Food diaries
Anthony Bourdain has it pretty good. As a globetrotting chef he navigates the world’s cities and cultures, guided by his appetite for the unusual and quintessential. His culinary travel show, Parts Unknown, is as entertaining and enlightening as it is gastronomically appealing. In fact, eating your way around the world isn’t a bad way to explore it. After all, food is economy, history, geography, tradition and religion, all stewed together in one burbling pot of birra (if your in Mexico), masala if your in Mumbai. I don’t know as much about food as Bourdain but I know I like to consume it -- both the raw material and the story.
Which brings me to where I am now: a month into our travels through Mexico. Mexico: where a bottle of beer is cheaper than a bottle of water and a stack of tortillas is your daily bread. We’ve already had untold numbers of culinary adventures -- most delightful, with only an occasional disappointment. The standard fare is colorful, plentiful and full of flavor. Lest I fail to recount the potency and verve of our food encounters, the joy that something as pedestrian as eating has brought us, let me dedicate this post to our month full of superb eating in Mexico.
I’ve often thought of Bourdain on our travels, wondering what unremarkable road-side cart he would patronize — which woebegone facade might he slip through for a secret garden of palatial pleasure? What comida tipica would he sniff out as a way into the belly of a place? My only strategy has been to try as much as possible. Essentially, eat as if it’s my job. Mexican wines on el Routa de Vino -- a must! Mezcal -- the smokey sister to tequila, why not? That fire-roasted pepper I’ll probably regret tomorrow -- what the heck? Tacos con camaron (shrimp), beef, pollo...We’ve given ourselves plenty license to indulge.
The past few weeks have been an exceptional excursion. As we sailed from Baja Sur -- just a peninsula but a veritable island of seafood (ceviche, fish tacos, aguachile - a soupy, spicy shrimp cocktail) and surprisingly limited fresh fruit and veg -- we’ve crossed into an agricultural promised land. Abundant harvests of tomatoes and watermelons, laden papaya trees (though not quite ripe), spiky acres of blue-green agave. Food on the mainland is surprising, varied and considerably cheaper.
Mexicans can attest that it’s easy to eat cheap and well in Mexico, but sometimes occasion calls to sit down for something a little special. As we drove from our campsite at the lovely Sol de Mayo, where we spent the previous night exploring the incredible waterfall-tiered canyon, we passed a quaint patio with beautifully laid wooden tables, set attentively with small cacti. A wood fire was ablaze, which piqued Tim’s interest, and a jug of something green and likely thirst-quenching. We had been anticipating our lunch of leftovers but intuitively re-routed to sit instead for a lovely lunch at Amalia.
The green drink turned out to be the aqua del día, a cucumber juice -- just a touch sweet and decidedly refreshing. Our waiter/owner/chef, as we soon discovered, served us home baked brown bread with a grayish spread that tasted familiar but undiscernible. After a few strained inquiries we discovered it was butter, whipped with the light ash of a corn tortilla. I settled for a cactus salad (nopales) with crumbled Mexican cheese and a sticky, salty dressing. Tim ordered the wild boar tacos (obvio). The setting, the surprise, the whole adventure of our diversion was the most gourmet (and spendy by our newfound standards). But when else might we wash down flame-grilled wild boar and cured cactus with cool cucumber juice and fill our bellies with and ash-buttered bread?
Our next stop was Santa Rita, perhaps more memorable for the evening we spent soaking in the hot springs under a starlit sky than what we ate. In fact, I don’t think we ate anything that night. Again, we had a campsite to ourselves. The next morning, given that it was Sunday, we thought it fitting to take it slowly and fry up some banana pancakes, curtesy of Trader Joe’s Buttermilk Mix, TJ’s almond butter and Turkish honey. Critically, however, this was all made possible with an egg donated to us by our friendly campsite host.
Our final day in Baja meant the last campsite carved out on the beach and a first experience of mole. Mole is the quintessential Mexican sauce that's more than a sauce but often the main event of a dish. Although the state of Oaxaca is most famous for preparing it, our first taste was on the east coast of Baja Sur. The pollo a la mole wasn’t spicy at all but nutty and somewhat sweet, cinnamonny, with perhaps a touch of anise…very hard to pin down but nuanced and memorable.
The next few days were spent en route to mainland Mexico. I had a hysterical exchange trying to understand how to catch the ferry from La Paz to Topolobampo on the mainland. A phone call with hybrid Spanish/English sentences, several minutes on hold and conflicting information. At first I was told no passenger ferries were operating to our desired destination -- “solo cargo”, the woman kept repeating. After pressing a little more, she acquiesced: we could go on the cargo ship but -- wait, too bad -- you’re a woman. “No mujeres.” So let me understand: there is, in fact, a cargo ship that we might patron but only if we both had testicles? After holding awhile longer, the clerk tells us to come to the terminal the next day and we’d sort it all out in person -- woman to woman.
That is how we found ourselves voyaging across the Sea of Cortez in surprising style. Turns out the cargo ferry was an former passenger vessel, complete with a gym, pool and air-conditioned movie theatre. It had a restaurant-cum-cafeteria that we did indeed patron with our free meal ticket. Fine. Nothing to write home about. But we were nevertheless delighted to have successfully navigated a complicated exchange and to be sailing in curious luxury.
Fast forward a day and we find ourselves in El Fuerte, the launching point for our Copper Canyon train ride. This little-known geographical wonder (if our own geographical knowledge is any indication) covers four times the area of the Grand Canyon and is much deeper in some places. And there’s a train that threads along the canyon edge to boot, that stops at picturesque villages along the way. This was to be our next adventure -- trading beaches and palm trees and margaritas for canyons and mountains, genuine pine trees and an astonishing amount of Tecates, the ubiquitous Mexican beer.
El Fuerte itself is a colorful historic town, incidentally the fabled origins of Zorro. On the way there we picked up a folded bread/pie looking thing that was being baked road-side in a brick oven en-masse. Not knowing what was inside we simply asked for “lo mejor” (the best). We soon discovered this gigantic pastry was filled with a goopy, fruity molassesy substance. It sustained us the few more miles to El Fuerte and on our quest for our first hotel room. After viewing several, ranging from foul to mediocre to under-construction, we settled on Torres del Fuerte. We’d recognized the name from the guidebook, even though we’d looked over it due to its triple dollar classification. From the dusty side-street stemming from the centre of town, through the iron gated archway, we spied a shady corridor and a sunlit garden full of fruit tress, fountains and green grass. A man stopped his raking and greeted us cheerfully as we entered, passing from the worn exterior into the lush, bird-filled paradise -- again, entirely unexpected. A beautifully constructed four hundred-year-old hacienda. A handsome legacy of the Spanish conquistadors.
But I digress. Food. El Fuerte is, thus far, the home of the most toothsome bargain tacos. For much less than a dollar you can have a twice bundled, fresh-grilled pork or beef asada accompanied by fresh guacamole, pico de gallo salsa, lime wedges, cucumber door stoppers and cilantro. Ever a fan of flame-grilled fare and a good deal, Tim couldn’t stop laughing at the absurd value of the street-side taquería — this was one place where a meagre budget can afford you a multitude of bountiful meals. We visited four times, Tim tapping out at a maximum of six tacos in one sitting.
A week in the Copper Canyon with it’s stunning vistas, cool evenings and rich culture and history was a feast for the senses. We encountered the indigenous mountain-dwelling Tarahumara people who, amongst other things, are known for their distance running (their name means “the running people”). For the most part the food we encountered at altitude was every bit as impressive, though considerably more expensive. But the hands-down highlight? Gorditas. Now, heretofore I had considered gorditas a yellow, oozy, plasticy, cheesy fiction of Taco Bell advertising. And who could blame me, with a name that translates roughly to, “little fatty”. Gorditas are not only authentic fare but fairly awesome. Divisadero is home of a kilometre-long zipline that hangs 200 metres above the canyon floor, and three versions of these delightful bready pockets: red potato, blue corn and flour. At the train station no less than six improvised drum-griddles are each serving a dozen simmering meat and veggie fillings into these delightful little pouches. It’s a hectic, vibrant, steamy, smoky, glorious place, where we fed like proper gordos.
I could go on. There are the roadside joints serving the quaintly termed, antojitos, or “little whims”; there was the snapper in passion fruit purée on the edge of a cliff; the pistachio ice cream… But let me end on a pure and simple note with my number one food revelation from Mexico: fresh coconut. They are not only perfectly hydrating but their flesh, pried straight from the hard shell, is subtly sweet, fatty and satisfying. Tim foraged for our first on the beaches in Baja, improvised a lasso for a couple hanging above our campsite in Laguna Santa Maria del Oro, and we just bought three for one dollar fifty. I think it’s fitting that our favorite food-find should be free or darn cheap, ubiquitous, deceptively ordinary on the exterior and utterly surprising inside.
