Lydia Gregory, a dear friend visiting from Phoenix, Arizona, tries a tuna (nopal cactus fruit) at the Tianguis Obrero Mundial, Colonia Narvarte, Mexico City. Tunas are delicious--and so is my friendship with Lydia! She loved it, but she couldn't smile because her mouth was full of tuna! We had such a great time.
Nearly twelve years ago, in August 2007, Mexico Cooks! featured every sort of produce, dairy product, and meat sold at a local tianguis (street market) near Guadalajara, Jalisco. For the entire month of August 2008, you read about seasonal availability of fruits and vegetables at the dozens of regularly scheduled tianguis (it's the same word in singular and plural: one tianguis, two or more tianguis, pronounced tee-AHN-geese) in Morelia, Michoacán. Mexico Cooks! would rather shop at a hot, crowded tianguis than at an air conditioned supermarket, would rather shop for supremely fresh foods at a tianguis than give a second glance to anything frozen, boxed, or canned that's offered for sale elsewhere.
A signmaker with a sense of humor stuck this tag on his fresh Roma tomatoes: "Like you saw on TV". These were offered at 14 pesos the kilo (about 45 cents US the pound).
The tianguis, wherever in Mexico it's held, is a basic part of the culture of modern Mexico. Its name comes from the Náuhatl word tianquiztli, market. Although Nahuatl markets are centuries old, the present-day form of the tianguis is fairly recent, originating during the 1970-76 Mexican presidency of Luis Echeverría Alvarez. The author of the tianguis project in Mexico was José Iturriaga, Echeverría's former finance minister.
These tender new elotes (early native corn) are piled up in a huge pot, ready to be steamed. When they're ready to eat, they'll be sold piping hot with a slather of mayonnaise, a heavy layer of freshly grated cheese, a squeeze or two of jugo de limón (the tiny fruit known in the USA as key lime), salt, and, to your taste, a sprinkle or more of powdered chile. Eat it while you walk the tianguis aisles--this is one of the most popular and delicious snacks in Mexico.
Cooked in a sweet syrup, whole calabaza de castilla (squash, left), camote (sweet potato, right), and higos (figs, rear) are available at the tianguis by the kilo or portion of a kilo. They're to be eaten for breakfast or supper.
Although Iturriaga was himself a wealthy, educated, and cultured man, he worried about the ability of Mexico's poor to feed their families. He was especially concerned about the availability of nutritious fresh foods sold at reasonable prices. The tianguis, otherwise known as a mercado sobre ruedas (market on wheels), was his idea. The government took charge of giving Mexico's working-class housewives and other food shoppers stupendous quality at the lowest possible prices.
Rambutan, available in season at tianguis all over Mexico. This exotic fruit, first hairy cousin to the lychee, is grown commercially in Chiapas, one of Mexico's southernmost states.
Beautiful cebollitas de cambray (knob onions), ready for serving with carne asada (grilled meat, usually accompanied by grilled whole onions like these.
Meats are available at a tianguis, too. At the left, these are long strands of longaniza (a spicy, fresh sausage similar to chorizo) and at the right, equally long strands of Oaxaca-style chorizo. My favorite is the Oaxaca-style chorizo.
Still operated by local government, today's tianguis only sometimes reach Iturriaga's ideal. Often the produce can be second-rate, the meats and seafood far less than fresh, and the market's hygiene questionable--while prices are often as high or higher than the días de plaza (sale days) in upscale supermarkets.
Prepared food, for eating on-site or for carryout, is available at all of the tianguis I've been to in Mexico--a lot! Here you see a taco of heavenly pork carnitas with chopped fresh cilantro and onion and some salsa roja.
Higos--figs, at the peak of maturity and ripeness--enjoy a relatively long season here in Mexico. We recently paid 100 pesos for two kilos of beautifully ripe figs and prepared half a dozen jars of you-don't-want-to-know-how-good fig conserve. Later this winter, spread on a toasted and buttered bolillo (small loaf of fresh-baked bread) from our tianguis, served over ice cream, or simply licked off the finger, the conserve will be an intense memory of summer.
Mexico Cooks! is a regular customer at one of the better tianguis in Mexico City. Our tianguis, set up early Wednesday mornings, is quite near our house. Our normal purchases include tortillas, bread, seafood, excellent pork ranging from maciza (fresh pork leg) to tocino (bacon), marvelously fresh chicken (whole or whichever part you want), all of our fruits and vegetables, cheeses and cream, grains, and flowers for the house. We don't eat much beef, but if we did, we'd buy it at the tianguis.
Tiny plátanos dominico (finger bananas, about 2.5 inches long) are just one of the banana varieties we usually see at the tianguis.
This is American-style yellow sweet corn, now grown in the Mexican states of Guanajuato and Querétaro. It's nothing like the native corns grown for millennia all over Mexico, but it's becoming very popular. I photographed this mound of corn at the tianguis in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán.
Prices at the Wednesday tianguis in our neighborhood, while not substantially lower than those at the supermarket, are still not higher than we care to pay. We usually budget about 700 pesos (about $50 USD) to buy what we need at the tianguis for a week's meals, including pork and sometimes shrimp. We budget another 400 pesos for purchases at the supermarket.
Mangos stacked high at a tianguis. This large variety is known as either Paraíso or Petacón.
On a recent Wednesday--when the refrigerator was bare of produce, as we had been out of the country for more than a week--these were our purchases:
6 large fresh white onions
1 huge cantaloupe
4 Petacón mangos
6 red-ripe Roma tomatoes
1/2 lb mushrooms
1/2 large white cabbage
8 Red Delicious apples
1 large avocado
2 large bananas
1 large papaya
1 lb fresh green beans
1 large head of broccoli
8 ounces crema de mesa (table cream, similar to crême fraiche)
1 kilo freshly ground-to-order beef
Total cost: 500 pesos--the equivalent of about $25.00 USD.
Common kitchen utensils of all kinds are also offered at a tianguis. These are escobetillas, used for scrubbing pots and pans. They're made from the root portion of a plant.
Times and needs change. Urban Mexico views the tianguis as both a terrible bother (who would want one on their street, with its attendant noise and mess that lasts till the market day is done!) and a joy (but where else can we get produce this fresh!). Mexico Cooks! knows people who disdain shopping at a tianguis, and we know people who will not shop anywhere else. You already know which side of that fence I stand on. Come with me some week and see what you think.
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I'm with you on this. Wish we had a decent one in my area.
Posted by: Bruce Taylor | July 30, 2019 at 07:16 PM