caroline

Thanks Bergerka. I loved yours! The coastal resorts are carefully plotted. One of my walking companions reported, with something between amusement and irritation, that the hotel she stayed in in Cancun had a "Mexican night." Yes, that's basically the Russian salad here. It seems to be popular across classes as I've heard mother's preparing it for their daughter's graduation from, say, a primary school in a rural village. I imagine it came to Mexico in the late nineteenth century when, with a few other French-style dishes, it took over much of the world. You find it in Turkey, I believe, and the Parsi community in India. The milanesa that Emilia prepared yesterday is also part of that group of dishes. Mayonnaise is common in Mexican kitchens. Judging by comments from a range of different people, a tortilla with mayonnaise is an after-school snack or a guilty treat from the refrigerator. Rachel

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I just had occasion to spend six weeks in Michoacan, four of them with a family in Morelia. The cook, Chila, made a different agua fresca each day. And she would announce them in the morning: "El agua del dia es jamaica." And then later, the soup: "La sopa del dia es tarasca." There was something about these announcements, and their accompanying solemnity, that made me smile. Not sure why. But she noticed, and from then on in, it turned into a joke. Everything was announced as being "del dia." And, Rachel, I agree with you. I'm not a soda pop drinker, either. Far too cloying and sweet for me. Those cool, refreshing aguas are one of the best things about Mexico. But very far removed from "juices." Chila told me that her secret for her exquisitely-flavored orange and lime aguas was to add just a touch of the peel. And when a particular day's agua was a blend of various left-over fruits, she would announce, "El agua del dia es tooti-frooti." But never without collapsing in a wave of giggles. ← Jaymes, that is such a wonderful story. I'm going to make tooti frooti tomorrow! And thanks for filling in for people on aguas frescas. See you soon, Rachel

Yes it seems that the Mexican sub-species Persea americana var. drymifolia has the anise scent and flavour. This doesn't mean that all Mexican avacados have the anise scent, for example Mexico grows a huge amount of Hass and this is likely to be hybrid of Guatemalan and Mexican sub-species. How strong is this anise flavor? Could I add a some ground anise to guacamole to approximate the flavour? ← You could. I don't think these tiny avocados are usually made into guacamole. Most people eat just the flesh or flesh and skin. The everyday avocado for guacamole is the Hass. There's a trend to add fruit to guacamole but it does nothing for me. Mash the avocado, add a spoon of salsa verde, and done, Rachel

Good to talk to you again. I agree that flan and arroz con leche are great desserts. In fact I think that the Mexican repertoire of desserts, candies, cookies, etc is greater than we usually realize but it doesn't fit American categories. Glad you like Mexico's pan dulce. I haven't had much of it in the US, none come to think of it, so it's hard for me to comment on its quality. Here I yearn for the old days when lard was used. Now it's all Inca (or is it Aztec, Inca I think) shortening which makes Crisco look like the gift of the gods. I'm crossing my fingers that very soon some smart Mexican entrepreneur is going to figure out that instead of opening a trendy French bakery (OK I patronize them) he will open a great traditional Mexican bakery. Rachel

Finally here is a post on the sweets. An eternity ago I talked about José Luis's book on sweets. What this means is sweets in the English sense, sweeties in Scotland, candies in the US. Here's the most famous candy shop in Mexico, just two blocks from the central square in Mexico City. If you haven't got used to overlooking my blurry, ill-lit photos by now here's your chance. The shop has been in business over a hundred years. The display counters came from DesPlaines which always amuses me. Display window done up for Day of the Dead. The interior. Forget chocolate. Forget vanilla. The base of most sweets is boiled down milk, milk fudge. The flavorings are nuts and fruits. Think the Arabian Nights, think the Nawabs of Lucknow, think the highest luxury of the courts of Europe who hired Spanish and Portuguese confectioners to teach them how to reproduce these sweets. Forget children. Think gifts for monarchs, think gifts for the gods, think of the nuns in the convents creating these as the highest form of culinary artifice. Here you have a selection, some of them with little nibbles in the side where I haven't been able to resist. -Roughly from top left clockwise Candied lime filled with coconut, coconut sweet made to look like an apple, sweet of red pine nuts, tastier than the white ones, almond marzipan pear, amaranth covered milk fudge, prune stuffed with milk fudge, tissue wrapped sweet, coconut sweet, pecans round milk sweet, spiraling in to milk fudge in wafers, egg yolk sweets of various kinds. This is confectionery of the highest order. This little lot cost about $20. And they have very little shelf life, hence the nibbles. Rachel

Rachel, I completely agree. Much as I love and crave and admire the cuisines of Asia, Latin America and India, I cannot wrap my tastebuds around any of their sweets and desserts. Far too different from what my experience says is "dessert". Perhaps its because sweets and desserts are so closely associated with childhood memories, and our own cultures and history? At any rate, thank you for your gracious answer to my dopey question about the water, and I am TOTALLY loving your blog. Your writing style is a joy. P.S. Any chance of doggie pictures?? Always a winner in my book ← Well you have the doggie pictures. And now you've prompted me to finally post the sweet pictures. here we go, imagegullet willing, Rachel

You have me there. I've never run across this chain in Mexico City. But then it is huge. Chicken soup is almost universally good in Mexico City. And I would bet that within a decade many Mexican franchises will give American ones a run for their money. Lots are experimenting now, and many are quite excellent, or at least I think so. Rachel

We buy the big brown blanket-sized sheets at a carniceria next to the within-smelling-distance bakery around the block. Southern folks finding fried pork rinds that take two hands to hold---Heaven. And the vacitas---yes I DO want to touch them. Also memories of my Southern childhood, when dried beans of several colors were a fascination. Relatives had a little grocery store, and just inside the flappy screendoor, a rank of perhaps six or eight half-barrels were bolted to the wall, just hand-height. They each held an immense quantity of beans, and the colors and their cool slippage through my fingers and the slishy sound of them as they rattled back into the pile---I've never forgotten. Uncle didn't seem to mind our grubby fingers buried in someone's prospective dinner, and he allowed us to man the silver scoops at will, but his first words to children through the door, repeated countless times in that cavernous deep-rumbly voice: "Don't mix the beans." ← Put me on your mailing list so that I can read your memoirs as soon as they appear. I love all this, Rachel

that is wonderful and makes me well up a bit! And yes, there will be lots of photos. No to cooking school and San Miguel de Allende beyond a day trip. Too little time! Rachel, with the whole Cervantes festival, would you say Guanajuato has a more Spanish influence than other Mexican cities? ← Complicated. Guanajuato, like some of the other great colonial cities of Central Mexico such as Guadalajara, Aguascalientes, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosí, was founded in a place with only a nomadic population. In the case of Guanajuato, the predominant group in the eighteenth century were the Basques. But when the Catholic Church and/or the Spanish crown tried to take censuses by ethnic group the priests just wrote back and said, hopeless, I'm sorry, we can't do it. Otomis, north Africans, West Africans, were just some of the bigger groups here and intermarriage was, to say the least, widespread. The after Independence the French became the greatest influence. Then came the English and the French and the Americans who owned mines, set up electric companies, etc. Then in the Spanish Civil War there was a new influx of Spaniards. In short, fewer indigenous influences than in the south. But as Mexican as tortillas and rice, Rachel

that is wonderful and makes me well up a bit! And yes, there will be lots of photos. No to cooking school and San Miguel de Allende beyond a day trip. Too little time! Rachel, with the whole Cervantes festival, would you say Guanajuato has a more Spanish influence than other Mexican cities? ← Me too. I've had such a protected life. Here as in Hawaii, on the mainland US, the stories of people's lives, well, they make me well up.

I can't wait until we're breaking bread, er tortillas, together.Ahem. ← With jaymes, of course, who is integral to so many of my Mexican food adventures! ← Do you think you will have time to take a class at María Ricaud Solórzano's cooking school? http://www.traditionalmexicancooking.com.mx/index.html ← Thanks for introducing María, Farid. I've learned more about Mexican cooking from her than from anyone. Right now instead of nattering happily with all my eGullet friends I should really be getting on with translating her book on salsas. I think it could be foundational. The sauces are the basis of any great cuisine and they have a structure. Most books on Mexican cooking just give separate recipes and don't even take a lick at the structure, Rachel

Thanks for the comment. And it sounds as if exploring the agua fresca world might just add a bit to those ways of drinking water. Rooting for you, Rachel

And here's Emilia eating her meal and looking at herself on eGullet. And here's Don Bruno doing the same. Ay Señora, que todo esta fama nos lleve suerte! May all this fame bring us luck. Rachel

Now for something in real time. Here's Don Bruno. He has taken care of my garden for ten years. I'll tell you more about him later but he's waiting for his lunch and I want to show him this before he goes. And here he is in his milpa (a flashback) And here's Emilia who works in the house. She's making chicken milanesa, rice and salsas for their lunch (and the salsas for us too). More about her later. Rachel

Adam, I haven't the foggiest notion but I can ask around. What I can say is that my dog who avidly consumes our over-ripe avocados, spitting out bits of skin and the seed all over the garage, even though warned that the Aztecs fattened their dogs on avocados, would not touch these. I assume because of the strong scent, Rachel

I'm just the drive. Rancho Gordo and Jaymes can do the work! Rachel

No protein content in the tamal. And whoops, I made another error, it's acelga (chard) not spinach (espinaca), though I doubt if you could tell the difference if you were blindfolded. I suspect the acelga stands up a bit better to the steaming. The glasses are everywhere. I bought these in Mega, the big supermarket in town. You can get them in Wal-Mart too. I think there are producers all over the place, there's certainly one in San Miguel, a colonial town about an hour's drive away. And this is my chance to say something about one of my favorite things in Mexico, aguas frescas, that whole tribe of lightly sweetened long cooling drinks of fruits, nuts, flowers, grains and so on. I am working on a project to have a different one from every week of the year and it's more than possible. I'm not fond of canned soft drinks so these are a life saver for me. So shock when a Mexico City buddy and ardent NY Times reader,Ruth Alegria, calls me up and says that Mark Bittman has an article on eating in Mexico, and shock, he talks about the watery juices of Mexico. Hasn't anyone told him, she says, that juice is jugo, and that agua fresca is something different. Apparently not. And this is my chance to say that if any of you want a guide to cuisine and much else in Mexico City, think of Ruth. Born in Nicaragua, owner for many years of a Mexican restaurant in Princeton, Ruth arrived in Mexico City to live three of four years ago. She really knows the city and the culinary scene. And she's one of the best friends anyone could hope to have. http://www.mexicosoulandessence.com/ Rachel

Wow! I knew about the black ones (and had a hell of a time with them here in Napa) but the red are new to me. I would almost bet money that the brown ones are what we call Yellow Eyes: but I've been wrong before. Actually, they could be butterscotch calypsos. Or brown vacaitas as you say. Is that a stray Flor de Mayo among the brown vacacitas? Yes, I do want to touch them! I can't wait until we're breaking bread, er tortillas, together. ← Yes, that Flor de Mayo had strayed in in the market and I thought I'd let it stay. On breaking tortillas, that's just what the ones in the middle in the photo (from the barbacoa place) do. Bad news. So we'll roll our tortillas together. Rachel Rachel

Here's the view from the kitchen window as I struggle to consciousness. If you want to see some good photos of Guanajuato, go to http://www.terragalleria.com/north-america...guanajuato.html I have no connection with this site, but they sure take better pictures than I do. The gossip on the walk this morning is all about the upcoming Black and White Ball run by the Rotary. Maria Elena's daughter will be queen (queens are a big issue in Guanajuato) so she has been busy teaching the younger girls, the fifteen-year olds who will debutar (come out), how to dance the cotillon. Each, dressed in a white dress with black touches, is accompanied by a chambalan. Just try saying it, I think its chamberlain. No dinner is served just an "ambigu" a cold plate of rolls of ham and (you guessed) Russian salad. The family of each girl is expected to buy between one and three tables, each seating ten, cost $300 a table. The entry fee for each individual is $25. The dress costs about $300. The number of debutantes has beeen gradually falling from about sixteen to nine this year. Another tradition hits the dust! Much concern, though, because the profits go to equipping houses for the handicapped. Back to breakfast on that good bread, nata (clotted cream) and plum jam from the cooperative of village women up in the mountain village of Santa Rosa about ten miles from here. They are inspiring. www.ccg.org.mx/santa.htm The plum jam is slightly tart and slightly runny, not over-sweetened and pectined, and the nata, well, it takes me back to my family kitchens. Bliss. The puffed lip indicates that my dog agrees. Rachel

Tomorrow. What's it's like to work in a kitchen in Mexico? What about salsas? The sweets I've been promising? What about servants? Can I cram it all in? Rachel

Finally dinner tonight. Something homey. Chicken with potatoes, the small onions from Mexico City, mushrooms in a white wine, garlic and rosemary sauce (rosemary from outside the back door). Salads of watermelon and the sparkling watercress from Mexico City. Ginger ale for my husband, agua de guayaba (guava water) for me (we've had our drinks before dinner, remember). Rachel

A quickie. We have three kinds of corn tortillas (the only ones that count around here) in the house at the moment. Here is a photo of the front and back sides of the three. Which is the best? Which is from the tortilleria? Which is hand patted but bad? You can't tell everything from appearance but a good bit. And I've more or less given the game away, Rachel

Now on to a miscellany of topics for today. As usual I hoofed it off at 8 this morning with my lovely dog and my walking group. I must tell you about them because they have been so wonderful. We started walking together ten years ago, two miles out round the old mining road about a hundred yards above our house, two miles back. Three of us have survived all those years. Normally between five and seven people, others have cycled through as they took jobs, or had children, or left town. These are accountants, lawyers, professors, and the like. One of the three original had a small restaurant downtown for years. If I'd had a brain in my head, I've had noted down all the recipes exchanged, all the meals described. Only one of the group has a cookbook. They are all good home cooks, they have no option. They are all experimental. It's been an unsurpassed window into the home cooking of this Mexican province. To see them just go to the teaser for this list. There we are, a bit swollen in numbers by Maria Elena's visiting sisters, doing the Guanajuato equivalent of blackberrying, garambulleando. We are picking the sweet black fruits, the garambullos, of the old man cactus. These are eaten out of hand or made into sauces for icecream. In the past they were probably dried and traded around Mexico. "Muy regional (very regional)" as Ricardo Muñoz once told me. I return home famished. Coffee and some of that ethereal chicharron that I bought. This is the best, light and fluffy, with those lovely carnitas. It is spectacular in salsa roja or salsa verde. Some like it well soaked but I find that a bit slimy. So I heat some bits in the meecro (microwave) with a little of the salsa roja from the barbacoa. Here's the breakfast table. Then we get to unpacking. I bought some beans in the San Angel market for Rancho Gordo who will be arriving in a week's time to spend two or three days with me. He probably has them already but here they are. Brown vacitas (little cows) Aren't they glorious? Don't you want to stroke them? And red vacitas. There are black ones too but I know he has those. Here's one view of the kitchen if anyone is interested. We put in the woodwork. the concrete dividers and the tile are the work of the previous owners, a geologist and his wife, who built the house as the house of their dreams and then had to move for work. And talking of water here's my latest gadget. The garafons are lined up in the pantry/laundry room. See the one with all the tubes coming out? They lead to a faucet in the kitchen and when it opens an incredibly noisy pump sends the water there. But I just love the fact that no one has to heave the garafons upside down on to garafon stands any more. Here's the photo of the year, the regular faucet and the little garafon faucet. http://forums.egullet.org/uploads/1192491246/gallery_8553_5278_18785.jpg Rachel