Señora Blanca Estela Martínez Bueno--known to the world as doña Esthela--along with her husband, don José, in the white hat--converse with Rafael Mier about some of Mexico's native corns.
Doña Esthela and her husband, both of whom were born and raised in farming families from the state of Sinaloa, Mexico, know corn inside and out. They had a lot to talk about with Rafael Mier and were thrilled that he'd brought the mazorcas (dried ears of corn) with him to the restaurant. The visit we made to their Valle de Guadalupe restaurant, La Cocina de Doña Esthela, was exciting for all of us. Watching the way these three people enjoyed touching these old-time ears of corn, listening to the stories they swapped about planting, raising, harvesting, storing, and cooking with the grains, inspired me deeply.
Doña Esthela and don José (doña and don are honorifics in Mexico, prefixes to a respected woman or man's first name) moved from Sinaloa to Baja California over 20 years ago. To do her part to support their family, doña Esthela took in washing and ironing. Shortly after, she began selling home-baked cookies--and not just any cookies: she was making and selling coricos from the state of Sinaloa, the curled-up cookies on the right in the photo. Coricos are made with lard, corn masa (dough), a little sugar, and some baking powder: simple ingredients with fabulous flavor.
Pretty soon her coricos, burritos, and whatever else she could prepare to sell outside the employee entrances to maquiladores (trans-border factories) and outside local schools was in hot demand among the workers and students in her Mexican neighborhood, and before much longer, other people got wind of the fact that she was a terrific cook. Soon after that, the actors and crew from a popular Mexican telenovela (soap opera), filming in the area, showed up asking to be fed, and the rest is history. She started restaurant life in her home kitchen, with one table, cooking whatever ingredients she could afford to purchase. Over the years, she and her family have expanded the restaurant over and over again--today, La Cocina de Doña Esthela can seat up to 160 diners at a time.
A simple sign, nothing fancy--but on weekends, the wait to be seated can be as much as three hours. If you're in Baja California and want to have breakfast at Doña Esthela's on Saturday or Sunday--or during a puente (holiday weekend)--a word to the wise: the restaurant opens at 8:30 AM. Be there early so you don't have to stand in line forever. On the other hand, if there is a line ahead of you, wait. Breakfast is worth it and you'll thank me.
Let's get to the point: what did we eat?
The star of the restaurant is the barbacoa de borrego tatemado (pit-cooked mutton). Doña Esthela gets up long before dawn to put the mutton and its seasonings into the underground cooking pit--it has to be ready when she opens the doors to customers at 8:30AM. Fall off the bone tender, the meat is served with a bowl of consomé, the liquid in which the meat was cooked. I've eaten delicious barbacoa in a lot of places, and I swear to you that this is the best I've ever tried. Anywhere. Ever.
Big platters started coming quickly out of the kitchen. These are gorditas, thick corn tortillas, split in half and stuffed with spinach, with machaca, with nopales, or with chicharrón, all served with frijoles refritos, Sinaloa style.
Machaca (shredded, seasoned dried beef), scrambled into eggs. Doña Esthela prepares everything herself, with some other staff in the kitchen to help.
I put a spoonful of the machaca into one of her house-made corn tortillas and bit into it, and I think my eyeballs rolled back in my head with joy. If you don't eat anything else at La Cocina de Doña Esthela, you must have the machaca. In 2015, the British food website Foodie Hub named Doña Esthela's breakfasts--with special attention given to the machaca--the tastiest in the world. It's certainly far and away the best machaca Mexico Cooks! has ever tasted.
To the right in the photo is the completely merited Foodie Hub trophy, awarded to Doña Esthela for her breakfasts. In the middle, one of the reed baskets filled with Mexico's colorful native corn. To the left, the clay bowl holds little balls of what I know as azafrán de bolita (little saffron balls). I was so surprised to see them in Baja California; a friend from the state of Jalisco gave me some several years ago and told me that they were only known in that state. His grandmother used them for giving a deep saffron yellow-orange color to a recipe that she made for potatoes and onions.
Here is some of the azafrán de bolita that my Jalisco friend gave me, in a dish that measures about two and a half inches in diameter. The little balls are about the same size as whole allspice. I split a couple open so that you could see their interior color.
Doña Esthela's hot-off-the-comal (griddle) corn tortillas. The incredibly rich flavors of every dish on the table were only enhanced by the pure, delicious taste of home-nixtamal-ized corn masa, pressed into tortillas and toasted on the comal until just right. The tortillas just kept coming--and not only these marvelous corn tortillas, but also doña Esthela's addictive flour tortillas! Which to choose! Easy--have both!
Just when we thought we were finished with breakfast (i.e., ready to burst from having eaten our weight in everything but the actual clay plates, which we politely refrained from licking), doña Esthela brought us a couple of platters of her corn hotcakes and maple syrup. Somehow these, too, disappeared. Our 9-year-old companion, Wolf Koenig, said these were the best pancakes he'd ever tasted. Seems like there's a "best" theme happening here--and honestly, everything we ate WAS the best of whatever it was.
Wolf's dad, W. Scott Koenig, snarfing down a flour tortilla filled with frijolitos refritos (refried beans). The plate at the bottom of the photo holds what's left of just one of the platters of those beans.
Our group, just barely willing to turn away from their plates to look at me as I took the picture. The shutter clicked and we all went right back to mmm-ing and oooh-ing and chewing and enjoying the best (there it is again!) breakfast ever. Clockwise from the left side of the photo: Chris Mejia of Baja Test Kitchen, W. Scott Koenig of A Gringo in Mexico, Wolf Koenig of corn hotcake fame, Ursula Koenig, Jennifer Kramer of Baja Test Kitchen, and just a sliver of Rafael Mier of the Facebook group Tortilla de Maíz Mexicana--which if you haven't yet joined, you definitely should.
One last shot of our crew, with its stars of the day: the maíces mexicanos nativos that were the reason for our trip to Baja California, and to the far right, our incredible breakfast hosts, don José and doña Esthela. From left to right, the rest of us: Mexico Cooks!, Jennifer Kramer, Rafael Mier, and Chris Mejia.
The best way to rescue Mexico's at-risk native corns is by eating them, as we did and you will at La Cocina de Doña Esthela. It's urgent that we promote Mexico's high-quality native corns and at the same time, Mexican farming.
Mexico's two most precious resources: the campesino and the native corn.
If you are ever in the vicinity of Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California, do not miss breakfast with doña Esthela. Go early, but if there's a line, don't be discouraged. Breakfast is so worth the wait.
La Cocina de Doña Esthela
Highway from El Tigre to Guadalupe S/N
Valle de Guadalupe, Baja California
Open daily from 8:30 AM
Telephone: 01-646-156-8453
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