So now it was Friday and we only had three days left……. 🙁
Day 6, Lunch: We walked East to El Biche Pobre, which means “The Green-Eyed One” and not what you might think. This is another restaurant that has been featured in too many guidebooks, has gone up-market and no longer does a comida corrida, and seems to be a wee bit self-important (with stuffy waiters to match). All of which I can overlook, because this was the single best meal we had during the entire trip.
The usual condiments were brought to the table, including some hellaciously hot peppers & onions:
I’ve had chalupas in the past, but no two Mexican restaurants can seem to agree on what they are. El Biche Pobre’s were thin fried tortillas, with potatoes in a tomato and chile sauce, with (again!) lettuce and cheese on top. Perfectly balanced, the tomato/chile didn’t overwhelm the flavor of the potatoes. This won’t be the last time I use the word “balance” 🙂
I ordered the pig’s feet in vinegar to share with B, but he didn’t care for them, so luckily I got most of that dish. So tender that you could almost slurp the gelatinous goodness off the bones, while the vinegar (assertive, but in no way overpowering) acted as the perfect foil and balanced the richness of the pork, and made the dish very moreish.
For his main, B got chicken in mole coloradito. Moles are the claim to fame of Oaxaca…supposedly there are seven distinct varieties, each containing up to 30 ingredients. B’s plate looks so simple, a bit of rice, a bit of chicken, some sauce and some sesame seeds, but the taste was amazing…a little sweet, a little tomatoey, and a lot complex! I don’t have the vocabulary to describe it. Second best dish of the trip. If my own main hadn’t been so good, I might have fought B for a few more bites of his 🙂
Best dish of the trip? Mine, of course! Beef tongue in “sauce”……it wasn’t described as a mole, but was similarly complex. Less sweet than B’s coloradito, in fact just a tiny bit bitter, and a perfect foil for the richness of the tongue (you might say it was very “balanced.”) Without exaggeration, one of the best things I’ve ever eaten, even though it didn’t look like much:
$300 pesos (about $24 US for two) for one of the best meals I’ve ever had, and for me, the food highlight of the trip. But we still had some excellent meals to come.
Day 6, Dinner. At The Italian Coffee Company, the Mexican equivalent of Starbucks. Good coffee but but not very good paninis.
Day 7, Lunch. B spotted this rotisserie chicken place. I had my doubts, especially after noticing that it was called “El Gran Gourmet Oaxaqueño,” (“The Great Oaxacan Gourmet”) but it turned out to be really good, and our best comida corrida, for $75 pesos each.
We were immediately brought a pitcher, not a glass, of guayánaba (that spelling may be incorrect) juice, pickled veggies, and fresh tortillas. I started off with cream of broccoli soup (really good) and a green salad, while B had the steamed vegetables and something I’m forgetting. We both had the rotisserie chicken, but B’s was a slightly dried-out breast, whereas mine was a tender, juicy leg quarter, with some rather good pasta salad with ham and herbs.
So while not being typically Oaxacan, this was good, solid tasty food, the kind I’d be happy to eat every day.
1-1/2 half days left. I can’t NOT do a separate post about hamburguesas………
Day 4, Lunch: We decided to try a “comida corrida” or fixed-price lunch. These are common in Oaxaca and all over Mexico. Comida corridas always come with a drink (usu. fruit juice, sometimes pop), soup/rice, sometimes a salad or vegetable course, a main course, and dessert. Some don’t offer a choice as to what you’ll get for each course, but in the few we tried, they did. We went to “Comida Económica Isabel,” where the cost was $60 MX, about $5 US.
This place was recommended by my guidebook. Apparently I’m not the only one with that guidebook, since it was filled with turistas!
The location was really nice, an open-air building filled with plants. Here’s B looking forward to our meal:
Here we’ve just received our first course. I had cream of vegetable soup, which tasted of neither. And I still don’t understand why a plate of rice is typically served at the beginning of these meals. Since it’s spread out on a plate, it goes cold really fast. The only thing I could think of was to pour most of it into my soup.
One thing to note is my beverage, agua de tamarindo. Absolutely delicious and refreshing, the sourness of the tamarind matched perfectly by the sugar used to sweeten it.
Here’s my main course, chiles gratinados de pollo. The menu said “peppers,” but I got just one, stuffed with chicken, topped with w/cheese, then heated under the broiler, aka “gratinado.”
This was yummy, the pepper soft and with just a hint of heat, and the chicken tender and flavorful. Two notes: on top of the pepper, what looks like a Kraft American single topped with queso fresco probably was exactly that — it wouldn’t be the last time we saw that combination. And the salad has large chunks of chayote, which I see all the time in Latino markets where I live, but have never tried before. Kind of like if cucumbers were kissed by apples (….).
B’s entree was ensalada de nopales, cactus salad. I’ve shied away from raw cactus, which I’d heard was slimy and kind of tasteless, but this was also very good, better than my pepper.
For dessert, I had flan napolitano and B had ice cream. Both good. Other than the soups, this was a pretty good meal, and definitely a bargain, although we had a better comida corrida later….
Less than two feet from our table was an aquarium. This turtle is expressing his displeasure over my comments about the soup 🙂
Day 4, Bar break. We tried out El Baresito, very low-key/chill/relax. Bruce had a cafe helado (literally, “iced coffee”) which turned out to be a blender drink with whipped cream on top, whereas I had a beer and a mescal. Mescal is a lot like tequila, but is brewed from a wider range of Agave species (tequila can only be brewed from Agave tequilana), so mescal has a wider range of tastes than tequila, if your palate is sufficiently learned. Mine isn’t 🙂 This time, instead of the near-ubiquitous peanuts, our free bar snack was strips of raw jícama with a light dusting of chile powder.
Day 4, Dinner: The legendary Tacos Alvaro! I didn’t think anything could top our previous night’s meal, and…or but…..
Tacos Alvaro has been around for ages, and although it’s mentioned all over the web as the “go-to” place for the best tacos in Oaxaca, B & I were the only güeros (Mexican slang for “fair-skinned”) in the place. Here it is from the street, and a taste of the decor:
As soon as we sat down, these were brought to our table:
Mostly recognizable, including the chile salt and smooth guacamole, but we never did figure out what the green powder was, or what to do with the crispy fried tortillas, so I treated them like poppadums. The red things are lightly-vinegared onions, but very mild and crunchy, and an excellent addition to what was to come.
B got the plato mixto for $55, a mixture of pork, beef, bacon, “jamón de pavo” (literally, “turkey ham,” but we both doubted whether that translation was correct), cheese, and veggies:
I got a bowl of pozole, a hominy soup with a light pork broth, your choice of white or red pork (I went with the white, since “red pork” seemed a little scary), scallions, chopped onions, radishes, and a few vegetables I couldn’t identify. It’s supposed to be the best pozole in Oaxaca, and it really was delicious. Plus, as I discovered later, the leftovers make a pretty effective hangover cure 🙂
Also three tacos ($8 each)….al pastor (mixed pork/beef), lengua (tongue, probably beef) and trompa (pig snout).
They look a bit sad sat there on the plate (despite the pefectly cooked tortillas)! But open them up, add a bit of pico de gallo, some pickled onions, maybe a bit of chile sauce or guacamole and a squeeze of lime….I’ve already used this word so many times, but they were delicious!
That was our third very good meal in a row….could our winning streak continue?
Day 5, Lunch: We went to the 20th of November Market, a few blocks south of the main square, and I had to try tejate, a very traditional drink from prehispanic times, made from a variety of ingredients including dried flowers. Here’s the señora who made mine…first she adds some sugar water from the red bucket, then stirs the slurry in the wide green bowl with her hand, scoops out some with the bowl, and pours it into your cup.
And what you get is this:
The guidebooks said I wouldn’t like it, and it does look fairly unappetizing, but it was good! Well, at least ’til I got to the lumpy bits 🙂 Imagine walnuts blended with water and milk, and slightly sweetened, but chilled and very refreshing in the heat of Oaxaca. Definitely a case of not judging a book by its cover.
Then B & I continued into the “Carne Asadas” hall in the market. This was definitely an experience….neither of us knew the protocol, and I think we both overthought it (I certainly did.)
There are two types of stands here, vegetables and (raw) meat. Every vegetable stand is identical to every other vegetable stand, and every meat stand is identical to every other meat stand. So first you go to one of the vegetable stands and pick out which vegetables you’d like grilled, for example baby onions or peppers. Then you go to a meat stand and pick out your meat, which is grilled for you, preferably by a cute Mexican boy:
Then you’re brought a range of accompaniments, like pico de gallo, avocado slices, guacamole, etc. to choose from, all in 6″ square styrofoam dishes, around $8 – $12 MX per dish.
Then someone brings tortillas ($5 if you’re Mexican, $10 for güeros), and…………you chow down. What B & I couldn’t figure out, and I think made us both a little uncomfortable, was how some random vegetable stand and equally random meat stand handled the coordination. In retrospect, we shouldn’t have worried — I’m pretty sure our hosts would have made sure we got a good meal (which it was) in any case.
Day 5, Dinner: We stumbled upon a little place that looked good, but wasn’t.
Only three days left in Oaxaca 🙁 Could the food get better? Yes it could, and did 🙂
Oaxaca state has the most distinctive cuisine in all of Mexico, so I really wanted to explore as much of it as possible, and my traveling companion B was on board. In Oaxaca, as far as I could figure, there are four meals per day: desayuno (breakfast), with pastries or fruit; almuerzo (elevenses), which is more substantial; comida (lunch), eaten from around 1-2 p.m., the most substantial meal of the day; and cena (dinner), usually late (~ 8 p.m). B & I quickly developed our own variety, collapsing desayuno and almuerzo into one.
I absolutely loved our little culinary expedition, as well as most of the food that I/we ate. So there are lots of pictures and lots of descriptions in this post. That’s just fair warning that it may be kind of boring if you’re not a bit of a foodie.
Day 1, Dinner: We got in late, and went to Cenaduría Tlayuda Libre around 12 a.m. A “tlayuda” is a typical Oaxacan dish, a large (~12″) thin tortilla not fried but seared (so it has scorch marks, like New York pizza), then smeared with pork fat, refried beans, lettuce, and the usual Mexican white cheese (queso fresco), for 40 pesos/$3.00, or with the addition of “meat” for an extra 10 pesos. The waiter proudly mentioned how the restaurant had been written up in many guidebooks, so maybe it’s just a case of the them resting on their laurels, because the tlayudas were pretty tasteless, and the meat was really overcooked and chewy. Of all of the meals we ate in Oaxaca, this is the only one where the meat was essentially inedible, and where I had to ask for salt. Not the best introduction to Oaxacan cuisine!
Day 2, Lunch: We went to Mitla, a Mixtec archaeological site about 30 minutes outside Oaxaca, with B’s friends. By 2 p.m. my stomach was growling, and we persuaded them to stop for a snack. I should have taken some pics of where we ate, which was outside, a few coolers, a burner or two, plastic tarps as cover, and the señora who was in charge. The only thing on the menu (which I mean figuratively — there was no menu) was tacos dorados, tortillas wrapped around your choice of quesillo (Oaxacan “string cheese”….but unlike American string cheese, it has flavor) or chicken. The chicken ones were okay, but the quesillo versions had so little cheese that it was much like eating an empty, deep-fried tortilla, and only the salsas saved them.
So far, a bit disappointing, but things looked up quickly, with a culinary adventure later in the day, and much better food to come.
Day 2, Dinner: We went to Café del Jardín, in one of the buildings facing the Zócalo, the main square.
I ordered a “michelada” with a Negra Modelo beer for $38 pesos. A michelada in Mexico City is basically beer mixed with a bit of lime soda (pretty much like a shandy in the UK), but in Oaxaca, the mix consists of tomato juice, chile, and lime, in that order. Kind of like a Bloody Mary made with a tablespoon of Tabasco and beer, and about as appealing.
We also ordered chapulines con guacamole ($71 pesos), fried grasshoppers with … guacamole.
I wouldn’t order either of them again, but it was a distinct pleasure to taste something with a bit more flavor. I thought that the fried grasshoppers might be more of a specialty item, but as we learned later, they’re very common.
Day 3, Lunch: We went to VIPs, which is a chain restaurant. My club sandwich was very good
Day 3, afternoon pick-me-up: Café con milk for B, Léon for me. It seems like every bar in Oaxaca had Indio and Léon beer. Indio’s a light lager, Léon with slightly more flavor….beers were always served with, at a minimum, a plate of salted peanuts, with slices of fresh lime, or occasionally the peanuts were already limed (if that’s a word 🙂 ).
Day 3, pre-dinner bar: Txalaparta, not far from our hotel, and hands down my favorite of the six bars/clubs we visited. It’s a warren of interconnected rooms, so you can escape the usual overly loud music that seems to be a constant in Oaxaca bars, although the music there was pretty good.
Plus, they serve Bohemia Chocolate, best beer of the entire trip. The chocolate flavor isn’t subtle, but doesn’t dominate either. My second fave beer of the trip was Bohemia Oscuro (“dark”), which was more widely available, but when I asked a server in a restaurant that served BO if they had BC, he said, “No, it’s so much better, but we don’t have it.”
Mexico instituted a comprehensive smoking ban in bars in 2008, which was widely observed when I was in Mexico City in 2009. Maybe things have changed since then….you could smoke in all of the bars/clubs in Oaxaca we went to!
Day 3, dinner: We had planned to go to Tacos Alvaro, reputed to have the best tacos in Oaxaca, but it was closed, so some random stranger on the street told us to walk up a block and take a left. So we ended up at Cenaduría El Ajo (garlic)….completely unassuming, no tourists or plastic-coated menus — no menus at all, in fact –, tortillas cooked over a charcoal burner in the street, and I finally got an inkling of why people rave about the food in Oaxaca.
We ordered quesadillas, molotes, and a tostada ($66 pesos), with atole con leche and a champurrado to drink ($24 pesos).
And everything was great! I don’t remember the quesadillas very well (that was B’s dish), but the tostada, simple as it was (tortilla, beans, lettuce, quesillo – Oaxacan “string cheese”) was excellent, and even better were the molotes, cooked pinto beans (which still had some texture, unlike refried beans), then encased in a batter made from plantains and deep-fried (but not greasy), topped with guac and the omnipresent queso fresco. Atole is a very traditional prehispanic corn-based drink, which may not seem very appealing, but I loved mine, and B’s champurrado, basically the same thing but with chocolate, was even better.
So far, this was far and away our best meal in Oaxaca. The ingredients were so simple, but the results were delicious. Why? I’m not 100% sure, but I think it has a lot to do with the freshness of the ingredients, and the fact that everything ended up on our table a few seconds after it was cooked.
Note the lack of cutlery — we quickly got used to eating with our fingers 🙂
That’s just the first three days of our trip! In the days that followed, we discovered a few more unknown restaurants where the food was great, a few known restaurants where the food was great, one unknown restaurant where the food was terrible, and tried three of the seven famous moles.
It’s a Canadian treat, I think more popular in the French parts. Pour gravy over French fries and top it with cheese curds.
. . . in other words, the perfect meal after a drunken night out. I often indulged.
Sure, you can make a roast, then deglaze the pan and scrape up the fond (the sticky bits) and make a roux, then strain it and make gravy. But gravy for a proper poutine (the kind you get at 2 a.m. in some dodgy restaurant or corner shop) must be made from a packet:
I didn’t have any fresh cheese curds, so used up my Raging Bitch.
I thought about adding some parsley, which would have made the picture prettier, but adding anything even remotely healthful to a poutine would be heresy.
I made this according to the recipe on cheesemaking.com, with a bit of Cabot Cheddar Osterized in 1/4 C. water for added luck.
It’s one of the first cheeses that I (sort of) knew what I was doing when I made it. It was wrapped in lard-soaked cheesecloth and re-pressed.
That’s a different cheese, but same process.
The idea of wrapping a cheese in cheesecloth is that all the molds, yeasts and bacteria that might grow on the rind instead grow on the cheesecloth, but because it’s porous can still work their magic in developing the flavour of the cheese, then you can just peel the cheesecloth away.
It went through a series of interesting molds, and in the last month, developed a healthy infestation of cheese mites.
Six months after the make, the paste is firm, dense, slightly crumbly, as you would expect a Cheddar to be.
One lesson learned: use a VERY sharp knife when cutting a clothbound cheddar. No one likes little bits of cheesecloth in their cheese 🙂
But, you ask, how did it taste?
Pretty happy with this. Undeniably a Cheddar. If I had bought a “Medium” supermarket Cheddar and got this, I would have been very happy. At first just kind of dense on your palate, then you can taste the lactic goodness and the complexity of flavour.
I wish it had had more complexity, so now it will be tightly wrapped and live in the fridge for six months.
I’ve never made a cheese soufflé before. I followed Alton Brown’s recipe. He’s a food scientist, so generally his recipes are pretty bulletproof, but often involve a lot of steps.
This one involved a lot of steps (not even counting my substitutions), all of which I can do individually, but cheese soufflés have a reputation for being tricky, so I was worried about the end.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Grease an 8″ soufflé dish generously with room-temperature butter.
Sprinkle 2 Tbps. of grated Parmesan on the sides and bottom of the dish. I didn’t have Parmesan (maybe in six months!), so used this:
It’s milder and sweeter than Parmesan, but it’s the only hard grating cheese I have, and seemed like an acceptable substitute.
In a medium saucepan, heat 3 Tbsp. butter over medium heat until the water has been cooked out. You’ll know that has happened when there’s no more crackling sound.
In a bowl, combine 3 Tbsp. flour, 1 tsp. dry mustard, 1/2 tsp. garlic powder, and 1/8 tsp. salt.
Stir into the butter, and whisk constantly for two minutes over medium heat to make the roux. You want the flour to get brown, but not too dark:
Whisk in 1-1/3 C. hot milk.
Remove from heat.
Beat four egg yolks until creamy.
Put a couple of tablespoons of the hot milk sauce into the eggs, and whisk furiously so they don’t turn into scrambled eggs.
Return the mixture to the saucepan:
And again whisk furiously to incorporate:
The recipe calls for 6 oz. of sharp Cheddar, which I didn’t have. Instead, I used Taleggio, which I have a lot of, à point and won’t be very good in a couple of weeks, so I need to use it up. It’s milder but stinkier than Cheddar, so I thought it would be a good alternative.
Stir into the sauce until it’s dissolved.
Using a hand mixer, whip 5 egg whites, one Tbsp. water, and 1/2 tsp. cream of tartar until stiff (the egg whites, not you.) Why does that joke always make me laugh?
Carefully fold in the egg whites, going by thirds.
Into the dish:
Bake for 35 minutes, but check after 30 to make sure it’s not getting too brown on top.
I should have had my camera at the ready, because a few minutes out of the oven and it had already started to sink:
But, you ask, how did it taste?
Fluffy, light, not at all dry as I had worried about. Intensely cheesy (but not stinky!) and rich, so much so that it needed an acid foil:
After a couple of hours, it had sunk down to about half size. A day later, it’s all gone 🙁
This is one of the first cheeses I made, a Jack, almost eight months ago. I used yogurt, not necessarily a bad thing . . . I’ve made some good cheeses with yogurt.
I didn’t use make sheets back then, so I’ll never know why things went so horribly wrong.
It was ready to be cracked.
The paste was soft but crumbly and looked appetizing:
But, you ask, how did it taste?
Nasty, sour and bitter, foul. So terrible that I involuntarily spat it out into my hand.
A couple of hours later, I kept thinking, “It can’t really have been that bad, can it?” and tried again. I didn’t want to spit into my hand again, so brought along a small plate.
I used the plate.
By far my worst cheese ever, and only the third one that went into the garbage.
With an eye to (hopefully) overwintering them, I grouped some of my herb plants next to the back steps, so they’d be protected from the wind, then covered them with leaves. The idea being that they would then get covered with a layer of snow, which would protect them from the worst ravages of winter.
No winter. No snow. No problem!
Mint, thyme, chives:
The non-protected thyme plants didn’t even blink an eye:
And the parsley plants are going nuts. This one is already knee-high. I see parsley soup in my future, once I have onions.
These are all seeds I collected last fall, which will be planted up later today. I’ll plant a shedload of basil again, to make pesto, but plan on scaling back on the other plants (no one really needs 140 pots of herbs, like I did last year 🙂 )
Lovely azalea from the front of the house:
Wet with the morning rain:
My dogwood tree is in full flower:
I love the simplicity of the flowers:
It took four months to sprout, but I have a baby tangerine tree!
This is (allegedly) prickly ash, the source of Sichuan peppercorns. The seeds spent three month of cold stratification in the fridge, and finally four months later, one sprouted. Not sure about the ID (I may have been sold a bill of goods), but I’ll find out in five years or so 🙂
. . . you’re lucky. I’m out of lemons. Afeard to go the grocery store, so also out out of ginger, out of garlic, out of potatoes, out of onions. Eeek!
On the other hand, if life gives you mushrooms and a weepy brie . . .
. . . lovely, lovely mushrooms . . .
make mushroom mac ‘n’ cheese!
Cook the mushrooms in the usual way, then add a “knob” of butter and a tablespoon of flour. Stir constantly over medium-high heat for two minutes to make the roux, then stir in one cup of chicken stock (water is okay) and keep stirring until it’s a bit saucy.
Add cheeses of your choice. I added mostly weepy brie with a bit of Limburger:
Stir until the cheese is dissolved. I added parsley (optional), or you can add any parboiled vegetable of your choice:
Meanwhile (I should have mentioned this earlier) make the pasta of your choice. I love farfalle, bow ties:
Stir it all together, and bung it into a casserole dish. I added bread crumbs, more parsley and cheese for extra goodness 🙂
Bake it in a 350 degree oven for 20 minutes, or until it has some lovely brown crispiness on top.
Pink and Black Oyster Mushroom Mac ‘n’ Cheese with Brie and Limburger, Three Pickle Plate:
