and Rio Tigris
Col. Cuauhtémoc
They’re open 10 a.m. to 2 a.m. Monday through Saturday.
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Tortilla casserole with guajillo chiles, chicken, squash and panela cheese
You ever have those moments when you’re super busy, but you add one more thing to your plate anyway? And it comes with this tickle of dread, like, oh shoot, should I really be doing this? Do I have time?
I’m always cramming a million things into my schedule. Usually it turns out fine. But sometimes — like with this casserole — it doesn’t. Here I am, moving and packing, and I thought: “I’m going to make one last big meal in the kitchen!” At that moment I should have stepped outside myself, and given myself a “WTF?” look. But no. I listened. I brought out Diana Kennedy and bookmarked the “Caserola de Tortillas en Chiles Guajillos” page.
Fast forward one hour later. I was frantically pushing the sauce through a fine-mesh sieve, while it slowly dripped out the other side, one tablespoon at a time. It was 3 p.m. Crayton and I had not eaten since breakfast. My stomach growled. My feet hurt. My face felt flushed and my fingertips tingled, from seeding and de-veining more than a dozen dried chiles. Plus I’d toasted and ground some cumin seeds in my molcajete.
Diana’s recipe called for cooking the casserole on the stove, in a flame-proof dish. I don’t own one and figured I could just bake it in the oven. But now, faced with having to actually make that decision, I panicked. Wouldn’t baking it dry it out? Did I need more guajillo chile sauce? More broth? A more melty cheese? I’d also strayed from Diana’s recipe in other ways — adding chicken for some heft, adding veggies. I dunked the tortillas in the sauce and left them whole, instead of cutting them into pieces and pouring the sauce over them.
Really, my “authentic” caserola had become something else entirely: a pastel-azteca-sopa-seca hybrid. But what did that mean in terms of taste, and cooking time? Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to think about my desired end result, and devise a plan to get there.
So I winged it. Layered the tortillas in my casserole dish, interspersed with my fillings. I didn’t strain the sauce fully, because that took forever. Who cares if we all end up picking guajillo chiles out of our teeth.
The panela didn’t melt well, which I knew it wouldn’t, but I had secretly prayed that I would be wrong. We had no cilantro as garnish. Most terribly, I forgot to salt the sauce.
Lunch went on the table at 4:15 p.m., after two hours of cooking. I took a bite and kind of wanted to cry. It wasn’t inedible… it just wasn’t good, necessarily.
“I like it,” Crayton pronounced. He’s such a good husband.
The three lessons I learned that day:
1. Do not throw your kitchen a goodbye party when you’re in the process of moving, no matter how much you desire to give it the proper send off.
2. Do not crack open Diana Kennedy’s “The Essential Cuisines of Mexico” when you’re in a hurry to eat. The next time I pick a DK recipe — and it will be soon, because I adore her books — I will scan it to see what can be made in advance. For example, this chile sauce totally could have been made the day before. Then I would’ve remembered to add salt, and had time to fry my tortillas properly.
3. Experimenting in the kitchen is great, but not when you’re starving and your partner is depending on you for his sustenance. Next time order him a torta.
By the way, if you have any favorite guajillo chile combinations, I’d love to hear them. They just didn’t wow me this time around. (Or maybe it was the fact that they needed salt.) Maybe cinnamon?
Pictures of the new place
I’ve got moving brain. Been up since 6 a.m. this morning, thinking about whether the TV is going to fit through the curved entry way, how to pack up the rest of the kitchen, and how to take the pantry items over without spilling everything, because I don’t have any small boxes left. Wait — I can use the laundry basket for pantry stuff. Score!
Wish I had a button to turn it all off. Maybe I’ll gift myself a spa treatment when this is all over.
Because it’s all I’m thinking about anyway, here are a few shots of the new place.
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