Advertisement
Published: January 12th 2014
Edit Blog Post
I could have talked about the food in Mexico in every single blog but I decided to save it and do one whole food blog for anyone who is interested.
Disclaimer – I do not by any means claim to be an expert on this subject, only to give an account of my experiences of eating food in Mexico. As this is the main reason that I travel it only makes sense to write about it.
Corn The most important thing in Mexican food is corn, or as the Spanish named it when they conquered Mexico, maize. Corn is seen throughout Mexican culture, the pre-Hispanic civilisations such as the Mayans worshiped a corn God and nowadays you cannot have a meal in Mexico without something corn-based in it.
Corn flour is the basis of most dishes, mixed with water and a little salt to make a dough. This is then turned into a tortilla, empanada, quesadilla, or steamed with meat or fish for a tamale.
Antojitos Since coming to Mexico we have ignored the advice of travel books and straight away started experimenting with street food. The first thing that we came across and is
very common all over Mexico is something called antojitos. This means ‘a sudden craving’ so can be eaten at any time of day or night. Antojitos is a broad term that covers most of the corn based snacks.
Empanadas We took a cooking class in Merida and learned how to make corn dough and then how to turn it into tortillas. This involved a small metal device to squash a ball of dough into a flat, thin circle. I have seen street vendors do this by hand but I don’t think I have the skills needed. We then filled these with potato, chorizo and onion, folded them over into a pasty shape and deep fried them to make empanadas. (In Argentina they use plain flour and they are baked, similar to a pasty but smaller). We served this with a nopales salad. The nopales are the flat, prickly leaves of the cactus which when stripped of their spikes and chopped have a crunchy but creamy texture. We added these to sliced onion, tomato and coriander. The nopales give off a sort of juice when chopped so almost creates its own salad dressing.
Quesadillas One of my
favourite antojitos is quesadillas. This is a tortilla folded over with cheese and any other filling. We have tried various flavours including my favourite of rajas – strips of mild green chilli. I think I was most excited about this one as we were finding it hard to find many vegetable dishes. I think vegetarians would find it hard in Mexico.
Tortas Our staple here has been tortas – sandwiches with frijoles (refried beans which come with nearly every meal in Mexico), avocado (you can buy some amazing avocados here), cheese, onions and tomatoes. These are normally served with chorizo or chicken but in Merida we found most street food stalls serving it with a filing of turkey. You could see these roasted with either a black sauce or a red one, both of which were quite spicy. I’m not sure if it’s just because the turkey is fresh (you see lots of them running around) or if it’s the way its cooked but it is really tender meat.
Soups With the leftover turkey they make sopa de limon. This is a turkey broth with the bits left in, with loads of lime, oregano, cheese, onion
and corn chips. Very, very yummy. We also tried an Aztec soup made with chicken broth, chipotle, avocado, cheese, tomatoes and served with corn chips. This one is a bit spicy, especially as I thought the chipotle was a mushroom and bit into it when it was in fact a dried chilli.
We did try a tamale which is steamed corn dough with either chicken or fish wrapped in a banana leaf. I am not a big fan but maybe I need to try some more.
Spices and mole As a rule Mexican food is not super spicy although there are exceptions, it is the condiments and salsas that add the spice. This is good as you have control of how spicy you want to make it. We found a range of salsas that use the habanero chilli. This is considered one of the spiciest chillies around and I could only take a little bit of it.
Oaxaca was my favourite place for food with a range of different mole sauces. They say when eating mole it doesn’t matter what you are having it with, it’s the sauce that counts. The sauce is nut based and
comes in different colours depending on the ingredients. There is even one with chocolate in, what’s not to like!
Drinks As we were in Mexico it felt rude not to try some tequila so we headed to a local bar to give it a go. I started softly with a margarita but was then knocking them back. However this is not the way to drink tequila in Mexico. I was informed by a local that you have to ‘kiss’ the drink. It is sipped, not drank ‘down in one’. We found a great mezcalaria in Oaxaca where we tried a couple of different mezcals which come served with slices of orange and a salt mixed with chilli and ground up agave worms. These are meant to have hallucionagenic qualities but as I couldn’t stand the taste I couldn’t tell you if they did or not.
We also tried a beer cocktail called a michelada. This is a cross between a lager and a bloody mary and is made by putting a mixture of salt, tabasco, lots of lime, Worcestershire sauce, and maggi seasoning into any beer of your choosing. Again this wasn’t for me but Steve found
it very refreshing.
All in all I have absolutely loved Mexico and the food here was a real highlight for me. It is not the healthiest of foods (especially the tlayuda – Mexican pizza which is a crispy tortilla with everything on it) but it tastes amazing and is fun to eat.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.072s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 10; qc: 25; dbt: 0.03s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1mb