caroline

And one more thought on this topic. I wonder if shouldn't change our terminology. Instead of talking about home dining as the traditional site of great Mexican cuisine, perhaps we should talk about private dining. For Americans and Europeans, home dining is nowadays much reduced as the opportunities for public dining have multiplied beyond the imagination of a couple of generations ago. It is spread out between the rushed family dinner (if there is one) and an occasional attempt (in the US) to create a Norman Rockwell-type family thanksgiving with everyone contributing a dish. Mexican private dining had many more shades and was, I believe, more typical of other great cuisines world wide, including Indian, Persian etc. Think of the town house with a bevy of servants to assist the woman of the house. Think of formal dinners where affairs of business and politics were discussed. Think of haciendas where guests might stay for months when the owners were actually in residence, or where the upper management might dine at the family table. Think of military messes where fine meals were served. Think of businesses in Mexico City that had private dining rooms for their executives. Think of private clubs that offered fine dining. These are not harried meals with children more or less out of control. They are social rituals where the participants can be assured of being exposed neither to the dangers of restaurant kitchens of unknown cleanliness and quality nor to the perhaps worse dangers of rubbing shoulders with strangers of dubious social antecedents. Given the enforced social mobility of the Mexican upper and middle classes due to the political and economic history of the last century, many well-to-do women on hard times made their living running the clubs and the dining rooms thus ensuring a coherence to the cuisine. And then there are the classes they offered for young ladies. These go back at least to the 1930s, probably longer, and they still continue. I have a two-degrees-of-separation acquaintance in Guadalajara who makes her living giving cooking classes to well-to-do girls engaged to be married. They take along their muchachas (servant girls) who will soon be doing the actual cooking while they supervise. The recipe binder alone costs $200. This is not your pot luck home dining. Rachel (Edited for clarity)

My goodness, where should I begin? Yes, there is a restaurant boom in the yuppie parts of Mexico City. For Condessa and Colonia Roma, just listen to Nickarte because he spends a good bit of his time there. So far as new-wave Mexican restaurants go, there are two overlapping groups involved. One is a group of well-to-do women in their 30s, 40s and 50s who have opened their own restaurants: Patricia Quintana, Martha Chapa, Margarita Salinas, Mónica Patiño. The second is a group of professional chefs, mostly men, often working for others, many trained by or associated with Ricardo Muñoz: Alejandro Curi, Gerardo Rivera, Abdiel Cervantes, Roberto Santibañez, Josefina Santacruz, Federico López, etc. They are the products of culinary schools. There are about 40 in Mexico City most of which offer not only classic chef training but also history and techniques of Mexican cooking. I know every generation defines itself against its parents but the idea that the first group of women restaurant owners and the yuppies who dine in their restaurants are “better educated and more worldly than their parents” is, I think, either the hubris of youth or an invention of Corie Brown. Imagine a Mexican saying of the American restaurant scene “this group is better educated and more worldly than Julia Child and her followers who only offered bland flavors.” Thirty or forty ago a particular kind of subtly-flavored “French” food was what was sophisticated. Now it’s “bold” flavors. That’s fashion not progress (except insofar as our repertoire is getting bigger). In fact, the women restaurant owners are repeating the pattern of earlier generations. Before them came women who promoted Mexican cuisine, including Alicia de Angeli, (who pioneered high end Mexican restaurants), Lula Bertrán, María Orsini, María Dolores Yzabal, Lila Lomelí, etc. Most of their work was in trying to improve restaurant standards, promoting Mexican food in the US, organizing food festivals, writing books, collecting regional recipes. But in their day it was not chic to open restaurants. They in turn followed earlier generations of Mexican women such as Josefina Velázquez de León, Adela Hernández, Frida Kahlo who also reinvented Mexican food. But they too worked largely around the home. To my mind the most promising trend is the growth in culinary schools and professionals trained in Mexican cooking to staff restaurants. A variety of factors contribute to this. Among them: The rapid growth of culinary tourism. This has created a need and an opportunity for restaurants. As the article says, Mexican food was at its best in private homes and private clubs (someday I’ll do another rant on why it is weird and unusual in human history to look for good cooking in restaurants). Perhaps so many foreigners think that street food was the heart of Mexican cooking because they never had the chance to experience home cooking. The rising status of the chef. This has made it chic to open a restaurant or go to culinary school. The support of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Council on Culture and the Arts (Conaculta) and of the various tourism agencies for research, travel and promotion of Mexican food. The difficulty of going home for the midday meal, given Mexico City traffic. New possibilities with spin offs (cookbooks, branded products, visits to the culinary schools for foreign tourists that are springing up like mushrooms, tours for foreign tourists). Is this making waves in the provinces? No. Of course the provinces are subject to the same trends as the rest of Mexico. But there is no national food press. Even if there were, the provinces regard chilangos (the inhabitants of Mexico City) with deep suspicion. And chilangos would rather die than end up in the provinces except in a circle of chic satellite weekend retreat places such as Valle del Bravo, Tepotzlán, Cuernavaca, Tequisquiapan, perhaps SMA, etc. Is this making waves elsewhere? It probably will because people from the US are looking for chefs for “interior Mexican” restaurants and for culinary experiences when they go to Mexico. And what about Diana Kennedy? Of course she’s testy. It’s been her trademark for years and is part of her wonderful perfectionism. She has done a terrific job collecting recipes and interpreting them for an American audience. She is honored in Mexico for promoting Mexican food abroad. But she has not “rescued” Mexican food as the blurb on her recent book says, she has not been the only or even the primary collector of recipes, she must know but does little to inform on the history of Mexican cooking, and she has not done anything to promote Mexican food in Mexico itself. All that has been done for at least the last half century by Mexicans and it continues to be done by Mexicans. After all, how did DK find most of her recipes? When Mónica Patiño said to the reporter that they looked to the works of Diana Kennedy, I assume that she was replying to a leading question in the polite way that Mexicans do. I would venture to say that although food professionals in Mexico all know of Diana Kennedy, the hundreds of thousands of educagted women who still turn out superb meals on a daily basis have never heard of her. End of rant, as Esperanza would say. Rachel

Ah, that explains my confusion. I never buy these herbs in the market because I grow them in my garden. And when they need replacing the thyme is always labelled tomillo. Puzzle solved. Thanks so much, Rachel

And following up on Esperanza, isn't it just a bit more complicated, RG? In the regions I know (East Coast, Appalachians, Texas) canned whole nixtamalized maize is labelled hominy, not pozole. It's not the same as the canned whole nixtamalized maize sold in Mexico. That, like the same thing sold in plastic vacuum packs in the grocery stores, is not nearly so soft. The cans are labelled "maíz cacahuazintle cocido para pozole y menudo descabezado" or cacahuazintle maize cooked for pozole and menudo with the little "head" removed. US canned hominy I love as a side dish heated with cream, salt and lots of black pepper. Great when you want a creamy side dish to go along with something roasted or grilled. Mexican canned and vacuum-packed nixtamalized maize I have not experimented with though all my neighbors say it's much preferable to prepare your own. Is the New Mexican dried hominy descabezado, RG? And how do they dry it? There's a whole lot of water to extract. Rachel

So many interesting things going on. Yes RG, I think I do use slow release. I don't want our tap water coming anywhere near what we eat. And getting enough water from the garafon to cool the pressure cooker is awkward and expensive. Ovens work well in the States. They are really a pain here with no insulation and wildly varying temperatures. So the pressure cooker is better for many reasons if you live at 7000 feet in Mexico. Apicio, like Jaymes I'd love to know about variants on flan leche in the Philippines. Here, for example, people like the caramel a little burnt and bitter because that cuts the sweetness of the flan. They also make it flavored with coffee, pine nuts, almonds (very common), hazelnuts, orange (also very popular), sesame seeds, coconut (another very popular one), pineapple, sweet potato, and who knows what else, Rachel

Goodness Fifty Dollars, I'm no expert on pressure cookers. If it's a really old one, I think the crucial question is whether the rubber sealing ring is in good condition. But I do have the impression the modern ones are much safer because they have interlocking metal flanges. Is it worth $50 bucks to make pressure cooker flan? I' m not sure. Here they have so many other uses. But look at the wonderful comments on the other flan thread (help, site managers, any way to combine these?). Best, Rachel

Welcome to egullet Apicio. Your mother's cooking sounds fantastic. I became a big fan of Filipino cooking when I was in Hawaii. Do they do flan there too? Yes, Rancho Gordo those are very aristocratic looking hens that I'm sure have fine eggs. What breed are they? We had bantams and game hens when I was growing up and they had wonderful eggs as they should have done since as pets they had the run the vegetable gardens. The flan napolitano sounds delicious Esperanza. I wonder why napolitano? It sent me off to my cookbook collection and there in Luisa de Calderon's Técnicas de la Alta Cocina (another of these aristocratic productions but later published in 1979) is a recipe for flan de queso. This is pretty much the same, one can condensed milk, one of natural or evaporated milk, 5 eggs, 250 grams cream cheese. What do you think about the cream cheese? Was this before the wholescale invasion of Queso Feeeladelfia into the Mexican food scene? Or part of that? And rambling on in a free associating kind of way, this reminded me that one of my neighbors makes a great savory flan de queso that she serves with a salsa. I must ask her for the recipe again. Rachel

Whoops, Chocartist, somehow your reply seems to have been wiped out! Rachel

Heaven help us. If you dive into the world of Mexican egg sweets you will never emerge! At least not in your right mind. On flan, I am really the last person to be talking. I'm not one for sweets in general and I'm definitely not one for flan in particular. But my husband gobbles up what I make and it's really quick and easy. But I think it's probably best to think of the Mexican flan magico as a different species from European flan. Same genus perhaps but definitely different species. And it's such an undemanding dish that I'm not sure it matters whether you allow it to reduce pressure slowly or under the faucet. I have to admit I can't even remember what I do, Rachel

Yup the bayos look like those around here. I've never run across bayo blanco. Could it be the regular alubia around here? Your photo of alubias looks as if it could be alubia chica though it's hard to judge the scale. I'll referee your application to the egullet society--for a kickback of course! I get to come along, Rachel

Thanks Jaymes. Yes you'd be hard put to find a flan made with milk in Mexico. The condensed milk-pressure cooker method is pretty much universal (though I see Patricia Quintana has one with milk, beaten egg whites and chestnut puree in The Taste of Mexico). But in general Mexicans don't see this as a second class substitute but as superior. It has less bubbles than flan cooked in a water bath. It is denser which they like because they can add all kinds of flavorings. And it's quick and reliable and doesn't require turning on the oven (if you have an oven). I now use half the amount of sugar that I gave in the original recipe. A full cup of sugar just means that most of the caramel sticks to the mold. And Rancho Gordo, I use one of those cheap and nifty molds that you talk about with the clamp to keep the top on. Cheers, Rachel

Chocartist, is this another case where there are regional differences? In Central Mexico tomillo is thyme (Thymus vulgaris) not sweet marjoram (Origanum sp.) Rachel

Just as confusing. And interestingly neither Mexican cookbooks nor those published in the US describing Mexican cooking do anything to sort out beans. Here's your chance, Rancho Gordo, Rachel

I just love all these recommendations. As Esperanza said, there's no decent guide to restaurants in Mexico City. Perhaps it's worth pointing out for followers of this thread that don't know Mexico City that there are several distinct restaurant areas in Mexico City. Maybe we could gradually fill them in because the city's so huge and the traffic so terrible especially with construction on the Periferico that you really have to pick an area. Plus, as a resident, I'm always on the look out for any good restaurant be it Mexican or not. Apart from a few old standbys Mexican restaurants are a pretty new phenomenon in Mexico. It always used to be a terrible problem for Mexicans to find Mexican restaurants to take visitors to. Center/Zona Rosa which are the areas visitors typically get to (as well as a lot of locals). this is the area with lots of monuments. The center which was horribly scruffy is finally and slowly getting tidied up years after the earthquake and the decline associated with most centers got under way. The Zona Rosa is going in the reverse direction. Chapultepec/Polanco area. This is the well-to do area closest to the center. It's bursting with chic and often very good restaurants though I don't know it well. It's not surprising that many of the new Mexican restaurants, including Izote, are strung out north of Reforma between this area and the Center. I was once taken to Charlotte's bistro and thoroughly enjoyed it. Open only for lunch and at least then a tiny place with four or five tables it offers French/Mediterranean by an English woman who does a lot of high end catering in the city. The West and the North (Satellite). There have to be good restaurants in these wealthy areas but who knows what or where they are. Colonia Roma/Condessa. Hip, coming up in the world again to the glory that they had in the late nineteenth century. Shelora mentioned Casa Lamm. Nickarte could probably add lots more if he's still checking from time to time. The South (San Angel/Coyoacán). Well worth visiting, just look in any guide book. Whoops, I've got to log offf unexpectedly. More on the south in a while Rachel

Just to keep things tidy, I'm replying to your Yucatan bean comments here Rancho Gordo. So American bayo beans are different from Mexican bayo beans! Nice to hae confirmation. And I've been surveying the line up of beans that are commonly available around here in the supermarkets. Nothing rarefied, just what's widely available. The flor de mayo family (for want of a better word), including junio y rosa de castilla The bayo or amarillo family including peruano and garbancillo The alubia or blanco family (alubia grande, chica and sometimes carita) The pinto family (though they're nothing like as commonly used as in Texas) The negro family And closely related, habas, garbanzos, and lentils (lentejas) cheers, Rachel

Found some notes I scribbled. It was one of a small chain, started I think in Querétaro. It was quite an ambitious undertaking. It offered a series of dishes in a large palapa-type setting with a huge grill at one end and one of those overhead menus. It also had a laminated menu in color that apart from the dishes described the mission, vision and values of the operation. You could choose all kinds of tacos, chuletas, costillas, bisteck with the sauce of your choice: pasillo, guacamole, chipotle mayonesa, limon, verde, rojo. Also cafes, raspados, aguas frescas and I think beers. apart from corn tortillas there were tortillas arabe (pan arabe aka pita bread). The "cheese tacos" were described as chicharron de queso. I remember asking the waiter where they were from and if I remember right he said either Belgium or Switzerland. They imported the cheese and he couldn't name it except it came in big blocks. (Sorry Theabroma and Esperanza! though i'm going to try your sandwiches). I had visions of some well-to-do young man who had been sent by his family to business school in Europe and come back with this bright idea for extending the Mexican menu. As Querétaro and León are two of the fastest-growing towns in Mexico and only about 100 miles apart, they tend to get a lot of these experiments (see fast food thread). I'll drop back next time I am in León. The last time I was fretting about the workshop down the street that was supposed to be replacing my dead battery so I wasn't at my culinary investigator best. Rachel

Shelora, Thanks for the information on the organic market in Oaxaca. Sounds as if it wonderful stuff. If any of the followers of this list have run across similar markets, it would be great to hear about them. What is clear is that the big growers have decided that the value-added margin for organic fruits and vegetables for the US is worth it. They are moving heavily into organic for export. Around here (Guanajuato in central Mexico) I don't have the sense that people are willing to pay the extra. But small local companies producing local procesed but non-organic foods are just booming, Rachel

Yimay, that's an interesting question. I recently ran across a place in Leon in central Mexico that offered cheese tacos. They consisted of a thin layer of grated cheese toasted on the comal and then rolled into a crisp cylinder. Delicious but incredibly rich. You could order them filled with meat or beans. I couldn't even contemplate those. Anyone else have any information about these? Rachel

Sounds wonderful! And we waiting for the reports on the next legs of your trip! Rachel

Oh dear, Esperanza. It sounds horrid, Rachel

My goodness, Esperanza, how can they get away with it? What impresses me with most restaurants catering to the upper middle class in Mexico is that they are thoroughly pleasant even when they don't rise to star status. Often the surroundings are lovely and almost always spacious, the waiters are attentive, the food is cooked on the premises etc. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come! Rachel

No those don't look a bit like the bayos around here. But I'm not sure real or not real is the right word to use. Ah we wheat eaters are so deprived, Esperanaza. No new wheat products. But I think of the enthusiasm in other parts of the world for new rice, new yams, all the fall maize dishes in Mexico. So cheer on the frijoles nuevos. Have a great time in the Yucatan, Rancho Gordo. Never been there so I have no ideas to offer. But when you get back I want to pursue the question of the black eyed pea in Mexico,, Cheers, Rachel

Well, to continue our on-again off-again bean conversation, I don't think the beans called bayo in this part of the world are cranberry beans. Whether loose or in bags or canned, they always seem to be a pale yellow bean. No red markings like a cranberry bean. That is unless there are cranberry beans without any cranberry marks. And if the Diccionario is right that in some parts of Mexico they are a synomyn for flor de mayo, that's certainly not true in this part of Mexico. Here they are always clearly distinguished. Just for what it's worth, best, Rachel

I agree, Sun-Ki, these meals do seem to be multi-cultural rather than inter-cultural. But the power of the turkey is impressive. When in Hawaii, I had a student who had arrived from mainland China in August. By November she was determined to cook a turkey for Thanksgiving. New to turkeys, new to ovens. Everyone in the department office chipped in with advice. She reported the following Monday that it was a wonderful success. I've always wondered just what that meal looked like, Rachel

Plate lunches places in universities may be promising. some of you probably know more about this than I do, but when I visited Oregon State University a few years ago there was a flourishing plate lunch place in the union. It may have had something to do with how many people from Hawaii go there, Rachel