I recently had the unbelievable good luck to be able to spend a few weeks in Mexico, touring the country and stuffing myself full of delicious morsels. Now, when most people think of countries with a strong culinary culture they think of France or Italy; but no matter where you are in the world, you will find a rich and vibrant appreciation of food. After all, the one thing that is truly universal is the biological need to nourish oneself (in both a literal and figurative sense).
Mexico is certainly no exception to that rule. From the street-side carts and the gourmet restaurants, you will find both a personal connection to the ingredients and a proud concern for the final product. It certainly defies the “bean and rice” type fare that you find in the so-called Mexican restaurants operating in the United States.
Rose Petal Soup
In San Miguel de Allende, we stopped by one of the restaurants across from the main cathedral to have an elegant and romantic meal in an open courtyard. Before my main course, I ordered the rose petal cream soup. I will say that the soup was not pure perfection, the petals themselves were still a little too bitter to really balance the flavors, but I appreciate the presentation certainly and the willingness to experiment with this combination.
Lunch at La Estacion
Another flower you’ll find more often in Mexican dishes than the rose is the squash flower. With a milder flavor and softer texture, squash flower blossoms can be found inside tamales, quesadillas and pretty much anything else. Here it’s merely the decoration for this lunch platter from La Estacion in Aguascalientes.
The use of flowers in their cooking is only one example of the distinctive and fascinating ingredients that you so rarely find in the U.S. Also on the plate above is nopales, cooked cactus leaves. You sometimes find nopales (or nopalitos) in Mexican groceries or the more authentic Mexican restaurants here but your mainstream “Tex-Mex” places have never even heard of them. When cooked, they have a slimy consistency similar to okra but without the white pithy seeds. When raw, you can blend nopales with pineapple juice to make a sweet, thin watery drink that is high in fiber and recommended for diabetics.
Dinner at Rincon Maya
At Rincon Maya, also in Aguascalientes, we got a taste of the cuisine more common in the south of Mexico and the Yucatan peninsula. The tamal oaxaqueño, on the left, is unlike the tamales you will find in the US or even in most Central Mexican restaurants. The tamale most of us are familiar with is wrapped in a corn tusk, served dry and has a coarse, grainy texture. The tamal oaxaqueño, on the other hand, comes wrapped in banana leaf, is served with a tomato-based sauce and slides into your mouth like an oyster.
While this provides only the slightest glimpse of the plethora of flavors and ingredients that Mexico has to offer, it certainly proves that there is much to explore south of the border. Stay tuned to the next few posts, for more expeditions into Central Mexican cuisine.
