theabroma

Well, anybody familiar with the Liberty Bar on Josephine St. in San Antonio? Though not exactly north end Mexican, they do have a wunnerful plate of quail in mole verde. Theabroma

Yes you do. And naaaah ... you need to go to La Tupinamba on the north side of the zocalo in Reynosa for cabrito - been there for 1,000 years. Big azulejo tiled fire pit in the window loaded w/strung up goat carcasses. Couple of ladies inside making corn tortillas a mano. Oh, man that place was good. Then its a catty corner march across the zoc to the Mission Bar for a shoe shine and a few tequilas. Ah, the Border. Nothing quite like it ... right down to that screaming raspberry pink toilet paper!!! Theabroma

I may do this yet, Brooks. Meantime, I will have to buy a new keyboard now, thanks to your article ... slobbered like an old hound dog all over mine. Yeccccch! 'Bout how far from NO does one have to go to get a room for JazzFest ... (I can hear you laughing). Among other groups, I am a big fan of Johnny Clegg who is all too rarely in my neighborhood. And I am an utter fool for the Nevilles ... in any other their manifestations. If I make it, I'll holler. If not, have a grand time. Look forward to further posts. And am very intrigued by the crayfish sack. Theabroma

Caroline, can you cut down the 1 cup of sugar, or dispense with it all together? I'm sure there will be some change in consistency - but I am trying to figure out how to curtail the amount of sugar. I love this stuff ... have never made it in a pressure cooker, though I have been looking at several models recently with and eye towards getting one. Theabroma

I agree with you on Nuevo Leon. I haven't been back in awhile - Greenville location got real crazy and I keep forgetting about the one on Oak Lawn. Hands down they still hold the crown for the niftiest presentation of the best Sopa de Tortilla I've had in a restaurant in Dallas. It in a large, wide-shouldered flattish soup dish, the thin, corkscrewed tortilla strips were stacked in a square in the center like so much edible firewood. Toasted strips of chipotle, finely shredded chicken breast, slivers of red onion, fans of avocado slices garnished the plate. The scalding broth was served separately, in a small pitcher. It was a rich double broth. Then they crumbled queso into it. Really inventive, really simple and elegant, and very, very good. What are your favorites there? Theabroma

Aha! What did you say that minimum size requirement was? Put me down on the list of people to go. We could maybe hit a taqueria or two or Hot Damn, Tamales! Backpack the Pepto. My schedule is flexible for the next couple of weeks. I will volunteer the 3 available seats in my car for the trek. Anyone else?? Theabroma

Hey, Nick! You come on in! You have hit one dilemma square on the head: the Mexico forum is ill- and oddly-attended, I'm here in Texas, you're there in Oregon, and we eat wherever we are. So, go for it. What passes for logic would seem to demand that most of the high-end Mx restaurants would be somewhere in the southwest, la or nyc - or chicago. But I say let's talk about the ones we know of, and hope that others will come and talk about those in their back yards. I have never eaten (I'm having a shame attack writing this) in either Topolobampo or Frontera Grill. Does Bayless have other, newer venues? I always look for places in San Antonio. La Fogata is very pretty but the food is competent, and that;s it. I loved Cascabel's when Jay McCarthy was there. I know of nothing in El Paso, either. And Javier's? What did you think? Ciudad? I often wonder what's up with these places. I would think that, especially after the roaring success Bayless has had, that there would be more places like that, especially here in Texas. Doesn't seem so at this point, and I wonder why? People aren't ready/willing to pay white tablecloth prices for 'enchiladas'? Especially this close to the border? I want to hear your thoughts. I want to hear thoughts from the Texas gang too. Theabroma

Does Sally's still have the photo triptych on the wall? JFK to the left, RFK & Pope John XXIII sowing the seeds of peace to the right, and Frank Sinatra in the middle? You know the pizza's good when it can overcome a display of that magnitude of distraction. Theabroma

Red Queen, are there plans to organize a group event around the festival? Would you let us know? I may have to buy stock in the company that mfgs AlkaSeltzer! Theabroma

About 2 weeks ago I got to join fifi some of the Houston people for a lecture on chocolate and a late dinner and cuppa chocolate at Hugo's in Houston on Westheimer. Now a Pueblan friend tells me that she may be going to work there. I was really delighted with my dinner - a green mole and with what I managed to cadge from my dining companions when they were not looking. I'd like to hear more about Hugo's and any other such venues anywhere in the state. Here in Dallas we have basically 2: Javier's which bills itself as Mexico City style, really seems more like the Frontera Ranchera cuisine with lots of grilled meats, and then there is Ciudad, which uses traditonal ingredients in sort of a nueva cocina azteca sort of way. I know that in Austin, the queen of these restaurants is Fonda San Miguel. What else is out there? I'd love to hear more opinions about the old guard and mention of any new places that have opened up. Theabroma

There are, of course, festivals for the Cinco de Mayo (coming up here in just a bit), and for the Dieciseis de Septiembre. These are celebrated in most of the major cities of Texas, and as you get down towards the border, many of the little towns have celebrations as well. Papers like the Observer and Chronicle are good about listing these events. I'll see what I can dig up on the Cinco de Mayo and post it as I find (or don't find, as the case may be) it. Also, the Spring, Fall, and Winter Festivals in Round Top, near Bryan and just north of Houston have traditionally been celebrations of the lives of the early German settlers in the area ... including a working smokehouse. Czech Festival in West, Texas over Labor Day weekend includes traditional music, dance, and food. Unfortunately, the beer is commercial ... nobody seems to do the homebrew anymore! Great sausages from Nemecek's in West. Theabroma

A while ago there was some discussion about the population of Middle Eastern restaurants in Austin ... and I think that it got mixed up with another Austin food thread. When I was there 2 weeks ago I just missed getting to go to Alborz. Have any of you intrepid eater/researcher types been? And what's the verdict? Good? Indifferent? Expensive? And where else do you like to go?? Theabroma

Chef Heredia at Hacienda Los Morales in Mexico City is known for a nueva cocina dish of tournedos of beef, stuffed with huitalacoche, and doused with a beurre rouge made with jamaica flowers. The garnish is the dried flowers flash fried until crisp and tart; they are strewn around the plate. As odd as it sounds, it is a lovely dish - the pleasing tartness and crunch of the jamaica flowers balances the suave meat and the buttery sauce and huitlacoche stuffing. Theabroma

Check out Whole Foods Market. They cut up the big slabs of Callebaut and Valrhona and sell them (at a pricey price) by the pound. They also have Scharffen-Bergerm and occasionally, El Rey. Check El Rey's web site - they're located in Fredricksberg, Tx, and I think you can order from the web site. I'll talk to one of my purveyors here in Dallas ... their hq's are in Houston. You may, subject to their minimum quantities (6-11 lbs), be able to drive over to their offices and buy them. Also, try Maid of Scandinavia, Bridge Kitchenware, Albert Uster, and Swiss Chalet. Check their websites. Some are professional suppliers, but you may be able to buy from them. The trade off is that you can get a much better price per pound from the wholesalers, but the quantities are large. Not that this is a particular problem with chocolate... Theabroma

I am as excited by your class on pasta as I am about how this is also a class on 'how to present a class.' You've convinced me to let go and fiddle around with the egg/flour proportions, and even to get some pasta making friends together to try different doughs and compare them. Is pasta ever traditionally made with just egg white? And if so, is oil mandatory in that mix? I would think it might wind up a less pliable dough. Thanks for the class ... I am really looking forward to Part 2. Theabroma

ExtraMSG just made me think of another form of enchilada - corn tortillas dipped in the sauce and folded in quarters, shingled down the plate, with more sauce and queso fresco or cotija crumbled on top. This is typical for Entomatadas (tomato sauce) or Enfrijoladas (a cream-soup consistency bean puree). Market ladies serve them plain, but 'fancier' places will serve them with shredded chicken or pork on top. Then the salad topping! The little place near the Punta de Mita in Vallarta, across the road from the beach served green possum enchiladas this way. Theabroma

Let's not forget Enchiladas Potosinas - where the fresh corn tortillas are filled with cheese and sometimes chiles, then folded, sealed, and fried. They really are quesadillas or empanadas, served sauced and buried under a filamentous avalanche of shredded cabbage and chopped radish. Theabroma

Richard, was it Jaime's on Red River? That's what came to my mind. I do remember the 1/2 and 1/2 tortilla basket being the norm there and in a few other places around town. Cisco's over on East 6th (Austin) always had both, and typically the waitress or waiter would ask your preference. At Mi Tierra in the mercado in San Antonio, they would ask which variety you wanted. I also just ran across a reference in Jim Douglas' little book from the '70's on New Mexican food to burritos which he describes as being enchiladas made from flour tortillas. Speaking of which, I think the baking of enchiladas is a US thing - homes in the little towns scattered across Northern Mexico did not tend to have ovens. I've seen some gone-to-the-dogs hybrids of Mexican food before, but have never commonly seen flour tortillas dipped into a sauce and rolled for enchiladas. I have no doubt, however, that in the regions where wheat flour tortillas are king, that there are homes that dispose of flour tortillas in some sort of enchilada/casserole fashion. But as corn tortillas end their life as tostadas, or in migas or chilaquiles, the most typical end for flour ones, at least along the Fronteras seems to be either bunuelos or quesadillas. Theabroma

Pasillas negras must be her way of distinguishing the dried chile pasilla from the fresh one - which is called chile chilaca, anyway. Cebolla de rabo is, basically, white bulb onion with the tops still on it. Green onions are known as cebollitas or cebollas de Cambray. Medelo beer is Negra Modelo Woof! and pulque - Sometimes you can find pulques curados, or 'cured' - i.e.: flavored pulques, but not the real Mexican, down and dirty stuff. It has the viscosity of water in which okra has been overcooked, the pearly, translucent greenish white color of half watered, home-brewed Arrak or Ouzo, and a sourish twang (like not having brushed you teeth in a while sourish) and a fermenty aroma. It is an acquired taste, and it will either slide right on down or book a quick return trip. The dregs of the pulque pot are used as leavening for bread, and all sorts of mystical and magick cures are attributed to it. I would say a shpritz of Pernod, Ouzo, or Arrak, but pulque is not liquorice/anis flavored. If you happen to have a couple of agaves out in your back yard, I can tell you how to harvest aguamiel and make your own .... No, I didn't think so. Theabroma

You are making me crave the border like I haven't in so long a time. The cities like Reynosa, Brownsville, etc. are crazy. Juarez is so huge, and so sad a place now, a graveyard for young women. Ah, but the little towns and pueblos just on the other side are heaven! The best bolillos, no the best pan frances I have ever eaten in my life came from the wood fired ovens of a tiny bakery, La Francesa, in Ojinaga. So I can only imagine what you encountered in Arizona. I have to stop myself from regretting how little my head knew about those foods, or about regional variation and diversity when I worked and lived in South Texas. I was too happy just encountering all this fabulous food and chunky liquid napalm you poured on it, to really stop and wonder about what part of the Republic it came from. But dollars to donas, the Cuevas people came from Sonora. Is anyone out there familiar with the work of Les Blank (Flower Films) and Chris Strachwitz (Arhoolie Records)?. They did a documentary about '76 or '77 called "Chulas Fronteras." It is about the music culture along the Texas Mexico border in the part of the Valley where I lived. Find a great video store and get it. I lost it with the opening song, Cancion Mixteca ("Que lejos estoy del suelo donde nacido!"), got it together again just in time to see the spontaneous tardeada and barbeque going on in someone's yard with fajitas, and a musical trio singing rancheras, and the kids and dogs running around, and all the cold beer. But when the grill guy pulled the roasted chiles and tomatoes off the grill, tossed them into a 2 kilo empty plastic Hormel lard bucket for an impromptu molcajete, and then missing a tejolote, or mano, to grind the salsa with he grabbed his beer bottle and began to work the salsa, I lost it for the rest of the movie. The tacos they are eating at this little gathering look divine. This was what went on on Saturdays, and many Sundays the entire time I lived in the Valley. And yes, the beer bottle 'mano' happens rather more often than I would like to think. It was here that I first learned what 'real' Mexican food could be, and these were the people who were my first hands-on teachers. Theabroma

In the mid to late '70's I lived outside of San Juan, Texas, close to McAllen and Edinburg, and about 15 miles from the Hidalgo/Reynosa international bridge. Corn tortillas, even along the Frontera were still the thing - but at home on the Texas side, most of the ladies made flour tortillas. The style was about an 8-9 inch round, rolled out pretty thin, using a sawed off broom handle for a rolling pin (they are the bomb). If you went to someone's house to eat, there would be - depending on what was being served - both flour and corn tortillas. However, everyone used to go 'to the other side' to buy the corn tortillas from the tortillerias. I don't know what it is about US tortillerias, but they just don't have the same texture, aroma, or taste. Anyway. The same was true of restaurants - you would get both flour and corn in the little basket when it came to the table. Enchiladas, migas, chilaquiles, gorditas, etc were ALWAYS made from corn masa. The same is true for tacos - unless, of course, you asked for 'soft tacos,' which used flour tortillas. There were two restaurants there that I especially liked - one called Patos, which was a taqueria specializing in the standard array of taco fillings, but using 4" flour tortillas as wraps. The other place, Cuevas, was famous for its burritos. They were the size of one's forearm. The basic filling was refried beans and queso fresco or queso quesilla (like mozzarella), and chiles, but you could get fancy with carne guisada or shredded fajita, etc. The kicker was the tortillas: flour, and tissue thin, and 18 to 20 something inches across. Although I did not have the point of reference at the time, they are very like the enormous, thin corn tortillas, clayudas or tlayudas, for which Oaxaca is famous. These come from Sonora-Durango, and they are actually rolled out as thinly as possible, then stretched either much like strudel dough is stretched (over the backs of the hands) or rolled and slapped and stretched as traditionally pasta dough is rolled out. Everyone I worked with brown-bagged it every day: flour tortilla tacos filled with potato & egg, chorizo & egg, refried beans & cheese, etc. Since these people were largely earning their living picking crops along the migrant stream, this food was easy to take along, and there were always beans, potatoes, eggs, etc around. Often the cheese was American slices. The tortillas were always freshly made, and many carried 'Bama jelly jars full of chile pequines (the plant grows wild throughout much of Texas), pickled in vinegar. The same for the burritos, especially since they are rolled up rather like a spring roll - closing the ends, thereby stopping leakage. Northern Mexico is where the Spanish planted wheat, and so wheat flour and its products has always figured more heavily in the northern part of the country than elsewhere. It is a very rural area with lots of little ranchitos scattered around. People go out for the day to work the land, and generally don't come home until late afternoon. Turning the staples of corn, flour, beans, chile, etc. into portable food is very desirable. I think as these people crossed the border working the crops or moving into and through Texas to other states, they took this type of quick and easy food with them. I do believe that the elaborated taco and burrito, as we know them here in the Southwest, are largely American constructions. I have seen and eaten tacos in Mexico, and burritos in the northern parts of the country, but I have never seen burritos and tacos like we find up here in places like On the Border or Chipotle, etc. in Mexico. It's just our take on them I think. Theabroma

Uh oh! No, there really isn't any real difference. But I would probably argue for a continuum from raw salsas to cooked ones, eg: more ingredients creep in as you go from fresh to cooked. After all, chuck some toasted pumpkin seeds, radish tops, a poblano, and chard or lettuce leaves into a cooked salsa verde and you have a credible mole or pipian verde. But I agree, there really isn't a fundamental difference. And thanks! Theabroma

Actually, the way adobo is used puts it closer to the recados from the Yucatan - moist, almost halvah-thick pastes of spices and herbs that are rubbed on meats for much the same purposes as adobos, and then the meat is pit cooked, roasted, or braised. Although the recados are not diluted with vinegar, they are often diluted with the juice of sour, or Seville, oranges - which it not as acidic as vinegar, but it is pretty stout stuff. Moles, on the other hand, generally do not contain vinegar or any other souring agent, and are, if anything (and I generalize a bit here) on the sweeter side of the divide. Markets sell mole pastes of all colors, including green (pumpkin seeds), and black (everything is charred). Generally speaking the meat (typically chicken or turkey) is boiled and pieced out or shredded, and the broth is used to dilute the mole paste. The fowl is then put back in the sauce. Obviously, the most famous mole here is mole poblano, famous for containing chocolate. Mole negro oaxaqueno also has chocolate in it. Neither have a lot of chocolate, and what is used is Mexican table chocolate, containing sugar, cinnamon, and almonds. That said, I had two great mole binges on my trip, 5 houses each, after a festival of the Virgin in Acuitlapilco and again in San Francisco Tlacochcalco. All of the ladies referred to their moles as 'mole poblano' all contained anchos and mulatos. Some also had pasillas and some had chipotles - either mecos or regular red chipotles. But no chocolate. And no tomatoes. They were all the same, but remarkably different at the same time. I have only recently retracted my vow never to eat mole again ... I had nightmares that I was drowning in oceans of it. Regards, Theabroma

I'm not sure what you mean by mixed with chocolate? Do you mean something like mole poblano or mole oaxaqueno?

Chipotles I still love them, but I also understand what Foodie52 is saying. I am over their overuse and abuse, but not the chile itself. First, there are several varieties of chipotles. The meco, which is made from a corked (those 'stretch mark' looking things on jalapenos), dried and smoked big jalapeno. They are commonly used for stuffing, and they are wonderful. In Puebla and Tlaxcala, in the rural areas, mecos are also used for moles, giving them a lighter color, and less heat. The ones we can buy easily here in the States, the chipotle, is also good toasted, rehydrated and stuffed, as well as used in salsas. The little ones, called moritas (although in Hidalgo they ripen and smoke dry serranos and call them moritas), make a killer salsa - toasted with a few cloves of garlic in the husk, in a heavy cast iron pan or griddle, then ground with some water and a bit of salt. It'll snap you to attention and give you convent posture right quick. I think that we've all had too much chipotle mayonnaise, and other abominations created by people who had to rush to use the hot, trendy thing and did not want to be bothered by understanding it. Although I will be the first to admit that I love a bit of toasted, ground chipotle in my hot chocolate and sprinkled on jicama, with lime juice and queso cotija. Theabroma