Kakaw, Chocolate, the good stuff.

Tomes have been written on chocolate's history, culinary influence and botanical origins. After years cooking, selling and reading about the stuff, I could do little more than a disservice if I tried to condense even a portion of all there is about chocolate here. But there are a few things worth mentioning, and you'll see how I make my own at home.

Anyone subjected to advertising in the last 20 years will have an inkling that chocolate has some sort of relationship with a civilisation of the Americas, one which certainly boasted some very attractive and athletic physiques, and shared a fondness for consuming chocolate bars wrapped in foil and coloured paper. And though advertising–especially when engaging its anthropological prowess– usually gets everything 100% right, there are a few notions astray here.

Our nameless civilisation suffering portrayal was most likely supposed to be Aztecs, who are too often credited with chocolate's initial usage. Due to the fact that the Aztecs had a formidable nation intact when the Spanish arrived, they authored much of Mesoamerica's pre-colonial history simply by being the ones to tell the story. Thus, they managed to attribute quite a few achievements attained by other cultures to themselves. The Aztecs had in fact left their homeland in the north only 4oo years earlier and had ruled Mexico for less than 100 years, thousands of years after chocolate had migrated from it's home in the Amazon basin.

In fact, the Maya were fundamental in cultivating and exploiting the wonderful properties of this fruit. The Popol Wuj (the Mayan book of creation) contains a number of references to chocolate in the form in which it was used in Mesoamerica at the time, as a sacred drink and as currency. It was in fact the Maya who had first shown the Spaniards the bean they knew as kakaw, the name which is the etymological root for our own word today. Further linguistic studies have shown the word kakaw to be Mixe-Zoquean in origin–a group indigenous to the north of Oaxaca–suggesting that if they donated the word they most likely donated the substance it describes.

And so it comes full circle, since Oaxaca is renowned for the quality of it hot chocolate to this day. The city boasts hundreds of molinos from which you can purchase freshly milled chocolate nibs, or as I do, take your own mix for them to grind. Its quite a fragrant process to say the least, and since I got the scoop on the secret ingredients from my sweet abuelitas in Guatemala, it's very much worth making my own.


Cocoa beans, AKA Theobroma Cacao, feremented, dried and ready for toasting.

I start by buying very good beans. To be honest, I find the best way to choose them by looking at the other products being sold and assuming the quality is consistent (i.e. you can easily tell if a chile ancho is plump and shiny, vanilla pod moist or pecans well formed, whereas cocoa looks fairly similar. Unless of course, it looks shabby). Now I have my chocolate lady, that's it. There will be no other.


My toasted and peeled beans, weighed out with their particulars.

I roast the beans on a comal before shelling them, weighing them and taking them to the molino. My mix gets a kilo and a half of sugar to a kilo of cocoa. This is regarded as bitter-sweet in Mexico as most chocolate runs at a mix of two and a half to one. Add 50g almonds and 20g cinnamon quill and run it through the coarse molino, mix the sugar in and then run it through the second molino on a finer setting, and there you have it. It is hot and runny from the friction of the granite plates, so it's poured into a bag, taken home, mixed with the secret ingredients and pressed out into a tray. Just before setting, I run a paring knife through the mix to portion it and let it cool completely.


Willy Wonka's first job at the molino in Oaxaca. This is the chocolate with nuts and spices added, about to be mixed with sugar.

If you want to try it, please book a class with us. If you want to know more about chocolate, check out The True History of Chocolate by Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe, or wait for our book to come out...


Tempatation.

Los Danzantes

A few shots from a high-end slow food place in Oaxaca. On previous visits mescal and wine from the house label–though we didn't indulge on the day–had proved quite a find, as had the slow braised duck tacos and tlayudas de camarones.

I started with a black bean soup with corn dumplings and aged cheese, Karin with the apple and mustard cress salad. The soup was quick simple yet spectacular, the little floating nuggets of masa quite reminiscent of gnocci. An earthy sour-dough with chunks of mushrooms throughout was set down and soon devoured.

Having full faith in Los Danzantes ability to work wonders with the duck, I had a seared breast on pumpkin-seed pilaf with mole chichilo. Karin had organic local turkey with mole amarillo and neither plate disappointed.

It was the start of a long month in which we visited a mushroom festival, moved house, lost a laptop to a glass of lemonade and had some great friends come and visit. Oh, and we made a fairly outrageous semifreddo with my home-made Oaxacan chocolate. Hence there are a few good posts coming up, to compensate for our absence. See you all soon.

And now, for something completely different...

This is the Mexican black truffle. A fungal spore known here as cuitlacoche, known in the States as corn smut (or ustilago maydis to your agriculturist), known to the Aztecs as "sleeping excrement"*. It's as remarkable in flavour as in appearence, musty and sweet, toothsome, and possesing the singular quality of the umami chain of amino acids. Though it now fetches high prices both here and abroad, featuring seasonally on high-end restaurant menus, it is common to hear stories of times when there was little more to eat and pounds of cuitlacoche would be consumed day after day.

It has long been a major blight upon the corn industry in the States, where decades of work have gone into working towards eradication. During that research, it was discovered that ustilago maydis serves as a model organism for research due to its yeast-like proliferation. In addition, because the cellular structure of fungus shares properties with human cells this research led to a discovery of synthesis-dependant strand annealing. In common English, this is to say that cuitlacoche revealed the process of DNA repair. How bout that?



I use mine for hunger repair. Sauteed with a little butter and shallots, salt and chicken stock for around 10 minutes, stuffed in a tortilla with quesillo and epasote. As my Chef used to say, "get the best ingredients you can, then do as little as you can to them."

Stay tuned for a visit to the mushroom festival in Cuajimaloyas at the end of the month. Happy eating.

* A term reserved for young politicians in Australia.

Cinco de Mayo: Thanks a Maximilian.

Mexico was only 40 odd years free of Spain's colonial claims when in 1861, President Benito Juárez provoked the French by refusing payment of debt interest. The country had had some rough years, from the bloodshed of the 11 year War of Independence, to the Mexican-American War which saw Mexico cede almost half its territory to the United States. (Losing California, Nevada, Utah, parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming, and the disputed Texas, all of which were part of Mexico until 1848.)

Mexico was in a ruinous state economically and its debts to England, Spain and France were too great a burden for the fledgling republic. Juárez, a Zapotec Indian, national hero and liberal reformist, declared a moratorium on debt payment and saw the three debtor nations respond by seizing Customs House in Veracruz. The French Emperor Napoleon III had had designs on empire expansion for a time, and Mexico presented a keen opportunity. When both Britain and Spain receded from the conflict, the French Army marched on to Puebla in 1862, but on the 5th of May they were defeated by a Mexican militia just over half its size. Though the victory is still widely celebrated today by Mexicans in the States and Puebla, the net result was Emperor's decision to fortify the French troops to an un-assailable 30,000, which easily took Mexico city in 1864 and installed Maximilian I on the throne.


Maximilian I, in all his 1860's hip glory.

The occupation only lasted four years, still it continued to fortify a strong French influence on culture and of course, cooking. Reduced stock-based sauces, pastries, baguette style bread, bechamel and veloute all became for a time–at least in wealthy circles–quite common. Techniques were adapted: the Bain Marie became the Baño Maria and puff pastry took on peasant food applications. (I discovered this on a Veracruz beach, when I purchased a crunchy mystery from a man yelling rather excitedly, "bolobanez-bolobanez-bolobanez-bolobanez-bolobaneeeez!". He was in fact advertising ham and cheese stuffed volovanes, a less elegant descendant of the vol-au-vent [those of us who lived through canapes in the 80's will just have to accept that they can be elegant]. The incredible array of Mexican baked goods both sweet and savoury are testament to this legacy, an insertion into a culinary repertoire whose closest cousin to an oven was a pit filled with hot stones.) The country restored to Mexican rule, yet Francophilia continued under dictator Porfirio Diaz, who's programs and influence emulated the architecture, fashion and cuisine of the French.

Samuel Ramos wrote extensively on the influence of French culture on the Mexican psyche, arguing that the tendency to rebel and a working towards democracy from oppression offered lateral similarities in culture. To the point of the culture of individuals, Ramos states that both Mexican and French ideals consider "culture" to be the domain of every man, accessible by all. The abstractions of many other nations cultures were not shared in the Mexican or French self-image, who preferred pragmatic and useful philosophy, concerned with practical applications.

Some of these aspects have drawn me to Mexico. And more of them than I had imagined have kept me here. So this 5 de Mayo, I'll give small but real thanks to Maxi and the French connection for the ill-conceived plan. Not for the baked goods, but for the Paseo de la Reforma, the embrace of the moment and, well, the baked goods.

Super Seed

This week, since I was thinking about pumpkin flowers, seeds and all things squashy, I had a play around and came up with this. It's a snack, if somewhat elaborate, and it was quite good. Crisp squash blossoms stuffed with braised pork, on whipped crème fraîche with pumpkin seed sauce.

The pork shoulder was marinated mainly in thyme, garlic and orange juice for 24 hours, slow-cooked for five, pulled apart then cooked down in its juices with confit onion, tomato, raisins and a little olive oil. Stuffed in to the flowers, battered and fried then served with the crème fraîche and the pepian sauce: an emulsion of toasted pumpkin seeds, olive oil and herbs and a few other things.

This lovely nutty, smooth and bright sauce has a balance of the sweet roasted garlic, slight piney notes from the pumpkin seeds and a clean lingering finish from the crème fraîche and olive oil. I would think it a most appropriate accompaniment to simple grilled chicken or even fish such as John Dory or Blue Marlin. The simple recipe is as follows.



Pumpkin Seed Sauce | Makes 300ml

1/2 cup hulled pumpkin seeds
1 clove of garlic, coarsely chopped
1 teaspoon oregano
3 black peppercorns
150ml chicken stock
1/3 cup chopped flat-leaf parsley
100ml crème fraîche (or light sour cream)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 teaspoon of salt

1. Dry roast the pumpkin seeds and garlic in a pan on a medium heat, stirring or tossing until the seeds are puffed up and lightly golden. Add the peppercorns and oregano and toast lightly for a minute until fragrant.
2. Add the chicken stock and parsley and bring to the boil, making sure the parsley is well softened. Quickly move the pan's contents to a blender and puree for a few minutes until very fine. Pass through a fine sieve to remove any graininess (if your blender doesn't get it fine enough to pass through the mesh, you can add a little of the crème fraîche to loosen it up, then re-blend and try again).
3. Place the mix into a large bowl, season, then whisk in the crème fraîche then the olive oil. Leave at room temperature to serve.

So, let's talk a little history of the little seed and it's fruit. Pumpkin, winter squash, or calabaza is one of the more under-sung ingredients native to Mexico. I guess it's not as glamorous as vanilla, as exciting as chili, as addictive as chocolate, or as employable as tomato. Yet this flowering gourd is one of the largest crops in the US (production in 2008 in the major pumpkin growing states was over 1.1 billion pounds–half a billion kilograms), and it has become a staple in the diets of cultures worldwide. Middle eastern, Indian, Italian and Thai culinary idioms all now boast traditional preparations of pumpkin, in fact, it's even big in Japan, as Tom Waits might say.

The genus Cucurbita covers a family which includes pumpkin, zucchini, cucumber, melons and inedible gourds which have historically been dried and used as storage receptacles (or musical instruments). In pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, even the edible pumpkin were used for their fibrous flesh, thin long strips were sun-dried and woven into mats. Centuries later, American colonists in the north scooped the seeds from large pumpkins, filled them with milk, spices and honey before roasting them on open coals. This bit of guerrilla cookery would eventually evolve, and become one of the–nowadays fairly established–colony's most loved and traditional desserts: the humble pumpkin pie.

The discarded seeds from the first pumpkin pie might well have been put to good use. One can only imagine that a fledgling colony would value highly this rich source of protein, manganese and magnesium. Pepitas are often regarded as one of the world's healthiest foods, a category which rarely crosses over into the world's tastiest, but here we have a clear exception. The nutty, clean and sweet notes of the seed are so versatile, working as either a leading flavour or as a base for brighter or more pungent ones.

My introduction to Pepita's variety of applications came whilst living in Guatemala in the form of Salsa Pepian, one of Karin's favourite recipes and one we will cover a little later in the blog. Another Mayan preparation of the seed constitutes Xikil Pak, a dip made from the paste of toasted pumpkin seeds, tomato, lime and habanero chili. It's pretty amazing. For the moment, try the above sauce, as prescribed. It sings of both Spring and Autumn so it's perfect for this time of year regardless your hemisphere.

This is the first of my own recipes that I've posted here at the blog, and it should be noted that this is not a traditional Mexican dish. It is submitted as an entry to Weekend Herb Blogging, an event that focuses weekly on a different herb, fruit, vegetable, grain, nut, seed, spice, flower or plant. Hosting this week is Prof. Kitty, who is cooking and playing tunes from her Cabinet. Sounds cool? It is. Click here to find out more.


If you'd like the recipe for the braised pork filling for the flowers, drop me a line at
travis AT delatierra DOT com DOT au

Vota Asi! (vote this way!)

Image care of www.foodincmovie.com

We got stuck in Puerto Escondido on Monday: 20 minutes after sitting down in the bus station we were told the bus simply wasn't going, as there was a road-block somewhere between where we were and needed to be. This July will see the state elections held in Oaxaca, and true to the political process of Mexico, rallies and disturbances occur to draw attention to community needs at one of the few times Mexican politicians really require the publics approval. While I'm certainly not enchanted with the choices in the Australian political system, there is little in it that would provoke me to a similar course of action.

Shortly after arriving back, we had a restful evening watching a documentary of which I'd previously been unaware, Food Inc. The film looks at the pressure placed on farmers by multinationals to produce low quality yet high quantity produce, talks about E.coli outbreaks due to bad practices, and many other things I could shout about from a soapbox. But rather than me ascending the little podium, have a look yourself.

This is a very important film, a good introduction to Michael Pollan or Eric Schlosser, and a sound reminder that while others may need to stop my bus home to improve their world, we can improve our own and others every time we plan a meal. So, that's the long bow that I'm drawing with my seemingly garrulous post, that as consumers we can vote with dollars and habits, and shouldn't feel helpless about a horrific food system that affects our health, environment, independence and culture. Have hope.

All the best,

De La Tierra

The Real Angel Food

Isabel and Mike at Queseria Angelita.

San Felipe del Agua is our neck of the woods in Oaxaca, and there's no denying that it's the ritzy end of town. We'd had visions of living in a very simple neighbourhood, possibly tending corn in our own milpa, milking "Daisita" every morning or even more rustic Mexican tasks, but it was simply not to be. We really had to look for a furnished place, since living in a house without furniture is called squatting, and writing a Mexican Food blog without the internet is just called hopeful.

So we ended up here in quaint San Felipe, half an hour from town but only two flights of stairs from the best little tienda in, well, maybe the world. I've never been fortunate enough to live too near a corner store before, at least not one that sold anything more than phone credit and cigarettes. As if to make up for all these years of misfortune I've now got Queseria Angelita, a dangerous place that has the best cheese, coffee, chorizo and pastries in town. And thankfully (I think) we have an account that only needs settling once a week, so until each Saturday comes the only thing I have to worry about, is how long it'll be until I move up a pant size.

Queseria Angelita's San Felipe store is owned by Isabel Victoria and Mike Vasquez. The couple moved to Mexico from San Diego about a year ago. Isabel had left her native Oaxaca nine years previous to live in San Diego, so when the US economy gave them a gentle nudge southward in 2008, it made sense to sell it all and follow the dream of a simple life back home, selling cheese, working hard, but working for themselves. They used Isabel's family contacts to get set up in the cheese business, and were lucky in that the contact was with one of the regions finest quesillo makers, Etla's original Queseria Angelita.

Half an hour north of Oaxaca, Etla is a small town whose seven-and-a-half thousand inhabitants are all about milk, and Angelita's leche is about as good as it gets. The bulk of that milk is used to produce Mexico's finest quesillo, a mozzarella style cheese made by souring, fermenting, curdling then streching the curd. The cheese is then wound into balls, later to be shredded by hand and added to any number of dishes. The current cheese heiress, Mago Arango Hernández, told me her grandfather started making Angelita's quesillo in Etla 60 years ago, and as his reputation for quality grew he found it impossible to meet demand. He returned to Etla, and offered his neighbours an opportunity to either produce milk or manufacture cheese, whilst learning the cheesemaster's production techniques. As a result, 17 families now put food on their table by helping produce the half a tonne of quesillo that Angelita turns out each day.


Mago Arango Hernández with a quesillo and queso fresco backdrop at the Mercado IV Centenario in central Oaxaca.

And what a cheese. For a time I worked as a fromager in Australia, and I would be remiss not to throw my professional hat in the ring and declare quesillo to be one of the finest young cheeses in the world. Lactose-sweet from high quality milk, tangy, salty and with 40-50% milk fat, it is simply luxurious. It has a wonderful melting texture like a tightly curded Fior di Latte, and a clean finish rarely found in such high-fat products.


Oaxacan treats: tiny balls of quesillo, wound up and ready for kids (and Australians, it would seem) to snack on.

The thing is, quesillo is just one draw card at Queseria Angelita. I mentioned the coffee: a deep fragrant blend, organically grown and roasted in Oaxaca by communities with the support of Sustainable Harvest. The Sustainable Harvest group work to connect small organic growers with buyers and roasters, keep the product local and maximising profit for small communities of indigenous people. It is a for-profit social enterprise that directs that profit into the hands of the people who work for it, rather than multinationals and industry bigwigs who recline in a world of tax-breaks and bailouts, leaving actual producers in poverty.

Mike and Isabel keep a small but exceptional range of meats too. Chorizo, tasajo, carne enchilado and more, all from the same Oaxacan butchery that has been in business for over 50 years. Besides the recipes for the marinated and treated products being so tasty, the meat remarkably deep in flavour, tender and fresh. The reason why would make even Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall proud.

Natural and humane practices in meat production are neither routine, nor remarkable in Mexico. Though cows are not read bedtime stories or knitted scarves, a considerable amount of them are reared out of the misery of feedlots, and consequently don't require heavy doses of antibiotics to stay alive till slaughter. (Of course there are exceptions. Walmart and similar enterprises are booming in Mexico, and much of their meat is sourced from the US then processed here by companies such as Granjas RYC in Puebla. Cheap meat from the North is pretty bad stuff: over 70% of all antibiotics produced in the US make their way into the cattle's diet.) Still, the quality of varies quite a bit and the products that Isabel and Mike offer are quite exceptional. Their supplier takes time between phases of production, allowing the animals to stay relaxed and healthy to experience a naturally paced cycle of existence, resulting in a high quality of meat.

This was meant to be just a few words about a little shop owned by the nicest people we know, but in thinking about what Mike and Isabel are doing, I realised something else. The products they have chosen–and the people they support by proxy–are so remarkable because they have been chosen sincerely, not to the ends of higher profit-margins or following trends.


Ojaldras, which Mike describes as "Oaxacan donuts". Only a select few stores have traditionally made ojaldras, low in sugar and baked daily in a woodfired oven. Of course, Angelita is one of the few.

In a cynical age (and I'm a cynical guy), food trends so often represent a lack of sincerity, like how organic has flailed in the face of local ("darling, you know organic is simply dead! I only eat bio-symmetrical liver-cleansing alfalfa grown within a hummingbirds flight! Still love my KFC though darling, well Oprah eats it!"), or how butchery courses and pig killing have become a weekend pastime for New York lawyers and execs. All of these issues are worth thinking about, and I'm not trying to be dismissive or judgemental. After all, I only have to walk downstairs to partake in ethical trading and it's much harder for most. But Isabel and Mike have chosen quality over all else, which is a very Mexican attitude towards food. And through this they support local communities and provide our community with clean, healthy food and so much more. While Walmarts and purely profit-driven monsters continue to pop up around the globe, it's nice to be able to celebrate the smaller guys who have a bigger heart. Did I mention how nice they are?

New World Ingredients: Part I

The first in a series of articles on ingredients native to Mexico.

Standing on the lush rolling hills of Gutierrez Zamora, Mexico, I was given cause to consider when I had first become acquainted with vanilla. Profoundly, I realised that I could draw direct line from it’s saintly aroma, to the life that I lead today. You see, my invitation to start cooking didn’t appear in a newspaper, as an ad in a window or from a well-meaning friend. Like many of us, it came from my mother many years before and if it had a perfume, it was certainly vanilla. The scent of cakes, custards and ice-cream that she sent through the house excited me so that I would lose my thoughts for anything else. As the convection oven hummed it’s promises and I licked spoons and bowls clean, my friendship with the little black pod was forged forever.

Vanilla is surely the most romantic and seductive of the spices. With an incredible flavour profile that’s deep, mellow, woody, spicy and smooth, it’s like the Isaac Hayes of flavour. Yet these are only the basic flavour notes, different varieties and points of origin grant yet more subtleties, rendering vanilla an endlessly busy collaborator. Though it’s classic role is in desserts, it also adds complexity and surprise to savoury dishes, beverages and perfumes.

The vanilla vine was first cultivated in the Veracruz region of Mexico by the Tontonaca people in around 1000 CE. The Tontonacan mythology that remains embedded in vanilla’s biography tells of the first plant rising from the blood spilled of forbidden love. The story goes that the Princess Tzacopanziza had angered her father by falling in love with the mortal Xzakanoxga, making off into the forest with him. When caught by the King’s priests, the couple found out the hard way that immortality had been revoked when they were beheaded. A vine (the Princess) grew from their final resting place, which cloaked itself around the trunk of a host tree (her lover).

That vine, is in fact a vanilla orchid, and the only orchid which produces anything of agricultural interest. As noted, the vine requires a host to raise itself off the ground and can grow up to 20m high in the wild if left unmolested. The orchid’s pale green flower produces a 5-10” fruit – a pod– that looks somewhat like a large, perfectly formed green bean, which explains the misnomer. This unassuming little miracle is the source of all the wonder, but only after a long process which brings it to life.



When green, the pod has no strong smell, though the flower is said to be sweetly fragrant. The pod’s volatile oils and compounds require not only maturation, but gentle drying before flavour develops. Traditionally, the drying process involves a combination of hot water and gentle sun-drying. At night the pods will be placed in blankets in airtight boxes to “sweat” or ferment, a key procedure in obtaining key flavour compounds. The pods are then stored to further develop their distinctive taste, darkening and shrinking as they do. When the moisture content has reached 20-30%, the pods will have lost up to four fifths of their original weight. This means 3-5kgs of fresh pods will yield 1kg of prepared product. The whole production chapter can take up to 8 months, and impatient global demand has resulted in practices which involve oven-drying and other techniques which produce a lower quality pod. The difference is easy to spot: good vanilla pods are slightly sticky, highly malleable and wonderfully aromatic.

Another predictable feature of good vanilla is that it not be cheap. Cost addition factors include significant moisture loss, long production periods and the big one, the need for hand pollination. Vanilla Planafolia is a troubled loner in nature, it can’t self-pollinate and the only insect with the know how is a native Mexican bee (not the one from The Simpsons) that evolved alongside the plant. This means that in most parts of the vanilla growing world, from Madagascar, to Fiji, to Indonesia, delicate pollination is tediously carried out by a worker who might be more skilled in Jenga or pick-up-sticks. This task, in combination with the fact the flower only lives for a tenuous one to two hours, gives a sound basis for its relatively high cost, second only to saffron in the spice world.

Still, we employ it in abundance. We use it for so many applications these days that it’s synonymous with conventionality, though this ungenerous equation has more to do with imitation essence than the real thing. Its spread across the culinary spectrum can be traced back to the apothecary (a kind of pre-pharmaceutical era pharmacist) of Queen Elizabeth I who suggested its use as a general flavouring agent and nerve tonic. Up until this time, vanilla was only used to enrich other New World ingredients such as chocolate and tobacco.

Nowadays, I use vanilla in desserts almost as commonly as I might use salt in savoury dishes. Vanilla’s way of mellowing yet heightening chocolate, adding bouquet to cream, or deepening the flavour of stone fruits makes it the first answer to most sugary inquiries. Should a pastry or dough seem eggy or floury on its own, vanilla imparts a congruous link between the obtuse flavours. Between this talent and it’s versatility, vanilla is extremely employable across many applications; this explains why Coke is the largest purchaser of vanilla in the world today, while fashion houses like Armani or Prada boast fragrances with vanilla as a base.

Yet where we most expect to see real vanilla we may well be disappointed. Industry insiders report that the tiny black dots in gourmet vanilla ice-cream are in fact exhausted bean specks, ground up pods that have already had full flavour extraction (vanilla essence or it’s imitation are used in conjunction to add the products heralded flavour). To me, this rather like serving a bone pulled from a beef stock, if marginally easier to swallow.

Sadly, outside of Veracruz it is hard to find fresh vanilla in Mexico today: as always, a sought after product will find it’s highest price. Never the less, good quality extracts are common and used in hot chocolate, pastries and the ever-present flan, a version of a crème caramel with Spanish roots. Still this simple and enchanting gift of nature travels most everywhere else. From the Napa Valley to Istanbul, from Tetsuya’s kitchen to your own local delicatessen. And herein lies the irony of the King’s command: it would seem the poor Princess Tzacopanziza has, in her own way, resumed her immortality.

Essential Equipment for the Mexican Cook (and what to use as a substitute)

Comal
A comal is either a thin metal or unglazed ceramic tray, used to cook tortillas or toast ingredients like chiles, tomatoes etc. A flat cast iron pan is a suitable replacement.

Molcajete
This is the Mexican mortar and pestle used frequently to make sauces, guacamole and the like. Molcajetes tend not to have a very smooth surface and require a little preparation, but are well worth it. Very handy for freshly grinding spices and creating wonderfully textured sauces.

Cazuela
The cazuela is a slow coking pot used for birria, cochinita pibil and braises in general. Traditionally they are a glazed clay or terracotta, but heavy based casseroles that apply good even heat can be used. A French oven like Le Creuset is a good substitute.

Tortilla Press
If you are going to make your own tortillas, there are two options: by hand or by press. Many varieties are available, and the heavy duty square presses are the best, though the easiest to find are the cast aluminium. Sheets of plastic cut from plastic bags are used to ensure the tortilla is easily removed. As the plastic is flexible, it tends to work even better than silicon paper.

Tamale Steamer
A purpose made tamale steamer is wonderful, but a good old vegetable steamer will do the job as well. Anything that you can fashion to keep the tamales elevated (above a decent amount of simmering water) will work just fine. A perforated tray that fits inside your favourite pot is suitable, just put a few ramekins or other heat resistant items in to prop up the tray.

Liquadora
The blender is a pretty standard piece of equipment in most kitchen, though rarely would it see this much use. From sauces to pastes, moles to fruit juice, the liquadora rarely gets a rest. Such is the case that most Mexican cookbooks recommend having two jugs, just as a baker might have two mixing bowls. The only substitute for the blender is a knife, a molcajete and a lot of hard work.

This is the first in a series on the basics of Mexican cooking.

Noche de Rabanos

Every 23rd of December since at least 1897, Oaxaca has celebrated an unsung edible root vegetable in a typically unique way. The Night of the Radishes heralds the Christmas break, filling Oaxaca's Zócalo with stands displaying scenes carved from oversize red radishes, or whole dioramas of intricately folded “totomoxtle” (dried corn husks). Families, visitors and tourists alike pass dozens of these exhibitions and marvel at the imagination and skill employed to contrive Zapotec dancers or a skeletal bride and groom.

The festival was inaugurated by the Mayor 112 years ago, but its beginnings reach further than that. Vendors selling salted fish and other foods after Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve would carve radishes to attract families to their tables. The radishes became more and more elaborate, garnished and prettied with onions, tomatoes and eventually, “flor inmortal” (brightly colored straw flowers). Housewives would search out the most skilfully carved to dress their Christmas Eve tables.



Three days proceeding the event, the knives are drawn as these radishes are pulled from the ground. As the sculpting starts, the radishes are sprayed repeatedly to ensure they look their best come the festival. Most of the carvers are themselves radish farmers, responsible for these huge vegetables which can reach up to six kilos – a little different to your average table radish. At this size, deformity is the norm and skilled carvers see immediately the soul dwelling inside the radish. And along with steady hands, this sculptor's imagination can grant a Christmas wish: a good cash prize accompanied by a village's pride.

A Matter of Taste: Notes for Cooks

It’s no secret that Chefs don’t suffer fools gladly. Weeding them out before they get into your kitchen and ruin service can be difficult, but there are ways. Many years ago, I had a phone interview that consisted of a single question, “How long does it take to boil an egg?” I replied that it depended on how big it was, and was told to come in the next day for a trial.

You see, an egg is not an egg. It may well be a quail or emu egg. And though this example may refer to size and cooking times, most variations occur in the sphere of taste. To be good cooks we must realise that all ingredients have their own qualities that are dependent on origin, seasonality and variety. Though we may rely on most recipes as clear maps to a culinary destination, we must appreciate that sometimes the terrain changes.

The case in point may be the recipes on this blog, composed with Mexican ingredients but to be made with whatever is available to you. Are my tomatoes sweeter? My lime juice more astringent? How do we now how to alter the quantities to get the dish to taste right? Really, we must think whilst tasting, and trust our own sense of where to guide the dish to get it to taste right. But what is taste, and in what manner can we think about it?

We developed taste as an independent sense when animals moved from the sea to land, losing gills and gaining follicles. As the sea conveys all chemicals through the same medium of water, there was no need to have a separate “distant chemical sense” of smell, and an “immediate chemical sense”, taste. Now land dwellers, we use smell to sense our surroundings and interpret flavour and taste as a final checkpoint before letting substances enter our bodies.

Taste, as a noun, is a function of the nervous system which indicates the presence of one or more of five sensations: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and umami. Umami translates from Japanese roughly as “savoriness”, and comes from the amino acid glutamate, a naturally occurring relative to MSG. Umami is the result of proteins breaking down by cooking or aging. Parmesan, aged beef and fish sauce all contain good amounts of glutamate, and as such tend to be “more-ish”, probably the defining characteristic of umami.

Perhaps you have heard of a tongue map, a diagram which supposedly demonstrates how this organ perceives different tastes in different areas. Even as a kid with a crumpled apron and a floor to mop, I remember being taught the idea that we taste salt here, sweet here, sour here etc. Happily this myth has been debunked: we taste all sensations with all parts of the tongue. This came as a relief to me, as I recall thinking I wouldn’t be very good at this job. I seemed to be able to taste salt or lemon wherever I placed it on my tongue. I had decided my apparatus faulty but really the idea was flawed, an enduring and contagious idea that lived far too long, born of
a simple mistranslation of a German text.

Though it can be hard to describe what we taste, why we taste is more empirically known. Taste provides us with signals that guide us through our omnivores dilemma of what to eat (read Michael Pollan), and we have evolved these senses as the food we eat has evolved. Taste informs us that we might have a bitter toxin in our mouth, if the fruit we eat is sweet and ripe, or that the salt we require for health and hydration is present. In fact, it is fair to say that your tongue is your on-board nutritional guide, one which has served us much better than food industry fads for nutrients, or back-of-label information we usually can’t understand.

And so if we can only sense five different tastes, how is it we seem to have an un-ending experience of new tastes? The process of “tasting”, now as a verb, is complex and involves all five senses to a degree. When we interpret flavour, we are using chemical receptors in taste and smell first, then bundling that information with sight, touch and hearing to create an opinion of what we are eating. There are so many variables in each of these senses, coupled with our psychological impressions of what is being eaten.

But if the inclusion of all the senses seems a little remote from the everyday reality, well, it’s not at all. There is no need to picture scenes of haute cuisine protruding rudely upward from the plate, accompanied by a baroque quartet and a manicure between courses.

Really, its much simpler: taste and smell give us our chemical readings translated as flavour. With touch we perceive texture and temperature, as well as mouthfeel and sensations such as the fizz of a carbonated drink, or the burn of a chile. Visual and aural join to inform us to a smaller degree. The final filter is our mind, where all these messages culminate granting our psychological reading has a huge bearing. Our minds influence is the reason food always tastes better when we are hungry, why foods we have had before are more agreeable, and why
no-one cooks a roast quite like mum.

With this many combinations, tasting is a truly limitless subjective experience. If we all take a bite of the same thing, it will elicit a very different response in each of us. Describing how you personally taste something is much like the parable of the three blind men trying to describe an elephant (the first man felt the trunk, the other a leg, the last an ear. None could agree it had been the same animal). When our tastes are only calibrated by our own experience, we never really know what it is anyone else is sensing.

If that’s the case, what’s the point in trying to master flavour at all? Speaking for myself, when I cook something just the way I like it, knowing how to get it there has its own rewards. But when cooking for others, there are a number of things that work by and large, for everyone. Essentially we want balance and response from these tastes, we want to pair the right ingredients in the right proportions to excite the appetite, engage in the push and pull of flavours and have a happy ending.

In upcoming articles we will talk about the tongue pyrotechnics of chile, why cloves are good for a toothache and why toothpaste and orange juice can’t get along. And on a more practical note, we’ll look at ways we can delight the palate by manipulating tastes, and how to get that balance of flavours by using a few little tricks of the trade.

Mexican Food Adventure

To ponder Italian food without tomato or peppers, Thai in the absence of chilli, desserts awaiting vanilla or a world without chocolate, is to render impossible some of the globes greatest dishes and rob us of life’s purest delights.

De La Tierra aims to be a travel blog exploring Mexican food through these ingredients. We will be traveling to Mexico to meet with the people who cultivate, harvest, and prepare them. Through our travels we will be looking for a re-connection with the process of true food production and hope this blog will be of some interest to not only lovers of Mexican food, but also to the ever increasing numbers of people who want to know where their food comes from and about the people who grow it.

Travis is a Spanish-speaking chef with more than 12 years experience cooking in 6 countries and a lifetime of Latin-American fascination. As my credentials do not extend into the culinary realm, by even the most tenuous thread, it will be his job to provide a more informed angle on the subject. With a background in design, I will offer up visual delicacies and an alternate impression of the journey - be it through a lens less food focused.

For a designer Mexico could not be a more intriguing country. While this blog is about Mexican food it will be virtually impossible for me not share with you discoveries of a more visual kind. Inline with the theme of the blog I will try to keep the emphasis on the earth and the food it provides.

The first place we will be visiting is Mexico's second-largest city Guadalajara. We aim to post often and are glad to have you on board for the ride.

Karin