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

Warm Up with Sexy Coffee

Bring in the New Year with a flaming drink that will really heat up the night.

It's Sexy Coffee, from Casa Mission in Cozumel. That's the English name on the menu. In Spanish, it's tamed down to Café Español. 

Just what the year's end needs, it's full of good spirits, namely brandy, Kahlúa and Xtabentún.

Never heard of Xtabentún? It's a honey liqueur from Yucatán with a strong touch of anise. You can get it on line and at some specialty spirits stores.  If not, replace it with another anise-flavored liqueur such as anisette. Galliano or Grand Marnier would be good too. 

You'll need to have everything ready to combine as quickly as possible. Rim the glass (or glasses) with sugar in advance and have the coffee hot.

Put in the ice cream as you heat the liqueurs. Ignite them and pour at once over the ice cream, then fill with coffee.

To get a showy fire, you will need to boost the alcohol content of the liqueurs with a little brandy.

Be careful, especially if you have combined enough for several drinks. The flames will leap about like a bonfire. Scary, but they'll die out as soon as you pour the fiery stuff into the glasses. 

SEXY COFFEE
From Casa Mission, Cozumel

Sugar
1 1/2 ounces brandy 
1 large scoop vanilla ice cream
3/4 ounce Xtabentún (Mexican honey liqueur)
3/4 ounce Kahlúa
1 coffee cup freshly brewed coffee
Cinnamon 

Rim a heavy, heatproof glass with sugar (rub the edges first with a cut lime or lemon to make the sugar stick).

Place 1 ounce brandy in the glass. Add the ice cream.

Quickly heat the Xtabentún and Kahlúa in a small skillet. When the liqueurs are hot, add the remaining 1/2 ounce brandy and ignite with a long-handled match, standing back from the flames. 

Pour immediately into the glass, add the hot coffee and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Makes 1 serving. 

Casa Mission Restaurant, 55 Avenida between Avenida Juárez and Calle 1º Sur. Cozumel, Quintana Roo, México. Tel: (987) 872-1641. 

Frijoles Tiernos from Chiapas

Eating black-eyed peas is supposed to bring good luck during the New Year, a southern tradition that morphs to a Mexican dish in this recipe from Chiapas.

It's based on frijoles tiernos, a bowl of delicious pale fresh beans served at La Selva, a restaurant near the Mayan ruins in Palenque. The entrance, which must have been inspired by the ruins, is in the photo below. 

The beans followed tortilla soup with local cheese and a hearty plate of beef filete with tomato sauce accompanied by rice topped with corn, zucchini and potato.

Even in such robust company, they stood out. Their flavor was arresting, unusual, with a delicate hint of anise. This came from hoja santa, a scented leaf that grows wild in the area. Parsley and cilantro were stirred in too. That's all.

Hoja santa grows easily, even invasively, where I live. If you can't get it, you can put in another fresh herb, such as oregano, but the key flavor will be missing.

The closest you can come to the Chiapas beans is fresh black-eyed peas, available at some farmers markets. They cook much more quickly than dried black-eyes, which you can substitute if necessary.

And good luck in 2012.

FRIJOLES TIERNOS
Fresh Black-eyed Peas 

1 pound fresh black-eyed peas
6 cups water
2 cloves garlic
2 medium hoja santa leaves, torn into large pieces
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons cilantro leaves, finely chopped
2 tablespoon Italian parsley leaves, finely chopped 

Place the beans in a deep saucepan. Add the water, garlic, hoja santa leaves and salt to taste.

Bring to a boil, then boil 20 minutes, uncovered, or until tender. Taste and add more salt if wanted. 

When the beans are done, lift out the garlic and hoja santa, if desired. Stir in the cilantro and parsley. Serve the beans with their broth in individual bowls.

Makes 6 servings.  

Candy Hunting in Mexico City

A kid in a candy shop is small fry compared to me let loose in the candy department of Liverpool.

This chain has stores all over Mexico, but a friend who lives in Mexico City took me to the Polanco branch, which is paradise--or should I say hell--for candy lovers.

So much to choose and so little time, because I had to get to the airport to go home. What I wanted was regional Mexican candies, and I found plenty in what looked like an acre of sweets.

The only practical choice was sturdy packaged candies that could survive in a stuffed suitcase.

So I looked for palanquetas, bars of caramelized nuts and seeds. Liverpool's stock included a round palanqueta made entirely of glazed pepitas (squash seeds), an oval palanqueta that combined peanuts and amaranth seeds, and a slim bar composed of amaranth, nuts and raisins.

Hernández Dulcería, a producer of artisanal sweets in Toluca, made the palanquetas and also amaranth bars, one topped with raisins and caramelized nuts and another that contained chocolate.

A couple of the famous sweet potato candies from Puebla, camotes de Santa Clara, went into my basket. If you go to Puebla, you will probably visit a street of dulcerías (sweet shops) where the slender, cigar-shaped camotes are sold. I last bought them at Dulcería El Lirio, 6 Oriente 204. Liverpool had them in several flavors. I chose strawberry and orange.

A circle of milk fudge decorated with pecans came from Guadalajara. And a block of white coconut candy tinted bright pink on top was from Morelia, Michoacán, renowned for its traditional sweets.

The label was Paraiso, the same brand as blocks of jamoncillo, a milk candy. I bought two of these, one with pecans, the other with pine nuts.   

From Linares in the state of Nuevo León in northern Mexico came a "combinado tradicional," a sack of assorted milk candies including individually wrapped natillas, the famous glorias, which are composed of pecans and milk fudge, and obleas, fragile white wafers sandwiched with goat milk caramel.

Liverpool's spectacular outdoor Christmas tree (above) is composed entirely of gift boxes. The store was mobbed, and the streets outside were jammed with shoppers and partygoers.

Sidewalk stands throughout the city were selling ornaments and fresh poinsettias. And an open-air market displayed kid-sized Santa Claus outfits--or were they for pets?

Everybody is celebrating even if only to hang a plastic Santa from an apartment window. 

If the airport taxi could have stopped, I would have made one more purchase, but not candy. Among the street vendors darting through traffic was a Mennonite man in overalls. This was startling because Mexico's Mennonite community is concentrated in Chihuahua in the north.

What he had was just as tempting as sweets--wedges of the pale Mennonite cheese that is admired in Mexico for its high quality.  

Liverpool Polanco, C. Mariano Escobedo 425, Col. Polanco, Mexico City. 

A Hacienda's Christmas Dinner

You're deep in Mexico, on the veranda of a luxurious hacienda. And it's Christmas. How will you celebrate?

With an extravagant dinner that is nothing like what you would get at home. No turkey and stuffing, no cranberry sauce, no mashed potatoes and gravy.

Because you are about to eat at Santa Rosa, the last of the great haciendas constructed in the Yucatán peninsula to produce henequen (sisal).

That's the entrance to the main building at top and the dining room at right. 

The henequen trade rewarded the hacendados handsomely until synthetic fibers killed the demand, and the haciendas were abandoned.

Some are still in ruins. Others are now luxury hotels and event sites.

Santa Rosa was a stop on the Aromas & Sabores tour of the Yucatán Peninsula organized by chef, restaurateur and cookbook author Patricia Quintana. 

Getting down from our bus, we were handed glasses of icy frappe de naranja, an orange drink

Then food and beverage director Juan Pablo Islas sent out appetizers that showed off the unique ingredients of the Yucatán peninsula.

There were longaniza empanadas, fried squid on end in hand-blown blue-rimmed shot glasses and skewers of achiote-coated fish (above).

The ball of corn masa sitting on a strip of banana leaf (above) contains mushrooms and beef. The dark sauce on top is made from the charred chile paste called recado negro.

I asked about Christmas--no chance to attend, sadly, because the hacienda's 11 guest rooms are sold out. 

The celebration takes place Christmas Eve, starting with cocktails on the pool deck (above) and carol singing by local children.

Then it's time to break the piñata, symbolizing the destruction of evil so that good (or goodies) can pour out. 

Dinner on the terrace will start with wild mushroom empanadas with a balsamic-infused lentil sauce.

The salad course will combine lettuce and spinach with beets, apples, pears and roasted peanuts in a bitter orange and cranberry vinaigrette.

The shrimp and lobster bisque that comes next will be garnished with huitlacoche and corn dumplings.

The diners can take a break from the rich flavors with guanábana and spearmint sorbet and then move on to salt cod prepared with Mexican Chardonnay and agave syrup and served with roasted yuca root and pickled sweet green peppers.

There will be turkey, not a roast, but a roulade stuffed with dried apples and chaya leaves, drizzled with tamarind and garlic glaze and served with wild rice and sauteed asparagus.

For dessert, guests can choose between goat cheese caramel crème brûlée or homemade ice cream. And by the time that is finished, it will be almost midnight and time for a Christmas toast.

What a lovely way to celebrate, especially because you don't have to drive home but can sleep it off Mayan style in a hammock, or else in a soft, comfy bed.

And it's not over. Islas, a young chef from Mexico City (above), has just as lavish a menu ready for New Year's Eve.

A Merry Christmas in Yucatán

Christmas is in full swing on the Yucatán peninsula, where you'll find Christmas trees everywhere, a humble patch of land by a cinder block wall to extravagantly decorated hotel lobbies. 

Santa Claus is there too. Just look at this cheery fellow beckoning customers into a gift shop in Izamal, Yucatán.

Christmas in Mexico is a sacred time, warmly expressed by this glowing altar in Calakmul, Campeche.

Nativity scenes (nacimientos) are as essential as Christmas trees, perhaps more so. This one is in the garden of Casa Mission, a restaurant in Cozumel, Quintana Roo.

Everyone celebrates in some way, including this dog, who just checked out the tree in El Crucero, an open-air restaurant along the highway in the state of Campeche. 

Even vegetables put on holiday dress, like this colorful assortment in the municipal market of Campeche. 

Over in Chiapas, tortilla soup appeared on a poinsettia-strewn tablecloth at La Selva, a restaurant in Palenque.  

But candy is what kids want. And what could be more tempting than this gingerbread house in the lobby of the Presidente Intercontinental Villa Mercedes in Mérida, Yucatán?

It's part of a full-sized gingerbread house stocked with holiday sweets for sale.  The hotel's culinary staff put it together, making visions of sugar plums a happy reality.