Mexican Food Porn

I was in Mexico City for Passover and I ate like a monster truck. Moreover, I ate fantastically, splendidly well. At restaurants and at the houses of generous hosts who cook and eat well. Mexico City was almost empty and looks very spiffy. For the first time in years the idea crossed my mind: I could live here (if it means eating well every single day). Without the traffic and without the Mexican drama, I could consider it.
Some of the following pictures may be NSFW, if you happen to work at Weight Watchers, that is.

My beloved family surprised me upon my arrival with lunch at El Cardenal, which utterly rocks traditional Mexican food. I ate like half a dozen homemade tortillas with fresh tomatillo salsa and queso fresco. The green liquid you see in the back is fresh limeade with chia seeds.

Then, I could not resist my all time favorite, sopa de fideos. This is a soup everybody makes at home, yet I insist in ordering it at restaurants. New York may have everything, but it doesn't have this.

I stole the garnish from my sister's tortilla soup: chicharrón, queso fresco and dried ancho chiles. My Middle Enchilado brother in law ordered a masterpiece of a soup, called Sopa de Rancho, farm soup. It was unbelievable.

Then I had one duck carnitas taco left by my nephew, which was awesome, followed by a chile relleno with cheese. By this point I felt like the fat guy at the end of Monty Python's The Meaning of Life.

For dessert we had crepas de cajeta (dulce de leche crepes) and guanábana sorbet.

That pink thing is a mini pepitoria, which is like a host wafer with piloncillo inside. I love that stuff.

Dinner next day was the Passover seder at my aunt and uncle's where there is gefilte fish with veracruzana sauce and a matzoh mole chicken gratin, which rocks. I was too busy eating to take pictures of the food, but you can see it here.

I was lucky enough to be invited for Passover lunch by Middle Enchilada's mother in law. She is from Veracruz, of Syrian Sephardic descent and she is an unbelievable cook. She makes perfect Middle Eastern food and perfect Mexican food from utter scratch, and thus I want to stay in her house and eat three meals a day forever. I also urged her to write a cook book.
By the way, Sephardic Jews have it easier on Passover, because they are allowed corn and rice. Hence, this paella.

Hence also, this amazing barbacoa de res, with its kosher for Passover corn tortillas.

She also made chicken in a red mushroom sauce.

 And her famous stuffed zucchini with apricots and prunes.

 She makes the traditional Middle Eastern Kebbe but without wheat, for Passover. It's addictive.

Subtle, refreshing jalapeños stuffed with tuna, too.

This woman makes her own chipotle chiles from scratch. And they are divine (they have bits of jicama in them).

There was also guacamole and salad. Which were also good. 

Needless to say, there were other homemade salsas, each better than the next, and more than one dessert. She makes her charoset with prunes and it should be a controlled substance, like her homemade plum jam, which I have no pictures of because I could not stop eating it. I have pined for it every day since. 

I ate everything. It is a miracle I did not collapse. That very night I saw my friend Jack for dinner and all I could eat was a splendid grilled artichoke with some mysterious seasoning at a fancy schmancy place. Oh, and two tequilas, and an anís campechano (dry and sweet anise on the rocks) to aid digestion. The anise works wonders. 

Coming up, Mexican Food Porn, part II.  (What? are you stuffed already?)

The New York Tapas Scam

I submitted these comments on this article in the New York Times that prompted the food critic (who doesn't even have to shell out for his meals) to wonder about the sanity of the small food craze in this rapacious town. It is a subject that has long been simmering in my bile. Here is my beef:

This small plates craze is the biggest New York ripoff since the financial crisis. Certain clarification is in order.
I spent 10 days in Barcelona recently. The tapas there are the size of Wyoming. 
The first time we ordered tapas we were thinking skimpy NY portions so we let it rip: pimientos de padrón, serrano ham, croquettes, tortilla, gambas al ajillo, what have you. It was a meal that could have easily been shared by six people, or more.The tapas in NY are as overpriced as they are undernourishing.
Rajj and Montero are particularly notorious at this scam. I have been to their restaurant Pintxtos, where a montadito is a puny slice of bread with a Spanish schmear. The bill for 3 small plates and two beers came to over $60.00. Any tapa you have at a bar in Spain is generously served and you can see it without magnifying glasses. As the writer points out, the entire concept and philosophy of the tapa has been perverted into culinary armed robbery here in New York. It's time to revolt against it. 
It is the generosity of spirit of those local culinary traditions that doesn't translate in New York. That generosity is an essential part of the cuisine, and if it is not there, no matter how good the food, as far as I'm concerned, the meal is bogus. 

I rest my case

To make matters worse, recently I read something somewhere by some American genius who discovered the virtues of small glasses of beer (as opposed to the disgusting buckets they give you here for draft beers) as if they themselves had found the Higgs Boson under the carpet. Dude, anybody who has ever been to Spain knows that there is no fresher, cooler or better glass of beer than what the Spanish call a "caña". A small little glass, perhaps 8 ounces, of crisp, ice-cold beer that never warms up or loses its fizz.  I have never understood the benefits of drinking flat, stale, tepid beer from a huge glass, like they do here.  

He dicho. 

Mexican Memes

Mexicans have always been known for their sense of humor. Mexican culture is awash with jokes, puns, double entendres and what we call ingenio, which is something as funny as wit, but less dry. Yet I don't think anyone foresaw how much mileage Mexican humor was going to get out of new technologies like Photoshop, You Tube and social media, which are starting to make Mexico look like the capital of memes. 

About a week after 9/11, if not sooner, I get an urgent email from my friend Pancho, with the following subject: "They found Osama Bin Laden". I open it, my heart racing, and I see a picture of Osama sitting placidly in a gondola in Xochimilco, a place where Mexican families go to have Sunday picnics on the water. To this day, it's the best thing I ever saw.
Apparently, it's the gift that keeps on giving:

Same when they couldn't find Ghadaffi:

Looks like the taquero from hell to me, even though, true to his Middle Eastern roots, he is hiding behind a spit of shwarma.
Any time a Mexican public figure makes a gigantic blunder, Mexicans and their ingenio take over cyberspace. A meme was created when newsanchor Joaquín López Dóriga attempted to interview Sir Anthony Hopkins and asked him "Juay De Rito" (Why The Rite?).
More recently, the PRI's candidate for president, a pompadoured calamity called Enrique Peña Nieto, was taken to task for not being able to answer correctly what three books have most influenced him, as he made an appearance at the International Book Fair in Guadalajara, the most important event of its kind in the Spanish-speaking world. You would think he'd brush up on his reading, given the nature of the event, but true to the caste of patronizing demagogues of his party, who are used to blathering from above and are completely unable to speak off the cuff, he was taken aback by the question and proceeded to pontificate without saying absolutely anything or remembering correctly the title of at least one book (not counting the Bible, which he said he had read parts of).
The barrage of tweets and doctored photos that invaded the net show no sign of abating.
His daughter then posted a tweet saying "a greeting to the bunch of fuckheads that are part of the prole (tariat) and who only criticize who they envy".
Now all of Mexico is claiming prolehood.
Gandhi, a chain of bookstores, famous for their clever ads, did not waste any time coming up with some funny print ads. Because their ads are easy to copy, Mexicans went to work on dozens of alternate versions:

There are pictures of Peña Nieto conferring with the actual Gandhi, with the Pope, and one of him as the swaddled baby of two of the most notoriously corrupt and sinister members of the PRI, ex-president Carlos Salinas and undying PRI fixture Elba Esther Gordillo.
Among the tweets:

"Let's read something by Martin Burger King #PeñaNietoBookstore"

"What is your favorite Benedetti? The pepperoni one, of course". #PeñaNietoBookstore"

"Three books that marked me for life: 1) Los Reebook, 2) La Notebook, y 3) El Facebook. #PeñaNietoBookstore"

 There are also many hashtags for the "prole" comment.

Apparently, at the PRI's behest, which is revolting business as usual, Twitter tried to censor the PeñaNietoBookstore# hashtag after it started trending with over 60,000 tweets. There was a huge outcry and they allowed it again. One thing these lamentable politicos do not appreciate is freedom of expression. They are used to despotism, but Mexico is changing. There is no more delicious schadenfreude than to see these corrupt bozos exposed by the citizenry for the frauds they are. It may not be funny to them, but it is seriously funny for us.
Social media can change things. Hopefully this idiot will not become the President of Mexico after this.

La Gran Tenochtitlán II

Best roast chicken in town they claim, at Gili Pollos. 

The famous strawberries and cream birthday cake from La Gran Vía.

They sell tomato pulque in there!

Candied fruit at lovely Dulcería de Celaya 

An anafre, perfect for cooking marvels on the street. 

Piloncillo: packed brown sugar for traditional sweets, café de olla and more. 

Traditional ice cream vendor. These are new. 

A new invention: jícama on a stick with chili or sprinkles

Conchas: best pan dulce for breakfast.