EatMx: Real Mexican food, at home and on the road

A New Twist on Nogada

You've heard of chiles en nogada--stuffed poblano chiles topped with a creamy nut sauce dotted with pomegranate seeds.

But enchiladas en nogada? That was a new one to me. I came across it at a tasting of dishes from the Delegación Iztapalapa, the largest of the units called delegaciones that compose Mexico City.

Such an expansive area could call on plenty of restaurants to show off their food. The enchiladas were from the Restaurante Anluardo. I can't swear to the spelling because the writing on the restaurant's card was too ornate to read. 

Instead of the usual chile-based enchilada sauce, these were coated with a pale nogada cream, then decorated with parsley and pomegranate seeds to represent the three colors of the Mexican flag as do the patriotic stuffed chiles.

The folded tortilla underneath contained the same sort of rich filling as the chiles--finely chopped pork, raisins, apple, nuts and citron, or perhaps it was biznaga (cactus candy), which is more traditional.

Behind it on the plate, another extraordinary dish--this one from the Restaurante Pastidena. It's an artichoke filled with cheeses and nuts, coated with egg and fried, then served in a tomato sauce with a touch of cinnamon.

And here's another, green pozole (above) that is a vegetarian's dream. Instead of meat you get broccoli, carrots, mushrooms and cabbage. It's from the Restaurante Vikinga.

And look at the tamal above, produced by the Restaurante Las Brujas. The corn husk contains no masa, just fish, topped with chopped epazote and enough chile to make it very spicy. 

Did you think Mexican food was like this? Or do you think of it as guacamole, burritos and your favorite chain restaurant combination plate? The restaurants of Iztapalapa alone could change your mind. 

 

Five Fun Places to Eat in Mexico: (1) Salón Luz

A Mexican cantina isn't necessarily the rough and ready bar that you may have seen in old movies.

Take Salón Luz in downtown Mexico City. It's a perfectly respectable place to drink, but they'll let you in if you don't and give you a glass of jamaica or horchata.

What you should really have, though, is beer, because Salón Luz specializes in German food.

Its steak tartara, which they also call carne cruda (raw meat), is memorable. It's seasoned with lime, Dijon mustard and olive oil and decorated with anchovies (although not in the photo). On the side are chopped onions, sliced tomatoes and a light potato salad.

The buttered, grainy bread that you'll be eating with the tartara, or whatever you order, is superb.  

If you can't decide on any one dish, you can get combinations called "Berlin," "Munich" and "Frankfurt" that incorporate hamburgers, raw meat, Frankfurt sausages, milanesas and fish, accompanied by German style potatoes or chicken salad.

These are prepared "con sabor alemán y sazón de Mexico"  (with German flavor and Mexican seasoning), the menu says.

Much more than a bar and tapas place, this cantina has a long menu loaded with seafood, parrilladas (mixed grill plates), soups, salads and steaks, including Argentine cuts.

If you want a sandwich, you take your choice of German, Mexican or Spanish. Tortas have a separate listing. The Salón Luz special torta includes a milanesa, Frankfurt sausage and cheese.

Its Mexican dishes include excellent ceviches of shrimp or fish (above), garlic-laden fried pompano and succulent chamorro (pork shank) with tomatoes, chiles, cilantro and onion. There's a German-style chamorro too.

Almost 100 years old, Salón Luz is traditional and clubby. In good weather, you can eat on an outdoor terrace.

Surprising for a cantina, it closes relatively early, about midnight. But if even that is too late for you, the doors open at noon so that you can drop in for lunch .

Salón Luz, Gante No. 21, corner Venustiano Carranza, Mexico City. Call 5512-4246.

 

A Bartender Bares (Almost) All

Dave Fernie was mixing cocktails so fast you could hardly see his hands. Then all of a sudden he threw off his shirt. Not because he was sweaty hot, but because he had a message on his chest for Bricia Lopez, who was celebrating her birthday that night. 

"I (heart) Bricia," his chest said. This happened at the new mezcal bar at Guelaguetza, the Oaxacan restaurant on Olympic Blvd. in Koreatown owned by Bricia's parents, Fernando and María López.

The place was jammed with Bricia's friends, who brought gifts, signed a mammoth card that said "happy birthday to our mole and mezcal princess," had their photos taken, ate Oaxacan food, sipped mezcal and drank the cocktails that Dave had created. 

Bricia's Birthday Bubbly was red, white and green like the Mexican flag. The red layer at the bottom was strawberry puree mixed with mezcal, honey and lemon. The white was the foamy champagne. And the green was the rim of the hand-blown Mexican glass. 

Dave grated cinnamon onto The Bricia Fix and powdered it with enough cayenne to turn the cool blend of mezcal, honey and agave syrup into fire.

María López was in the kitchen supervising the food, which included taquitos coated with guacamole and black bean sauce, Tehuantepec style empanaditas with bananas and cheese, pigs feet in black bean sauce and ribs in a sauce made with Oaxacan pasilla chiles. 

Mariachis arrived to sing Las Mañanitas, the Mexican birthday song, while guests sipped mezcal poured from bottles labeled with Bricia's name.

The birthday cake was frosted with the image of a Tehuana in the elaborate costume typical of that region. That same image had gone out on handmade invitations. And it appeared on the wrappers of Oaxacan chocolates along with words "thank you." The chocolates and other candies were in colorful Oaxacan baskets handed to the guests as they left.

It was a really cool party, and so was the bartender.

Guelaguetza restaurant, 3014 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90006. (213) 427-0608. 

Hot & Cold--a Piña Raspado

It has been agonizingly hot in Los Angeles, the air so heavy I felt like my nose was stuffed with heated cotton. 

Sweating and dehydrated, I took off for the only place I could get some relief--Zacatecas Raspados in East Los Angeles. 

This small shop (at top) is famous for its natural fruit toppings. Add them to a tall cup of polar-cold ice and you're in heaven.

This time, there was only one flavor I wanted. This was piña (pineapple), because I was still under the spell of an agua de piña, a light thirst-quencher that I bought at a taco stand in Tijuana the weekend before. That drink included bits of fruit. So did the Zacatecas raspado.

But the raspado had something the drink didn't--color, lots of color, blindingly brilliant color.

The way it looked was really hot. At the same time the raspado was so cold that I coughed with each swallow as the ice tickled my throat. What pain, what pleasure. What a treat.

Zacatecas Raspados, 422 N. Ford Blvd., Los Angeles, CA. 90022. (323) 264-7651.

Baja Holds Its 1st Culinary Fest

I'm just back from the first Baja California Culinary Fest, which took place from Tijuana down to Ensenada and over to Mexicali for five days, ending Sunday.

There were dinners, a cheese tour, a wine tour, a boat tour to see how oysters and mussels are raised in Ensenada bay, cooking demos, a margarita festival (sorry I missed that one) and a lobster festival at Puerto Nuevo (above). 

Guest chefs came from various parts of Mexico and other countries to pair up with local chefs for the dinners. And Guadalupe Valley winemakers provided their best bottles to go with the food. 

On Saturday, Tijuana restaurants showed off their dishes at a culinary festival spread out over the grounds of El Trompo, an interactive museum for children.

There was lots to taste, including seafood tostadas, ceviche, quesadillas, tacos (look at the cute stand above), tortas, paella, regional cheeses, olive paste, flavored vinegars, artisanal beers, wines, exotic ice creams and local pastries, including tiny cakes made with nopal flour.

Things to buy included olive oil (such a choice item that the supply ran out hours before the festival ended), wines, fruit preserves and a dry mix of chiles, garlic and peanuts to add a powerful kick to almost anything.

Top tastes included tacos (above) from Casa Plascencia. You could have your choice of three fillings (or keep returning to get all three). They were cachete de res (beef cheeks), costillas de res en salsa verde (shortribs in green sauce) and borrego enchilado (lamb with red chile). You piled onto these the usual toppings--cilantro, onion and salsas and added a squeeze of fresh lime.

Erizo, another of the Plascencia restaurants, turned out green ceviche on chips (above).

And Caesar's presented what else but the classic Caesar salad (above), delicious even in a bare bones presentation on a plastic plate.

It was great luck to run into winemaker J.C. Bravo (at right), whose Carignan is legendary and hard to get--I've only been able to buy it at his winery at Ejido El Porvenir in the Guadalupe Valley.  

It was even better luck that he brought along enough extra bottles to sell. I won't confess how many I bought.

The Baja Culinary Fest was organized by a team headed by Javier Plascencia of the Plascencia restaurants. This was a first attempt, and plans are to make it better next year. So plan on going down some time in the fall of 2012 to get your fill of the best of border cuisine.

Tacos Around Town: Guisados

Driving through East L.A., I pulled in at Guisados, a corner place where the tacos are serious. 

The list of fillings was long and tempting--mole poblano, chicken tinga, pork chop in green sauce, steak in red sauce, steak picado and vegetarian choices such as mushrooms with cilantro and beans with cheese.

If deciding is too difficult, you can get a taco sampler--six mini tacos for $6.50.

But I had my eye on cochinita pibil, a Yucatecan dish of pork red with achiote that you don't usually find at taco stands.

Owner Armando De La Torre said it's his favorite, and that settled the matter. The meat, pork butt, is marinated with achiote paste and simmered for three hours until it comes apart in tender shreds. The numbers 1-10 beside it on the blackboard menu are the heat levels, determined by the amount of salsa added. 

If your idea of a taco is meat in a fried shell, forget about that here. You get a soft, fresh handmade corn tortilla laid flat on a plate, topped with beans and filling.

Cochinita (in the photo at the top) comes with black beans, because that's what they like in Yucatan. There was lots of meat on top and a few slivers of the red pickled onions that are also typical of Yucatan.

Armando handed me a sample of a special that day, shortribs in black mole. I hope he adds that one to the menu, because it was delicious, not sweet like Puebla style mole. And different from Oaxacan black mole too. 

Sit in the front corner, and you can watch the action in this busy Latino neighborhood--kids on bikes, moms pushing strollers and men with accordions, guitars and even toting huge base fiddles, hoping for gigs during the lunch hour.

Guisados, 2100 E. Cesar Chavez (corner St. Louis), Los Angeles, CA 90033. (323) 264-7201.

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