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

A Lenten Bread Pudding from Mexico

Lent may be a time for fasting and sober thought, especially in this corona virus epoch. On the positive side, it's also the season to eat a buttery rich, syrupy sweet and totally fabulous dessert, the Mexican bread pudding called capirotada.

Alex Peña (above) is an expert in making capirotada, and in all Mexican breads. His capirotada is on the right. On the left is another of his bread-based desserts, budín.

Peña grew up with Mexican baking at his family's panadería and market, La Morenita in Cypress Park, California. Now, he's director of development for Pak Group, producer of Bellarise yeast and other commercial baking supplies. In his lab in Pasadena, California, he tests and fine-tunes everything to do with bread baking.

For capirotada, Peña bakes his own bread, often using round, sweet picones (above).

Or else he makes bolillos (above). At home, you can use store-bought bolillos, which you then cut up and dry in the oven. 

Many Latino supermarkets provide ready made dried bolillos for capirotada such as these displayed at a Northgate Gonzalez market in Los Angeles. 


I even found them at AA Marketplace in Garden Grove, a pan Asian market that also carries Mexican ingredients.  

Some Latino markets and bakeries sell readymade capirotada such as this version in the prepared foods counter at Northgate Gonzalez. 

Assembling the pudding is easy. Once the bread is prepared, you place it in a baking dish, then add melted butter, raisins, roasted peanuts, grated cheese, candies and a syrup spiced with cinnamon and cloves.

Special ingredients such as piloncillo, fat cinnamon sticks and colaciones (at left in front) are available in Latino markets. 

Here, Peña sprinkles grated cheese over the pudding--yes, cheese is an essential component of capirotada. His Guadalajara style capirotada is topped with Jack cheese. In northern Mexico, cooks might use sharp Cheddar.

Peña pretties up the pudding with candies--fat round Mexican colaciones and multi-colored candy sprinkles. You can eat capirotada warm after baking or refrigerated and cold. It's good either way, he says.

And if it's too hard to shop for the ingredients now, capirotada will be good anytime, not just during Lent. 

To see more of Peña's Mexican breads, go to his Instagram site, Baking Evolution.

ALEX PEÑA'S CAPIROTADA
Mexican Bread Pudding

6 cups sliced or cubed bolillos, from 4 bolillos, about 3 1/2 ounces each
2 quarts water
2 pounds piloncillo (Mexican brown sugar cones) 
2 large whole cinnamon sticks
1 teaspoon whole cloves
1 1/2 cups butter (3 sticks), melted
1 cup raisins 
1 cup roasted peanuts 
3 cups shredded Jack cheese 
Decorative Mexican candies such as colaciones or candy sprinkles

The bolillos can be prepared a day ahead. Spread the slices or cubes on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 30 minutes, until dry. 

The syrup can also be prepared a day ahead. Combine the water, piloncillo, cinnamon sticks and cloves in a large pot. Bring to a rolling boil. Cook until reduced to 1 1/2 quarts. If storing overnight, you can leave the spices in the syrup. Before baking, strain the syrup to remove the spices.

Heat the oven to 350 degrees.

Place the dried bolillos in a 10-inch-square baking dish. Sprinkle evenly with the butter, raisins, peanuts, cheese and candies. Sprinkle the syrup over all. Cover with a lid or foil. Bake for 1 hour. 

Serve warm or cold. Makes 20 (3-ounce) servings or 12 (5-ounce) servings. Additional cheese and sprinkles can be added after baking or when reheating for an attractive presentation. 

The Season's Best Pan de Muerto

Pan de muerto--bread of the dead--is heavenly, the way Alex Peña makes it.

Decorated with skulls and bones and sprinkled with sugar, it has the most divine texture of any bread I've tasted, like cake and bread combined. 

Peña (above right) was making it for the YouTube show Trippy Food (www.YouTube.com/TrippyFood), an episode you can see November 1. At left is show host Valentino Herrera.  

Pan de Muerto is the bread that goes on the ofrendas (altars) set up for the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). On November 1, children who have passed away are honored. November 2 is for adults. The bread and other treats they loved in life are set out on the altar so they can "taste" them again when they return home for a brief visit. 


At this time of year, all panaderías and Latino markets offer pan de muerto. Above is a supermarket loaf. Peña's bread isn't in retail outlets, but you can see how it's made on Trippy Food and imagine the dreamy taste.

Once, Peña made Mexican breads for his family's bakery, La Morenita in Cypress Park, which is now closed. They were the best I ever tasted. Now he's director of product development for Bellarise, a company that supplies yeast and other ingredients for industrial baking. Bellarise is part of Pak Group, the fourth largest yeast company in the world.  

But Mexican bread remains Peña's passion, and the other night the lab where he works was filled with the sweet scent of freshly baked pan de muerto. The bread dates from the 1940s, created by Basque bakers who settled in Mexico City, he said. 


A unique flavoring employed by the Basques was orange flower water. The taste of this in the bread is so subtle you hardly know it's there. Here, Peña sniffs a slice. 

The other ingredients in his pan de muerto are yeast, flour, butter, lard, eggs, water, cane sugar and salt. Some recipes use cinnamon instead of orange flower water, but Peña says this slows fermentation, and he doesn't use it.

After mixing the dough, he forms it into rounds and refrigerates them to ferment. The slow fermentation adds flavor and improves the texture, he said.  

Large rounds of dough represent tumbas (tombs). To make bones, Peña rolls small balls of dough into knobby strips and drapes these over the top of the tumbas. Other balls of dough represent skulls

Here is a completed loaf ready to go into the proof box, where it will develop for 45 minutes to an hour. The bread then bakes for 25 minutes in the lab's revolving oven.  

Peña paints the freshly baked golden brown breads with melted butter.

Then he coats them with sugar. The custom is to use pink sugar for children and white sugar for adults, he said.

The way the breads are decorated varies from region to region in Mexico. Peña sprinkles some of the loaves with sesame seeds instead of sugar.

After baking, he lets the bread cool just long enough to slice and enjoy. 

Talk about melt in your mouth, I've never tasted bread like this. It's truly a gift from Paradise. 

A Ranch Kitchen That Really Sings

One extraordinary dish after another lined the counter at La Cocina Que Canta, the cooking school and culinary center on the grounds of Rancho La Puerta at Tecate.

This was a breakfast like none I've ever had, most of it based on produce harvested from the six-acre farm just outside.

The counter was the broad chopping block island (at top) where students work during cooking classes. It's at one end of a large room facing an enormous window that looks out to the farm.  A small, flowery patio leads to the entrance. Inside and out, the building is warmly Mexican in design. You can see in the photo the traditional cut paper, papel picado, that decorated the kitchen for the breakfast.

La Cocina Que Canta means "the kitchen that sings," which gets you ready for an upbeat experience. I went there on a media tour. Although there were only four of us, the staff set out enough food to almost cover the counter, starting with bowls of strawberries, melons, pineapple and mangoes (above).

Executive chef Denise Roa saw to it that we tasted everything from traditional Mexican food to healthy ranch specialties such as the pancakes (above). They're gluten free, made with rice, tapioca, potato and quinoa flours. Even better, there was ranch-made mulberry jam and soft, light strawberry jam to spoon on top.

We ate eggs scrambled with kale, onion and sweet red peppers along with potatoes just harvested from the farm. 

Roasted ranch vegetables (above) were so delicious that I've already made them at home, following Denise Roa's instructions. You season the cut-up vegetables with olive oil, agave syrup, gluten free soy sauce and lots of fresh herbs, then bake them at 350 degrees until tender. The vegetables in the photo are beets, parsnips and carrots. 

Because we were in Mexico, we had what Mexicans often eat for breakfast, cheese-topped chilaquiles--tortilla hash (above).

To spice up the chilaquiles, there were chopped fresh salsa and traditional red and green salsas (above). 

Who could resist these cute miniature chocolate and banana muffins (above)? They're doubly chocolate, because they contain both chips and cocoa, and doubly banana, because they're made with banana chips as well as the fresh fruit.

After breakfast, we went outside to see the farm, and ate carrots and radishes (above) that Roa pulled out and washed. 

Then we saw what radicchio looks like as it grows (above).

Cooking classes at La Cocina Que Canta aren't only for spa guests. Rancho La Puerta offers Saturday excursions out of San Diego that anyone can take part in. They include spa activities, a spa meal and a cooking class that ends with lunch or dinner.  

Even if you don't go, you can still taste the banana and chocolate muffins. The recipe below is for a loaf, but you can turn it into muffins instead. Roa uses 72 % chocolate chips, which you can see in the muffin on my breakfast plate (above).  

CHOCOLATE BANANA BREAD
From La Cocina Que Canta at Rancho La Puerta

12 ounces pitted prunes
2 cups water
2 medium bananas
2 large eggs
1 cup unbleached all-purpose or whole wheat flour
½ cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 ½ teaspoons baking soda
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup chopped walnuts
½ cup banana chips, broken into small pieces
1 cup good-quality semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Lightly butter a 9x5-inch loaf pan, and line the bottom with a piece of parchment paper.

Cook the prunes and water at a slow simmer until the prunes are very soft. Drain any excess liquid. Puree the prunes, bananas and eggs in a blender until very smooth.

Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and
cinnamon into a mixing bowl. Stir in the banana mixture and combine thoroughly. Gently stir in the walnuts, banana chips and chocolate chips.

Turn the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 50 to 60 minutes. When the bread is done, a sharp knife inserted in the center will come out without any raw batter, although a bit of melted chocolate chip may cling to the knife.

Turn the loaf out of the pan onto a rack to cool. Cut into thin slices to serve. 

Makes 1 loaf. 

La Monarca's Mexican Chocolate Cookies

Who could resist a cookie, or chocolate, or, better yet, the two combined?

Ricardo Cervantes of La Monarca Bakery put these irresistible treats together for his demo Sunday at The Taste 2012 at Paramount Studios.

It was the second day of the event, and the coolest place to be was Hoy Cafe, a breezy room set up by The Taste of México Association for its food demos, which alternated with performances by the Mariachi Los Toros.

Cervantes, president of the association, was the last to appear. He followed Jaime Martín del Campo and Ramiro Arvizu of La Casita Mexicana, who showed how to make mole poblano and agua de coco, and Vicente Del Río of Frida Mexican Cuisine and Casa Azul Cantina, who presented halibut ceviche verde.

"At La Monarca, we try to incorporate chocolate into as many things as possible," Cervantes (above) said as he mixed the dough for his Mexican Hot Chocolate Cookies, rolled it out and cut the cookies.  

A version of the Mexican polvorón, the cookies are rich with butter and include powdered Mexican chocolate, the kind used to make hot chocolate. After they are baked and cooled, more chocolate is sprinkled on top (above). 

Trays of the cookies circulated during the demo, and more were handed out at La Monarca's booth, which was part of a "barrio" of Mexican restaurants clustered beside Hoy Cafe.

MEXICAN HOT CHOCOLATE COOKIES
La Monarca Bakery 

1 cup unsalted butter
1 cup powdered sugar 
4 cups cake flour
3/4 cup Mexican chocolate, such as Abuelita, grated into a fine powder
1/3 cup water

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a mixer, using the paddle attachment, about 4 minutes.

Stop the mixer and add the cake flour and chocolate. Beat on low speed until fully incorporated, about 3 minutes. Stop and scrape the sides of the bowl as necessary to prevent sticking. The mixture will appear like dry grains of sand.

Add the water and continue mixing at low speed until the dough is evenly blended and separates completely from the bowl, about 2 minutes. Stop and scrape the sides as necessary.

Remove the dough from the mixer and place it on a cutting board lightly dusted with cake flour. Roll out 1/4-inch thick. If the dough sticks, dust it with more cake flour.

Cut out the cookies with a 1 1/4-inch round cookie cutter, and place them on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 15 minutes.

Let the cookies stand at room temperature until cooled, then dust them lightly with additional powdered chocolate.

Makes approximately 7 dozen cookies.

Tip: Cervantes suggests grating the chocolate with a zester.