Mexico 2002: Free-market Economy

Mexico 2002

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Stories, Observations, and Miscellany

Good Eatin'

I look forward to visiting Mexico because I love eating there. For one thing, Mexican food in the U.S. tends to be very narrow, as if you were to go to Europe and open a chain of "American food" restaurants that served nothing but food from one state. (Come to think of it, I suppose that's what McDonald's does.) So there are more dishes to sample in Mexico, not to speak of exotic fruits whose names I can never remember and other ingredients that, while interesting, go beyond the boundaries of my culinary daring.

My family knows some of my favorite dishes, and the first day we get there, there's usually a big family dinner with sopa de pasta, taquitos, and other fare. In years past, my fondness for these dishes has gotten the best of me, but this year I exercised some restraint (with difficulty) and managed not to overdo it in the first 24 hours.

One of the joys to me is that even simple fare is delicious. The Mexicans have a way with chicken in a pot, and even the plainest caldo (broth) is just yummy. Several times a day the bakeries produce huge bins full of fresh-baked hard rolls called bolillos which are good enough to eat plain and which also make excellent sandwiches with the local ham and white cheese. A simple breakfast that we found both tasty and hearty are molletes, which are bolillos that are split and covered with a layer of refried beans and cheese and then baked till warm. As is the local custom, we adorned this simple combination with salsa and then chowed down. When accompanied with fresh-squeezed orange juice and cafe con leche, it was meal that left us set for the morning.

There's food everywhere on the streets, should you get hungry as you go. Little stands or pushcarts are ingeniously constructed to create a tiny place to cook quesadillas or make churros. We were a little leery of street food, but Oscar took us to a stand that sold elotes (corn on the cob) and esquites (kernel corn served in cups). You can buy elotes roasted, which you then rub with salt or lime or chile (or all three). Alternatively, you might buy your corn boiled. A popular way to eat boiled corn is to cover it with mayonnaise and then sprinkle grated cheese on it. That particular variation left me cold. But we did sample the esquites, on which you can dab various flavored mayonnaises (for example, chipotle) and add lime and chile. Quite delicious.

Unlike most tourists, we also get the benefits of home-cooked meals. A couple of times, we had pozole, a hominy soup with chicken that you get to garnish yourself with radishes, lettuce, onions, and the ever-present chile. Margot served up chuletas ahumadas (smoked pork chops) and rouladen, a rolled-up piece of meat stuffed with bacon that happens to be German.

Mexican cuisine is very regional, and every area of Mexico has its unique foods and methods of preparation. Among people who love food — which includes most members of my family in Mexico — mentioning that you will be visiting any particular place is apt to bring the response Se come bien en ..., that is, "There's good eating in ..." This became a source of amusement to us during our first week in Mexico City. We would tell people that we were going to Oaxaca, and it seemed to us that the invariable response was ¡Se come bien in Oaxaca! with a dreamy look on people's faces. Same thing with Puebla.

Still life with Coke

Oaxaca is famous for black mole, and when they say black, they're not kidding. Another specialty is quesillo, a soft, salty, mozarella-like string cheese that is sold in balls in the market. The Mexicans invented chocolate, of course, and you can get chocolate paste flavored with cinammon or almonds to be made into a hot chocolate drink with either milk or the more traditional water. Oaxaca is also particularly famous for chapulines, the roasted grasshoppers that are sold by the basket in the local mercados and appear on the menu in all the restaurants. Chapulines clearly separate the culinary men from the boys, because in the Oaxaca market we found t-shirts with the Spanish equivalent of "I survived the chapulines in Oaxaca."

We sampled most of the regional specialties save the chapulines, which simply didn't sound appealing enough. In fact, we ended up sampling at times to excess. As we discovered, for example, quesillo is such a local favorite that it's served three meals a day — with your beans at breakfast, on your sandwich or tlayuda at lunch, and in your soup at dinner.

In Puebla, after arriving at the bus station, we went along with Oscar's suggestion and made a beeline for a restaurant known for its regional cuisine. ("Lunch? I was hoping you'd say that!" were his exact words, I believe.) Leaving ourselves in his hands, we had mole poblano and pipian, a mole-like sauce made from squash seeds, with chalupas for appetizer. Oscar ordered horchata, an opaque drink made from rice, which I had tried earlier in Oaxaca with good results. The next day we stopped into a local family-owned fonda and had the menu of the day, which consisted of a set of unadorned but delicious courses from soup through dessert.

Alas, we were not able to indulge in the cuisine as much as we might have liked. The high altitude, the change in schedule, the simple stress of travel — many things conspired to keep us off our feed. We both suffered slight cases of gastric problems that likewise required at least taking it slightly easy. For all its many attractions, Mexican food does have its downsides. For starters, you generally get a lot of it when you order a meal. In Puebla, any one of my three enchiladas de tres moles could have been a meal in itself. And it can be a bit heavy, since they do love to get the flavor benefits of things like the lard that's so important to tamales and other dishes.

But as I said, se come bien even if you're sticking with the simple and plain. If you're not feeling up to a five-course extravaganza, you can snack on perfectly ripe fruit you buy at the market or make yourself a sandwich from bolillos and quesillo. Or you can take advantage of another benefit of the Mexican culinary scene — the relaxed attitude that restaurants have in Mexico. Sit down, order yourself a nice bowl of tortilla soup, and then while away the lunch hour watching the tourists and the vendors stroll by.