More mushy American food

I ate a hamburger and fries. I couldn’t help it, even though Tito's is famous for its tortas.

And it’s true, Mexican coke is different from American coke. It’s made with sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup, and the sweetness is definitely more genuine.

Tortas at La Hormiga

It’s been interesting to see what middle-class Mexicans will tell foreigners about street food here in Oaxaca. First, they start by telling you never, never to eat street food and to only eat raw fruits or vegetables if they have a good, thick removable skin. I’m not quite sure what the danger is, beyond your usual food poisoning. Although guidebooks and locals will tell foreigners that they have to be careful because their sensitive foreign stomachs aren’t used to the local bacterial blend, middle-class Oaxaquenos themselves are careful about where they buy food on the street and they also carefully disinfect lettuce and other produce by soaking them in iodine and water before eating raw salads. Every morning, you can hear a guy shouting in the street, “Agua! Agua!”, as he delivers big plastic canisters of purified water. And no one ever asks how you want your meat cooked—there’s only one option when the butchers don’t use refrigerators. Can you imagine what the raw food movement would do here?

Their exhortations not to eat street food were so strong, I did wonder at first, if there was something that made street food in Oaxaca more dangerous than in Thailand or Haiti or any of the other places I’ve eaten street food. But when I started to press them, even the American staff at my school backed down and said, “Well, I eat street food. We just don’t want anyone blaming us if they get sick.” Pretty soon, I started to get tips from my Mexican family, the cooking teacher at ICO, and my private teacher, about the fruit juice seller at Mercado Juarez that uses purified water, or Senora Angelita whose corn, on and off the cob, is “muy limpia.”

One of the biggest factors in determining the cleanliness of a vendor is how they handle money. Many of the reputedly clean people have a helper who handles all the money, while he or she handles all the food. But if their helper is absent, the favored method seems to be to put on a thin plastic glove before handling the money, and then taking it off to go back to cooking food. I like it. Any serious cook would agree that it’s hard to determine when food is done through plastic or rubber, but the NYC Department of Health would have a collective heart attack.

So now that my Spanish classes are in the afternoon, I have from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. to do nothing. I spend most of my morning (and admittedly, most of the night before) thinking about where I am going to eat lunch. Wednesday was my appointed day to go eat at the recommended, “very clean” torta truck, “La Hormiga” in Conzati Park. “Hormiga” means ant, and the truck accordingly has a very happy ant smiling at its customers. The truck itself gleams with cleanliness, and it’s always crowded, particularly when school lets out.

A torta reminds me very much of a Vietnamese banh-mi. If it’s ordinary, it’s nothing more than a sandwich. (And personally, I am not big into sandwiches.) But if the bread is toasted right and the crust crackles as you bite into it, and the sharply salty filling is balanced, by creamy avocado and cheese in a torta or by tart pickled vegetables in a banh-mi, it can be so much more satisfying than a sandwich deserves to be. Or perhaps it would be fairer to compare a torta with a panini, since both get toasted and pressed on a grill, and the Platonic ideal of both sandwiches recognize that the bread is as important as the filling.



I wouldn’t say that “La Hormiga” is on the level of Saigon Banh Mi at the back of the jewelry store on Mott St. at the corner of Grand, or my favorite little ‘Ino in the West Village, but my torta with cecina, a spicy, shredded pork, and quesillo was crackly, salty, and balanced like an Olympic gymnast. ¡Qué sabrosa!

Filling my belly with la comida corrida at La Olla

I first heard about La Olla from Karen and Steve, the foodie-couple I met in the cooking class at ICO. They were here for two weeks, and they ate the comida corrida, or the lunch prix-fixe meal, at La Olla almost everyday. They raved about the freshness of the ingredients, the variety of flavors, the awe with which they faced every new dish. They even took the cooking class at the related bed-and-breakfast.

I celebrated my first Monday out of school and out of my homestay by going to La Olla, determined to try the famed comida corrida. I had been a bit disappointed by my first meal there, a farewell dinner we had for a friend who was moving on to Chiapas and eventually Guatemala and Honduras to study women’s peace movements. My tortilla soup had been tasty, but the tacos nopales (cactus) had been boring, and the chocolate cake and cheesecake my friends had for dessert were dry and overcooked.

The comida corrida I had on Monday, however, was absolutely stunning. For 70 pesos, or a little less than $7, I had a four-course meal with a glass of agua de jamaica (hibiscus flower) and a substantial bread basket. The food was straightforward and simple, but done with such care, it was like eating at the home of an extremely talented cook.



The bread basket came with homemade tortilla chips, a spicy, dark salsa, and a little cup of pickled vegetables that gave some comfort to me with my increasing kimchi cravings. Did you know you can pickle a baby potato?



The comida corrida, however, officially began with a refreshing salad of lightly steamed and cubed chayote and matchsticks of jicama. The vinaigrette was light but flavorful, and I was amazed by the tiny bits of radish that added just enough contrasting color.



I was already pretty full of tortilla chips and pickled vegetables, but I still ate every spoonful of the chickpea puree soup, in which they’d placed half a hard-boiled egg. So many of the soups I’ve had here have this indescribable quality, probably from hierba santa or some other herb that I’m not familiar with, that adds an earthy dimension to otherwise simple soups, making them completely addictive.



And then I had a choice of beef with scallions or a chile stuffed with tuna. I chose the beef and ended up with a thin fillet of beef overlaid with sautéed onions with a nice slice of fried cheese and scallions in a slightly creamy sauce. I think the cheese was queso fresco, and I was happy to see it could fry as successfully as halloumi. The cream should have been too rich, but it wasn’t in balance with the sautéed scallions. Oaxacan beef is far from tender, but if you like a good chew, and I do, you would love this dish.



I no longer had the pressure of being a guest in someone’s home, but I ate it all and then finished off the guava pie dessert as well, which was tart with a good crumbly, graham-cracker-like crust and a huge improvement on the failed desserts I’d tried earlier. I like to imagine the waiters were impressed by my prowress, but sadly, no one applauded me, the way my friends Danica and Sharon were applauded in China. No matter, I don't need outside recognition to be proud of my accomplishments.

Finding peace in ice cream

Oaxaca is surprisingly noisy. I thought I was leaving the biggest, baddest city in the world, to come to a place that was almost rural and definitely simpler. But Oaxaca is really, really noisy.

I’m living now in an apartment that faces the street. It’s not a major thruway, but because it’s on a slope, every car has to rev its engine to make it up the hill, and the ones that want to go fast are as macho as any motorcycle. Are there no decent mufflers in this town? There are also rockets or fireworks that go off almost everyday. I first started to hear a spate of them on June 14, the anniversary of the government’s first failed attempt to expel the teachers demonstrating in the zocalo, but apparently, today’s rockets were let loose by the multitude of churches that cluster downtown to celebrate, I don’t know, the saint of fireworks? If I close the windows, it’s much better though by no means quiet, but that means I give up the night breezes that give us all hope during the heat of midday.

I’m starting to feel the annoyance of life again. It was so easy not to have a cellphone, and as much as I missed living alone during my homestay, it was also so easy not to cook or to clean or to think about anything like where to get drinkable water. I miss my Brooklyn block, which only has three early-morning motorcyclers and your occasional loud party down the block. I miss my friends, who are all friends of choice, not of convenience. I wish I had taken that other apartment in nearly suburban Colonia Reforma. My God, if it’s this noisy on a Sunday, what will it be like tomorrow?

So I have to focus on what is good and right: strawberry ice cream at the Mercado Organico.

It was only during my third trip to the market that I noticed the vendor selling sweet rolls and hot chocolate was also selling freshly made ice cream. I had been getting ready to leave, having already consumed a delicious, chewy piece of pizza-flatbread and the best cup of coffee in Oaxaca, but then I saw a man walk by with three blue dixie-cups filled with ice cream. It called to something deep in my soul and I practically ran back to the stall.

It was fresh. Creamier than most “nieve,” the sorbet-like ice cream most available in Oaxaca, it was studded with fresh, tart strawberries and pecan bits. It was being kept cold in a wooden pail packed with ice and salt, but it wasn’t just the romance of the old-fashioned ice-cream making that made it taste so good. It could have come out of a high-tech, stainless steel freezer and I would still have been rolling my eyes to heaven. It’s rare and magical when ice cream hits that perfect balancing point between rich and fresh, sweet and tart, creamy and yet refreshing.

The ice cream will be the subject of my meditation every time I feel like screaming because of the noise outside my windows.

The comforts of posole

Just when I thought my month of eye-opening, homemade Oaxacan food was over, Patty served posole for our Saturday comida. Her entire family had been up late celebrating her second oldest’s graduation. Unlike American teenagers, Valeria and her friends had big party at which her mother, father, little brother, aunt, uncle, and 84-year-old grandmother were all very welcome. Valeria, according to her own words, had several shots of whiskey mixed with soda, right in view of her parents, probably with her parents for all I know. Her grandmother got home around midnight because she was tired; her parents, Patty and Homero, came home at 4 in the morning. Valeria and most of her family were tired and “cruda” or hungover, and posole was the most restorative thing Patty could make. I love Mexican family values.

Posole is a soup made of chicken or pork broth and rehydrated dried corn kernels, bigger than any most Americans have ever seen, to which various kinds of meat can be added, depending on your regional definition of “posole.” Patty’s was chicken-intensive, to which you could add shredded cabbage and a fresh squeeze of lime. Some crunchy, fried tortillas crumbled into the broth made it even better. It’s my favorite kind of food, homey, warming, and very, very delicious.

I wasn’t hungover, since I’d spent much of the night watching the Simpsons in Spanish, but I think the posole did me a lot of good, too.

Crapola American food

This is what happens when you order nachos, chicken wings, and fried cheese sticks at a sports bar in Oaxaca. I haven't eaten cheese like that in...well, maybe never. Oh, there was that Philly cheesesteak I ate the "authentic" way with Cheez Whiz in 2003.

A group of us had hoped to find some thrills in watching Mexico play Brazil in the Copa America fútbol tournament in a crowd full of Mexicans, but on top of missing Mexico's two winning goals, due to a misreading of the newspaper, we had to order crapola American food, due to the 80 peso per person minimum being enforced that night. Keep in mind that this was only a first round game, but the bar was packed, and only seats left required me to tilt my head back so far, I started getting a crick right away.

Being in "Metrocity," the sports bar, reminded me of being in Seoul in high school. The bar was trying to be very American, despite its almost completely Mexican clientele. It had a black wooden bar that kind of made it look like an American pub, if you squinted and didn't notice the paneling didn't go all the way, and a bunch of random, mainly American sports posters, like one of Scottie Pippen for the Portland Trailblazers, and a big inflated inner tube advertising a beer company.

I don't really have to describe the way the food tasted because I'm sure you know. I need to find a new sports bar pronto, because the Copa America is going on all month. I watched Argentina trounce the U.S. beautifully at my homestay last night (sorry, I'm a bad American but it was really well done), but my new apartment doesn't have a TV. It's a good thing I don't have cravings for American bar food, because God knows where I would go.

Vota por chiken

And for lamb and for beef, for duck and for pork, for fish and for shrimp, for clams and for lobsters, for everything delicious that walks and swims and crawls on this earth.

My last Patty post

On Sunday, I’m moving to my new apartment. I’m looking forward to living alone again and excited about how my understanding of Mexican food might deepen in my own kitchen, but I’m going to miss my Mexican family. Obviously, the immersion was great for my Spanish, but it’s been meaningful in ways I never anticipated. Every week, I would come home and find not only the five people who live in my house, but also a sister, brother-in-law, aunt, uncle, nieces, all of them speaking Spanish at the same time. None of them were ever flummoxed by the sight of a tall Asian woman in their house, who spoke Spanish haltingly, and would simply include me in whatever was going on. On one Sunday, while I sipped banana liqueur, the aunt sitting next to me repeatedly patted my arm and said, “¡Mira!” (“Look” or “You see”), as she told me and the rest of the family about the terrible car accident her daughter had been in. They reminded me a lot of my large Korean family. They made me miss my own family.

Not surprisingly, the cultural immersion I appreciated the most was the chance to eat homemade Mexican food. I got to see what I love most about food, how it can center family and friends and nourish more than our bodies. Given the enthusiasm with which most Oaxacans I’ve met talk about food, I can tell food is a valued part of their history and tradition, but Patty, I think, is uniquely spectacular. She and her family would give me tips on where to find good street food, the kind that’s “muy limpia” or “very clean,” or tell me which is the most authoritative cookbook on Oaxacan cooking. In the 29 days I spent with them, I ate 28 different dishes. We joked that she should write a cookbook herself, except it wasn’t really a joke, she really should. Eating with her, I not only learned words like “ajonjolí” (sesame) and “canela” (cinnamon), but also “tresoro” (treasure) and “herencia” (inheritance).

In addition to the tamales that I loved so much upon my arrival, my favorite torta, and the coloradito mole that made my toes tingle, there have been a couple of other real standouts.



Isn’t it magnificent? They’re fried taquitos filled with chicken and beans, and then drowned in Patty’s awesome salsa verde, finished off with a drizzle of crema, queso, and lettuce. She had also made some guacamole that day, thinner and more sharply acidic than the American dip, and I happily put some of that on as well. I wanted to stop at three, but I just couldn’t and I ate all them.



This is what I ate for lunch a week later, chicken estofada with rice and a bit of black bean puree, and tortillas, of course. I started with a soup that I would be thrilled to make for myself and serve to guests, so simple but so bright in its flavors. I didn’t even have to ask for the recipe, it just declared itself: chicken broth with rice, hierba santa, and then finely chopped white onion, parsley, jalapeno peppers, and limes to squeeze right before eating.

And then I ate the estofada, which according to Patty requires you to toast sesame seeds and almonds, and then grind them up with tomatoes and “muchas muchas spices.” Like a fine wine, it had such incredible depth of flavor. And like moles, it was obviously fatty because a sauce doesn’t get that smooth without fat, but it didn’t taste greasy at all. It’s not a spicy sauce, for once, and I have a strong suspicion that it must have some Moroccan origin, via Spain, because sesame seeds and almonds just don’t seem very Mesoamerican. This is my favorite kind of globalization.



And more recently, I dined on this fine chile relleno. I’ve never been a big fan of chiles rellenos, probably because I don’t really like green peppers. I just don’t see the point—you have your delicious sweet red and yellow peppers, and you have your fantastic range of hot peppers, so why would you ever eat a pepper that just tastes like crunchy grass?

I have to admit, I didn’t adore the Oaxacan chile relleno I had with Patty, but I think I would have loved it if the pepper had been hotter, maybe a chile de agua, which is lighter in color but stronger in power. It had a much more interesting filling than the chile rellenos I’ve had in the U.S., shredded chicken made saucy with tomatoes, raisins, and almonds, all wrapped in the smooth and crunchy exterior of the fried pepper.



Finally, the crème de la crème, Patty’s mole negro. Look how shiny it is in its darkness. I love how “the” dish of Oaxaca can vary so much from restaurant to restaurant, home to home. Hers is a little sweeter than mole I’ve had elsewhere, maybe a little smokier. It’s such a fine balancing act, the bitterness and the sweetness. Jane, the student who’s been staying in the apartment out back, requested the dish for lunch the Friday her husband came to town. He and I got into a discussion on immigration reform that nearly boiled over, but Oaxaca must have changed me, because I managed to keep my temper and enjoy every bite of my mole negro.

And it wasn’t only the main dishes that were so impressive. I had multiple kinds of rice, all cooked to be fluffy and flavorful. I ate every spoonful of every soup, whether it was chicken broth with precisely chopped vegetables or a soup tinged with tomato and filled with pasta. There were days that I ate more than I wanted to, but my desire not to explode was clearly overcome by greater desires.

I’m happy to know that Patty and her family will always remember me as the Korean girl who ate everything.

A wall of pork rinds, and a swim in the mountains

Have you ever seen a wall of fried pork rinds? I hadn’t, until I went to the big weekly Sunday market at Tlacolula, a pueblo about 25 minutes east of Oaxaca City.



As soon as we got out of our “colectivo taxi,” a shared taxi, we saw two Zapotec women walking with turkeys tucked under their arms, like they were footballs. This market also sold everything under the sun, from big tin buckets



to large metates for grinding corn



to pink kernels of dried corn. I have no idea how or why they are this way.



I’d eaten an enormous breakfast of eggs cooked in salsa, then wrapped with beans in tortillas, so I couldn’t work up much of an appetite, even for the wall of chicharrones but I did buy some tamales de elote, which turned out to be basically sweet corn bread baked in corn husks. Smokier than American-style cornbread, but not the mushy texture of other tamales. Very hearty and satisfying.



And I saw the most lovable dog. Look at his face!



But I had to admit, it wasn’t as much fun to go to a market when I didn’t have any reason to buy a plastic bag full of nopales (cactus salad), or a big loaf of pan de yema. And I felt badly just taking pictures of everything without buying much.

So the highlight of the day was moving further east to Hierve El Agua, which translates as “boiling water, which is quite an overstatement. It’s actually a slightly lukewarm spring on top of a mountain. But it’s not as boring as it sounds! It’s a lovely place to get away from the big bad city, and to swim in what looks almost like a fancy infinity pool on top of a mountain.



We had taken a “coletivo taxi” or a shared taxi from Oaxaca to Tlacolula, and from Tlacolula to Mitla, where we found a pick-up truck with a covered back taking people to Hierve El Agua. It turned out Hierve El Agua isn’t actually that far from Oaxaca, but it takes an hour and a half to get there because from Mitla, you have to climb a steep, curvy, unpaved road.

Once you enter, you see a fairly bare hilltop, a few spare brick buildings on top of one hill where they serve snacks and drinks, and a few half-constructed buildings that seem to be hopefully anticipating more tourism. Like the rest of Oaxaca, though, Hierve El Agua seemed to be hurting for tourists.



We walked down a stony slope strewn with cacti and other dry plants to find the spring itself, enclosed in a little metal fence as if it were in some danger, and then a beautiful pool facing the mountains across and the valleys below. There were a few families with children splashing around, three Asian tourists with cameras slung around their necks, and us. The water had a slight smell of sulfur and it was warm from the sun, but it wasn’t anything approximating a hot spring. Still, I was so happy to jump in the water and do a few awkward crawls.



I would have liked to take the footpath around the mountain, but we didn’t really have time since we wanted to eat lunch, and I didn’t really care, it was that kind of day.

(Admittedly, it didn’t feel so relaxing when we started making our way back on the same curvy, steep road in pouring rain. I saw the driver cross himself before we started, and then at one point instruct his compañero to put rocks behind the tires so we wouldn’t slide backwards, but hey, we got back just fine. Such are the joys of public transportation!)

Mercado organico at El Pochote

Now that I’ve been here for over three weeks, it’s finally hit me that I’m actually living here, in Oaxaca, Mexico. The raw newness of the city has worn off, and there are areas I can navigate without looking at a map. Best of all, I’m starting to have favorite places, and at the top of the list is the little park of El Pochote.

You could walk by El Pochote and not even know it. It’s built into the old aqueducts of the city, with only one small wooden door in a brick wall of arches leading into the enclosed space. Once you’re inside, it’s mainly red dirt with a brick walkway, a small pond with a brush of bamboo, and not much greenery, but there’s something so lovely about its quietness and feeling of secrecy. Oaxaca, despite being a city less than 1/12th the size of New York, can still feel noisy, crowded, and polluted at times, and it’s always a relief to find myself inside El Pochote.

The park regularly shows free art films and hosts events like the bicycle-power generator demonstration I went to Saturday night (inexplicably paired with a series of animated shorts by a Czech filmmaker I’d never heard of, Jan Svankmajer). But the biggest draw of El Pochote for me is undeniably the organic market on Fridays and Saturdays.

Like organic markets in the U.S., the customers appear generally middle- and upper-class, along with a lot of the type of gringos who like to visit places like Oaxaca, lefty, green, well-meaning. The whole market is very well-groomed, pretty white tents on wooden poles, instead of helter-skelter plastic tarps. The only non-food items are tasteful, traditional pottery and all-natural soaps and shampoos, no plastic cups with Disney characters printed on them. And as much as I like the crazed chaos of piñatas juxtaposed with raw meat, I have to admit it’s often a little easier to enjoy the Mercado Organico.



And no market in the U.S., neither the Union Square Greenmarket, or my beloved Alemany Market in San Francisco, or even the gastronomic playland of the Ferry Building in San Francisco has the tlayudas, enchiladas, and tacos I can get at El Pochote. Actually, I don’t think there’s any other market in Oaxaca where I could get the food I ate at El Pochote. Looking at the wide range of sautéed vegetables—squash, mushrooms, dark leafy greens—I suddenly realized what I’d been missing in my diet for the past three weeks. My stomach cried out for something that would taste fresh and simple, not cooked or pureed or seasoned.

I started with a fantastic “taco” of a tortilla rolled around diced chicken piquant with sautéed sweet peppers, mixed with a bit of black bean spread and such lovely, tasty sautéed mushrooms.



I then had two enchiladas smothered in coloradito mole with some shredded chicken, lettuce, and queso sprinkled on top. I think prices here are slightly higher than elsewhere, but they’re still so low by American standards: 23 pesos or a little under $2.30 for a plate of food that would have been more than enough for my lunch. I felt particularly lucky eating these, that I’m here long enough to try multiple versions of my favorite foods. This coloradito had a sophisticated touch of bitterness, but still slightly sweeter and better, I think, than the one I’d tried at Casa Oaxaca.



I drank some chilacayote, a pulpy drink with seeds and all made of a type of sweet squash. I didn’t like it very much, and wished I had gotten tejate in a pretty little gourd instead, like my classmate who graciously wasn’t surprised when I asked to take a picture of her drink.



I bought some candied figs, squash, and chilacayote, which were pretty good, but a little too sweet to eat in the huge chunks they sold them in.



And then I finally tasted some chapulllines, the Oaxacan specialty of fried grasshoppers. I’d been waiting for July or August, when they would be bigger and better, according to Soledad my cooking guru from ICO, but the little old lady selling them was so insistent, I ended up buying a tiny $1 bag. They tasted salty more than anything, not as crunchy as I’d thought they would be, maybe a bit like anchovies. I love anchovies, but I don’t snack on them, and I didn’t finish the bag.

And to take home, I bought a little chocolate crescent-bread from the Korean woman who runs an organic farm and restaurant in Etla, a pueblo outside Oaxaca. I think she and her half-Korean daughters were as surprised to see me as I was to see them, but I was too shy to get her story. I had hovered by her stall for so long, though, that I felt obliged to buy the bread. Lucky for me, it was really good. I loved the cinnamon-y texture and flavor of the bit of chocolate running through the swirls of sweet, eggy bread. It wasn’t at all like eating a crappy pain au chocolate with a stingy bit of chocolate at Au Bon Pain. Most Mexican bread tastes too dry and/or too bland to me, organic or not. This was so much better, wholesome without being boring. (My friend wants to organize a trip to her restaurant, so I hope to get her story sooner or later.)

Heh heh, when I have my own apartment, I can take more food home.

The five official meals of Mexico

After 3 weeks of classes, I now have more than 3 tenses at my disposal, which means I have even more conjugations to run through my head as I search for the right one. We're now in the murky world of tenses that don't have a real equivalent tense in English, and we wrestle with the difference between a desire that may possibly be fulfilled versus a past desire that has already been thwarted. Neither tense is appropriate for the direct declaration, "I want..." There's even a difference between asking, "What happened?" when you know there's a definite answer, versus when you don't. And we haven't even gone over the subjunctive yet! The Spanish speaker's sense of time, not to mention reality, must be so different from ours. My friend Lisa agrees; she says it's the only explanation for why her half-Mexican husband takes 20 minutes to get out the door after announcing that he's ready to leave.

This more complicated and possibly more nuanced view of time is carried over into meals, the Mexican conception of which differs even more from the American one than I'd previously thought. The main meal is definitely "la comida correa," but in addition to "desayunar" (to breakfast) and "cenar" (to dine lightly late at night), there is also "almorzar" and "merendar." "Almorazar describes the act of eating a bigger breakfast, like eggs or atole or chilaquiles, and it's eaten around 8-10 a.m. Merendar is the act of eating a late afternoon snack, like coffee and a sweet bread, at 6-7 pm. I love that each meal deserves its own verb. It's not good enough just to say, "I ate breakfast, I ate lunch, I ate an afternoon snack."

So there's no real point to this, except that I had my favorite "cenar" the other day. I only eat 3 meals a day, with an occasional popsicle in between, but my light-dinner is never a sweet bread or yogurt, as explained in my guidebook. I don't know if it's because Patty thinks I'm a hungry American--and given that I eat everything she gives me, she probably thinks I am. But usually, it is a big torta, or sandwich, and my favorite is bean-quesillo-avocado-tomato. I’ve raved before about Patty’s beans, but I’ll rave again. They’re black beans that have been pureed into a smooth, savory spread. She must just have some made lying around almost everyday, because I know she’s not soaking, cooking, and pureeing the beans right before “cenar.” But what a way to use leftovers! Patty combines the beans with the stringy Oaxacan cheese called “quesillo,” slices of ripe avocado and tomato, and then something spicy and creamy that I finally identified as chipotle mayonnaise.

In a week, I'll be moving out of the homestay into my own apartment, and I'm curious to see how much I'll maintain the Mexican pattern of meals, especially since I'll be leaving the institutional classes of the school and switching to private one-on-one classes in the afternoon. If I keep nothing else, I just hope I can figure out some way to approximate Patty's bean-quesillo-avocado-tomato sandwich.

Aqui, Casilda (Here, Casilda)

Such a declaration of place!

Whenever I ask, “Do you know Aguas Casilda,” everyone says, “Ohhh, Aguas Casilda, muy riquissimas!” I doubt Casilda is still there, as she would have to be 97 years old, but regardless, her stall is situated just a few stalls down from the nieve place I also love in Mercado Juarez, making that spot a place of difficult decisions. Even those who are squeamish about street food exclaim, “Y ella es muy limpia,” because the stall uses purified water. When King Juan Carlos of Spain and unspecified presidents of Mexico, governors, actors, actresses, and singers have come to pay homage to Casilda, who established her stall in 1926, who are you to be afraid of diarrhea?

I know all this about Casilda because the laminated menu has a history on the back. If my reading is correct, Casilda was practically a saint, as she is described giving horchata to thirsty, often penniless students, making her, “La Samaritana Oaxaquena.” I don’t think Americans have ever felt that strongly about a drink-maker. Even your biggest, die-hard Coca-Cola fan isn’t likely to want to confer sainthood on the inventor, whatshisname. Their pride in Casilda reminded me a bit of Korea, where the government catalogs every person with a traditional talent or craft, so that Mr. Kim the master of ceramics becomes “National Living Treasure #548.”

But of course, the most important object of pride is not Casilda’s history but her products, the aguas themselves. When I flipped over the laminated history, I could see clearly that pride of place had been given to one drink in particular: horchata con tuna y almendres.



Isn’t it beautiful? I’ve always liked horchata, ever since I tried it at my first taqueria with my first burrito in the Mission in San Francisco, but this version of Mexico’s famous drink made of rice tasted simpler and purer, and definitely less sugary. The tuna, which you remember is cactus fruit, made it rosier and fruitier, as did the chunks of cantaloupe floating in it. The small bits of nuts were definitely not almonds, but probably pecans or “nuez.” Maybe they ran out of almonds. No importa, I love pecans.

Sadly, it was over too quickly. I drained my glass in five minutes.

The chaos of Mercado Abastos

In the past two weeks, I’ve been to five markets and I haven’t even visited the ones in the pueblos yet. I try to remind myself that I’m going to be here for awhile, and that I’ll have plenty of time to visit them, and won’t it be nicer to go when I actually need to buy things like onions and chilis? But markets are my crack: I can’t get enough of them.

The biggest market in town is the Mercado Abastos on the southwestern end of town, near the second-class bus terminal and a good 10-15 minute walk away from the tourist-friendly Centro. It’s open everyday, but Saturday is its “market” day, the day people come from all over to sell and buy everything under the sun. It’s not in either of my guidebooks, the fussy Fodor’s or the more adventurous Moon Oaxaca, and from talking to my host mother, I get a sense that middle-class Oaxacans aren’t too fond of it. But chowhounds, of course, who tend to rate food more highly when it’s harder to get, like a frat brother who’s been hazed, love to write loving stall-by-stall descriptions of its culinary highlights.

Once we went past the zocalo, we soon stopped seeing other tourists and found ourselves squeezing between other people heading to the market with big bags on narrow sidewalks. I somehow ended up in charge, with a map and some sense of where we were going but with no real idea of what I was looking for. The streets felt louder, smellier, oilier even.

When we arrived, there was no real entrance. We just plunged in, finding ourselves at first surrounded by flowers, which segued into fish which segued into bread.



Tamales! I needed to buy one, but with no fork, I ended up carrying it for an hour, this hot little bundle that the vendor had somehow kept intensely warm in the depths of her straw basket.



And then we were in the religious section, with candles, skeletal images and books, on Wicca, and then the section for piñatas and the section for New Age health supplements.



We kept turning and turning, and I lost all sense of north-south-east-west. Jane was looking for crafts, and we kept asking people who just said, “Oh, straight ahead,” when that could mean absolutely anything.



We saw plastic cups hanging in bunches over our heads, tubs of yogurt big enough to bathe a child in, and then suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a stall full of frothy wedding and First Communion dresses.



Of course we passed fruit and vegetables, and the white onions that I love because with their tops on, they look like green onions with tumors, but we also passed rows of turkeys and chickens lying on the ground and cages crammed with ducklings and rabbits.



It was everything I knew it would be. Oh the excitement to being somewhere with live animals that you know are just waiting to be eaten! The unrecognizable herbs, little old ladies carrying mysterious sacks that could hold anything, perhaps the best homemade tortillas in the world! Yes, your pocket could be picked in the mad scrum of humanity, but you might also find anything and everything.

At the same time, It's not an easy market to be in. It's not like sitting in the shade of a secret garden at the organic market, serenely eating the most delicious, healthy-tasting taco ever (more on that to come). In a way, if you've seen Dongdaemun market in Seoul, or been in other similarly chaotic markets, it's not as shocking and exciting as it might be to an American. At the same time, my American friends didn't like it at all. But we're going to another massive market at Tlacolula, a pueblo outside of Oaxaca, on Sunday!

Two stomachs can always eat more than one

Oaxaca is an easy place to eat alone. Obviously, there’s fabulous street food that you can always eat on a park bench, and it’s almost better to be alone when you find your face smeared with salsa and your fingers tangled in the long, stretchy strings of Oaxacan quesillo. The only people watching you are the native Oaxaquenos to whom you’re already completely foreign anyway.

So until my lovely lunch with a fellow foodie at Casa Oaxaca today, I’d almost forgotten how enjoyable it can be to sit down and share a meal, compare notes, and revel together in a new, gustatory experience. It’s like seeing a funny movie or looking out at a gorgeous vista: you want someone to hear you say, “Wow, that is really good.” It’s even better, of course, when that person agrees with you, and this was such a meal.

The restaurant is beautiful but casual, with clean white walls, wooden beams, and a courtyard that opens to the sky. It felt very still and very calm, though that might also have been because we were practically the only ones there.



Soon after we sat down, the waiter brought with a flourish a large platter of the fish available that day: mahi-mahi, grouper, dorado, tuna, and some amazing prawns. Jonathan, who claims not to like shellfish, was instantly hypnotized by the prawns. I was so flustered, I forgot to take a picture, but being with someone who takes notes at most of his meals, I felt no shame in asking the waiter, “¿Por favor, podriamos ver el plato de pescados una otra vez?”, and then whipping out my camera.



The bread basket was surprising. It was filled with fried blue corn tortillas and this very curious, nutty and delicious bread with a smear of creamy cheese and red pepper running through the loaf. It tasted like the best pimiento cheese I’d ever had—could Oaxaca and the American South share a culinary ancestor? The bread was served with a blob of decent guacamole, the springy queso fresco, and the stretchy quesillo, as well as two kinds of salsa, one that was sweet like a peppery jelly and one that was more straightforward.

The poor waiters had so little to do, they came towards our table 3-4 times before we were finally able to make our decisions.



We began with two appetizers. “Bursting with flavor” always makes me think of chewing gum commercials, but I can’t think of any other way to describe it. The “chile relleno” stuffed with ceviche and served with a sauce of passionfruit and pomegranate seeds was literally bursting with flavor. I was shocked when I took my first bite and found the chile was actually spicy, a “chile de agua.” Stuffed peppers are some of the most boring things to eat ever—they bring back memories of Yale’s dining hall—but this “chile relleno” may have fully blotted out all other memories. As nouveau as it seemed, it was so representative of what I love most about Mexican food, the riot of flavors and textures that somehow all comes together.



The bean and tortilla soup, garnished with queso fresco and avocado, was good, but not the party in your mouth of the chile relleno. Smooth, just not revelatory.



But I’d be hard pressed to say what was better, the chile relleno or the entrée of prawns served “guajillo” with a little cake of mashed plantain and chayote, capers, oyster mushrooms, and stuffed squash blossoms. The mushrooms were so fragrant, the colors so vivid, and the guajillo chile oil! The guajillo chile has become one of my favorite chiles in the past two weeks. I was already so full, but I had to eat every single one of my allotted prawns, sopping up the chile oil with every bite.



Our second entrée, the mahi-mahi with a mango-chipotle sauce, Jonathan liked better than I did. For me, it was just a little too sweet without enough kick. But it clearly had been cooked with grace and care.



Our third entrée, because how could we not order any mole, was the coloradito with turkey. Sadly, it appeared we had been served turkey breast as it was a tad too dry, but at that point, I had eaten so much, it didn’t matter. All I could do was valiantly dab a blue corn tortilla in the very deep coloradito. It was a bit less sweet than Patty’s coloradito, maybe a bit smokier, and very very fascinating. I’m shocked to be saying this, but there are days when I wonder if I like coloradito maybe, just maybe, more than mole negro.



Finally, and there was an end to all this food, we shared a guava tart served with a scoop of rose-petal nieve (sorbet) on a little fried tortilla. As Jonathan put it, it wouldn’t be Mexican without a little corn. The nieve was the first rose-petal dessert I’d had that didn’t taste like lotion, just fresh and pretty and the perfect complement to the tartness of the guava.

Like all memorable meals, it wasn’t just that the food was fantastic. The whole event felt fortuitous, the kind of thing that can only happen when you’re traveling, to eat and exclaim over a culinary delight with a relative stranger but a fellow chowhound in another country. Is this what it feels like to be a Freemason?