kalypso

Long waits to get in on the weekend and GARGANTUAN portions of marginally okay food. Go hungry and don't plan on eating the rest of the day. If you're looking for breakfast you can do better other places.

Geographically, San Diego is a big, spread out city. Where are you staying and will you have a car? You also might want to take a look through some of the previous posts on this board. There's a thread called "Cheap Eatz" started by MizDucky that has a ton of great ideas for inexpensive places to eat.

HI Mario, welcome to the Mexico board Yes, it is possible to purchase the book directly from DK. Both my book and Rancho Gordo's book (photographed upthread) came from Diana and are signed. RuthinCondechi got them from Diana and sold them to us. Whether $600, $800 or $1,100MXP the book is stunning and worth every peso, dollar or euro.

Have you ever made a tamal de cazuela? It's kind of like a tamale pie or casserole, only better, and would use a reasonable amount of masa, though not 5# There is also a variety to tamal where you pat the masa out on a tea towel, spread it with seasoned black bean puree, roll up jelly roll fashion, then slice and wrap in corn husks. Remember, tamales freeze beautifully and people love to receive them as gifts because it's labor intensive and it's not something they'll usually make for themselves. But you'd better work fast, masa tends to sour quickly.

Hillcrest is one option, but 30th St between about University and Upas is a hotbed of activity these days. The Better Half in Hillcrest (Uni. between 2nd and 1st) runs a nightly Blue Plate Special. 3 courses - $20 not including tax, tip and beverage. Very good value for what you get Wine Vault & Bistro (India & Washington in Middletown, down the hill from Hillcrest) does a $30 5-course meal that's probably the absolute best deal in town. Mama Testa (Univ. between Vermont and Richmond) does all tacos all the time. Great salsa bar. Blind Lady Ale House on Adams Ave around 30th +/- has numerous local craft brews and some pretty good and pretty economical food selections (mostly salad and pizza) Mayahuel on Adams Ave 1 block west of 30th has one of the best selections of tequila in SD and does a fantastic housemade mole several nights a week. On 30th Aperativo, Caffe Calabria, Urban Solace, Lefty's, Hamiltons, Ritual Tavern, The Linkery isn't exactly budget but it is one of the only fully local and sustainable restaurants in SD The best budget sandwich in SD is at the deli in Windmill Farms in Del Cerro by SDSU. The $3.99 Lindsey Special, made to order, choice of breads, cheeses, and veggies. I believe the meat on the sandwich is turkey. K's Sandwich on Linda Vista Rd and Mesa College Dr. in Linda Vista does a really good Bahn Mi that's really inexpensive. Where is the person requesting the information staying and will s/he have a car.

RG is right, the book is terrific and it will be difficult to cook one's way through it here in the U.S. as some of the ingredient - especially the herbs and other vegetation - aren't commonly available, even in Mexican markets in areas with large Mexican populations. I, too, have the cookbook and paid about $60 US in Mexico for it. The photography is beautiful and reading it is making my Spanish better, though it's sometime slow going for me . The skinny on the book (and it's not skinny by any means) is that a wealthy Mexican industrialist paid for the book to be printed. I understand that the entire book run was only 3,000 books and the sponsor kept 2,000 of them. Diana, of course, got a stock of books which is where mine (and I believe RGs) came from. RuthinCondechi, who sometimes posts on this board, may have additional information on availability.

Just checked on Amazon -Marilyn Tausend. Is she any good? ← Yes, she's very good. She's also the co-author of Mexico the Beautiful

Who is the author on Savoring Mexico? I have a pretty good familiarity with Mexican cuisine authors and a good feel for who's recipes are structurally sound and based on traditional cooking. I think how successful these series (Savoring, Beautiful) of books are depends entirely upon who the authors are that are contracted to write them and how attuned to the culture or country they're writing about they really are.

I have Mexico the Beautiful and have cooked very successfully from it. Since this book is dedicated more to traditional Mexican food than the food that was current at the time it was published, whether it's out of date or not isn't a particular issue. Yes, it probably is, but the thing is...you can still find many, if not most, of the recipes in this particular book still being made in Mexico. There may have been some tweaks or variations in the 15 years since the book first came out, but the recipes are structurally sound and still pretty common today. I suspect things may vary from book to book depending upon what the initial concept was for a particular edition when it was first published, with those tracking to the traditional side perhaps fairing better in terms of still being viable today.

Bruce, if it's been a while since you've read the front of Zarela's Veracruz, you might want to do a quick reread. She talks about a town in the Veracruz highlands where the specialty is chayote...all parts of it including vines and roots. She made it sound heavenly. I think there is even a soup recipe for it in the book. I've had sopa de guias in Oaxaca made from chayote vines and it is, indeed, exceptional. It looks kind of gnarly (literally) but tastes great. Good luck on your growing project

Fish Veracruzana is a standard in my house. I've done it a gazillion different ways using a variety of different fish. We don't see a huge amount of grouper where I am, but it should work just fine. I've used the rock fish labeled as red snapper on the West Coats, halibut, swordfish and mahi (which I think would be called dorado where you are). I've made it with filetes and I've made it with with whole fish. I made it on the range top in a skillet and baked it in the oven. No matter the fish, and no matter the cooking method, it almost always turns out pretty well. The fish isn't the star of the show in this dish, it's the sauce On the range top I've both slipped the fish into the simmering sauce to cook, or briefly sauteed the fish and then poured the sauce over to finish cooking. For the oven, I slash the fish on each side, rub with a bit of lime and salt, arrange in the baking dish, cover with foil and punch a couple vents into the foil and then bake. Mike, you can't go wrong with Pescado Veracruzana, it's a hard dish to mess up. Have you looked at a whole huacinango, it might be considerably less to purchase a whole fish than filetes. My favorite fish for this dish are - in this order - huachinango, halibut, mahi. All of these fish have a fairly firm flesh. IIRC, grouper also is a fairly firm flesh fish. I say, give it a whirl and see what happens. Focus on making the sauce as good as you possibly can and it may not really matter what type of fish you use.

Bruce, your Chileatole looks fabulous. I played around this past weekend with the Chilelímon recipe from Zarela's Veracruz. Wow, was it ever good. Used it with both some halibut and chicken and it worked extremely well with both of them. This sauce is definitely a keeper.

Over the weekend I made Caldo de Res ...aka Cocido...vegetable beef soup. See the link for photo. It was (and still is) very good and the left overs are getting better every day

Carolyn, you're a woman after my own heart Chocolate is a wonderful thing and I can certainly appreciate and enjoy all the really great products that are out on the market these days. But when it comes right down to it, See's always seems to pull me back. It's not the fanciest nor the best stuff out there, but I find myself returning and returning to it year after year, after year.

It was a dark and stormy night...so I made Cocido, aka Caldo de Res, aka Vegetable Beef Soup There are probably as many recipes and variations for cocido as there are cooks in Mexico. There were 2 in Diana Kennedy's The Art of Mexican Cooking, estilo Oaxaqueno and estilo Michoacano. I made the latter using short ribs that I deboned and defatted, onion, garlic, carrots, chayote, jicama, cabbage, green beans, zucchini, corn and potatoes. I know the potates in the photo look enormous; they really weren't, they were actually small fingerlings! The house smelled wonderful while the soup was cooking and it tasted even better. The chopped chile, cilantro and a squeeze or two of lime made it even better. This is real comfort food. We're between storms today. I've got a lot of soup leftover. I'm sure it will continue to get better as the days go by and it will definitely be the perfect meal for cold, wet weather. Today I'm adding some chopped avocado to the garnish plate. And perhaps some fresh, hot corn tortillas if I can get motivated enough to make them

About a year or so ago I picked up Splendid Soups & Spectacular Sides while I was waiting in the check-out line at a local store. The magazine was put out by the Cuisine at Home folks. The photos looked good and I love soup. So I bought it, and then, of course, proceeded not to cook from it. Until last month, that is. In January I made Wild Rice & Chicken soup and Split Pea & Ham. The Wild Rice & Chicken soup was satisfying and spectactular. Onions, carrots, celery and ham sauted then deglazed with sherry and chicken stock. Add chicken, cooked wild rice and thyme. Finish with milk. Garnish with toasted slivered almonds and chopped green onions. The Split Pea & Ham was good, but ultimately, a little bland. I can make a better free-form split pea soup using just what I have on hand. It's cold and rainy here today; a good day for puttering in the kitchen and putting on a pot of soup.

Cafe Chloe - just over the bridge from you. Hexagone is a fairly new French Restaurant, open only about 4 months. It's in the old Gemelli space at 5th and Laurel across the street from Laurel and the Mr. A's building. Reviews have been mixed. Food generally hasn't been the issue, most of the negative comments I've read related to service. A good friend of mine has eaten there twice and loved it. Ambiance is nice...low, soft lighting, understated. It's owned by the same chef that has French Market Grille in RB.

Katie, agave nectar is in wide distribution. The easiest place to find it is Whole Foods, but if you don't want to pay their prices you can usually find it at the healthy foods grocery stores and health food shops. Some well stocked mainstream grocery stores are stocking it as well. You can also do a Google search for you particular area to see who stocks it. In my neck of the woods (San Diego, CA) it's about $5-6 for a 16 oz bottle. A little can go a long way since it's actually sweeter than sugar.

I've gotta second this recommendation. Agave nectar can be substituted 1:1 in any recipe using liquid sweeteners such as honey, simple syrup, Lyle's, etc. The flavor is pretty neutral. You could definitely use it in the ketchup mixture you use on your meatloaf. It is very cool stuff. This web site will give you more information about agave nectar.

Chris, I agree with you 100%. I received TFB as a Christmas gift and have spent a lot of time reading through it and considering the lists of pairings. I had a swordfish steak I needed to do something with a week or so ago, so I pulled out TFB and turned to swordfish to see what it recommended and what I had on hand. I ended up putting together a sauce with olive oil, lime juice, cilantro, green onion and pine nuts. Would probably not have considered the pine nuts had it not been for TFB, they kind of took the sauce and the swordfish to a whole new dimension.

Bruce, make this mole, you won't be sorry. I kept looking at the recipe too and wavering back and forth between wanting to make it and not wanting to spend the time. Spend the time, it's worth every single minute. What finally pushed me over the edge into making it was not only my impending trip to Veracruz but the fact I had a bunch of chiles in my pantry I wanted to move out so I could bring a fresh supply home from Mexico. The recipe calls for a huge amount of chiles. Zarela gives weights and count, I measured them out by weight and ignored the per chile count. Her method of oven toasting them on cookie sheets worked like a charm. The direction then proceeds to say to grind them in a food processor. I couldn't get them fine enough in my food processor so I finished the grinding in my spice grinder. That was about the only thing I did differently with the recipe method and I would really recommend using the spice grinder to finish the chiles if a food processor doesn't grind them fine enough. I used a small pork loin roast that we got from Costco for the meat. I simmered the meat, unseasoned, in some water (not to cover) until it was about half way done, then sliced what I needed for the meal and finished it in the sauce. I think this recipe would work equally well with any cut of pork, chicken, duck, turkey, quail, rabbit and believe it or not, shrimp. I'm also tempted to say it would work with salmon. This mole has a nice sweetness to it from all the fruit without being overly sweet, it's just enough. And there's just enough heat from the chiles to make the sauce interesting but not bitter or flaming hot in the mouth. So any protein that can hold up to some sweetness is probably going to pair pretty well with this mole. I also think it would work well with an assortment of steamed vegetables, particularly things like chayote, carrots, calabacitas, potatoes, corn, onions, all the typical vegetables you'd find in a Mexican market. According to Zarela's directions for reconstituting the mole paste the ratio was 2 1/2 cups of water to 3 cups of paste. I used only 1 cup of mole paste and somewhere between 1 2/3 to 1 3/4 cups of pork broth. To start the dilution I added only about 3/4 of a cup of broth and it was apparent very quickly that was insufficient so I added about a 1/2 cup more and then just kind of kept adding more little by little until I had the consistency I wanted. Her dilution ratio was really the only direction in the recipe that I found was slightly off. The recipe yielded a generous 8 cups of mole paste. I've got 3 - 2 cup packages vacuum sealed in the freezer along with a 1-cup package. It makes a lot

I spent 4 1/2 hours on Sunday making Mole de Xico paste from scratch. Totally from scratch. Lots of roasting, toasting, frying, grinding, blending and pureeing. Not much in the way of chopping. I used a cookie sheet, a big skillet and a small one, a spice grinder, a food processor and a blender. The recipe wasn't hard, just a lot of ingredients and rather time consuming. But, OH...MY...GOD! We had some for dinner last night and it was truly spectactular. I've eaten my share of mole in Mexico and brought assorted mole pastes home, but only a few of them have approached the same level as the mole paste I just made. I am sure a lot of my success had to do with the use of fresh ingredients and the fact it was hand made. Xico is a small town in Veracruz not too far from Xalapa and Coatepec. Their signature mole tends to be a little sweeter than others. The recipe I used was from Zarela's Veracruz. And kudos to Zarela for the recipe method, it was clear, concise and extremely accurate, particularly with regard to cooking times for each of the ingredients. I decided to tackle this recipe because I had the time, almost all the ingredients and I'm leaving for Veracruz in 3 weeks. I jsut thought it might be interesting to compare a mole recipe from an American cookbook to the real thing, which I wouldn't be able to do unless I actually made the recipe. I did and it turned out better than I could have imagined in my wildest dreams.

This should probably fall into the better late than never category I was 10 years old when my aunt first started teaching me how to make candy. I'm quite a bit older than that now but the tradition of making candy during the holidays has stuck. So when the Dec. issue of Saveur arrived on my doorstep with an article about candymaking in Puebla, including several recipes, I knew a trip into the kitchen would not be far behind. I settled on the recipe for Jamoncillo de Frutas y Nueces (pg. 30 of the Dec. 2008 issue of Saveur), which I really like. The recipe accompanying the article was based on old convent recipes and the method was somewhat unorthodox to me. With no assurances as to what I'd really end up with I hauled out my trusty candy thermometer (a real relic) and an 8 qt stock pot into which I pour milk, corn syrup and sugar, broke up a couple of sticks of canela and added a dab of baking soda. The recipe was quite explicit, bring it to a simmer over medium heat and do not stir. So...here's where I started After about 35 minutes of simmering, spooning off any foam and occasionally washing down the sides to prevent crystalization, but not stirring, the mixture reached 240* and I took it off the heat The next step was to add some butter and vanilla and let it cool to 180*, all the while still NOT stirring. It cooled rather quickly but sure didn't look so appealing. Once cooled I took a wooden spoon to the mixture and started beating the daylights out of it until it loss it's glossy appearance. It took about 5 or 6 mintues and I got a pretty good upper body workout. Waiting on deck were the add-ins There were 3 kinds of nuts, all toasted, and mixed candied fruits. The bananas in the photo had nothing to do with the jamoncillo, they just happened to be on the counter when I took the photo (oops). I found some good quality candied fruits through the back pages of Saveur and they worked out well. A few stirs to get the fruit and nuts mixed up and into the prepared pan it went. After chilling overnight I cut the pan 8x8 into 64 pieces. The candy is rich, sweet and very different for the American palate. I thought the candy was outstanding as did almost everyone who tasted it. There were a few dissenters who did not care for it and I noticed that older people liked it better than younger ones. I do think there is something somewhat old fashioned about this particular candy as it's flavor profile doesn't easily fit into today's mainstream candy tastes. I will make this again next Christmas with only few modifications. I may trade out the pine nuts for additional walnuts and pecans. I may have to make a special trip down to Mercado Hidalgo in Tijuana to get some real Mexican candied fruits to use. But most of all, I think I'll criss-cross a couple of strips of wax paper over the bottom of the empty pan with the ends extending out, so that I can lift the finished candy out of the pan to cut it more easily. While the candy cuts really easily, it's pretty dense and getting the first few pieces out was difficult. This was an experiment well worth trying and the results were divine.

I haven't tried it recently either, but I do know several people that have gone for RW and no one has been especially pleased with it for RW. If you're going to go, my suggestion would be to go after RW.

With regard to food, Hotel Circle is often thought of as one of Dante's circles of hell. Yeah, it's not great, but it's not impossible either especially if he's got a car. Bully's East on Camino del Rio South is a good place for Happy Hour and some sports bar type night life. It's 2 exits east of your husbands hotel. It's an old school, clubby steak house that actually specializes in prime rib. It's pretty solid from the food stand point but not particularly inexpensive. The Better Half on University between 1st and 2nd in Hillcrest is currently running a $15 Blue Plate special. The Better Half (name because it serves only 1/2 bottles of wine) is a very good restaurant and this is a very good deal. Terra in the Uptown shopping center is wonderful and next door to it is Aladdin's which does a very nice job with (Americanized) middle eastern food. University between Park Blvd. and 1st Ave - a stretch that is probably 3-4 miles long - is restaurant row in Hillcrest. Parking is a pain, but there are probably almost 100 restaurants to choose from in almost every price range. Jayne's Gastropub on 30th at Adams Ave has good food in a nice setting. I think it's a bit spendy for what you get. Mayahuel on Adams just west of 30th serves up some really decent mole and great tacos. It's about 4-5 miles from the hotel. There is a surfact street about a block or 2 west of the hotel that goes directly up into Mission Hills (I'm sorry I can't remember the name of it). This will put your husband very close to Parallel 33 which is at Washington and Goldfinch. Oliveto is in the same area, it's fairly new, not a lot of buzz about it yet. Your husband's hotel is on one of the major East/West freeways in San Diego, I-8, on the North side of the freeway (the hotel is on the south side), he can find a King's Fish House (pretty decent, moderate to moderately high), Fuddruckers (don't laugh, this location is pretty good) and a Gordon Birsch. On Friar's Rd. on the north side of I-8 are 2 major shopping centers. Fashion Valley has a PF Changs and Cheesecake Factory if he gets desparate, and truth be told, neither one is bad. There is a new restaurant called Bing Crosby (yes, like the crooner) in this complex serving fairly upscale meals. Further east along Friars is a shopping center anchored by a Ralph's and Long's. There are several small mom and pop places here. El Portal is probably the best of the lot, though the Indian place wasn't too bad last time I tried it. Your husband can also take state route 163 north to the Mesa College Drive exit. Turn left at the top of the exit, cross the freeway and go to the first stoplight and turn right. This is Linda Vista Rd, it will eventually become Convoy St. which is where the majority of Asian restaurants in SD are located. Emerald, Jasmine and China Max are 3 of the better known, easier to find places. You can find just about anything on Convoy St. Try these two links for local restaurants SignOnSanDiego Click on the entertainment link San Diego Reader Scroll down to the restaurant link On either site you need to look at Hillcrest, East (or central) San Diego for options closest to the hotel. Hotel Circle was built a long time ago and mostly for lodging not food. It's not an easy location for food oriented people.