Saturday

tampico report 2: the food

one of the advantages of living in mexico is getting to leave the big city and try regional specialties. I especially enjoy differnet variations of street foods. The biggest treat is homecooking, always created with the expertise of someone who knows their recipes inside and out, what follows are basically my notes for a deeper investigation i plan to conduct when i return to Pueblo Viejo during christmas vacation.

secrets of mexican grandmothers cooking
salsa: put a handful or 2 of chile arbol, cleaned, stems removed and a couple
of tomatoes in a plastic bag and micreave then toss them into the blender
with some vegetable oil and salt...

lard: can be from pork or beef. the secret that i would like to understand is their soft touch when it comes to using lard and oils...i think it might have something to do with the masa- the dough that is used to make tortillas, tamales, empanadanas, and a specialty of the region- bocoles- this round patty, similar to a gordita- made with a mixture of pork and beef lards and cooked on a comal. then the
corn cake sliced open and filled with fresh cheese and chili salsa. oh my god! I
have eaten my share of masas while eating in mexico and central america
but nothing as rich as these. the texture is super rich- the inside has
openings in the dough like english muffins. In true mexican grandmother
fashion, they kept coming in a non stop flow- 1 or 2 at a time- fresh from the
comal.

this thread on the use of fresh lard on egullet shed some light on the subject.


huevos con camarone
simply shrimp in scrambled eggs. the grandmother had a freezer full of
bags of fresh frozen gulf shrimp- big and pink. they were lightly defrosted
under a trickle of running water while we made the empanadas. then they were cleaned by 2 or 3 pairs of hands while we continued to make empanadas.
and finally they were cooked in a saute pan with some oil and a bunch of
farm fresh eggs. i didn't see the rest of the cooking, but my guess is that
they were stirred very lightlly...because they were incredibly light and fluffy with huge curds.

cascabel chiles

tamales de calabaza con camarone
a filling of pumpkin with dried fresh water shrimp- pulled apart the
night befre while we all sat around the table gossiping after supper. the
heads and tails removed from the bodies and reserved for the stock, the eyes
removed from the heads and tossed out and the bodies of the shrimp for
the pumpkin filling (castilla- yellow-orange) ...cooked to a stew like
consistency, some cascabel chilies, a few green olives, black pepper,
chunks of pumpkin, the shrimp parts...then filled in plaintain leaves smeared
with masa worked with porkard and a little water- wrapped in that special
tamale wrapping technique that i learned this morning and the steamed in a
gigantic tamale steamer.

mole- homemade with the help of the blender
crushed saltines, a fried plaintain, a tablet of chocolate, cascabel
chiles, pepper, salt, seseme seeds, i think peanuts. ..all ground then worked
together with chicken broth a huge cazuela clay pot. so rich every bite with full of chocolate and nutty and the fire of the chile


carne guisado con salsa de cascabel
camarones fried in chili
black beans cooked in a clay pot


the only streetfood that i had a chance to try was a torta de cecina. it tasted so much like the chopped steak cheese burger at aka on the L.E.S. delicious!

cecina recipe

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/rtranks/rttecolutla.html

http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/bzm/bzmpaveracruz.html

zarela´s veracruz

Friday

thanksgiving

Yesterday was thanksgiving. Yesterday was a sad day for me because I love thanksgiving. I love planning for it, shopping for it, cooking for it, eating it, sharing it. But i don't live in the united states. I live in mexico now. in chilangolandia to be exact. Even though some gringos were celebrating, most mexicans think of turkey only for christmas dinner.

yesterday d.f. hosted a massive political demonstration of oh, only about 80,ooo to 100,ooo plus people so unless you are some kind of sadist, there was no reason to be moving around much. One of the major gathering points is the monument of the revolution- just down my street. People were arriving from the provinces as early as tuesday night and by wednesday night every public plaza and parking lot became campgrounds. One of the major arteries of the cities was closed all day, but i made to work and i made it home again. and i made off with a frozen sara lee apple pie.

Jorge and I went to my favorite turkey restaurant La Casa del Pavo (the house of turkey!) located on Motolinea #40, in the lovely centro historico because they have delicious tortas de pavo. Shredded roast turkey on a french bolillo roll with avocado, mayo, salsa buffalo, pickled jalapeño & carrots- who needs cranberry sauce? Perfect with a bohemia beer. And only 54 peso (about U$ 5 ) for 2 of each.

We walked home through the quiet streets of the centro, stopping atSanborns (i now love Sanborns !) to look at the new magazines and the Pupa make-up and buy imported chocolate (toblerone) to eat and talk about the movies we wanted to see.

Maybe i'll roast a turkey on sunday or maybe I won't. There are actually many things to do- like go to the Mutek festival, go to some markets, and plan our holiday trip. I think my homesickness has passed.

Monday

dia de gracias

i spent all day saturday home alone pouring over recipes and suggestions for thanksgiving recipes on the internet.

first i read this discussion your way or their way and thought about the blankness of the faces of my mexican familiy in regards to this tradition, which they see as typical american gluttony- serving a 20 lb turkey, 6 side dishes and 5 deserts on a random thursday in november. and i want to show them how its done- share this tradition of cooking for 16 hours straight every thursday-but i'm afraid its just not feasible on the $100/week i am earning right now. but if i change my mind- these are my menu ideas:

i even cried a little bit when looking at the sweet potatoes recipes on chowhound. Not because i am so sentimental about yams, just that trying to rember if i had made this particular yam recipe and not being able to cook with my mom on thanksgiving. The last few years i have been driving the thanksgiving bus, but she is the one that rescues everything at the last minute- the mashed potaoes, the gravy, one more pie...

a turkey with traditional bread stuffing along with a bit of chorizo, and chili peppers served with mole instead of gravy (my mom always makes the gravy)

maybe a riff on this deborah madisonrecipe of winter squash braised in cider using calabacitas. I'd need a cider substitute, too.

or thisparsnip recipeusing another root vegetable, like...hmm,what?

definitely sweet potatoes. here in mexico city, sweet potatoes are only eaten as sweets called camotes they are candied or you buy them from the camotero the guy who wheels around a mobile coal powered steamer. you know he's coming as the steam whistle gets unbearably louder and louder. the steamed sweet poatoes are 15-20 pesos a piece in my neighborhood and garnished with sweet canned milk, lechera.

and for dessert- a pecan pie would be something novel for my guests. i heard this recipe for a fudge pecan pie is good (i even think we'ver served it before)

and i'm on the fence about pumpkin pie having made homemade pumpkin puree for my birthday cake. but maybe a pumpkin pecan pie

i also found this thread about appetizers to be fascinating. chowhounds are so meticulous ! stilton honey toast recipe and i down loaded this this salmon mousse recipe, too.

and i posted this shrill for barra vieja, a super chill beach about an hour south of acapulco.

and discovered some facts about mexican cheeses and more about mexican cheese which is great because i still have kilos of fresh cheese from veracruz in my fridge.

also this weird cheese recipe

behind on my blogging

things to come:
better photo page. the current ones have faults. fotolog is great, but you can only load one photo per day. yahoo is free but it just sucks. please email me if you have suggestions.

archives: the first 6 months! i have loads of emails & journal entries to post. i think those days were more interesting. more moving around oaxaca, chiapas, guatemala, veracruz everything was new and more exciting - thought at least one thing is still new & exciting- daily. maybe that's what i should write about...

i'm almost finished my tampico report. i'll try to finish it up and post tomorrow. I want to read over it one more time, as i'm detailing the first funeral i have attended here in mexico and don't want to be to...irresponsible.

so this weekend is over and i have to say i miss new york city terribly! it subsided the past few weeks and came back stronger these last days. I miss my lady friends! and little bars and little parties and ethnic diversity and mediamediamedia and potato pancakes. i miss cabs you can lie down in! i miss slices of pizza!! and my imac at fluid and my friends at fluid and mochas from balthazar...

enough.