Mexicowoods—An Expatriate Life

¡Sponch!

A snack food has arrived in San Miguel de Allende—one that is new to me. ¡Sponch! What a great name!

I can't tell exactly what ¡Sponch! is, but it's colorful and you can bet that it's sssweeet: loaded with high fructose corn syrup, guar gum, tragacanth and of course those tasty di- and triglicerides. Any resemblance to actual food is coincidental.

Mexico will not be outdone by the United States in the race to obesity and diabetes. Already the world's biggest per-capita consumers of soft drinks, Mexicans have fielded a new secret weapon in the sugar consumption wars.

¡Sponch! Just looking at the picture puts me into a sugar coma.

Good Eats in Ecuador

A folk saying says that Mexico is a land where nobody goes hungry. That seems to be true in Ecuador too. Food is tasty, plentiful, and cheap. Even people subsisting on handouts can score enough nickels for café y humitas.

I make an effort to eat traditional foods wherever I travel. What am I eating in Quito? Llapingachos (fat cheese-filled potato pancakes colored orange from some spice), guatita (tripe and potato stew in peanut sauce), empanadas verdes (plantain flour empanadas stuffed with cheese), and chifles (crispy fried plantains).

My favorite so far is cheviche. It's different than the Mexican kind. In Ecuador, it's served in a pink thickened sauce with onions and herbs. My cheviche came with cangil (popcorn) instead of rice. Apparently popcorn is a perfectly acceptable starch in Ecuador.

Secos are thick stews, as in secos de pollo (chicken) or secos de chivo (goat). I just had to try the latter.

The pink sauce in the cup is aji, spicy like salsa. It was served with every meal. For some reason, most dishes include a wedge of avocado and little triangles of white cheese that you cut up and add to your main course. A fellow diner taught me to do this with my tripe soup—which improved it considerably.

Here's what I'm not eating: cuy. Cuy is guinea pig. They gut the cute little things and roast them whole. On the plate you can't tear your eyes away from the mouthful of pointy teeth.

But for a real gross-out experience, a street vendor offered me a skewer containing a grilled cat-sized rib cage, nicely browned. She told me it was guanta. Wikipedia explains that a guanta is a large rodent, known to most of the world as a paca.

Photo © Hans Hillewaert

To drink: various fruit juices. The glass next to the seco de chivo contains fresh jugo de mora (blackberry juice), every Quiteño's favorite. It's always squeezed from fresh berries. Exotic juices I tried were naranjilla (a small, sour orange), maracúya (passionfruit), and tomatillo. A tomatillo is not the green husk tomato of Mexico, but a strange fruit called a tree tomato.

Sort of look like pointy tomatoes, don't they? You peel them like you would a mango.

The peeled fruit goes into the juicer and out comes an orange liquid that tastes like a combination of peaches and… tomatoes.

All of these fruits are also offered in batidos: milkshakes made with milk, not ice cream. I got hooked on them.

Hot drinks are a problem. Ask for coffee and you usually get Nescafé. Ecuador grows coffee, but most of the beans get shipped to rich countries. An alternative is candelazo (cinnamon tea spiked with aguardiente). The booze is served in a separate pitcher so you can add to your liking—a practice that relieves me of the awkwardness of asking for a virgin candelazo.

Ecuador has a tremendous variety of fruits, vegetables, and meats to choose from. And most are quite inexpensive if you stay away from beef. But with chivo, cuy, and guanta to choose from, that shouldn't be a problem.

Food and Music at Xochimilco

Waterborne vendors on the canals of Xochimilco tempt weekend boaters with souvenirs, clothing, toys for the kids, and food. The network of waterways is a hub of commerce. This man offers candied apples.

Others sell pan dulce, empanadas, tacos, beer and soft drinks. Some cooking is done right on the water: here boiled or roasted corn—Mexican comfort food—over a wood fire.

Visitors hire musicians at every turn. A small, blue barca containing two marimba players pulls alongside a family boat, mesmerizing a young lady with soft music.

Norteño bands congregate at a canal-side restaurant, hoping for a gig.

Mariachis abound. They seem to spend more time poling up and down the canals waiting to be hired than actually performing. They have a lot of downtime, just like the mariachis at the Jardín in San Miguel de Allende.

 

Everyone enjoys singing along. What traditional tune so inspires this family? Quiereme Mucho? La Paloma? Guadalajara? 

No—they are singing I Did It My Way.

I love zither music, so when this salterio player came alongside and pitched me, I immediately asked him to play Cielito Lindo. Laura shot a clip of his performance. The fee for one tune? $20 pesos.

If you watch the clip to the very end, you can hear the bass player suggesting a couple more tunes and me responding No más!

On the canals, music complements every situation. Here mariachis set the mood for two lovers.

 

We drifted through the waterways for a couple of hours, sipping Pepsi Cola thoughtfully supplied by our boatman (for a price), listening to music and the laughter of families enjoying themselves on a warm afternoon. Our first visit to Xochimilco was just another of those tourist "must do" events. Someday we'll return again just to experience another relaxing afternoon among happy people.

Produce Sellers at Mercado de Jamaica

Mercado de Jamaica, the big flower market in Mexico City sells fruits and vegetables as well as flowers, although vendors of these are far outnumbered by flower stalls. But to reach the flowers you have to walk down a corridor past all the fruit stands.

 

Sellers here seem to have more space than those in, for example, San Miguel's San Juan de Dios market. The Jamaica displays are larger, the foods offered are more varied.

 

I post so often about mercados that something has to be out of the ordinary to inspire me to write again. And Mercado de Jamaica is different: the attractiveness of the displays and the quality of the produce is superior to any I have seen elsewhere in Mexico, reminiscent of that in Barcelona's Mercado la Boqueria.

Look how big, beautiful, juicy, and perfectly ripe these fruits are. Not a single green, overripe, bruised or spoiled one in the lot. Soriana (a Mexican supermarket chain) could learn much from these sellers.

 

SInce Mercado de Jamaica sells flowers for use as gifts, it's natural that fruit vendors package gift arrangements as well.

 

Exquisitely prepared candied fruits catch my eye. Peaches, pears, figs, tunas (prickly pear fruits)—each sugary specimen looks perfect.

 

This candied fruit looks nothing like the crudely hacked stuff in our local mercados or supermarkets. Check out these calabazates—candied miniature pumpkins—each in its own little dish.

 

As in other Mexican mercados, the selection is larger than in U. S. supermarkets. Unfamiliar fruits and vegetables are abundant. An example, the yellow-orange tecojotes are an apple-like fruit that appears seasonally. I see them used to flavor poncha, a fruity drink served warm during the Christmas holidays. I wonder what other ways they're used.

The tecojotes are priced at 15 pesos per kilo, about 50¢ a pound. The apples in the background are priced the same—50¢ a pound. They are imported Washington State apples identical in quality to those sold for $2 per pound in Los Angeles. That says something about distribution and margins in the U. S. food distribution system ¿No?

 

The sign stuck in the pile of strawberries says "Who gives you more?" I wouldn't be surprised if they were imports from California—Watsonville or Oxnard. They look like the flavorless, case-hardened variety, bred to have a shelf life of four weeks. But at 70¢ a pound maybe they're a good deal anyway. A few fish genes spliced into strawberry DNA never hurt anybody. Who gives you more?

Which of these things is different? A solitary egg vendor squeezes in between two fruit stands. Consistent with Mercado de Jamaica standards, his display is arresting.

 

But the eggs along with the pineapples and melons, high as their quality may be, are nevertheless products of agribusiness. The pineapples—from Hawaii, the melons—from California's Imperial Valley maybe, the eggs—from Bocacho, a huge Mexican producer. The tecojotes may have been locally grown, but they're bucking the trend.

Mercado de Jamaica offers produce as good or better than what you can buy in Draeger's swanky market in Menlo Park, CA. And it does so at less than a quarter of Draeger's prices. The mercado's produce is the best of the best: that is, the best that agribusiness can produce. The appearance is gorgeous: the flavor and healthfulness may be something else.

I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. I've always preferred food that is locally grown using organic methods, but I never really appreciated how big corporations have hijacked our food system, how good nutrition and palatability have been sacrificed for appearance, transportability, and shelf life.

I think I'll continue buying my food at tiny Via Organica or Natura. The selection is limited to what's in season locally and it doesn't always look as pretty as the stuff in Mercado de Jamaica. But it's always healthy and flavorful.

Lunch in Teotihuacan

Adjacent to Teotihuatlan, the village of San Martín de las Pirámides provides a convenient destination for lunch. Ravenous from so much walking and pyramid climbing, we head for the mercado and some quesadillas. My lunch is cooking in the middle of the comal: quesadillas de flor de calabaza and quesadillas de champiñones (squash blossom and mushroom).

 

Heaped on the tortillas in the foreground are sesos—brains. Considered a great delicacy by many Mexicans, I've never found them appealing. However, I did sample a quesadilla de panza. The filling is stomach—not tripe mind you—but the actual stomach of some animal. It was quite tasty.

These quesadillas are not made with traditional round flour tortillas. The cook places a blob of masa—cornmeal dough—into this device. As with a pasta machine, she gives a crank a single turn. Rollers press the masa into a thick patty, and a second roller cuts it into an oval shape. It's cool to watch.

 

She places the masa ovals on her comal and adds cheese along with whatever other ingredients you want: onions, squash blossoms, brains... She ladles copious amounts of oil from the aluminum pot on her left, more in my opinion than is needed to keep the quesadillas from sticking. This is not going to be a low-fat meal.

 

Her hands move in a blur. She must have served twenty people in as many minutes. Hers is a popular place. Every stool was filled and often customers stood behind in ranks, waiting for their lunches.

 

Mercado food is a favorite for me. I wish it was even remotely healthy, but it's not. So I only get to eat it on rare occasions. But it tastes sooo good, and dining shoulder to shoulder with an amiable bunch of strangers only adds to the experience.

Dinner at Mom's

Wednesday's post was about shopping for seafood at Joe Patti's Seafood Market. This one is about what we did with our purchases.

Laura's Mom, Julie Demarko, is a celebrated chef in Pensacola, so dinner at her house is always a treat. I expect to gain weight on this visit. Julie undertook to prepare a seafood dinner, a three-course affair. Faced with such a project, I would have fretted about it for days before hand. Julie tossed the whole thing off effortlessly.

I didn't get off scot free. I was pressed into service preparing one of the appetizers: seared scallops.

 

Voila! They look great, no? I forgot to season them. I was a little intimidated, cooking under the supervision of so accomplished a chef.

Second appetizer: soft shell crabs Cajun style. Is it even possible to get soft shell crabs in Mexico? These were a real treat. I try to get some whenever they're available.

Main course: Fish stew accompanied by green salad. The stew contained exquisitely fresh red snapper, local shrimp and a stone crab claw, served in an intense broth made from fish trimmings.

How I miss the seafood I tasted in San Francisco and Boston. Dinner at Julie's is a rare treat.

[A disquieting note: I learned that stone crab claws are harvested by trapping the crabs, snapping off their claws, and returning them (the crabs) to the sea where they grow new claws. Eewww.]

A Famous Fish Market

Joe Patti arrived in Pensacola from Sicily in the 1920s. He fished for shrimp, opening his namesake fish market in 1935. Today, it is a Pensacola institution. When we visit Laura's folks, we always try to shop at Joe Patti's Seafood, because it is one of the finest fish markets in the country.

 

No kidding. The amount and variety of seafood sold here is staggering. Nine years ago (the only numbers I could find) the sales volume was $14 million.

I tagged along with Laura and her mom early one morning as they shopped for dinner.

I have never found anything so fresh as these redfish in San Miguel de Allende, but then our town is located in Mexico's midwest, hours from any fishing port. People tell me the fishmonger at the tianguis is good, but buying from him requires a leap of faith I have been unable to make. Things run downhill from there: the seafood composting at Soriana perfumes the entire supermarket.

Joe Patti's sells a half-dozen species of shrimp, either cooked or uncooked, shelled or not, with or without heads. They sell more varieties of just shrimp than all of the kinds of seafood offered at Mega.

I've never seen wild-caught salmon in Mexico. We only get fish that were farmed in Chile. And look at those prices! The Sonoma Market in California sells salmon for three times as much.

I don't know what mullet gizzards are. No doubt they're a bargain at $3 per pound. I'm game to try some, if I only knew how to prepare them.

Blue crabs are caught locally. Customers take the ones the counterman selects. You don't get to pick the ones you want for only a dollar each.

Frank Patti, son of founder Joe, is a no-nonsense kind of guy. He sets the rules for his customers (like no picking) and shows them exactly what to expect when they ask to get their fish cleaned.

Make sure you ask for the backbones, and expect to pay 40¢ per pound to have the black cleaned out of the bellies, whatever that is. Oh, and keep in mind that once your fish is cleaned, it's yours. No backing out.

Customers take their dripping, fishy purchases to a bank of checkout stands where everything is weighed and priced, and packed in ice for the ride home. Forgot to bring your cooler? Cheap Styrofoam ones are for sale at nominal prices. A sobering refund policy greets purchasers: it features the word "no."

Nobody is put off by Frank's rules. The fish is too good and the prices are right.

The store sells more than fish. A "gourmet" section offers spices and condiments, breads and cheeses.

Here's a typical offering:

They still operate their own fishing boat, but much produce is bought from local fishermen who transfer their catches right onto Joe Patti's dock where it travels about twenty feet to the store's counters. Fish doesn't get any fresher than that.

Joe Patti's is a major tourist attraction. But for locals, it's just the place they buy their fish. Lucky Pensacolans.

Organic San Miguel

Sonoma County, in the wine country north of San Francisco where I used to live, has always been in the forefront of the organic food movement. From the mid-'60s on, small farms have offered organic produce. Many of us grew our own veggies, if not for health reasons, then at least because the food tasted so much better. Just compare a home grown tomato with the strip-mined supermarket variety, and you'll see what I mean.

When I moved to San Miguel in 2003, I had to give up hormone-free grass-fed beef, those incredibly sweet Sierra strawberries grown by Korean gardeners, eggs direct from farms where chickens were allowed to eat bugs. I left behind the French market lettuces grown in raised beds at Mustard's Grill in the Napa Valley. Italian chicory forced in darkness, Cox's Orange Pippin and Pink Pearl apples, Yukon Gold potatoes—I said goodbye to all.

Little or no locally grown food was available in San Miguel when I arrived, much less organic food. Mercados received most of their food from large distributors. Supermarkets and tienditas alike offered the output of corporate farms, often in a state of incipient decay.

Today this is changing. First there was Bee Natural (now Natura), a small store offering organic veggies. Then a few restaurants recognized the market opportunity, given that so many expats mourn the loss of healthy foods. They began offering locally grown foods. Now, a major player has entered the game: Via Orgánica.

Via Orgánica is an organization dedicated to promoting organic food production through workshops, an organic certification process, and a producers' network. Most Sanmiguelenses though know of it through their café and tienda in Colonia Guadalupe.

The sign says, "Eat healthy. Eat organic." And indeed you can, from a breakfast and lunch menu of unique dishes all prepared from locally grown ingredients.

In the tienda proper, shoppers won't find Log Cabin genuine artificial maple-flavored syrup. Or Jif peanut butter, or Smuckers jam. All the canned and bottled stuff is from organic producers.

(The shelves of prepared foods make me nervous. They smack too much of the offerings of Whole Foods, an Austin based nationwide organic supermarket chain (oxymoron!) that has managed to give the organic movement a bad name, with its ties to agribusiness and its mistreatment of employees.)

Via Orgánica offers dairy and bakery products, most of them locally made. Hormone free beef and line-caught fish are available (unfortunately, frozen). For me the fresh fruits and vegetables are the stars. Vine-ripened tomatoes, little white-and purple striped eggplants, tiny sweet carrots, tender "non-shippable" lettuces—these products make eating vegetables attractive again.

Today's shopping basket: tomatoes, zucchini, spinach, broccoli, bananas (!) and wax beans I snatched out of the box the minute they were delivered. They had been picked just a few hours ago.

After buying my groceries, I always sit down at Tapas Café for lunch: a small veggie pizza, a green salad, fresh fruit juice, maybe a blackberry tart.

Our community contains 5,000-10,000 expatriates, many of whom have shopped organic in the States and have grown to appreciate healthy foods. So San Miguel is a natural place to get started with Mexico's organic movement. Via Orgánica, with its community-wide vision, is positioned to accelerate change.

But it's not just brown-rice Californian expats making this all happen. Mexico already has organic markets, many of them small but all responding to ever increasing demand by discerning Mexicans. A list of them can be found at the Red Mexicana de Tianguis y Mercados Orgánicos website. (The Mexican Network of Organic Stores and Markets).

Mona's Eyes

Walking to the gym the other day, this tiendita caught my eye.

Such a romantic name for a place that sells pork rinds and orange soda.