Har gow and tacos and chaat, oh my!

My friend Lina asked me recently if I’d gotten tired of my blog. I protested that I hadn’t, but I think I had, just a bit. But I recently spent a long weekend in San Francisco and got reinspired. I didn’t have any culinary epiphanies, despite the city’s reputation. In fact, I got seriously annoyed that my favorite bakery, Tartine, is no longer a place to have a quiet breakfast with a paper on a weekday morning. I think it was having an intense, packed weekend of opportunities to share good food with people I love, who I hadn’t seen in so long. One of those friends even ended up taking me on an all-afternoon eating tour of the East Bay.

"Zizou" (as she prefers to remain anonymous) did preliminary research, and as you can see, provided a full write-up as well. So I’m not going to repeat everything she said, just highlight my most lasting memories.

1) We went to eleven places!

2) We only ate at eight. The remaining three, we picked up food to eat later.

3) Zizou packed a cooler for stop #3, the meat counter at Café Rouge. She always carries a cooler, “just in case.”

4) I had ice cream that rivaled Il Laboratorio del Gelato and I do not say that lightly. The Catalan flavor at Ici, started by the pastry chef from Chez Panisse, was so good, I didn’t want it to end. It had a curious flavor that I didn’t recognize immediately, a mixture of anise, lemon, and something else that made it special and absolutely inimitable. I ordered it in a cup, to which Zizou said, “What! You want the cone. She’ll take the cone,” turning to the laughing ice cream scooper. She was right. The hand-rolled cone had a nugget of chocolate at the bottom.



5) Vik’s Chaat is as good as I’d hoped all that time I lived in San Francisco and never went there. I especially loved the chapati that came with the hyderabadi fish special—simple, flavorful, chewy, everything a flatbread should be.



6) Tao Yuen in Oakland’s Chinatown had crispy, not at all greasy, tofu skin rolls that I would never have believed could come out of a take-out dim sum place. I think they were 50 cents or something equally obscene.

7) We found at the Cheeseboard a bigger, pizza-only place next door to the cheese shop, with an elderly musical trio performing and young, happy Californians spilling out of the restaurant and just sitting on the grassy median in the middle of the busy two-way street. Pizza as excellent as ever. I love San Francisco when it just does its own thing and doesn’t worry whether its pizza crust lives up to some NY/New Haven ideal.



8) Taco trucks are the best, always.



I did eat dinner afterwards. I told Anne I had to eat vegetables, and she, former Midwestern carnivore, suggested we go to Greens, where I had a very simple and refreshing salad of greens, celery root, cheese, and butter beans. I was embarrassed that the waiter might think I was the kind of woman who only orders salad, but he praised my choice, saying, “Beautiful! That’s my favorite salad!” I was in such a good mood, I only giggled quietly and was thankful for all that the Bay Area had bestowed upon me that day.

Just for you, Lina!

As promised.



But the better 호떡, hodduk, makers were in Kangnam, who used some newfangled metal mold, so that the outside was perfectly crisp without being greasy, the inside chewy and sweet.



(For those of you who have never tried this, it’s a ball of dough filled with brown sugar and sometimes nuts. The sugar melts when the dough is flattened and fried and you end up with one of the best street food snacks in the world.)

Going home

You know that there is something not quite healthy about your life when you find yourself thinking, "I just cannot eat another bite of foie gras." Or when you eat 14 delicious razor clams by yourself and still don't really feel happy. I had some additional fabulous pintxos in San Sebastián before I left, including a pistachio croqueta with a buttery-smooth interior and an excellent crunchy exterior at Bar Garbola and an unbelievable special foie dish at Hidalgo 56, as well as their award-winning "volcan de morcilla" with crumbled blood sausage, a just warmed but still runny egg yolk and a smooth sauce made of apples. (Todo Pintxos is an amazing site, no? You can find an English version by clicking on the top right-hand corner.) But my very last day, instead of going to the famed Aloña Berri, I went to a classmate's apartment where she and her roommates served spaghetti with jarred tomato sauce. It tasted great, too.

So I think all this means it's time for me to go home, which is appropriate as I am going home today. In less than 12 hours, I will be in New York. I'm not really going back to real-life yet, as I will be in Seoul, Korea for most of December visiting my parents, and I hope to rectify the dearth of posts about Korean food on this blog while I'm there, but I doubt I'll be blogging with the fervor I've been for the past 6 months. This blog didn't start as a travel-food blog and so will continue life as it started even when I get back from Korea, but I can't imagine I'll be nearly so prolific.

So dear family, friends, friends' mothers, and a few random people who don't know me but have kindly read my blog, thank you for helping me feel like I have someone to talk to while traveling alone for so long.

More ruminations on pintxos

I confess, I am one of those Americans who like to complain about their country while traveling. The bread is better here, the family is more important here, oh life is more beautiful here in _________. I know that I tend to exaggerate, and I get mad if other people bash America, but one thing is definitely true about life here in Spain—drinks are so much cheaper here! And more importantly, the culture of pintxos bars in San Sebsatian is lovelier than anything I have experienced before.

I had feared before I arrived that pintxos might not really be my thing. I thought they might be too precious, too expensive, and more arty than tasty. San Sebastian, after all, boasts more Michelin-starred restaurants than anywhere else in the world, other than the center of Paris, but none of them were on my to-do list. The rest of the Basque country likes to say that San Sebastian cuisine is very French, and they don’t mean it as a compliment.



But even if they are right, pintxos in San Sebastian are the most democratic form of haute cuisine I’ve ever seen. There’s nothing precious about them. More likely, you’ll end up with sauce on your face and olive oil on your fingers trying to eat one in the requisite two bites. In Bar Goizargi this past Saturday, everyone, young and old, was eating the brocheta de gambas, or grilled shrimp skewered with bits of bacon and served with a vinagrette sauce of red and green peppers, onions, and carrots. They’re award-winning and even included in the sixth edition of “Los Mejores Pintxos de Donostia,” but at 2 Euros, they cost the same as the Sunday issue of El Pais, a major national newspaper.

Sure, there are places that are more haute than others. Sure, a couple of pintxos don’t make a meal and can add up quickly. But I had two pintxos at the award-winning Goizargi, the shrimp and a tiny bowl of succulent squid in ink sauce, plus a glass of rosé for 5 Euros. Even at the obscene U.S. dollar-Euro exchange rate, that’s only $7.50 at most. I can’t get a freakin’ glass of wine in Manhattan for less than $8. And I couldn’t tell you if the crowd is young and hip or old and rich, since it was crammed with a group of students, older couples, and families with young kids. Okay, it definitely wasn’t an angry young pro-ETA bar, but the food hadn’t drawn a certain self-selecting crowd, the way it often feels in NY. There was no statement being made by the people eating there, that they support organic local food or that they are hip enough to eat meat by the pound on a picnic table in Williamsburg. They only wanted to stand with their friends with a drink in one hand and an empty toothpick in the other on a beautiful Saturday afternoon.

I can’t even wish that someone would open a true pintxos or tapas bar in New York. It wouldn’t be enough for there to be one such bar, as there would always be a line out the door and the easy joy of it that I love would just disappear. So I have three days left here. Ready, set, go!

I get it now

What a wonderful world we live in, that I can see Rufus Wainwright in concert singing Gershwin while wearing the knee socks and breeches of a Basque folk costume in San Sebastian. And how appropriately strange and alluring to eat pintxos before the concert in a city that values tradition but also loves surprises.

I walked into Bar Bergara with all the panache of an experienced solo tapas eater. I smoothly ordered a “copa de txakoli,” knowing I still wasn’t pronouncing it quite right but that I was getting closer. Then I looked at the jewel-like bites laid out in large platters, completely covering the counter. The counter, being plastered with pintxos, cleverly had a little shelf under the counter on which you could place your little plate of pintxos. That’s where I quickly took a stealth photo, and how lucky I am that it came out fairly focused because these were the best, most intensely flavored and most mind-blowing pintxos I have had so far.

The one on the left is revuelto, or scrambled eggs with roasted red peppers, with a little cross-hatch of roasted green pepper strips. An awesome combination of flavors and textures, the smoothness of the eggs, the sweetness of the peppers, the appropriate bright saltiness of the entire ensemble.

The one right behind is half a deviled egg on top of an anchovy on which is piled, believe it or not, shredded boiled egg white, topped with a dollop of aioli and a curled shrimp. I would never, never have thought of serving egg white like that, but it wasn’t just a showy trick, it was excellent. Again, so perfectly salty!

The third one is diced tomatoes and browned garlic tossed in fantastic olive oil, and then topped with golden fried onion bits and more green pepper. Like eating a bite of late summer.

The best one, I couldn’t even take a picture of it. Sorry, I already stick out enough, I can’t bring myself to wave my camera around. It was “foie gras con uva de oporto,” which I think translates as foie gras drizzled with grape-port wine sauce. So rich, so smooth, just sweet and tangy enough to make vow immediately to return.

To be honest, I’d enjoyed my pintxos and tapas up to this point, but I hadn’t really seen them as something worthy of extreme hype, just something lovely about Spanish culture. I get it now.

Cafe-Bar Bilbao (redux)

So you can see some of Café-Bar Bilbao’s creations:



I went back for an early lunch, my last meal in Bilbao. The one on the left turned out to be a ball of cream cheese with something slight and meaty in the middle, covered in slivered almonds, and then topped with the aforementioned raspberry jelly. Not so exciting, and the cream cheese made me only long for a proper bagel. But the one on the left was tasty, I think bacalao mixed in olive oil with a slice of sautéed zucchini and a blob of sauce that was more tart than spicy.



And then I ate an entire plate of fried calamari. The first few were so good, so succulent, so far from anything served by the kind of American restaurant that serves fried calamari. But by the end, sigh, I realized why fried calamari is usually shared.

The challenge of pintoxs

Bilbao has been hard for me.

The city itself is beautiful. It has a bad rap, affectionately called “el botxo” or “the hole” by locals, and was known mainly as an ugly industrial city for years, until it got the Gehry-designed shiny Guggenheim 10 years ago, which, incidentally, is more beautiful than I ever imagined. But it must be “ugly industrial” European-style, because if this city were in the U.S., it would be advertised as a picturesque tourist destination. It’s not in the style of Salamanca or Santiago de Compostela, which can brag about their 500-year-old medieval buildings. Bilbao’s colorful houses and buildings along its Ria, or inlet from the sea, are only from the 19th century; perhaps that’s why it’s not considered one of Spain’s beautiful cities. But it has the Guggenheim; it has the Mercado de Ribera, the biggest covered market in Europe; it has fantastic public transit; it has the world’s oldest transporter bridge (very cool, trust me). Also, the river apparently used to stink, but I went for a morning run my first day and it smelled just fine!



Bilbao has been hard because here, it is undeniable how social Spaniards are. One of the things I love most about Spain is the way people go out, young, old, infant, all together, every night. A typical tapas bar is a place to gather with friends, maybe even your grandparents, and not a place to cruise strangers. Bilbao is chilly these days, but it doesn’t stop the crowds from standing outside the Cafe-Bar Bilbao or Sasibil or Berton with drinks and pintxos, Basque tapas, in their hands. Food and friends go together so well here they have gastronomic societies called “txokos.” (Anyone want to start a Txoko Brooklyn with me?) People have a drink and a pintxo and then move on to the next bar. The classic drink in Euskara Herreria, or Basque country, is txakoli, a light, fizzy white wine with low enough alcohol content that you can move from bar to bar all night without getting smashed. Spanish kids must get smashed sometime, but it must be after I go to sleep because I haven’t seen a trashed Spaniard yet, even though every person I see seems to have a drink in her hand.

As lovely as this is, though, it is not an easy society to fit into as a solo traveler. I’m reminded of what my friend Bianca said to me when I was getting ready to move to New York from San Francisco. “NY is not a good place to find someone, but it’s a great place to be single—at least you know you’re not the only one.” Spain, and a pintxo-focused city like Bilbao, is the exact opposite. I am the only person alone in the entire city!

So what was I supposed to do in this pintxo-paradise? I tried one strategy, going when it’s not prime-tapas hour and I knew I could quietly snag a corner bar stool. In Salamanca, I had forced myself into a café-bar and been rewarded with strong black olives and luscious chunks of jamon, its chewy texture giving it a flavor I liked even more than the thinly sliced jamon I’d always known.



Here in Bilbao, I started with pintxos for breakfast at Abando y Barra, one block from the Guggenheim. I think that’s a little fried quail egg. It was so adorable, it was calling my name like a puppy in a pet shop window. I wouldn’t have thought a room-temperature egg would taste good, but it did. The little sandwich was mainly a tangy tuna sandwich, a little fishy for breakfast, but fortifying for the hours I spent in Richard Serra’s “The Matter of Time.”



That night, around 7:00, I walked to Bar Berton, just down the street from the Pension Mardones, and ate this pretty trio. The croquetas just melted in my mouth. Good, but afterwards, I wished I’d ordered the “solomillo con foie,” one of the few that you had to order off the menu. Here, there was even space at the end of a long table and I sat down and scribbled in my journal, closing the world away from me.

I felt like I was training for a marathon. The next night, I had to push myself further.



I walked by Café-Bar Bilbao twice before I could work up the courage to go in. It was 8:30 pm and it was buzzing, people spilling out onto the Plaza Nueva, people ordering and carrying away 2, 3, 4 glasses at once for their friends waiting outside. But once I was inside, the array of colors and textures on the counter gave me strength. I wanted so much to try one! I ordered a glass of txakoli and three pintxos. Sadly, I was too embarrassed to take out my camera. One can only overcome one insecurity at a time, no? I’m not even sure what I ate, I gulped everything down so fast. I only know that it was very, very, very good. Café Bar Bilbao is known for pushing pintxo boundaries beyond tradition. It must be so, because I think one of my pintxos had raspberry jelly on it.



Could I really tapas-hop on my own? Would I go home slightly hungry or stop at one more place? It’s funny, once you do something scary once, it really isn’t so hard the next time. It wasn’t nearly so painful to walk into Sasibil alone, even if the bartender there didn’t have the kind crinkly-eyed smile of the one at Café-Bar Bilbao. I’m thankful this time I was able to take a photo and have a memento of the 5 minutes I spent there. The one on the right was some sort of chopped jamon with maybe a parmesan crisp on top, and good, but the ones on the left, of bacalao, were stupendous. I think they were rehydrated salt cod, not cooked and so almost raw. The one in the foreground had a little fried quail egg and sitting on top of that, a round slice of octopus. So deliciously chewy! And the one behind had some serious chili oil happening, one of the few spicy things I’ve eaten in Spain.

I’m in San Sebastian now—here’s hoping for less harrowing pintxos-eating here.

First tapas

As shocking as it seems, but I didn’t plan out my entire food itinerary before I got here. I only had reservations at one restaurant in Madrid, I had no list of “must-dos.” What I wanted to feel was the culture of food here, for ordinary people everyday, to be in a world where anchovies were normal. Poor Anne, she patiently followed me as I walked up and down the aisles of the grocery store at the basement of the department store chain, El Corte Ingles, not looking at me like I was a crazy person while I peered at flan sold in pudding packs, tins of shellfish, and jars of marmalade. She even took a photo of me caressing an entire ham.

So in my first 6 days in Spain, in Madrid, I’ve inevitably had meals that were so-so, not bad, just very ordinary, except it wouldn’t have been very ordinary in New York. I had a cheap bocadillo, or sandwich, the other day, a plain almost tough roll with some fried boquerones, or white anchovies, inside, no mayo, no sauce, no nothing. It was the equivalent of a decent slice of pizza on any random corner in N, but in NY, Whole Foods sells boquerones for some insane price per pound.

And then there are places like Txirimiri, a pintxos/tapas bar in La Latina with food so good that when I dropped half my tapa on the floor, I considered applying the five-second rule and eating it.

Anne and I arrived there by accident. We were aiming for one of the more famous places in La Latina, along Calle Cava Baja or Cava Alta, but it was pouring and we jumped in. Instantly, I was overwhelmed. The bar was lined with people chatting, drinking, eating, there were pintxos, or Basque-style tapas on bread on the counter, and then a blackboard listing more. I’d read all the guide books on how tapas worked, but I felt so frozen, so totally lost. Anne says I hid it well, but I was terrified.

Luckily, I didn’t have to fight for the bartender’s attention and I managed to order a glass of wine and two raciones, or larger portions of tapas, of the blackboard.



This was called a bacalao tempura, and it came on a bed of caramelized onions and peppers, so sweet and rich, and a perfect balance to the golden cod. I had told Anne earlier how much I loved the word “bacalao,” and when I told her it was salt cod, she had been wary, but not after tasting this. The crisp crust, the meltingly tender fish inside—it brought fried fish to a whole new level.



This was called “habitas baby,” and we deduced after it arrived that the “habitas” must refer to the beans. More caramelized onions, which was good as I can never get enough. It was like an intense, salty shot of flavor, topped with jamon and foie.

By now, I was relaxed. The wine was working its magic, especially since it was so cheap, and we just started pointing and eating. I started to fall in love with Madrid. Three nights later, we came back for our last dinner in Madrid and ate another round of the bacalao and things I didn’t need to identify to enjoy.

Txirimiri is special and obviously popular, as packed as it is with hip young things, but in its own way, felt as ordinary as the corner bar selling bocadillos de boquerones fritos. I’ve long gotten over my embarrassment taking pictures of my food, but I felt a pang of sadness, knowing that to eat cheap, delicious food and drink a $2 glass of wine in a comfortable bar was nothing notable for the Spaniards around us. But not so sad that I lost my appetite.

Itanoni, Flower of Corn

Yesterday, as I ate the most delicious tortillas of my life at Itanoni, a casual restaurant that seriously celebrates corn, I thought about Mexican Independence Day, which begins tonight at 11 pm with “El grito de independencia” or the shout for independence in the zocalo.



As the cheese and poblano peppers, with their slight yet sure spiciness, oozed out of my rolled-up taco, as I scooped up the last bit of chicharrones, or fried pork rinds, in red salsa with my bare fingers, I pondered all the ways in which Mexico is so different from the U.S.



When I bit into my tetela, the pre-Hispanic triangular corn turnover filled, in this case, with an intense black bean puree, enhanced by crema, queso, and the anise-scented hoja santa, I sighed and longed for some culinary delight that would link me and my country to a history spanning more than 250 years.

Mexicans domesticated corn 9000 years ago. They’ve probably been eating tortillas for almost as long. Although the Spanish brought smallpox, death, and destruction to the indigenous peoples, Mexicans are still eating the tortillas the conquistadors were given when they arrived 500 years ago.

I imagine most Mexicans take this for granted. Itanoni doesn’t. Its full name is “Itanoni, Flor del Maiz,” meaning “Flower of Corn.” It declares with pride that all its antojitos are made out of maiz criollo, meaning that the variety is indigenous and native to Mexico. (Criollo also means a Mexican of Spanish descent. Confusing and yet revealing, no?) Each plastic table, under its plastic tablecloth, displays a sweet story about the ant that revealed to the god Quetzalcoatl the secret of maiz, thus ending a famine.



Although Itanoni has a heightened sense of purpose, it tries to look like yet another little storefront selling memelas, tacos, and other small treats based on masa or corn dough, with its tin roof and casual, cheap resort furniture. You only begin to notice how self-consciously it seeks to be traditional when you see the menus, artfully designed with wholesome corrugated cardboard and brown paper, the aguas served in old-fashioned, thick glass bottles, and the sturdy construction of the wood-burning, outdoor stoves.



Whatever Itanoni is doing, it works. My tacos, my tetela, were the best anything made out of masa I have ever eaten anywhere. They reminded me that like a sandwich, a taco can be elevated by tasty fillings, but it can never be sublime without a great base. They had subtle layers, as flat as they were, almost like roti but without a hint of grease. They were unsalted and unsweet, tasting purely and cleanly of corn. The outer layers were toasty, while the inner layers remained soft and pliable. Is there anything that smells more innocent and more comforting than something toasted?

Octavio Paz says that Mexico believes in a continuity between its indigenous past and its post-Revolution, independent state, broken only by a couple hundred years of New Spain. Unlike the U.S., whose Founding Fathers plotted for independence without a thought for the Native Americans, the Mexican struggle for independence began with a Catholic priest calling to action angry indigenous groups, mestizos, and criollos, Mexican-born Spaniards who didn’t have the power and status accorded to Spanish-born Spaniards. However false and however strange, as Paz implies it is, to see modern Mexico as a restoration of what existed before New Spain, it’s what Itanoni celebrates, a sense of gastronomic and cultural heritage stretching back thousands of years. I envy it, if only because the food is so delicious. What would we similarly celebrate in the U.S.? Corn-on-the-cob? Roast turkey, when they’re bred to be so big-breasted the poor things end up with sad, sexless, artificially inseminated lives? (Apparently, Mexican Independence Day is now being celebrated in California. Really, illegal immigration is just Mexico’s revenge for having lost California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas to the U.S. only 150 years ago.)

Calvin Trillin is probably right, the best thing that ever happened to America food-wise was the Immigration Act of 1965. When I get home, I am going to comfort myself with a big platter of sushi.

A jicama popsicle at Guelaguetza

Two weeks ago, when Erin and I were staying in a hotel in Mexico City, I watched vivid footage of buses burning in Oaxaca, as anti-government protests turned dangerous leading up to the planned “official” Guelaguetza 2007. I watched a group of five or six policemen pushing a man down to the ground and then begin kicking him, oblivious or careless of the news cameras trained on them. Finally, two policemen in different uniforms came in, grabbed the man, hugging him to their bodies, and hustled him away, possibly to beat him in private.

July 23rd marked the first day of Guelaguetza, Oaxaca’s indigenous folk dance festival and its biggest tourist attraction. Also called “Lunes del Cerro,” translatable as “Mondays on the Hill,” the official performance celebrating Oaxaca’s distinct regions and cultures takes place annually on two Mondays in July, at the Cerro del Fortin on the western edge of the historic center, with a beautiful view of the city and the valley beyond. Normally, these two Mondays frame a week of fun, as street food proliferates all over town, crafts vendors set up even more stalls throughout the zocalo, and tourists from all over Mexico and the world pour into the city. To gild the lily, the annual mezcal festival is held at the same time. If you threw a stone, you would hit a marimba band or a dance troupe, on stages around the Ex-Convent of Santo Domingo or just in the streets. To me, it feels like there’s always a fiesta or saint’s day celebration going on in Oaxaca, complete with deafening fireworks, but Guelaguetza just multiples the everyday feel by ten.

Last year, when APPO took over the center of the city in protest of the state governor, the official Guelaguetza was cancelled, for the first time in its history. This year, even as the governor spent millions in promoting and marketing “Guelaguetza 2007,” Ticketmaster promised a full refund if the shows didn’t happen. APPO called for a boycott of the official one, hosted its own on July 16th, and graffiti sprouted around the city, quite well-designed stenciled images with exhortations like, “The art of the pueblos for the pueblos!” In the end, all scheduled performances went on, even in the pouring afternoon rain, and at least during “Lunes del Cerro,” the protests remained peaceful.

There’s no question there have been gross human rights abuses here. But I have no expertise with which to analyze the pros and cons of the boycott, the protests, the demands of APPO. (Erin and I bought tickets to the official one before I realized how fraught the mere act of attendance could be and watched for an hour before we got rained out.) Yet I want to report on what I do know, what amazed and moved me at the two smaller, local Guelaguetzas I saw at Reyes Etla and Tocuela. And that I ate a jicama popsicle.



Guelaguetza is not just for tourists. More than any other folk dance I’ve ever seen, it is truly a celebration for the communities here. The town of Reyes Etla was deserted on July 23rd because the entire town had gone up to their cerro to watch the four-hour show. I was possibly the only tourist at the performance in Tocuela, probably the only non-Mexican, and definitely the only Asian person. I felt like I was at a community talent show or a high school concert, with all the personal warmth the audience felt for the performers.

I had been invited to see the show at Tocuela on July 30th by Senora Soledad, my cooking teacher, as her son was the director of the show, so I sat in the VIP section right next to the stage with her family. Everyone around me wanted to know who I was and where I was from and how long I was in Oaxaca (and of course, whether I was married), and this really beautiful baby was fascinated by my digital camera.



Each dance celebrates a specific region, with the performers wearing gorgeous traditional clothing. There’s a specific repertoire that makes up the Guelaguetza, and everyone ends with the “Danza de la Pluma” and the pineapple girls, but having seen three Guelaguetzas, I can attest that each director puts his personal touches on each show.



Soledad’s son clearly loved playing with the bullfight motif, charged with male-female conflict, as his girls charged the boys waving red handkerchiefs so vigorously, the stage became a Laurel-and-Hardy show of boys tumbling and girls chasing.



But to truly celebrate the region, the performers will throw samples of the regional specialties to the audience, which might be light little things like straw woven fans and dried gourds for drinking mezcal, or dangerous projectiles like mangos and pineapples. Many of these girls do not throw like girls. I only got hit once, in the face with a tortilla, though I did duck a mango or two. Luckily, the region known for its turkeys merely dances with a turkey, rather than throwing one out to the audience. So at the end of every number, there were arms waving frantically in the air and children running up on stage to wheedle more closely.



At Tocuela, the people around me got deeply invested in making sure that I got many “recuerdos” or souvenirs, and kept yelling to their daughter/cousin/niece, “Maria Cruz! Maria Cruz! Over here! Over here!” I came home with two little clay bottles of mezcal, two mangos, a little basket, two tlayudas, one totopo (crispy tortilla from the Isthmus), one passionfruit, three rolls of pan de yema, a piece of sugarcane, a hollowed stick of wood for drinking mezcal with a cord to wear it around my neck, a weird little bar of fruity, brown sugar dessert, and an inedible dessert that seemed to be made from a wedge of sugar cane soaked in a toxic liqueur.

Oaxaca is the most indigenous state in Mexico, with over 30% speaking an indigenous language. People are generally considered indigenous if they speak an indigenous language, like Zapotec or Mixtec, rather than by the color of their skin. Oaxaca is not necessarily representative of Mexico in this regard, but the intense pride I saw in their indigenous heritage at Guelaguetza was overwhelming. I know that indigenous populations are among the poorest in Mexico, and that Guelaguetza may be only a shallow form of recognition, but coming from a country where we don’t even pay lip service to our indigenous cultures, I was so moved by the sense of connection to a deep and rich history. I’m a big believer in the importance of national principles and ideals, even if they’re only aspirational, because how much worse is it not even to aspire to them?



And I finally ate a jicama popsicle! They were selling them at Reyes Etla, big thick slices on a popsicle stick, with so many different containers of colorful powders and spices. I had trouble understanding the vendor, who was very curious where I was from, so I ended up just asking for “lo mejor,” and got something that was spicy and tart and sweet, as if it had been dusted in those chili powder and Kool-Aid.



I also ate molotes, little fried torpedos of masa filled with potatos and chorizo, at the performance in Tocuela, but I think they made me sick. God probably wanted to strike me down for the arrogant way I’ve been bragging about how I never get sick from street food. (For an agnostic, I’m kind of obsessed with God, no?) I’ll spare you the gory details, but I finally had to open my bottle of Pepto Bismol. It was too bad, as they were so perfectly fried.

But for once, the food was not the point.

(Special thanks to Erin for the National Geographic-worthy photos from Etla!)

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.

Random delicious things

Esquite: corn kernels that are grilled then boiled right on top of the grill, served in a little Styrofoam cup with lime juice, salt, chili powder, queso, and a little mayonnaise if you like, which I do.



Pepe y limonada: no idea if it’s Mexican, but my favorite café, owned by an American, serves fresh limeade and cucumber juice in a massive beer stein, which I like to order with carbonated water.



Queso de Tehuantepec: a bucket of fresh, salty cheese from the Tehuantepec region of Oaxaca, in the isthmus of Mexico, that someone brought to my family’s home, and which I was lucky to eat a lot of.

¡En Oaxaca!

(Revised, with photos, June 5, 2007)
God, I wish I could show you a photo of what I´ve eaten already! But I haven´t figured out a way to upload photos from my camera yet. Sooner or later, I´m bound to find a place with wireless internet. (I knew I should have bought a flash drive.) But for now, I´m just going to have to make myself write tantalizingly vivid descriptions to make up for the lack of visual food porn.

I arrived yesterday at Oaxaca International Airport, a short 2.5 hour flight from Houston, Texas. Houston was a good way to ease into a foreign country from New York. The Oaxaca airport, thankfully, was small and easy to navigate, and I found myself easily enough in a cheap airport shuttle that dropped me off at my homestay, the home of Betsy the grandmother, Patty the mother, Homero the father, and their two children, Valeria and Homero, Jr. They´ve had students stay with them for years, and so they´re used to speaking slowly, using easy words, and being very very patient. And lucky for me, Patty is an excellent cocinera (cook)--more on that to come.



Their house is a little north of the center of the city, but still easily walkable to the famous zocalo (square) and the famous cathedrals, and just blocks from my school, Instituto Cultural Oaxaca. It´s on a fairly busy street with a few bodegas, a fancy liquor store, a gas station, and a couple of restaurants, but it´s easy to find because it´s marked with a huge, beautiful tree with vibrant fuschia flowers that planes directly in front of the gates. The family also maintains a little hostel behind the house where another student, 53-year-old Jane from Miami, is staying.

My room, to a New Yorker´s eyes, is huge, half the size of the old tiny tenement apartment I shared with my sister in the East Village. To my happy surprise, unlike most mattresses I´ve encountered outside the U.S., the mattress is firm and I slept better last night than I have in weeks. Probably also helps that I now have absolutely zero responsibilities, ha ha!

I spent an hour or two yesterday just orienting myself in my neighborhood, wandering around with Jane who was in Oaxaca two summers ago. But today is the real day my Oaxaca adventures began, starting with an unbelievable desayuno (breakfast).

When I sat down at the breakfast table, there was a plate of cut-up fruit, banana, papaya, and half a mango, and a bowl of nicely sour yogurt. When Patty asked me last night if I ate todo (everything), I answered with a strong "¡Si!", forgetting how much I loathe papaya. This papaya was a deeper orange than any papaya I´d ever seen, and I thought I would give it a chance. Nope, still tasted like fart. I ate as much of it as I could, dumping small pieces in the yogurt and eating it with the banana to mask the taste. I´ll have to figure out some way to tell them.

I was happy and full, when Patty came out with a big platter--my God, a oaxequeno tamale! Imagine this: the platter covered with unfolded banana leaves, and in the center, chunks of tamale, shredded chicken, the possibly the most complex and delicious sauce in the world, mole negro. "¿Todo para mi?" (All for me?).

Tamales are not my favorite food. Too often, they´re too dense and uninteresting. But a tamale like this, I could eat for breakfast almost everyday. The corny tamale was so flavorful, it was almost fluffy, it was so easy to eat.

I wish I had the words to describe what mole negro means to me. It was already my second mole negro in Oaxaca, as I´d had enchiladas en mole con quesillo (cheese) the day before with Jane, and thought it reasonably enjoyable. But this mole negro made obvious why mole is not something to be taken lightly or eaten mindlessly. Slightly sweet, earthy and deep. Perfecto.

I ate it all.

And then I walked all the way down to the zocalo and sat at a cafe on the western side, drinking pineapple juice and watching people walk by.