Mexico Cooks!

Rosalba Morales Bartolo :: The Newest Maestra Cocinera Tradicional (Master Traditional Cook) in Michoacán

On March 8, 2021 (International Women's Day), several women in Michoacán received the designation "maestra cocinera tradicional" (master of traditional cooking), named as such by members of a committee well-familiar with each of their achievements in the cocina tradicional de Michoacán (Michoacán's traditional cooking).  The criteria for naming each of them as maestra cocinera were arduous and included participation in health and safety issues for diners, in community efforts, in the development and promotion of their own small restaurants, and in the promotion to the public--both in Mexico and internationally--of Michoacán's cuisines.  Seven new maestra cocineras were named: Calletana Nambo, Paula Campoverde, Concepción López, Blanca Delia Villagómez, Carmen Vidales, Norma Alicia Urbina, and Rosalba Morales Bartolo.  What happy news!  Each of these women deserves enormous accolades for her trajectory as one of the greatest cooks in the state.


All seven of the new maestras cocineras are featured in this photomontage provided last Monday by the government of Michoacán.


Rosalba Morales Bartolo with her brand new document naming her a maestra cocinera de Michoacán.

Rosalba, born and raised in San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro, Michoacán, grew up cooking alongside her mother in their indigenous Purépecha kitchen. Purépecha women are well known for their regional cuisine and extraordinary cooking abilities. Rosalba, who learned recipes and techniques from her grandmother and her mother, beginning in her childhood, has become one of the most exemplary cooks living in Mexico. In the photo, Rosalba oversees a restaurant dining room during a 2015 homage dinner she prepared for Diana Kennedy and many attendees. All photos copyright Mexico Cooks! unless otherwise noted.


San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro--Purenchécuaro translates to 'place of visitors'--nestles at the shore of the Lago de Pátzcuaro, in central Michoacán.  Eighty per cent of the town's approximately 2,000 inhabitants are indigenous Purépecha and a large number continue to speak their native language and teach it to their children.  The town continues its millennia-old social customs, some of which are incorporated now into Roman Catholic religious practices.  Mexico Cooks! took the photo from a scenic overlook in San Jerónimo; you can see the town, including the parish church tower, one tiny portion of Lake Pátzcuaro, and the tiers of Michoacán's mountains stretching out beyond the other shore. 


Lake Pátzcuaro fishermen, in an old postcard.  Today, the butterfly nets typical of the lake region have been largely replaced by other styles of hand-woven nets. Fishing continues to generate income as well as family sustenance for the towns around and close to the lake. Photo courtesy Mexico en Fotos.


Charales, freshly caught and cleaned.  Rosalba's father was a fisherman, working on Lake Pátzcuaro.  From him, she learned how to fish with a net. She learned how to prepare tiny charales (genus Chirostoma) her grandmother's old-fashioned way.  Once the fish are caught, she scales them (yes, these tiny fish, one by one), then eviscerates and washes them.  The heads are typically left on the charales.  Next, Rosalba spreads them out in the sun to dry on petates (mats made of palm fronds).  Once the fish are dried, she uses them for a variety of different dishes: fried for a filling in tacos or gorditas, simmered in a richly flavored broth, crushed into a salsa, or cooked in a guisado (a type of main dish that can also be used as a taco filling).


Petate (mats made of palm fronds), rolled up to be transported on a bicycle.  The petate, of pre-Hispanic origin, has multiple uses, including use as bedding, as a drying floor, and as a burial shroud. Image courtesy Pinterest.


At home in her kitchen, Rosalba shows off a plateful of her famous charales.  Restaurants and individuals in cities and towns all over Mexico order kilos of Rosy's charales to be shipped to them.  I confess that I always thought I hated them: strongly fishy, thickly breaded, greasy, and often overly picante (spicy), charales were for years the very last item on my list of things I wanted to eat.  One day a few years ago, Rosalba stood in front of me with a lightly fried, delicately golden brown charal held out between her fingers.  "You haven't tried mine, Cristina," she insisted, as she poked it into my mouth. There was no way to say no. What a surprise, it was absolutely delicious!  Now I crave them--but only Rosalba's.


Your family's food preparation probably begins with a trip to a well-stocked supermarket.  Once your ingredients are at home, you simply turn on a modern stove, either electric or gas. Rosalba's food preparation begins with a trip into the woods near her home, where she gathers branches to be used as fuel in her wood stove.  In addition, she grows much of her food in her large back garden: she tends and harvests tomatoes, chiles, squash, cilantro, avocado, and various fruits, among other delicious items that end up on her table.

Recently, Rosalba has been featured on several Mexican television programs, including this one called "Cocineros Mexicanos" (Mexican Cooks). Take a few minutes to watch how she cleans the charales, prepares a simple soup and salsa, and delights Nico (the program's host) with her simplicity, directness, honesty, and skill as a cocinera.

Rosy's route to her present renown hasn't been fast and it hasn't been easy.  Her life has had numerous ups and downs, its path twisting from her birthplace to a risky life as an undocumented person in the United States and back again.  In 1984, she graduated from primary school in San Jerónimo and left the next day to work as a cook in a private home in Guadalajara.  Her employer asked her to prepare food that was completely unfamiliar to her--fish cooked in white wine!  She remembers, "That day marked my life and was incredibly special, because it confirmed and reconfirmed the love, my deep feeling for cooking, as I experimented with different flavors."


In 2013, Rosalba won honorable mention in Raíces, Platillos que Cuentan Una Historia (Roots, Dishes Which Tell a Story) at the annual Encuentro de Cocineras Tradicionales de Michoacán (Meeting of Michoacán's Traditional Cooks).  Her first entry, in 2010, won her a first prize.

Twice Rosalba entered the United States as an undocumented worker, each time laboring in Mexican restaurants and sending money back to her native San Jerónimo Purenchécuaro.  Over the course of 25 years, she was able to construct her own home, where she lives today and has made her "Cocina Tradicional Rosy" well known to Mexicans and foreigners who are intent on dining well in Michoacán. 


Everybody's favorite chile in much of Michoacán: chile manzano, known in Michoacán as chile perón. Approximately 1.5"-2" in diameter, the perón is only chile in the world with black seeds.  It ranks between 30,000 and 50,000 'heat' units on the Scoville scale--about the same heat level as the chile de árbol.   "While I was living in the United States, I really missed caldo de trucha (trout soup) with chile perón," Rosalba reminisced.


Rosalba at Morelia en Boca 2015, with chef Aquiles Chávez of La Fishería Restaurant in Houston and Restaurante Sotero in Pachuca, Hidalgo, Mexico.  Morelia en Boca, an annual international high-end food and wine festival, featured a conference given by cocinera tradicional Rosalba together with chef Aquiles, demonstrating the preparation of Rosy's tiny charales and chef Aquiles' enormous pejelagarto (freshwater gar), native to the waters in chef Aquiles' home state, Tabasco. Their conference was so knowledgeable, so well-presented, and so funny that the huge and enthusiastic audience gave them a standing, cheering ovation at its end.


Chef Aquiles roasted the pejelagarto over a charcoal fire; this photo shows only the head and a small portion of the giant fish's body.  To roast the fish, chef Aquiles inserted a broomstick into the gaping tooth-filled mouth; the broomstick stopped at the fish's tail.  With the end of the broomstick that protruded from the mouth, chef Aquiles was able to turn the fish as it roasted.

Rosalba serves a taco de charales to chef Joaquín Bonilla, director of the Colegio Culinario de Morelia (Morelia's Culinary School).  Not only has Rosy prepared and served her extraordinary dishes all over Mexico, but she has traveled to a number of foreign destinations as well.  In 2016 alone, she thrilled Chicago, Illinois, for several weeks with her food. Later that year she participated in the Slow Food International Terra Madre event in Turin, Italy.  The current year has brought more much-deserved recognition throughout Mexico.


Rosalba's caldo de pata de pollo.  She prepared this rich chicken broth using just chicken feet as the base.  She added fresh vegetables just prior to serving.


Rosy's delicious guisado (a casserole or stewed dish) made with nopales (cactus paddles) and calabacitas (a squash similar to zucchini).


One of Rosalba's many talents is the ability to create utterly wonderful food from whatever is seasonably available.  Salsa de zarzamora (blackberry sauce) is a molcajete-ground spicy, sweet, and savory concoction of roasted chile perón, roasted ripe tomatoes, and native Michoacán blackberries.  A pinch of salt, a moment's grinding in the volcanic stone mortar, and it's ready for the table.  I would cheerfully have eaten it with a spoon, it was so heavenly.


Mexico Cooks! with Rosalba.  It's a privilege to share close friendship with her.

Please contact me if you'd like to visit Rosalba and enjoy a meal in her kitchen.  I'd be delighted to take you to meet my dear friend and talk with you about the food and its preparation.

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Mexico Cooks! Ignores Her Mother :: La Nueva Viga, the Second Largest Fish Market in the World

Mexico Cooks!' mother, circa 1980.  She tried her best to give me good advice, but I was often loathe to listen.

In November 1969, she suggested that the March on Washington, against the war in Vietnam, might be overcrowded.  I went anyway, and it was packed--but the experience was entirely worth being smooshed like a sardine in a can. 


Over the course of several years, she warned me about wanting to do battle with the New Year's Eve crowds in New York City's Times Square. Although the idea of squeezing in still piques my interest, I haven't been there yet.


My mother didn't know about Mexico City's wholesale fish market, La Nueva Viga, but had she known, she would have insisted that Viernes Santo (Good Friday) was not the day to go. This photo, taken on Good Friday 2017, barely does justice to the incredibly jammed aisles at La Nueva Viga, Latin America's largest fish market and the second largest fish market in the world.  Only the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, Japan, surpasses the volume of fish and seafood sold annually at La Nueva Viga.  The Tsukiji market averages 660,000 tons of fish and seafood in yearly sales; La Nueva Viga racks up around 550,000 tons. I think 549,000 tons must sell just on Good Friday, the last Lenten day of abstinence from meat.   See that short-ish person in red in the middle of it all?  That's me, squished.


The main entrance at La Nueva Viga is on Prolongación Eje 6 Sur, Colonia San José Aculco, Iztapalapa. The facility extends over nearly 23 acres (9.2 hectares), with 202 wholesale warehouses, 55 retail warehouses and 165 sellers in total.  On any given ordinary day, the market receives between 20,000 to 25,000 customers, mostly restaurant owners in Mexico City and the areas immediately around it.  On Good Friday, the clientele is mainly retail: home cooks looking for bargain fish and seafood for the Friday before Easter.  Both fish and good prices abound and it seems like half the city is there to buy--what a challenge!

On Good Friday 2017, friends Rondi Frankel, Magdalena Mosig, and I made the trek to La Viga.  Rondi drove and Magdalena acted as our guide; she at one time owned a restaurant and always bought fish and seafood at the market.  It was a great treat--not to mention an enormous help!--to have her show us the ropes.  From my street, south of Mexico City's Centro Histórico, the trip to La Viga took about 45 minutes. Because it was Good Friday, there was no traffic at all until we were close to the market--and then--yikes!  Bumper to bumper, several lanes of near-parking lot, hundreds of street vendors of everything from cold bottled water to kites, partial sleeves (wrist to above the elbow) to wear while driving so your arm doesn't get sunburned, thin, crisp, sweet fried morelianas (a kind of cookie), chewing gum, single cigarettes, bags of ready-to-eat mango with chile, limón, and salt, soft drinks, straw hats--anything at all that a person might want.  

The massive parking lots for La Viga were completely filled, so we drove a couple of blocks past the fish market and found a private lot. Once we were finally at the market, we sloshed through salty puddles, thousands of fish scales flying through the air, and the ear-jangling clang of huge knives hitting long fish-cleaning tables. Then up a few stairs and we were smack in the middle of the jostling, shoving crowds, pushing between rows of vendor stalls. 


Extra-jumbo shrimp!  That's Rondi's normal-size adult hand, for comparison.  Each shrimp measured approximately 8" long with the head on. The price?  $280 pesos (approximately $15 USD) per kilo--or $8.00 USD per pound.  If I had to guess, I'd say these huge shrimp are about 4 or 5 to the pound.


Beautiful, fresh, and enormous huachinango (red snapper) were everywhere.  These measured about two feet long--great big ones!--and looked fresh as the morning. According to the sign, they were caught in the waters off the state of Veracruz, on the southeastern Gulf coast of Mexico. The darker fish to the left are mojarra (sea bream, a salt-water fish related to the perch), delicious but very bony.


Another vendor displayed his mojarra with the gill flap raised.  It's easy to see by the condition of the gill that the fish is wonderfully fresh. This is exactly how a gill should look when you're buying: firm and pink.


Many vendors had huachinango for sale; these were offered at a booth farther down the aisle from the first photo of huachinango.  You can tell by the condition of the eye that this lovely fish was freshly caught.  The eye is shiny, not sunken into the head, and full of light.  My only hesitation in buying a fish was the length of time that I would be carrying it around in a bag prior to getting it home and into the refrigerator: too long in the very warm Mexico City springtime weather.


The smallest of these almeja gallo (rooster clams, at the rear) carried a sign reading, "For soup".  Their price was $20 pesos (about $1.40 USD) per kilo.  As the sizes increased, the prices increased.  The most expensive were the ones on the right, at 35 pesos the kilo.


Look at this incredible tower of live blue crabs, tied up with reeds!  Mexico Cooks! has always seen blue crabs in retail markets, always quite dead, so it was wonderful to discover that they actually arrive at La Viga still alive and kicking.

Proof positive!  Watch these babies wiggle!  The first thing that crossed my mind to prepare was a big platter of Chinese blue crabs in black bean sauce.


Fresh red octopus, piled high.  $245 pesos the kilo.


Spanish mackerel.


These are langostinos--where you live, they may be known as crayfish (although they are a completely different species). 


Oysters: piled-up huge costales (in this case, open-weave polypropylene sacks) of oysters.  Oysters are sold by the costal, or shucked in their liquid in plastic bags as long as your arm, and also in smaller containers for home consumption.  Some oysters come from the southeastern Mexican states of Tabasco and Campeche; others come from the Pacific Coast states of Baja California and Sinaloa.  Mexico is the fourth-largest producer of oysters in Latin America.  These particular oysters were for sale at $150 pesos the sack.  "Isn't that about $8.00 USD?" Why yes, it is.


Oysters, ready to eat.  Served with fresh Mexican-grown limones (Key limes), a dozen cost 100 pesos at this sit-down restaurant in La Viga.


What would Mexican seafood be without a bottled table salsa to season it--along with limón and maybe a wee pinch of salt?  What we see here is a small selection of the hundreds of salsas from which to choose.  


And truly, it wouldn't be right to serve seafood without a splash of home-made salsa bruja: witches' sauce!  I keep mine on my counter and top it off with more vinegar as needed.  The salsa is a mixture of vinegar with onion, garlic, carrot strips, bay leaf, rosemary, split-open chile (I use serrano), oregano, a couple of cloves, salt, and pepper. Stuff all the vegetables and herbs into an empty wine bottle, fill with vinegar, cork, and allow to sit for several days.  Voilà, salsa bruja!

The next time I go to La Nueva Viga, I will abide by what my mother surely would have advised: go on a day when half of Mexico City isn't there!  You come, too--we'll have a marvelous time!

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Meatless Mexican Meals for Lent :: Comida Sin Carne Durante la Cuaresma

Atole de grano, a Michoacán specialty made of tender corn and wild, licorice-scented anisillo, is a perfect cena (supper) for Lenten Fridays.


Tortitas de papa (potato croquettes, left) and frijoles negros (black beans, right) from the state of Chiapas in far-southern Mexico are ideal for a Lenten meal.

Roman Catholic Mexicans observe la Cuaresma (Lent), the 40-day (excluding Sundays) penitential season that precedes Easter, with special prayers, vigils, and with extraordinary meatless meals cooked only on Ash Wednesday and during Lent.  Many Mexican dishes--seafood, vegetable, and egg--are normally prepared without meat, but some other meatless dishes are particular to Lent. Known as comida cuaresmeña, many of these delicious Lenten foods are little-known outside Mexico and some other parts of Latin America.

Many observant Catholics believe that the personal reflection and meditation demanded by Lenten practices are more fruitful if the individual refrains from heavy food indulgence and makes a promise to abstain from other common habits such as eating candy, smoking cigarettes, and drinking alcohol.  

Lent began this year on February 18, Ash Wednesday.  Shortly before, certain food specialties began to appear in local markets. Vendors are currently offering very large dried shrimp for caldos (broths) and tortitas (croquettes), perfect heads of cauliflower for tortitas de coliflor (cauliflower croquettes), seasonal romeritos, and thick, dried slices of bolillo (small loaves of white bread) for capirotada (a kind of bread pudding). 

This common Lenten preparation is romeritos en mole.  Romeritos, a slightly acidic green vegetable, is in season at this time of year.  Although it looks a little like rosemary, it has the texture of a succulent and its taste is relatively sour, more like verdolagas (purslane).


Beautiful fresh romeritos at a market in Morelia, Michoacán.

You'll usually see tortitas de camarón (dried shrimp croquettes) paired for a Friday comida (midday meal) with romeritos en mole, although they are sometimes bathed in a caldillo de jitomate (tomato broth) and served with grilled and sliced nopalitos (cactus paddles).


During Lent, the price of fish and seafood in Mexico goes through the roof due to the huge seasonal demand for meatless meals.  These beautiful huachinango (red snapper) come from Mexico's Pacific coast.


Caldo de habas secas (dry fava bean soup), delicious and thick even though meatless, warms you up from the inside as if your days are still frigid at the beginning of Lent.  Easter Sunday marks the end of Lent; this year, Easter falls on April 4.

Chef Martín Rafael Mendizabal of La Trucha Alegre in Zitacuaro, Michoacán, prepared trucha deshuesada con agridulce de guayaba (boned trout with guava sweet and sour sauce) for the V Encuentro de Cocina Tradicional de Michoacán held in Morelia in December 2008.  The dish would be ideal for an elegant Lenten dinner.

Capirotada (kah-pee-roh-TAH-dah, Lenten bread pudding) is almost unknown outside Mexico.  Simple to prepare and absolutely delicious, it's hard to eat it sparingly if you're trying to keep a Lenten abstinence!  This photo shows capirotada as served by Carmen Titita Ramírez Degollado at the El Bajío restaurants in Mexico City.

Every family makes a slightly different version of capirotada: a pinch more of this, leave out that, add such-and-such.  Mexico Cooks! prefers to leave out the apricots and add dried pineapple.  Make it once and then tweak the recipe to your preference--but please do stick with traditional ingredients.


At left, Mexican canela (long cinnamon sticks).  At right, dark raisins.  You'll need both of these for preparing capirotada.


Two different sizes of cones of piloncillo (raw brown sugar).  For making capirotada, you'll want the bigger cones.


Pan bolillo (dense white bread), Tangancícuaro, Michoacán.  Photo courtesy Silvia Sánchez Villegas.

CAPIROTADA (Mexican Bread Pudding for Lent)
Ingredients
*4 fresh bollilos, in 1" thick slices--after you slice the bread, dry it in a slow oven
5 stale tortillas
150 grams pecans
50 grams prunes
100 grams raisins
200 grams peanuts
100 grams dried apricots
1 large apple, peeled and sliced thin
100 grams grated Cotija cheese
Peel of one orange, two uses
*3 cones of piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar)
Four 3" pieces of Mexican stick cinnamon
2 cloves
Butter
Salt

*If you don't have bolillo, substitute slices of very dense French bread.  If you don't have piloncillo, substitute 1/2 cup tightly packed brown sugar.

A large metal or clay baking dish.

Preparation
Preheat the oven to 300°F.

Spread the dried bolillo slices with butter.  Slightly overlap the tortillas in the bottom and along the sides of the baking dish to make a base for the capirotada.  Prepare a thin syrup by boiling the piloncillo in 2 1/2 cups of water with a few shreds of cinnamon sticks, 2/3 of the orange peel, the cloves, and a pinch of salt. 

Place the layers of bread rounds in the baking dish so as to allow for their expansion as the capirotada cooks.  Lay down a layer of bread, then a layer of nuts, prunes, raisins, peanuts and apricots.  Continue until all the bread is layered with the rest.  For the final layer, sprinkle the capirotada with the grated Cotija cheese and the remaining third of the orange peel (grated).  Add the syrup, moistening all the layers  little by little.  Reserve a portion of the syrup to add to the capirotada in case it becomes dry during baking.

Bake uncovered until the capirotada is golden brown and the syrup is absorbed.  The bread will expand as it absorbs the syrup.  Remember to add the rest of the syrup if the top of the capirotada looks dry, and reserve plenty of syrup to pour over each serving.

Cool the capirotada to room temperature.  Do not cover until it is cool; even after it is cooled, leave the top ajar.


Try very hard not to eat the entire pan of capirotada at one sitting!  Photo courtesy Heraldo México. 

A positive thought for this Lenten season: give up discouragement, be an optimist.

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What Do YOU Think of As Authentic Mexican Food? Here's What I Think.

I wrote and first published this article in 2010, in response to inquiries from readers who were confused about other authors' articles about "What is authentic Mexican food?"  The subject comes up again and again, most recently in comments and queries from readers and food professionals about Mexican and other cuisines. Less than a month ago, the question required the magazine Food & Wine to apologize to the two chefs who created a traditional Mexican recipe for its pages--and the food stylists completely blew the dish and its components into something unrecognizably bad.  I still stand behind what I wrote nearly 11 years ago--it's as applicable today as it was then.

"Real" Mexican chile relleno (stuffed, battered, and fried chile poblano), caldillo de jitomate (thin tomato broth), and frijoles negros de la olla (freshly cooked black beans).  Notice that the chile is not suffocated with globs of melted cheese: the cheese is inside the chile, as its filling.  

More and more people who want to experience "real" Mexican food are asking about the availability of authentic Mexican meals outside Mexico. Bloggers and posters on food-oriented websites have vociferously definite opinions on what constitutes authenticity. Writers' claims range from the uninformed (the fajitas at such-and-such a restaurant are totally authentic, just like in Mexico) to the ridiculous (Mexican cooks in Mexico can't get good ingredients, so Mexican meals prepared in the United States are superior to those in Mexico).

Much of what I read about authentic Mexican cooking reminds me of that old story of the blind men and the elephant. "Oh," says the first blind man, running his hands up and down the elephant's leg, "an elephant is exactly like a tree."  "Aha," says the second, stroking the elephant's trunk, "the elephant is precisely like a hose."  And so forth. I contend that if you haven't experienced what most writers persist in calling "authentic Mexican", then there's no way to compare any restaurant in the United States with anything that is prepared or served in Mexico. You're simply spinning your wheels.

It's my considered opinion that there is no such thing as one definition of authentic Mexican. Wait, before you start hopping up and down to refute that, consider that in my opinion, "authentic" is generally what you were raised to appreciate. Your mother's pot roast is authentic, but so is my mother's. Your aunt's tuna salad is the real deal, but so is my aunt's, and they're not the least bit similar.  And Señora Martínez in Mexico makes yet another version of tuna salad, very different from any I've eaten in the USA.


Carne de puerco en salsa verde (pork meat in green sauce), a traditional recipe as served at the restaurant Fonda Margarita in Mexico City.


Carne de puerco en salsa verde from the Mexico Cooks! home kitchen.  The preparation looks similar to that at Fonda Margarita, but I tweak a thing or two that make the recipe my personal tradition, different from the restaurant's.

As you can see, the descriptor I use for many dishes is 'traditional'. We can even argue about that adjective, but it serves to describe the traditional dish of--oh, say carne de puerco en chile verde--as served in the northern part of Mexico, in Mexico City, in the Central Highlands, or in the Yucatán. There may be big variations among the preparations of this dish, but each preparation is traditional and each is considered authentic in its region.

I think that in order to understand the cuisines of Mexico, we have to give up arguing about authenticity and concentrate on the reality of certain dishes.


A nearly 200-year-old tradition in Mexico that shows up every September on Mexico's home and restaurant tables: chiles en nogada (stuffed chiles poblano in a creamy sauce made with fresh (i.e., recently harvested) walnuts.  It's the Mexican flag on your plate: green chile poblano, creamy white walnut sauce, and red pomegranate arils.  But hoo boy--there are arguments to the death about the "authentic" way to prepare these chiles: battered or not battered?  Put up your dukes!  (I fall on the not-battered side, in case you wondered.  God help me.)

Traditional Mexican cooking is not a hit-or-miss let's-make-something-for-dinner proposition based on "let's see what we have in the despensa (pantry)." Traditional Mexican cooking is as complicated and precise as traditional French cooking, with just as many hidebound conventions as French cuisine imposes. You can't just throw some chiles and a glob of chocolate into a sauce and call it mole. You can't simply decide to call something "authentic" Mexican x, y, or z when it's not. There are specific recipes to follow, specific flavors and textures to expect, and specific results to attain. Yes, some liberties are taken, particularly in Mexico's new alta cocina mexicana (Mexican haute cuisine) and fusion restaurants, but even those liberties are based, we hope, on specific traditional recipes.  As Alicia Gironella d'Angeli (a true grande dame of Mexico's kitchen) often said to me, "Cristina, you cannot de-construct a dish until you have learned to construct it."  Amen.

In recent readings of food-oriented websites, I've noticed questions about what ingredients are available in Mexico. The posts have gone on to ask whether or not those ingredients are up to snuff when compared to what's available in what the writer believes to be more sophisticated food sources such as the United States.

Deep red, vine-ripened plum tomatoes, available all year long in central Mexico. The sign reads, "Don't think about it much--take home a little kilo!"  At twelve pesos the kilo, these Mexico-grown tomatoes, brought to market red-ripe, cost approximately 75 cents USD for 2.2 pounds.

Surprise, surprise: most readily available fresh foods in Mexico's markets are even better than similar ingredients you find outside Mexico. Foreign chefs who tour with me to visit Mexico's stunning produce, fish, and meat markets are inevitably astonished to see that what is grown for the ordinary home-cook end user in Mexico is fresher, riper, more flavorful, more attractive, and much less costly than similar ingredients available in the United States.

Chicken, ready for the pot.  The chickens raised in Mexico for our food are generally fed ground marigold petals mixed into their feed--that's why the flesh is so pink, the skin so yellow, and why the egg yolks are like big orange suns.

It's the same with most meats: pork and chicken are head and shoulders above what you find in North of the Border supermarkets. Fish and seafood are direct-from-the-sea fresh and distributed by air within just an hour or two from any of Mexico's long coastlines.


Look at the quality of Mexico's fresh, locally grown, seasonal strawberries--and the season starts right now, in February.  Deep red to its center, a strawberry like this is hard to find in other countries.

Nevertheless, Mexican restaurants in the United States make do with the less-than-superior ingredients found outside Mexico. In fact, some downright delicious traditional Mexican meals can be had in some north of the border Mexican restaurants. Those restaurants are hard to find, though, because in the States, most of what has come to be known as Mexican cooking is actually Tex-Mex or Cal-Mex cooking. There's nothing wrong with Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex cooking, nothing at all. It's just not traditional Mexican cooking.  Tex-Mex is great food from a particular region of the United States. Some of it is adapted from Mexican cooking and some is the invention of early Texas settlers. Some innovations are adapted from both of those points of origin.  Fajitas, ubiquitous on Mexican restaurant menus all over the United States, are a typical Tex-Mex invention.  Now available in some of Mexico's restaurants, fajitas are offered to the tourist trade as prototypically authentic. 


Pozole blanco (white pozole) with delicious clear broth that starts with a a long-simmered whole pig's head, nixtamalized native white cacahuatzintle corn, and lots of tender, flavorful pork meat.  Add to the pot some herbs and spices.  Then add hunks of avocado at the table--along with a squeeze or two of limón criollo (you know it as Key lime), some crushed, dried Mexican oregano, crushed, dried chile de árbol, a raw egg fresh from the shell (it cooks in the hot broth), and, if you like, a tablespoon or two of mezcal.  Traditional and heavenly!

You need to know that the best of Mexico's cuisines is not found in restaurants. It comes straight from somebody's mama's kitchen. Clearly not all Mexicans are good cooks, just as not all Chinese are good cooks, not all Italians are good cooks, and so forth. But the most traditional, the most (if you will) authentic Mexican meals are home prepared.


Diana Kennedy, UNAM 2011.  Mrs. Kennedy was at the Mexican National Autonomous University to present her book, Oaxaca Al Gusto.

That reality is what made Diana Kennedy who she is today: she took the time to travel Mexico, searching for the best of the best of the traditional preparations. For the most part, she didn't find them in fancy restaurants, homey comedores (small commercial dining rooms) or fondas (tiny working-class restaurants). She found them as she stood facing the stove in a home kitchen, watching doña Fulana prepare desayuno (breakfast), comida (the midday main meal of the day), or cena (supper) for her family.  Ms. Kennedy, an English woman, took the time to educate her palate, understand the ingredients, taste what was offered to her, and learn, learn, learn from home cooks before she started putting traditional recipes, techniques, and stories on paper. If we take the time to prepare recipes from any of Ms. Kennedy's many cookbooks, we too can take advantage of her wealth of experience and can come to understand what traditional Mexican cooking can be.  Her books will bring Mexico's kitchens to you when you are not able to go to Mexico.  But please: do follow the recipes, or your dish will come out different from what it is supposed to be.


My dear friend Abigail Mendoza, cocinera tradicional (traditional home cook) from Teotitlán del Valle, Oaxaca, prepares a vat of mole negro (black mole, the king of moles) for a large party she invited me to attend at her home.

In order to understand the traditional cuisines of Mexico, we need to experience their riches. Until that time, we can argue till the cows come home and you'll still be just another blind guy patting the beast's side and exclaiming how the elephant is mighty like a wall.

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The Feast of the Three Kings on January 6 :: Rosca and Reyes and the Journey to La Candelaria

A gently non-traditional and just-the-right-size rosca de reyes (Three Kings Bread), a gift to us from chef Lucero Soto and the staff at Lu: Cocina michoacana. Tradición e innovación here in Morelia.  The delicately flavored, rich bread was a welcome treat on the night of January 6!  Usually it's served with Mexican-style hot chocolate.

The Día de los Reyes Magos (the Feast of the Three Kings) falls on January 6 each year.  You might know the Christian feast day as Epiphany or as Little Christmas.  The festivities celebrate the arrival of the Three Kings at Bethlehem to visit the newborn Baby Jesus.  In some cultures, children receive gifts not on Christmas, but on the Feast of the Three Kings--and the Kings are the gift-givers, commemorating the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh that they presented to the Baby Jesus. Many, many children in Mexico still receive special gifts of toys from the Reyes (Kings) on January 6

Typically, Mexican families celebrate the festival with a rosca de reyes (Three Kings' Bread).  The size of the family's rosca varies according to the size of the family, but everybody gets a slice, from the littlest toddler to great-grandpa.  Accompanied by a cup of chocolate caliente (hot chocolate) or an atole (a corn masa (dough) thickened, hot and often fruit-flavored drink), it's a great winter treat. 

A friend who lives and works in the northern state of Tamaulipas recently wrote a bit about the significance of the rosca.  He wrote, "The rosca de reyes represents a crown; the colorful fruits simulate the jewels which covered the crowns of the Holy Kings.  The Kings themselves signify peace, love, and happiness.  The Niño Dios hidden in the rosca reminds us of the moment when Saint Joseph and the Virgin Mary hid the Baby Jesus in order to save him from King Herod, who wanted to kill him.  The three gifts that the Kings gave to the Niño Dios represent the Kings (gold), God (frankincense), and man (myrrh).

"In Mexico, we consider that an oval or ring shape represents the movement of the sun and that the Niño Dios represents the Child Jesus in his apparition as the Sun God.  Others mention that the circular or oval form of the Rosca de Reyes, which has no beginning and no end, is a representation of heaven--which of course is the home of the Niño Dios."

On January 6, 2009, Paty Mora de Vallejo, wife of Morelia's then-mayor Fausto Vallejo, served a slice of the enormous rosca de reyes monumental moreliana, prepared jointly by bakeries from everywhere in the city.

In many places in Mexico (including Morelia, Michoacán, where I live), bakers prepare an annual monumental rosca for the whole city to share.  The rosca pictured above contains nearly 3000 pounds of flour, 1500 pounds of margerine, 10,500 eggs, 150 liters of milk, 35 pounds of yeast, 35 pounds of salt, 225 pounds of butter, 2000 pounds of dried fruits, and 90 pounds of orange peel.  The completed cake, if stretched out straight, measures two kilometers in length!  Baked in sections, the gigantic rosca is the collaborative effort of ten bakeries in the city.  The city government as well as grocery wholesalers join together to see to it that the tradition of the rosca continues to be a vibrant custom.  Unfortunately, this traditional annual event was canceled this year due to the pandemic.

The plastic niño (baby) baked into our rosca measured less than 2" tall.  The figures used to be made of porcelain, but now they are generally made of plastic.  See the tooth mark on the head?  Mexico Cooks! is the culprit.  Every rosca de reyes baked in Mexico contains at least one niño; larger roscas can hold two, three, or more.  Morelia's giant rosca normally contains 10,000 of these tiny figures.

Tradition demands that the person who finds the niño in his or her slice of rosca is required to give a party on February 2, el Día de La Candelaria (Candlemas Day).  The party for La Candelaria calls for tamales, more tamales, and their traditional companion, a rich atole flavored with vanilla, cinnamon, or chocolate.  Several years ago, an old friend, in the throes of a family economic emergency, was a guest at his relatives' Three Kings party.  He bit into the niño buried in his slice of rosca.  Embarrassed that he couldn't shoulder the expense of the following month's Candelaria party, he gulped--literally--and swallowed the niño.

El Día de La Candelaria celebrates the presentation of Jesus in the Jewish temple, forty days after his birth.  The traditions of La Candelaria encompass religious rituals of ancient Jews, of pre-hispanic rites indigenous to Mexico, of the Christian evangelization brought to Mexico by the Spanish, and of modern-day Catholicism. 

In Mexico, you'll find a Niño Dios of any size for your home nacimiento (Nativity scene).  Traditionally, the Niño Dios is passed down, along with his wardrobe of special clothing, from generation to generation in a single family.

The presentation of the child Jesus to the church is enormously important in Mexican Catholic life. February 2 marks the official end of the Christmas season, the day to put away the last of the holiday decorations.  On February 2, the figure of Jesus is gently lifted from the home nacimiento (manger scene, or creche), dressed in new clothing, carried to the church, where he receives blessings and prayers.  He  is then carried home and rocked to sleep with tender lullabies, and carefully put away until the following year. 

Each family dresses its Niño Dios according to its personal beliefs and traditions.  Some figures are dressed in clothing representing a Catholic saint particularly venerated in a family; others are dressed in the clothing typically worn by the patron saints of different Mexican states.  Some favorites are the Santo Niño de Atocha, venerated especially in Zacatecas; the Niño de Salud (Michoacán), the Santo Niño Doctor (Puebla), and, in Xochimilco (suburban Mexico City), the Niñopa (alternately spelled Niñopan or Niño-Pa).

This Xochimilco arch and the highly decorated street welcome the much-loved Niñopan figure.

The veneration of Xochimilco's beloved Niñopan follows centuries-old traditions.  The figure has a different mayordomo every year; the mayordomo is the person in whose house the baby sleeps every night.  Although the Niñopan (his name is a contraction of the words Niño Padre or Niño Patrón) travels from house to house, visiting his chosen hosts, he always returns to the mayordomo's house to spend the night.  One resident put it this way: "When the day is beautiful and it's really hot, we take him out on the canals.  In his special chalupita (little boat), he floats around all the chinampas (floating islands), wearing his little straw hat so that the heat won't bother him.  Then we take him back to his mayordomo, who dresses our Niñopan in his little pajamas, sings him a lullaby, and puts him to sleep, saying, 'Get in your little bed, it's sleepy time!"  Even though the Niñopan is always put properly to bed, folks in Xochimilco believe that he sneaks out of bed to play with his toys in the wee hours of the night.  

Trajineras (decorated boats) ready to receive tourists line the canals in Xochimilco.

Although he is venerated in many Xochimilco houses during the course of every year, the Niñopan's major feast day is January 6.  The annual celebration takes place in Xochimilco's church of St. Bernard of Sienna.  On the feast of the Candelaria, fireworks, music, and dancers accompany the Niñopan as he processes through the streets of Xochimilco on his way to his presentation in the church.

Gloria in Xochimilco with Niñopa, April 2008.  Photo courtesy Colibrí.

Blue papel picado (cut paper decoration) floating in the deep-blue Xochimilco sky wishes the Niñopan welcome and wishes all of us Feliz Navidad.

El Día de La Candelaria means a joyful party with lots of tamales, coupled with devotion to the Niño Dios.  For more about a tamalada (tamales-making party), look at this 2007 Mexico Cooks! article.

From the rosca de reyes on January 6 to the tamales on February 2, the old traditions continue in Mexico's 21st Century.

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Get Out Your New Underwear and Your Old Suitcase: Mexico's New Year's Rituals Explained

In Mexico and other Latin American countries, women wear yellow underwear on New Year's Eve to bring good luck and wealth in the year to come.  Red underwear (this vendor has a lot on her tables for sale) indicates a New Year's wish for an exciting love interest!  Just remember that the underwear has to be NEW.

Superstition or not, many people here in Mexico have the custom of ritos del Año Nuevo (New Year's rituals).  Some rituals include foods, others prescribe certain clothing, and still others warrant attention for religious interest.

As the clock strikes midnight, it's common to eat twelve grapes--one at each ding, one at each dong of the bell.  While eating the grapes, you make a personal wish for each grape you consume, welcoming the new year that's beginning.  Mexico Cooks! finds that it's helpful to write down the twelve wishes so as not to forget one or choke in the rush to swallow the grapes before the clock finishes striking the New Year's earliest hour!  Even the most elegant restaurants promise that along with your late-night New Year's eve meal, they will provide the grapes and champagne.

Eating a tablespoonful of cooked lentils on New Year's Eve is said to bring prosperity and fortune.  You can also give raw lentils--just a handful, with the same wish for abundance, to family and friends.


Mexico Cooks! has often received a New Year's detallito (a little gift) of a tiny bottle like this, filled with layers of different kinds of seeds and grains.  This gift represents the giver's wish for your New Year: abundance.


Sweep all the rooms of your house, your front steps, and the street in front of your house to remove all traces of the old year.  Some people put 12 golden coins outside--to be swept into the house after the house is swept clean.  The coins are to invite money and other abundance to come into the home.  Photo courtesy Jeff Trotter.


Give someone a little woolly toy sheep as a New Year's gift--it too is a symbol of abundance!  Why?  In Mexico, a slang word for "money" is lana--wool, in English.  And what's a sheep covered with?  Lana--for an abundance of money in the New Year.  Photo courtesy Etsy.

On a small piece of paper, write down the undesirable habits and customs you'd like to let go of in the New Year that's just starting.  Burn the paper, then follow through with the changes!

Choose three stones that symbolize health, love, and money.  Put them in a place where you will see them every day.

Light candles: blue for peace, yellow for abundance, red for love, green for health, white for spirituality, and orange for intelligence.

Spill clean water on the sidewalk in front of your house as the clock rings in the New Year.  Your house will be purified and all tears will be washed away.

To have money for your needs all year, have some bills in your hand or in your pocket to welcome the arrival of the New Year.  Some people fold up the money and put it in their shoes!

Take your suitcase for a walk.  Legend is that the farther you walk with your suitcase, the farther you'll travel.  Several New Year's Eves ago, Mexico Cooks! and a few friends celebrated by walking our suitcases around the block.  We all traveled far and wide during the new year that followed.

Mexico Cooks! wishes all of you a muy próspero Año Nuevo--and especially wishes that your red underwear brings you (or keeps you) the love of family, friends, and that special someone.

We'll see you right here in 2021!  May your New Year be infinitely better than old 2020!

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Wait, What? You Said Piñatas at Christmas? :: Espérate, Qué Dices? Piñatas en Navidad?

Huge piñatas ready for sale at a Mexico City market.

Among clean ollas de barro (clay pots), plastic receptacles filled with engrudo (flour/water paste), and colorful, neatly stacked rounds of papel de china (tissue paper), Sra. María Dolores Hernández (affectionately known as Doña Lolita) sits on an upturned bucket.  Her birthday is on December 24, and she still lights up--just like a Christmas tree--when she talks about her business and her life.

The last point of the star-shaped piñata is in Doña Lolita's hands, nearly ready to be glued into place. 

"When I was a young woman, raising my family together with my husband, it was hard for us to make a good living here in Morelia.  We had eight children (one has died, but six girls and a boy survive) and we struggled to make ends meet.  My husband was a master mason, but I wanted to help out with the finances.  I knew a woman who made piñatas, and I thought, 'I can do that.'  So I started trying my hand, over 60 years ago."

Doña Lolita adds another layer of newspaper to this piñata in progress.  "You can't put too much newspaper on the pot, because it will take too long to break," she explained.  "And you can't put too little on it, either, because then the first child to hit it will break it.  That's no good, either.  You just have to know how much to use."  Click on the photo to enlarge it and get a good look at the clay pot inside the paper maché.

"The woman who made piñatas wouldn't give away her secrets, so I had to figure everything out for myself.  You should have seen me the first time I tried to make a bird's beak for a parrot-shaped piñata!  A man I knew told me to make it out of chapopote (a kind of tar), so I did.  It hardened all right, but later in the day the weather warmed up and that beak dripped down to here!  What a mess!  I finally figured out how to make the shape out of paper, but I just about broke my head thinking about it!"

The family has cut rounds of papel de china (tissue paper) that wait to be glued onto a piñata.  The black plastic bag holds strips of newspaper used for covering the clay pot to create the shape of the piñata. 

Doña Lolita told me about the different grades of paper used to create different styles of decoration on the piñata, and she explained different kinds of paper-cutting techniques; she's absolutely the expert.  Here, her son-in-law Fernando cuts tissue paper for fringe.  His hands are so fast with the scissors it made my head spin; he can even cut without looking.

"In those days, the kind of clay pots we use for piñatas cost four and a half pesos for a gross--yes, for 144. In the old days, I usually sold about 7,000 piñatas every December, so you can imagine the investment I made just in clay pots.  In the 1960s, I could sell a large piñata for seven pesos.  Now--well, now the pots are much more expensive, so naturally the piñatas cost more, too.  The large ones cost 45 pesos.  This year, I'll sell about 1,000 piñatas just to break during the posadas. " 

Piñatas in various stages of completion hang from every beam in Doña Lolita's tiny workshop.

"When my daughter Mercedes was about eight years old, she wanted to learn to make piñatas.  She'd been watching me do it since she was born.  So I taught her, and I've taught the whole family. Piñatería (making piñatas) is what's kept us going."  Doña Lolita smiled hugely.  "My children have always been extremely hard workers.  There was a girl for each part of making the piñatas.  Every year, we started making piñatas in August and finished at the beginning of January.

This gigantic piñata, still unfinished, measures almost six feet in diameter from point to point. 

"One time, we had so many piñatas to finish that I didn't think we could do it.  So I thought, 'if we work all night long, we can finish them by tomorrow morning.'  Only I couldn't figure out how to keep the children awake to work all night."  She laughed.  "I went to the drugstore and bought pills to stay awake.  I knew I could keep myself awake, but I gave one pill to each of the children.  And in just a little while, I was working and they were sleeping, their heads fell right down into their work!  What!  Those pills didn't work at all!  The next day I went back to the drugstore and asked the pharmacist about it.  'Oh no!  I thought you asked me for pills to make them sleep!' he said."  Doña Lolita laughed again.  "We finished all the piñatas in spite of those pills, but you had better believe me, I never tried anything that foolish again."

Doña Lolita builds piñatas with her son-in-law, Fernando Cedeño Herrera (left), her daughter Mercedes Ayala Hernández, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.  A close friend, Oswaldo Gutiérrez López (background), works with the family.  Her grandson Enrique, 19, says he intends to keep the family business going.

Oswaldo Gutiérrez works on this piñata in the doorway of the tiny taller.  Doña Lolita has taught many people the art of creating traditional piñatas, but her family and her loyal customers say she's the best piñatera (piñata maker) in Morelia.

"People come from everywhere to buy my piñatas.  I don't have to take them out to sell; I only sell them here in the taller.  Because they're so beautiful and well-made, all the best people in Morelia--and lots of people from other places--come to seek me out and order piñatas for their parties.  I've taught my family that our work is our pride and our heritage, and my children have all taught their children the same.  That is our legacy, our family tradition."

Fill the piñata with candy like these bags of traditional colación (hard candies especially for Christmas).


A group of Doña Lolita's piñatas, hung up for sale outside her workshop.

But why piñatas, and why in December?  During the early days of the Spanish conquest, the piñata was used as a catechetical tool.  The body of the piñata represented Satan; each of the seven points symbolized the seven capital sins (pride, lust, gluttony, rage, greed, laziness, and envy).  Breaking the piñata equated with the triumph of good over evil, overpowering Satan, overcoming sin, and enjoying the delights of God's creation as they pour out of the piñata.  Doña Lolita's most sought-after piñatas continue the traditional style, but she also creates piñatas shaped like roosters, peacocks, half-watermelons, deer, half moons, and once, an enormous octopus!


What the piñata might contain at Christmas--but fill it with whatever you think the kids will like best!  Candies, small seasonal jícamas, sugar cane, mandarinas (tangerines) and cacahuates (fresh roasted in the shell peanuts, in season now) are all popular.  Photo courtesy Google Images.

Now, for the nine nights from December 16 through December 24, Mexico celebrates las posadas.  Each evening, a re-enactment of the Christmas story brings children dressed as la Virgencita María (ready to give birth to her baby) and her husband Sr. San José (and a street filled with angels, shepherds, and other costumed children) along the road to Bethlehem, searching for a place to stay.  There is no place: Bethlehem's posadas (inns) are filled.  Where will the baby be born!  For the re-enactment, people wait behind closed doors at certain neighborhood houses.  The santos peregrinos (holy pilgrims) knock, first at one door, then another.  At each house, they sing a song, begging lodging for the night.  At each house, the neighbors inside turn them away in song: 'No room here!  Go away!  Bother someone else!'  Watch a lovely video filmed in Michoacán, a traditional small-town posada:   

I hope that one day you are able to participate in this beautiful tradition.

In Mexico, freshly toasted cacahuates (peanuts) also stuff the piñata.  The wooden box holding the peanuts is actually a measure, as is the oval metal box.


Very small jícamas are also part of the Mexican Christmas piñata bounty.

After several houses turn away la Virgen, San José, and their retinue, they finally receive welcome at the last, previously designated house.  After the pilgrims sing their plea for a place to stay, the guests assembled inside sing their welcome,  "Entren santos peregrinos..." (Come in, holy pilgrims...).  The doors are flung open, everyone piles into the house, and a huge party starts.  Traditional foods like ponche navideño (a hot fruit punch), buñuelos (a thin fried wheat dough covered with either sugar or syrup), and tamales (hundreds of tamales!) pour out of the kitchen as revelers sing villancicos (Mexican Christmas carols) and celebrate the coming of the Niño Dios (the Child Jesus).  Finally, all the children line up to put on a blindfold and take swings at a piñata stuffed with candy, seasonal fruits, and peanuts.

This five-pound bag of hard candies shows a blindfolded (but peeking) boy ready to break open the filled piñata.  Luis Gómez, a merchant at Local 290, Mercado Independencia in Morelia, offers these and other bags of piñata candies.

Mandarinas (tangerines) are in season at Christmastime and add to the goodies in many Mexican piñatas.


Caña de azúcar, sin pelar (unpeeled sugar cane) is yet another seasonal sweet that's put into many of Mexico's Christmastime piñatas.  Photo courtesy Science Image.

The piñata, stuffed with all it will hold, hangs from a rope during the posada party.  A parent or neighbor swings it back and forth, up and down, as each child takes a turn at breaking it open with a big stick.  Watch these adorable kids whack away at one:

The piñata, lovely though it may be, is purely temporary.  Nevertheless, happy memories of childhood posadas with family and friends last a lifetime.  

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Caña Fest Morelia, in honor of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe :: Morenita, Protect Us Now More Than Ever

Everywhere in Mexico, so many events and traditions have been cancelled, postponed, or otherwise affected by the on-going worldwide pandemia.  This article, originally published in 2010, is a look back on a Morelia, Michoacán, favorite: the annual month-long festival Caña Fest (the sugar cane festival), that normally begins in mid-November and continues for a month, through December 12, the feast day of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe.  Here's how Morelia's festival looked and sounded in 2018:

Originally, the pandemia cancelled the fiesta for 2020.  Recently, the government announced that due to public outcry, the festival would indeed take place, but not all in one spot as it is usually scheduled.  Some stands will set up in one colonia (neighborhood), others will set up in another colonia, and still others will be relegated to other locations in the city.  Will it be the same?  No, of course not.  Nevertheless, if only ONE case of COVID-19 is prevented, it's worth the change.  Let's hope we can be back, business as usual, in 2021.  Video courtesy Youtube. 

Enjoy these photos and reflections on past Caña Fests!

Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe (Our Lady of Guadalupe, lovingly nicknamed La Morenita [the little brown woman]), caña (sugar cane), and fresh-roasted cacahuates (peanuts) are an annual combination in Morelia during the weeks from November 19 until the last minutes of the night of December 12, Our Lady of Guadalupe's feast day.  The Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe is one of the most important religious festivals in all of Mexico, celebrated in every home and every town, in every church and every heart.

Hundreds of tons of freshly in-season caña (sugar cane) are hand-peeled with flashing steel machetes for your eating pleasure. Every year, more than 400 vendors set up food stands, trinket stands, and booths filled with religious articles in Morelia's Jardín Morelos, on Avenida Tata Vasco, and along the Calzada Fray Antonio de San Miguel leading to the Santuario de Guadalupe.  Brightly colored children's rides and games illuminate the evening hours in the park; the fragrance of grilling meat competes with the deep smell of roasting peanuts, and the whir of the cotton candy machine pairs up with the rhythmic whack-whack-whack of the caña-cutting knife.

Long sugar canes are fibrous and tough, but hand-chopped with a huge knife into bite-size pieces, caña is easy to chew.  Munch a piece until the sweet juice is gone, then discard the mouthful of straw-like fibers that are left.  Munch another, it's addictive.

A bed of freshly sliced oranges and a pile of sliced caña con chamoy make a mouth-puckering, refreshing snack.  Chamoy is a sour fruit brine that's popular for its flavor combination of vinegar, salt, and sweet fruit.

This roaster toasts about seven kilos (15 pounds) of raw cacahuates (peanuts) at a time.  The family that operates this stand had the roaster made from an oil drum, along with a metal box on legs to hold the fuel.  One of the family members turns the handle (to the left in the photo) to make sure the peanuts toast evenly, without burning. 

The heat for the peanut roaster comes from carbón, Mexico's real-wood charcoal--they're not "briquets" from commercial bags!

Raw habas (fava beans) are toasted by the same method.  Roasted habas and cacahuates are sold unsalted.

Here's a juice extractor to make you a glass of super-fresh and sweetly delicious jugo de caña (sugar cane juice).  One operator inserts the long sugar canes through the back of the dark metal rollers while another turns the handle on the wheel at the left of the photo.

The juice pours onto the slanted tray, down the spout, and into your waiting plastic cup.  A 12-ounce cup of hand-squeezed juice costs ten pesos--less than one United States dollar.  

Do you need some real food?  Try made-to-order tacos at one of the stands in Plaza Morelos.  The bottom pair are bistec (chopped grilled beef), the top two are carne de cerdo al pastor (marinated pork cooked on a vertical spit).  A squeeze of lime, a pinch of salt, and a sprinkle of minced cilantro and onion (and of course a spoonful of the hottest salsa you can tolerate) make these tacos delicious.

Maybe pambazos, enchiladas placeras, or taquitos are more to your taste.  Everything at this stand is cooked to order on an anafre (brazier).  Mexico Cooks! is partial to a good pambazo: it's a sandwich made from an individual-sized loaf of dense white bread, sliced open and dipped in enchilada sauce, filled with picadillo (meat/potato/carrot hash), fried till the bread is just slightly crisp on the outside, and topped with shredded lettuce, diced fresh tomatoes, minced onions, grated Mexican cheese, and a salsa muy picante (really spicy salsa). 

The sign asks, "What blankety-blank crisis?"  The bags of caña that this dealer offered continued at the 2009 price: 10 pesos.  The world economic situation in 2008-2009 deeply affected Mexico, but up until 2020, nothing stopped this party!  

Mexico has a real 'thing' for corn dogs.  Here in Mexico, they're fair (as in county fair!) food, just like they are in the United States.  They make quite a switch from a traditional pambazo, no?

For dessert, local strawberries flash frozen in Zamora, Michoacán, are partially thawed and served with cream.  You can see that the cartons are labeled both 'fresas' and 'strawberries' (for the English-language market; strawberry export is an enormous business in Michoacán.  Duero is the name of the strawberry packing company, as well as the name of the Michoacán river that runs through Zamora.  They're named for the Río Duero roars through western Spain and Portugal.

Take home a bag of candies.  Pick the candy you prefer--pea-size chocoretas (mint chocolate balls), crisp-coated lunetas of chocolate, sweet and tart buttons, gummy worms or bears or frogs, and a dozen more choices-- and buy as little or as much as you like.

It's traditional for both adults and children to dress in 16th Century indigenous clothing during these December fiestas.  This beautiful baby wears painted bigotes (moustache), a tiny poncho, a sombrero de paja (straw hat), and a bright paliacate (handkerchief/scarf), all in honor of San Juan Diego, who first saw and talked with Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe in chilly mid-December of 1531. 

I don't know about you, but I'm going to pray for the end of the pandemia and the return of Mexico's traditional festivities.

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Día y Noche de Muertos en Michoacán :: Day and Night of the Dead in Michoacán

Unfortunately, COVID-19, in addition to causing unprecedented worldwide death, has also separated us from publicly receiving the spirits of our departed loved one during the 2020 Day and Night of the Dead commemorations in most of Mexico.  Cemeteries are closed, public spaces continue to be off-limits to the usual throngs of visitors to small town and large cities during this sacred time, and many usually highly tourisited areas in Michoacán, Oaxaca, and other areas of Mexico continue be closed to living visitors.  The dead will come, expecting to be received, but our deceased friends and relatives will be welcomed in manners different from any other year in anyone's memory. 

Because of inability to travel to the places I'd like to show you this year, Mexico Cooks! is simply reprinting this very popular Día y Noche de Muertos en Michoacán article from earlier times.  Let's hope that in 2021 we will be able to once again enjoy the company of visitors from afar--including, first and foremost, our visitors from the más allá--the great beyond. 

Remember me as you pass by,
As you are now, so once was I.
As I am now, so you will be,
Prepare for death and follow me.
                   ...from a tombstone

What is death?  We know its first symptoms: the heart stops pumping, breath and brain activity stop. We know death's look and feel: a still, cold body from which the spirit has fled.  The orphan and widow know death's sorrow, the priest knows the liturgy of the departed and the prayers to assuage the pain of those left to mourn. But in most English-speaking countries, death and the living are not friends.  We the living look away from our mortality, we talk of the terminally ill in terms of 'if anything happens', not 'when she dies'.  We hang the crepe, we cover the mirrors, we say the beads, and some of us fling ourselves sobbing upon the carefully disguised casket as it is lowered into the Astroturf-lined grave.

Octavio Paz, Mexico City's Nobel Laureate poet and essayist who died in 1998, is famously quoted as saying, "In New York, Paris, and London, the word death is never mentioned, because it burns the lips."


Tzintzuntzan, Michoacán panteón (cemetery), Mexico Cooks! photo.  These fellows sing to la Descarnada (the fleshless woman) on November 2, 2009.

In Mexico, on the contrary, every day is a dance with death.  Death is a woman who has numerous affectionate and humorous nicknames: la Huesuda (the bony woman), la Seria (the serious woman), la Novia Fiel (the faithful bride), la Igualadora (the equalizer), la Dientona (the toothy woman), la Pelona (the bald woman), la Patrona (the boss lady), and a hundred more.  She's always here, just around the next corner or maybe right over there, behind that pillar.  She waits with patience, until later today or until twelve o'clock next Thursday, or until sometime next year--but when it's your time to go, she's right there, ready to dance away with you at her side. 


November 2013 altar to La Santa Muerte (Holy Death), Sta. Ana Chapirito (near Pátzcuaro), Michoacán. Devotees of this deathly apparition say that her cult has existed since before the Spanish arrived in Mexico.

In Mexico, death is also in the midst of life.  We see our dead, alive as you and me, each November, when we wait at our cemeteries for those who have gone before to come home, if only for a night. That, in a nutshell, is Noche de Muertos: the Night of the Dead.


In the lower center portion of this photograph, you can see the Quiroga, Michoacán, panteón municipal (town cemetery).  Late in the afternoon of November 1, 2013, most townspeople had not yet gone to the cemetery with candles and flowers for their loved ones' graves. Click on any photograph for a larger view.

Over the course of the last nearly 40 years, Mexico Cooks! has been to countless Noche de Muertos events, but none as mystical, as spiritual, or as profoundly magical as that of 2013.  Invited to accompany a very small group on a private tour in Michoacán, I looked forward to spending three days enjoying the company of old and new friends. I did all that, plus I came away with an extraordinarily privileged view of life and death.


A magnificent Purépecha ofrenda (in this case, an altar in the home of beloved friends) in the village of Santa Fe de la Laguna, Michoacán. This detailed and lovely ofrenda was created to the memory of the family's maiden aunt, who died at 74. Because she had never married, even at her advanced age she was considered to be an angelito (little angel)--like an innocent child--and her spirit was called back home to the family on November 1, the day of the angelitos.  In Santa Fe de la Laguna, relatives, friends, and neighbors who arrive at the house to pay homage to a deceased person bring fresh fruit to place at the foot of the altar.  This altar filled an entire room of my friends' home.  Be sure to click on the photo to see the details of the altar. Fruits, breads, incense, salt, flowers, colors, and candles have particular symbolism and are necessary parts of the ofrenda.


Detail of the ofrenda casera (home altar) shown above. The altar included her favorite rebozo (shawl), placed just above her photograph. Several local people told Mexico Cooks! that the fruit piled on the altar tasted different from fruit from the same source that had not been used for the ofrenda. "Compramos por ejemplo plátanos y pusimos unos en el altar y otros en la cocina para comer. Ya para el día siguiente, los del altar pierden su sabor, no saben a nada," they said.  'We bought bananas, for example, and we put some on the ofrenda, and we put the rest in the kitchen to eat.  The next day, the ones in the kitchen were perfectly normal, but the ones from the altar had no taste at all.'


Preparing a family member's ofrenda (altar) in the camposanto in a tiny village in Michoacán. The camposanto--literally, holy ground--is a cemetery contained within the walls of a churchyard.  The candles used in this area of Michoacán are hand made in Ihuatzio and Santa Fe de la Laguna.

Come with me along the unlit road that skirts the Lago de Pátzcuaro: Lake Pátzcuaro.  It's chilly, the puddles splash up as we drive, and the roadside weeds are damp with earlier rain, but for the moment the sky has cleared and filled with stars.  Up the hill on the right and down the slope leading left toward the lake are tiny villages, dark but for the glow of tall candles lit one by one in the cemeteries.  Tonight is November 1, the night silent souls wend their way home from Mictlán, the land beyond life.

At the grave: candlelight to illuminate the soul's way, cempazúchitl (deeply orange marigolds) for their distinctive fragrance required to open the path back home, smoldering copal (frankincense) to cleanse the earth and air of any remnants of evil, covered baskets of the deceased's favorite foods.  And a low painted chair, where the living can rest through the night.


Watching through the night.  This tumba (grave) refused to be photographed head-on.  From an oblique angle, the tumba allowed its likeness to be made.

"Oh grave, where is thy victory?  Oh death, where is thy sting?"

Noche de Muertos is not a costume party, although you may see it portrayed as such in the press.  It is not a drunken brawl, although certain towns appear to welcome that sort of blast-of-banda-music reventón (big blow-out).  It is not a tourist event, though strangers are certainly welcomed to these cemeteries. Noche de Muertos is a celebration of the spirit's life over the body's death, a festival of remembrance, a solemn passover.  Years ago, in an interview published in the New York Times, Mexico Cooks! said, "Noche de Muertos is about mutual nostalgia.  The living remember the dead, and the dead remember the taste of home."


One by one, grave by grave, golden cempazúchitles give shape to rock-bound tombs and long candles give light to what was a dark and lonely place, transforming the cemetery into a glowing garden.  How could a soul resist this setting in its honor?  


"Our hearts remember..." we promise the dead.  Church bells toll slowly throughout the night, calling souls home with their distinctive clamor (death knell).  Come...come home.  Come...come home.


Waiting.  Memories.  Prayers.  No te olvido, mi viejo amado. (I haven't forgotten you, my beloved old man.)

Next year, come with me.

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Autumn in Pátzcuaro, Michoacán :: Wildflower Season and Sights at the Market

The area around Lake Pátzcuaro, in the state of Michoacán, bursts into wildflower bloom in late September, just as the rainy season is ending here.  The flowers are naturalized wild cosmos, known here as mirasoles ("look-at-the-sun").  Entire fields fill with swaths of these delicate flowers, turning our green countryside into a temporary sea of pink.  Behind the mirasoles is a milpa, a field of native Michoacán corn, beans, and squash.


These beautiful blossoms, selling now at the municipal market in Pátzcuaro, are called estrellas del campo (stars of the field).  From the tops of the flowers to the bottom of their thin, tender stems, they measure about two and a half feet long.  Each multi-petaled bloom measure about 1.5" in diameter.  I've lived in Michoacán for a long time, but this is the first year I've seen these for sale.  We took three large bunches as a gift to a friend--at 15 pesos the bunch.  The total for a big armful of beauty was the Mexican peso equivalent of about $2.25 USD.


Available throughout the year, the native Mexican nanche fruit is in full-blown season right now, piled high on stands around the perimeter of the Pátzcuaro municipal market and on numerous street corners all over the town.  Sold in clear plastic cups (as seen in the photo, courtesy of Healthline) or by the plastic bagful, the vendor will slather these 3/4" inch diameter fruits with jugo de limón (fresh-squeezed Key lime juice), a big sprinkle of salt, and as much highly spicy bottled salsa as your mouth can handle.  The biological name of the nanche is Byrsonima crassifolia.  The fruit is slightly sweet and mildly musty-flavored, a combination that most people love and that I regret to say is not a taste I enjoy at all.  Nanches are packed with nourishment, though--a half-cup of them will give you nearly 60% of your daily Vitamin C requirement, 41 calories, and only 9.5 grams of carbohydrates!  


These are jocotes (native Mexican plums), also in season now in central Mexico.  The fruit measures about two to three inches long; the flesh is bright orange and the flavor is marvelous.  Unfortunately the stone of this plum is almost as big as the entire fruit, and although you could eat it out of hand, the delicious jocote is most often made into an agua fresca (fresh fruit water) that is only available for the fruit's short season.  This little plum is replete with Vitamins A and C, phosphorous, iron, and calcium, and is said to work wonders with gum problems.


Who wants to take a guess at what each of the green herbs (and the vegetable) is?  The elotes (tender fresh Pátzcuaro red corn) at the bottom of the photo were part of a small daily harvest brought to sell on the outdoor periphery of Pátzcuaro's market.  Just to the left of the corn, at the bottom of the photo, are some mint branches that the same vendor brought for sale.  But above the mint?  Click on the photo to enlarge it and you'll be able to tell that these are home-grown spiny chayotes.  You are probably familiar with the paler green smooth-skinned chayotes (mirliton in Louisiana, pear squash in other English-speaking locations).  The chayote has an interesting growing habit: unlike most squash, which grows as a vine along the ground, the chayote is airborne--its vines grow on overhead trellises and remind me of grapevines; the small squash hangs down from the vines.  It's an extremely versatile vegetable, taking on the flavors of what you cook it with.  Be sure to eat the soft, tender, flat, white seed--it's considered to be the prize part and is as delicious as the chayote itself. 

To the right of the chayotes is a big bunch of wild anise, known in Pátzcuaro as anisillo.  Used to make the Pátzcuaro regional specialty atole de grano, this herb is tremendously flavorful.  In case you find some anisillo where you are, here's a recipe for atole de grano.  

Atole de Grano
(Fresh Anise-Flavored Corn Kernel Soup)

Ingredients
2 fresh ears of tender young corn
2 cups fresh corn, cut from the cob
1 bunch wild anisillo 
3 liters water
2 whole chiles perón (or substitute chiles poblano)
1/2 pound recently ground corn masa (dough)--ask at the tortillería near you
Salt to taste

Garnishes
1/2 medium white onion, minced
Chile serrano or chile perón, minced
Fresh Key limes, cut in half
Sea salt

Preparation
1.  Clean the ears of corn, remove the silk and cut off the ends.  Cut each ear into three pieces.

2.  Boil the corn on the cob AND the corn kernels in enough water, for an hour and a half or until the corn is tender.

3.  Cut the stem away from the chiles, take out the seeds and veins.  Cut the chiles into small pieces.

4.  In the blender, liquify the chiles, the anisillo, and the masa with two cups of water.  Strain and add to the pot where the corn on the cob is cooking.

5.  Allow to boil for about 10 to 15 minutes, until the liquid is slightly thickened.

To serve
1.  Place sections of the cooked corn ears into each of 2 bowls.

2.  Ladle soup and corn kernels into the bowls.

3.  Serve with the minced onion, minced chile to taste, sea salt, and Key lime halves to squeeze into the soup.  

Serves 2 people as a main dish, 3 as a first course.  This soup is both vegetarian and vegan, and gluten-free.


Atole de grano, made in a cazo (large copper kettle).


The vendor at this small booth at the Pátzcuaro market had an interesting variety of things for sale.  Bottom right are fresh guavas, just now coming into season.  To the left of the guavas are chiles perón (aka chiles manzano), arguably the most-used chile in this part of Michoacán.  Above the chiles perón are fresh, green chiles de árbol.  To the right are wild mushrooms known as patita de pájaro (little bird foot).  These mushrooms, growing wild in Michoacán's woods and foraged during the rainy season, make a wonderful mushroom soup.


These are home-grown loquats, known in Mexico as nísperos (NEE-speh-rohs).  Nísperos are local and are plentiful in markets right now.


Gelatin--this large cupful is called "mosaíco"--mosaic, because of its many colored cubes.  More gelatin is eaten in Mexico than in any other country of the world!  A cupful this size is usually an eat-while-you-walk snack food.  This one was made and sold from a tiny cart with no name, just to one side of the Pátzcuaro market.  The young woman selling the gelatins said her name was Yesi--I said her cart was now dubbed Gelatinas Yesi, and she laughed.


Just at the corner of the market, we bumped into don Rafael, who was selling--you guessed it--cotton candy.  Cotton candy HAS no season, it's always available here.  Get the blue, it will turn your lips and tongue blue as a blueberry, but just for a while.  

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