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

La Vaquita's Mexican Mojito

Mariscos La Vaquita's bar menu has a sense of humor. Pay double for your first drink and the second one is free, it says.

This may be lame, and the cocktails are pretty rudimentary compared to the intense mixology in other parts of the world. Still, a Mexican mojito sounded promising.

To make it Mexican, the bartender put in cilantro instead of mint and tequila instead of rum.

The long green drink was fine on a hot evening, although it could have used more authority, meaning more tequila. I took care of that in the recipe below. 

Mariscos La Vaquita, Avenida Mar de Cortez and Puerto Peñasco, San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico. Tel: 577-2837.

MEXICAN MOJITO
Mariscos La Vaquita 

2 Mexican (key) limes
4 teaspoons sugar plus additional for rimming the glass
1 tablespoon cilantro leaves
3 ounces white tequila
3/4 cup ice cubes
3/4 cup club soda

Cut 1 lime in half. Lightly coat the rim of a tall glass with one of the halves, then swirl the rim in sugar to coat.

Squeeze the remainder of the lime into the glass. Add 4 teaspoons sugar and the cilantro leaves and muddle to blend the flavors.

Cut 2 slices from the remaining lime and add to the glass. Squeeze the juice from the remainder of the lime into the glass.

Add the tequila, ice cubes and soda and stir to mix.  

Makes 1 serving.

Rosa Lina's Horchata de Arroz

Creamy horchata (above) is one of the most common drinks in Mexican restaurants.

It's popular on both sides of the border. And certainly in San Felipe, on the Sea of Cortez in Baja California, where you'll find it at taco stands and other informal eating places.

The container above is in a line-up of drinks at El Filete, a popular open-air restaurant there. Next to it is jamaica, a red drink made from dried hibiscus flowers.

Spiced with cinnamon, horchata looks rich, like a milk shake. This is deceptive. The creaminess comes from ground rice and canned milk, but these are diluted with water. I found it light and refreshing, even in near 100-degree weather in San Felipe as summer approached.  

You can buy commercial horchata in American markets that stock Mexican products, but why bother, when it's so easy to make it yourself? Then it's really fresh, and you can sweeten it to your own taste.

I learned to make horchata from Rosa Lina Ramos Lazcano (right), an architect who lives in San Felipe.

It's best to pre-soak the rice, she said. Then you grind it in a blender along with water and  cinnamon stick--I use the shreddy kind that you find in Mexican markets.

You strain the mixture to eliminate the gritty residue and add evaporated milk, more water and sugar.

In just a couple of minutes, you have a traditional Mexican drink that's so delicious, you'll want to keep it on hand all summer.

HORCHATA DE ARROZ
Mexican Rice Drink
From Rosa Lina Ramos Lazcano

1/2 cup rice
5 cups water
2 to 3 inches stick cinnamon
3/4 cup canned evaporated milk (half of a 12-ounce can)
1/2 cup sugar or to taste

Place the rice in a bowl and add 1 cup water. Let stand at least 4 hours or overnight.

Drain the rice and place it in a blender container. Add the cinnamon stick and 2 cups water. Blend on high speed 1 minute, or until finely ground.

Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl or pitcher. Add the evaporated milk, the sugar and the remaining 2 cups water. Stir well.

Pour into glasses and add ice. 

Makes 5 cups, or 4 servings.  

This Cheff Makes a Great Breakfast

Marco Antonio Meza serves a great breakfast. But you have to go to San Felipe in Baja California to get it. The place is his restaurant, El Rincón del Cheff.

"This is a very typical breakfast here in San Felipe," Meza said as my companions and I started to work on enormous plates of food.

Not waffles, French toast or hot cakes, but camarones rancheros, succulent shrimp from the Sea of Cortez in a tomato and fresh chile sauce, and spicy machaca de pescado, fish shredded and cooked like hash.

Refried beans and a scoop of red rice sat alongside each other. The edges of the plates were dusted with red chile powder.

To make the breakfast even heartier, we could have freshly made flour or corn tortillas or both.  

Meza (above) is a native of San Felipe and knows where to get the best ingredients. He used dogfish (cazón) for the machaca, a dish that goes back to the days when there was no refrigeration in San Felipe. Then, people dried fish in order to preserve it and needed a way to cook it so it would be palatable. Now they make machaca with fresh fish. 

The camarones rancheros were so delicious I asked Meza for his recipe, and he explained each step. There's no secret to it other than using good, fresh ingredients.

When I tried the dish at home, I was able to make it more authentic than expected, thanks to a supermarket special on jumbo shrimp from the Sea of Cortez. That's my version above. 

El Rincón del Cheff is an informal, neighborly place with bright chartreuse walls and an artsy map of Baja California on one of them. The clock is a chef's face. It's easy to find, on a main street downtown and not far from the malecon.

El Rincón del Cheff, Avenida Mar de Cortez, San Felipe, Baja California, Mexico (a couple of doors from Chumpo's Restaurant). Tel: 57707-11. Open daily from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

CAMARONES RANCHEROS
Marco Antonio Meza, El Rincón del Cheff

24 jumbo shrimp
1/2 pound tomatoes, chopped
1 small onion, halved lengthwise and sliced crosswise
1 fresh California chile
3 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup canned tomato puree
1/2 cup water
1 bay leaf
Natural sea salt 

Peel and clean the shrimp, leaving the tails attached. Prepare the tomatoes and onion.  Cut off the stem and tip of the California chile. Cut the chile in half lengthwise and rinse out the seeds, then cut each half into 2 strips and slice these crosswise.

Heat the oil in a large skillet. Add the shrimp and cook 1 minute. Add the tomatoes, onion and chile, stir to mix and cook 3 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Add the tomato puree, water, bay leaf and salt to taste. Bring to a boil and simmer 2 minutes.

Makes 4 servings. 

 

Desert to Sea, San Felipe Has It All

San Felipe, on the opposite coast of Baja from Tijuana and Ensenada, couldn't be more different from those happening places.

It's tranquil, quietly friendly, soothing, even now that the days are heating up for summer. And because San Felipe is in the desert, that means really hot. But relaxed and pleasant at night.

What a contrast, the warm, blue waters of the Sea of Cortez on one side, rocks, sand and dry desert plants on the other.

That's Cantú Cove above. Can you imagine a long, beautiful, curving beach without a trace of rubbish or a single person? Aside from my small group of visitors, only birds waded on the shore.

The sign as you drive into San Felipe says the population is 19,000 plus. A more current estimate is 23,000. Of these, 7,000 are Americans. But you seldom see them.

Residential developments such as Misión Los Sahuaros, with its blocky, Southwestern style houses (above) and desert landscaping, are well out of town. 

The desert is carpeted with mesquite, copal, ocotillo, sahuaros, gobernadora and others. A good place to see them is the Valle de los Sahuaros Gigantes (Valley of the Giant Sahuaros, above).

Keep your eyes peeled for cactus fruits (above) that look very different from the prickly pear tunas displayed in Mexican markets. Pitaya grows in the area too.  

The palm trees that you see aren't coconut palms. Those on the grounds of my hotel, the Riviera Coral (below), were the same sort of palms that line streets in Los Angeles. 

People go to San Felipe for sport fishing, water sports and to warm up from freezing winters where they live. Hanging out at the pool is popular too. 

If you're not a beach hound, you can do something else--eat. San Felipe is street food heaven. Drive along streets such as Mar Caribe Norte and Chetumal, and you'll see many places to pull in for a taco (above), a gordita or sandwich or a taste of the fermented corn drink teshuino. 

Most are very small, a stand or cart under an awning with a couple of tables and chairs.  Others are modest restaurants like El Filete (above), where you can order out front or go in and sit down.

In the afternoon, you might walk along the malecón, which borders the sea, and stop at an open-air restaurant for a michelada--beer with lime juice and ice.

While watching passersby, you can buy trinkets from strolling vendors. Their jewelry and crafts come from other parts of Mexico, because San Felipe hasn't promoted its own artesanías.

However, the Desert Mothers Art Center is bringing in experts to teach local women how to make ceramics and other things that they can sell.

But mostly, malecón stores display beachwear, hats, sunglasses and novelties like those at any resort. 

San Felipe is so laid back that it hasn't promoted what could have made it famous--the fish taco. Although it claims to have originated this popular snack, Ensenada took over and turned the fish taco into its own specialty. Above, Axle Acuña is frying strips of corvina for tacos at La Vaquita.

Slowly, the town is progressing. A California couple, Michele and Bob MacDonald, who have resettled in San Felipe, are spearheading some of this.

They have remodeled a ramshackle building in downtown San Felipe into La Placita, a charming space now occupied by boutiques (above). Among them is a wine shop where you can get Baja bottles that you may not find elsewhere.

And they are turning San Felipe's natural sea salt into an upscale product that is attracting Baja's top chefs. There they are (above), with Francisco Sosa (left), a partner in the salt business.

Although the fish taco has languished in San Felipe, clams are doing fine. You can taste them at the annual clam festival, which will take place June 17.

To get some idea of the wealth of seafood coming from the Sea of Cortez, go to the dock where fisherman unload what they've caught.

Fish markets in town sell a great variety--nice if you are a short or long-term resident. Tons go to China and Japan.

San Felipe has no municipal market like other Mexican cities, where you can shop for produce, eat at fondas and buy local products. There are small markets and a couple of larger supermarkets, which may be threatened by the planned opening of the chain Calimax. Above is the produce display at the biggest market, Hipon.

I've tasted excellent queso fresco from San Felipe, and I've heard that some ranchers produce dates, but I haven't seen these. Flour and corn tortillas are still made by hand, at least partially. The girl above is flattening flour tortilla dough with an electric press.

Restaurants range from pizza and hamburger joints to places that serve seafood cocktails, fried fish, shrimp and steaks and one new upscale restaurant, El Balcón in La Placita.

If you're coming from the United States, the best route is through Calexico and Mexicali. The drive from Mexicali takes about two hours over a highway that is partly under construction, so you'll hit a few rough spots. To reach some attractions, you have to drive over dirt roads (above). 

My group travelled very late, arriving at 3 a.m. Driving in total darkness made it impossible to see our surroundings except for a huge lopsided orange moon hanging over sharp, rocky hills. 

As we stepped out of our van, we could hear the birthday song, "Las Mañanitas," in the distance. Although not planned for us, it was a nice greeting from this well known, and at the same time surprisingly unknown, town.  

Daniel Ovadía's Easy Mole Carretera

Don't believe that you have to put scads of hard-to-find ingredients into a mole before it amounts to anything.

Nothing could be eaiser than Mexico City chef Daniel Ovadía's mole carretera (at the top). It has just two main ingredients, aside from meat--plantains and ancho chiles. And only common seasonings such as onion, garlic, cinnamon, cumin and oregano.

This fruity, aromatic mole comes from the state of Veracruz. The name means "highway mole," which sounds like rough and ready food for truck drivers.

"Some people in Veraruz call it an adobo or sauce," Ovadía (right) said when he demonstrated the dish at the recent Food & Wine magazine festival at Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. "But it's a fruit mole."

At his restaurant Paxia in Mexico City, Ovadía serves the sauce with duck, but he switched to beef at the festival.

Hardly road food, it's what you would expect from an upscale Mexico City restaurant. Ovadía poured the sauce over a single portion of beef filet, topped this with crisp, fine shreds of potato, leek and plantain and swirled a golden puree of sweet potato and guava on the side.

My adaptation of his recipe (above) uses a heartier cut of beef and leaves out the garnishes. Despite its simplicity, the sauce has extraordinarily good flavor.

It should be made with a plantain, not the sort of banana that you eat raw. If the plantain you buy is green or yellow, let it stand until the skin turns black. Then it will be ripe and sweet enough for the mole.

MOLE CARRETERA
Adapted from a recipe by Daniel Ovadía

1 pound boneless chuck steak
Pork lard or oil
4 cups water
1 slice onion
1 clove garlic
Salt
6 black peppercorns
3 dried red ancho chiles
1/2 medium onion, sliced
1 very ripe plantain, sliced
1 1/2 inches stick cinnamon
Dash ground cumin
Dash dried oregano
3 cups beef broth, more if needed
Sesame seeds

Cut the steak into chunks, removing any excess fat.

Heat 2 tablespoons lard or oil in a heavy skillet. Add the beef and sear on all sides.

Place the beef in a deep saucepan. Add the water, onion slice, garlic, salt to taste and peppercorns. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, 30 minutes. When cooked, strain off the broth.

Rinse the chiles. Roast them in any fat remaining in the skillet until fragrant. Remove them and discard the stems and seeds.

Add more lard or oil if needed. Add the sliced medium onion half and cook until tender. Add the sliced plantain and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. 

Combine the onion and plantain in a large saucepan.  Add the chiles, the cinnamon stick, cumin, oregano and 2 cups broth from the beef. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer until the chiles are softened, 10 minutes.

Cool 15 minutes, then puree in a blender. Return to the saucepan. Rinse out the blender with another 1 cup beef broth and add to the saucepan.

Bring to a boil, add the beef and simmer gently 20 minutes. If the sauce becomes too thick, dilute with additional broth. 

Serve sprinkled lightly with sesame seeds.

Makes 4 servings.