caroline

Hmm. Interesting article. My impression is that McDonald's, KFC, etc remain the food of the urban middle class. They are just too expensive for most of the population. But of course the middle and upper class has a disproportionate amount of the disposable income. The poor do buy Maruchan (now the branded name for instant noodles). They're still a treat but with the price of tortillas rising one that's possible from time to time. And some of the Mexican fast food chains seem to be booming. Many of the grilled chicken ones are very popular. And I just had lunch a couple of days ago at Doña Tota (http://www.gorditasdonatota.com/) which is a successful chain. Small thin gorditas about 3 inches across. Fillings include chicharron, carnitas with mole or salsa verde, rajas, nopales, asado, cochinita pibil, huevos con machacado. They cost about 50 cents apiece. And then there are the other foreigners. Habib's for example is a Lebanese fast food chain based in Brazil. And cleanliness is an issue. Rachel

This is all fascinating. Migas are well known in this part of Mexico. If I ask the girls who work for me (OK, OK this is Mexico) to make migas, they turn our stale bread into breadcrumbs. I have not heard them use the term migas for crushed stale tortillas. Those seem to be toasted, made into chilaquiles, but not crushed, Rachel

Gee, thanks. Ah well, early breakfast. That might be different. My impression is that you just eat something very light early on. But normally almuerzo is available from 8 or 9 and that's when you get eggs. Including the delicious huevos con machacado! At least in the north. Hotels, sad to say, are taking over the American "breakfast buffet" idea and although the best are good, most are not. I think migas really are Tex-Mex, don't you? I've never encountered them here, Rachel

Thanks, Robb, for a fascinating Q & A session. It's great to have someone talk seriously about Tex-Mex and I can't wait to buy your book next time I'm in the States. As the author of the LA piece, I'd like to add a few comments to the DK discussion. I don't think Diana Kennedy is just recording a peasant cuisine as one or two comments on this thread have suggested. In fact, one of the guessing games you can play with her books is tracing the class origins of the different dishes. Much of what she records is the cooking of the very well-to-do. And I sometimes have the suspicion that over the years people have increasingly offered their latest inventions which get folded into a seamless web of supposedly timeless Mexican food. It's interesting to compare her take on Mexican food with that of another Englishwoman, Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz. She published her book in 1965, a little before Kennedy. When I moved to Mexico I found it much easier to cook from. The recipes are much less baroque (to use Robb's phrase) than Kennedy's. And her clear distinction between the corn kitchen and the rest of Mexican food is very helpful. It's also important to remember that Mexican food has its own very distinguished tradition of cookbooks, gastronomic works etc going back to the eighteenth century. Rick Bayless makes much use of these. I'm sure Diana Kennedy must be more than conversant with this tradition too. Right now, one of the most interesting things happening in Mexico is the back influence from the US, including from Tex-Mex. Nachos and chips. Chile's (sp?) restaurants. It's not just migrant workers, it's also the Mexican middle class who acquire a taste for such things when they go shoppping n the Galeria in Houston, have exchange students, etc. And Robb, I give you the coffee. Mexico is not a great coffee drinking country (though cafe de la olla is wonderful) and for many Nescafe remains up market. But eggs for breakfast. Interesting you couldn't find them in Monterrey. In the parts of Mexico I know eggs are breakfast: rancheros, divorciados, omelettes, revueltos, estrellados, etc. Rachel

Sounds great, Rachel

What about the Thai dishes? My understanding is that 7-11 is soon going to be offering some pretty high quality items. Rachel

I think Fifi's right. Nixtamalization is not necessary for a steamed dumpling which is what tamales essentially are. Not only in Texas but through much of South America tamales or tamale-type things are made with corn meal. Of course they have a different flavor. Probably (and I think I've read this somewhere) nixtamalization was a late addition to maize technology. Tamales came first. What nixtamalization did (and presumably it was first done to add/change flavor) was to make the resultant ground dough flexible when patted into a disk and cooked. Masa harina gives a less flexible tortilla than fresh masa. Some Mexicans correct this by adding up to four tablespoons of flour to a kilo of masa harina. Rachel

Thanks for the comments. Judith, you are so right. Wouldn't it be lovely if the analysis of residues was a crystal ball! Right now what the people I have been talking to are hoping to do is simply to find out if metates were used mainly for grinding maize, what else they were used for, whether different shapes and lithologies correspond to different uses. It's miles from mole. And all the metates in museums have been carefully scrubbed clean so you're talking about looking in new sites. In any case, it would have to be combined with ethnographic work. And people with the skill to use the metate will be gone very, very soon. And Sharon, I'm rather inclined to give the nuns a higher culinary ranking than you are. I think it was one of the few times in history when women were responsible for creating a high cuisine. The story of Sister whatever her name was who supposedly gave mole to the visiting dignitary is almost certainly false. No mention of anything in any of the convent records. First mention in 1912. But in all the convents, nuns (who had to be Spanish, literate and educated except for the occasional high-ranking Mexican who got in) did much of the hands on cooking. Of course they had Mexican girls to do the grinding. But there were two cuisines in the convents. One a maize cuisine for the servants who far outnumbered the nuns (about 10 to 1 if I remember right). the second a wheat cuisine for the nuns. It was partly economic (though there were also symbolic reasons). There income was largely in kind from the haciendas they owned. So they had to add value (and turn into cash) all that wheat, fruit, chiles, etc. They did this by a catering operation for the well-to-do plus gifts to patrons. Spanish recipes with Mexican substitutions. If I had to guess, I'd put the origins of the Alta Cocina Mexicana in the convents, Best, Rachel

Whoops, sorry, got interrupted and hit the add reply button twice by mistake, Rachel

Actually perhaps it should be added that whatever the quality of some of the products on the market, including the huge plastic buckets of the paste in every supermarket, mole is a great candidate for jarring since it keeps so well and is so laborious to make. In fact in my experience (input from others please) most towns have a woman or women who make high quality mole and sell it in plastic bags on street corners or in or near the market. Discerning housewives buy this and simply dilute it with a light broth from whatever they are going to pour it over. Some good ones are coming on the market too. I can't remember the name of the brand that is sold in the gourmet department of department stores but I'll check it tomorrow. Best, Rachel

Actually perhaps it should be added that whatever the quality of some of the products on the market, including the huge plastic buckets of the paste in every supermarket, mole is a great candidate for jarring since it keeps so well and is so laborious to make. In fact in my experience (input from others please) most towns have a woman or women who make high quality mole and sell it in plastic bags on street corners or in or near the market. Discerning housewives buy this and simply dilute it with a light broth from whatever they are going to pour it over. Some good ones are coming on the market too. I can't remember the name of the brand that is sold in the gourmet department of department stores but I'll check it tomorrow. Best, Rachel

Hi Theabroma, Thus far I have found no resistance from the knowledgeable food pople in Mexico City though I haven't yet finished sending the article around. I think this is for several reasons. First, Mudejar influence in Mexico is well documented and well known (two Artes de Mexico issues on it in architecture for example). Second, most knowledgeable food people in Mexico City are well aware of a tradition of high Mexican cuisine influenced by the Spanish and later the French. Indeed that's where they all fit. So the idea that the first cuisine imported was a Spanish version of the cuisine of al-Andalus is no problem. Especially when you have so many arabic food words in Mexico. Third, historians of Mexico have written at length on the spiritual, musical, etc etc conquest of Mexico. All emphasize the point that however stunnning Cortés' victory over Mexico City, the Spanish wouldn't have had a prayer against the diminishing but still overwhelming majority of the indigenous population if they hadn't followed up with a cultural campaign. Hence the idea of an imposed cuisine fits with practically everything else in recent Mexican historiography. I'll get to the nuns later, Best, Rachel

Oh and if Theabroma's out there anywhere, she's the person to ask about the history of chiles in the America's. She's translating Janet Long Solis's Capsicumy Cultura: La historia del chilli. Theabroma? Rachel

Esperanza, A friend of mine with a Oaxacan mother-in-law invites me to the mole making every Christmas. I'm afraid that I don't hve your stamina. I just wilt at the idea of a whole day devoted just to making the mole. Takes slow food to a whole new level. But your recipe sounds delicious even if time-consuming. And I think I'd be inclined to agree with jhlurie that many moles are meant to have bitter amongst the spectrum of tastes. Rachel

Thanks for the response Irwin. I don't think anyone would disagree that the British in general and Crosse and Blackwell in particular (as well as Indians such as Veeraswamy with restaurants and cooking classes in London in the early 20th c) were responsible for spreading "curry powder" around the world. And surely we can also agree with Pan that other substances such as black pepper were used for a piquant taste prior to chiles. It would be fascinating to have the evidence that the Catholic Church controlled the planting of chile seeds. I'd always had the impression that chile plants spread almost immediately after the Conquest. But the role of missionaries (and not just Christian ones) in moving foods round the world is a wonderfully interesting topic. Best, Rachel

Oh, and it occurs to me that there are gorgeous photos of four kinds of mole taken by Mexico's great food photographer Ignacio Urquiza in an article I just published. There's a link to it in the News and Media forum, Rachel

Hmm, so there are sweet moles. Is it a southern recipe? Or like a manchamanteles? Rachel

Here I am again, harping on about books that are in Spanish and out of print anyway. But there is such terrific stuff here I'd really like people to know about it. But in 1992, the utterly charming Edelmira Linares of the Botanic garden at the National University published a book on the wild greens (quelites) Mexico of which purslane or verdolagos is one, called Los Quelites, Un Tesoro Culinario. She has recipes for using them in a mixed salad, a spinach and mushroom salad, in meat-potato croquettes, in a stew with green chiles and tomatillos and wild mushrooms, in another with cheese, and in horchata. Admittedly this was an attempt to make quelites use-friendly to the well-to-do but they're recipes worth trying, Rachel

No worry Adam. I'd love to know more about the history of the word curry. And I'm with Pan in thinking that the Indian influence (both Hindu and Buddhist) in southeast Asia could do with more work. Multiple waves of influence here. Rachel

Fifi, I wouldn't want to deny that the pre-Conquest peoples of Mexico ground chiles. And it seems that they were used with chocolate in drinks at least. We don't know about sauces. And grinding was a technique used world wide so there was an easy confluence of traditions here. But three comments. (1) I think the chocolate is a bit of a red herring (to mix metaphors) in the mole discussion. Assuming that the moles are a coherent class (and I'm not sure that's true because there is such a huge gap between say mole de olla and mole poblano), it's not clear that chocolate is a defining ingredient. (2) Another question that needs to be followed up is the difference between sauces made in the molcajete and those ground on the metate. This may simply reflect how hard the ingredients are and the consistency of the final sauce. Or it may say something about which traditions they come from. Mexican archaeologists are just beginning to do residue analysis on pre-Conquest metates because they really don't know what was ground on them. (3) Most important. The Spanish were conquerors. Unlike people like me, anxious to taste all kinds of foods when I travel, they had no intention of eating the foods of the conquered. They wanted to become hidalgos and eat the prestige foods of their homeland. Obviously they couldn't quit pull this off. But if nuns in Puebla (as you know the mythic source of mole poblano) were preparing such a dish for visiting dignitaries, it stretches the imagination to think they would have offered up something they thought of as indigenous. And Adam, thanks for the comments. I agree that this type of dish is pre-Islamic. And I agree that "curries" have other influences. Rachel

Scott, I agree with Fifi and Esperanza. The trouble presumably is that if you cook corn meal (presuming that's what you're using) in an aqueous solution of lime you're going to end up with mush/polenta with an alkaline taste. There would not no way I can think of to get the lime out of that mush. If you cook the whole kernels though you can just rinse out the lime solution. Wonderful smell by the way, Rachel

I've not seen one but I would love to. It would be perfect for those computer overlays. I'd like to see lots of Mexican food mapped. And there's so much research going on in Mexico at the moment on Mexican food that there will probably be some soon, Rachel

Hello Pan, I published a revised version of the paper Alithea referred to in the first issue of Gastronomica. I'd be happy to send the scanned version to you as I have to her. And hello Wesza, Good to chat again. I'm not really sure what you find so inaccurate. I entirely agree that what we think of as curry is later than the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. Indeed I say so toward the end of the paper. And I entirely agree that the spice trade picked up with the Portuguese and Spanish. The point I am making is simply that we can see the remote origins of both mole and what Octavio Paz called curry in the spicy stews that came from a Persian-Islamic tradition and that were found whereever that tradition was carried, whether east to India with the Mughals (or actually further) or west, in a Christianized version, with the Spanish to Mexico and Peru. Does this clarify things? Best, Rachel

Hi Shelora, I'm afraid it's not just in the US that many restaurants resort to Doña Maria! Ricardo's book is only in Spanish. It's published by Clio who have done so much on Mexican food history. It's absolutely stellar. On moles, for example, for each of the forty he tells you the place where it is most commonly made and the ingredients. Same for atoles, same for tamales, etc. So you can make quite a bit out even if you don't speak Spanish. Plus hundreds of entries on individual dishes and ingredients (with all the necessary Latin names). Plus splendid color illustrations. You might be able to get it at a price from Harold Karno books. It was originally $40 here, a bargain. I was out of the country when it first appeared, by the time I had returned it was out of print, and after searching everywhere I managed to pick up a new copy at a book fair for $20. One of those happy days, Rachel

Wongste, I'd bet dollars to donuts (or pesos to Herdez) that the mole used was Doña Maria, the most widely distributed pre-prepared mole that (as Fifi says) is a mole negro type with a touch of mole poblano. Ricardo Muñoz lists 40 (yes 40) different kinds of mole in his definitive Diccionario de de Gastronomía Mexicana. Many of the moles are slightly bitter. None that I have encountered have the sweetness of sauces in many other cuisines. And they are rarely piquante. Best, Rachel