DC Culinarian

Wild Blueberry Pie

Mrs. Culinarian and I are going to Australia. This is tangentially related to blueberry pie, I swear.

I have a brother in Melbourne. He moved there last year to go to grad school, though Melbourne is quite conveniently also where his girlfriend hails from. She is now his fiancée, which is fantastic. And not just for them! Not only do I get another sister-in-law, I get one who can play knifey-spoony. So we're going to the land of funnel web spiders and Yahoo Serious for a wedding.

Getting two people to Australia ain't cheap. Being in Australia ain't cheap. Of the five most expensive cities in the world, two are down under: Sydney and... Melbourne. I'm not complaining, mind you. Well, I am, but only insofar as it relates to blueberry pie. Which it does. Sort of. Bear with me.

With the Australia trip on the horizon, Mrs. Culinarian and I have implemented cost-savings measures. They are many and splendiferous, but only two are relevant to today's discussion: bicycling to work, and shopping more at Trader Joe's. In the frozen foods section of Trader Joe's one will find bags of wild blueberries. Mrs. Culinarian made this discovery several times over and picked up wild blueberries every time she went, leaving our freezer littered with unopened bags of blueberries.

Something had to be done. So, pie.

Shortly after the pie was completed and the first slices consumed, Mrs. Culinarian started her intention to have a slice for breakfast the next morning "if there is any left," unsubtly suggesting that I was not only capable of consuming almost an entire blueberry pie in one evening, but likely to do so.

I'm not going to call that slander. Actually she was pretty on the nose, and here's why: bicycling to work. For me it's about 18 miles round trip. Every day. That's a daily pastry indulgence. At the end of the circuit, my thoughts are not "whew that was a good workout" or "boy I sure am happy to be staying fit." It's literally: "Pie time, son." I've arrived home sweat-drenched and completely parched, and reached for pie instead of water. And pie contains water. And salt. It's basically Gatorade.

Anyway, I'm going to Australia and I eat a lot of pie.

Recipe after the jump.

Aguas Frescas

The price of enjoying Mexico is vigilance. It is realizing that in everything you do, everywhere you go, each and every interaction you have, there is a hidden menace. An invisible threat.

Montezuma...

Guarding oneself against the Aztec emperor's gastrointestinal curse means avoiding all non-treated water. This is not difficult, given the ubiquity of bottled water and alcohol, but it can make the enjoyment of aguas frescas an adventurous affair.

Aguas are like ades, made with fresh fruit, flowers, cacti, whatever. Often you'll encounter stands on the street with huge cylindrical jars of brightly colored aguas, looking superbly appealing in the Mexican heat. This is the time to be wary. Sip a careless vendor's wares and you'll find yourself perched atop the porcelain.

The easiest way to obviate this risk is to make your own aguas frescas. Here we have two aguas for two different purposes: agua de jamaica for refreshment, and agua de horchata to counter spiciness.

The agua de jamaica is made from dried hibiscus flowers, and is simple to the point of comedy. You simply boil the flowers (obtainable at most Latin markets) with sugar, strain over ice, and enjoy the tart, refreshing goodness.

The horchata is slightly more involved -- more ingredients and a certain amount of technique -- but oh the payoff. Horchata is one of the great accompaniments to spicy food: sweet, milky, and utterly delicious.

Recipes after the jump.

Chalupa Veterans For Truth

Taco Bell stands guilty of many, many crimes: an 840-calorie taco "salad," "Mexican pizza," popularization of the word "melty," etc. One of their most persistent acts of mischief has been to sow confusion as to what a chalupa is.

It is not, as they advertise, a deep-fried taco shell stuffed with ground beef and regret. And while I'm harsh on this account, I have to tend to my own house as well. My chalupas de pescado con pipián from last May are not true chalupas either. They're actually sopes.

So what makes a true chalupa? At it's most basic it is a thin tortilla, fried lightly until just firm, and covered with salsa, minced onion, and shredded meat. It's street food, light and quick.

Part of the confusion stems from the fact that so many other street foods follow this same tortilla-salsa-meat formula. An elongated tortilla fried and dressed in the exact same fashion as a chalupa and cut into strips is called a huarache. A chalupa whose tortilla has been fried until crispy is a tostada. Use a thicker, deep-fried tortilla (as I did with my faux-chalupas... fauxlupas... sorry) and you'll have sopes.

The salsas are the traditional salsa roja or salsa verde I showed you how to make the other day. It's important that you use good salsa -- it's doing the heavy lifting here flavor-wise. Typically, the meat used is either chicken or beef, boiled with garlic and onion and shredded. (The best thing to do is boil a bunch at one time, shred it, and freeze the remainder -- when is a big bag of frozen shredded meat NOT useful?)

Now that the chalupa science has been dropped and we're clear on what a chalupa is and what it isn't, get to making them. If you don't, then Taco Bell has already won...

Recipe after the jump.

Guacamole

This week's theme has been volcanoes. It really can't be anything else. The thick column of ash rising from Popocatépetl is on everyone's tongues, literally and figuratively. Mrs. Culinarian has already had an asthma attack, and I tried to go for a run the other day, working up a light sweat and a heavy wheeze.

Which leads us to the molcajete, a solid hunk of porous volcanic basalt that has been hewn and shaped into an efficient grinding instrument. A traditional molcajete has three legs supporting a broad basin, and the likeness of an animal's face -- typically a pig -- on the side. It comes paired with a tejolote, the pestle-like grinding tool that represents the animal's child.

It's the tool of choice for grinding up a good guacamole. "Guacamole" is a portmanteau of the Spanish word for avocado (aguacate) and mole, meaning ground chile paste. The chile of choice is serrano, a skinny, angry little green bugger whose heat is mercifully tamed by the avocado. 

The traditional guacamole has just six ingredients: avocado, serrano chile, cilantro, onion, lime juice, and salt. Preparing it depends largely on a proper molcajete technique. Set the rounded point of the tejolote in the center of your palm, drape your fingers down its sides, and grind using quick turns of the wrist. If you hold it like an ice pick and start mashing away at your guacamole, you'll end up with a seventh ingredient: tiny chips of basalt.

The beauty of the molcajete is that it also becomes your serving dish. Just set it on the table with a bowl of tortilla chips and enjoy with a cold beer.

Under The Shadow Of The Volcano (Finally)

I've mentioned in previous posts that one of the local volcanoes, Popocatépetl, has been active of late. But for weeks now, Don Goyo, as the volcano is lovingly dubbed by the locals, has been hidden from view, shrouded by a cloud of ash of its own creation.

Last night, the wind picked up around sunset, clearing out the ash and giving us our first spectacular view of Don Goyo.

Mole Sacristía

Another class, another mole. Namely, mole sacristía, devised by chef Hernández and the speciality of Mesones Sacristía.

It's commonly held that all moles contain chocolate and thence derive their coloring. This is wrong. Some moles do contain chocolate -- mole poblano among them -- but it's not universal and a mole's coloring comes primarily from the type of chile used..

Mole sacristía is colored and flavored with chipotles: a specific variety of chipotle called meco, which are jalapeños that have been sun dried, boiled with liquid smoke, and then sun dried again. The boiling changes the color, turning the chiles a brownish-yellow. When the chiles are fried prior to their inclusion in the mole they inflate and take on a color that, if you haven't seen the process, can best be described as mahogany. If you have seen the process, it can best be described as... something else.

Anyway, the chipotles are ground together with tomatillos, onions, and garlic charred on the comal. And that's it. When stacked against other mole recipes that are 30- or 40-ingredient monsters, it comes off as simplistic. But the flavor is complex and excellent: smokey and hot from the chipotle, tart and slightly bitter from the tomatillos.

That's two moles in two days -- not an awful way to kick off your vacation. As hinted at by the photos, we learned and prepared much more at Mesones Sacristía, which I'll get into later.

Mole Poblano

So here we are in Puebla.

It's a big city -- the fourth largest in Mexico -- and it is growing at such an alarming rate that it likely would have merged with nearby Mexico City at this point but for the two monstrous volcanos that separate them.

Growth and modernization are changing Puebla, but it is still at its core, both physically and culturally, a traditional colonial Mexican city. Food is a vital part of that culture.

In the historical center of Puebla, just off the zócalo, or central square, Mesones Sacristía maintains that culinary tradition, preparing classic poblano fare and offering instruction in its preparation. That is where Mrs. Culinarian and I went yesterday to learn the intricacies of Puebla's namesake dish, mole poblano, as explained by executive chef Alonzo Hernández, seen here explaining the virtues of small tomatillos.

"Mole" comes from the Nahuatl word molli, meaning a sauce or paste of ground chiles. The Aztecs ate molli straight -- just ground chiles. As chef Hernández told it, the spice of the molli was too much for European colonizers, whose palates were ironically unadventurous. So they made some additions to cut the heat; the Spaniards threw tomatoes and onions into the mix, while the French tamed it further with fruits. But still, mole is defined by chiles.

To be considered mole poblano, the mole must contain three specific varieties of chile: mulato, smoked and dried; ancho, deep red and leathery; and pasilla, redolent of tobacco. (All three can be easily obtained in Latin markets.) Six of each chile have their seeds removed and are quickly fried in oil -- three or four seconds, maximum -- to release their flavors. In that same oil you fry your desired quantity of thoroughly ripe plantain, which sweetens as it caramelizes and takes on some of the spiciness of the chile-infused oil.

The plantain pulls double duty, sweetening the mole but also thickening it with copious amounts of starch. This effect is achieved, curiously, by mixing the plantain with tortillas that have been set on fire and blackened until they resemble hockey pucks. (Speaking of double duty, the Aztecs also used blackened corn to clean their teeth.) The blackened tortilla and fried plantain are blended together with a small quantity of water to produce an ashen-gray paste whose usefulness far exceeds its appearance.

We have the thickener, but what about the thickenee? Roma tomatoes, rough-chopped white onion, and a couple of cloves of garlic form the substrate for the mole. They're charred; then boiled in a pot with with peanuts, almonds, and the fried crumbled chiles; then blended until smooth. You saute the chile sauce over high heat, add in the plantain paste, crumble in some good Mexican chocolate, and after 25 minutes of slow simmering: mole poblano.

The fashionable plating you see above was the work of Mrs. Culinarian, who under the expert tutelage of chef Hernández transformed a tomato skin into that lovely rose garnishing the mole. (I also attempted this. We don't need to talk about the result.)

I'll post a detailed recipe at some point soon, but I'm on vacation, so you people can wait.

Food Blogging Your Honeymoon

The nine bays of Huatulco face almost due south, situated as they are along the portion of Mexico's Pacific coast that curls eastward right before running into Guatemala. The bays themselves are constantly buffeted by pounding surf, which can be daunting to gringo tourists looking for a leisurely swim, but can't deter the small-boat fishermen who shove off every morning to cast nets and dive for shellfish.

The area is isolated, though not without some significant touristic development, and awash in seafood that is fresh to the point of disbelief. It's also where the newly married Mrs. Culinarian and I spent our honeymoon.

We stayed at a beachside bed-and-breakfast at the end of a cobblestone road that has no name -- on the business card of the B&B's proprietress, the address is given as calle sin nombre ("unnamed street"). The area is under development, but still pretty rustic. During the day, chickens peck along the median. At night, you have to be on guard for roving packs of dogs.

A few doors up from the beach is a small restaurant called La Concha, the owner of which is an affable young man who hails from -- of all places -- Cincinnati. This rare güero, named Zack, met his wife, a native huatulqueña, while working in an Ohio warehouse. After visiting Huatulco for the first time a couple of years back, he decided to pack up his life, move to rural Mexico, and sink all his savings into this modest eatery. Such adventurous romanticism is a rare thing.

La Concha's speciality is seafood, and when Mrs. Culinarian and I sat down for the first time and asked for a menu, Zack produced for us a plate of red snappers that had just been pulled from the sea and simply asked us to pick our pescado. The fruit of the selection process was the best huachinango al mojo de ajo I'll likely ever eat.

A whole fish, slathered with garlic, fried and crisped. The flesh of the snapper was sweet and delicate, with that savory, briny flavor encountered only in absurdly fresh seafood. When paired with key lime and cilantro, you get a flavor that is uniquely Mexican and incapable of being reproduced anywhere else. 

Mrs. Culinarian and I took several meals at La Concha, including a ceviche of sierra and scallops, which were plucked from the sea floor by the intrepid local free divers (who perform this feat, we were told, while thoroughly inebriated). In fact, we were the best customers Zack had seen in a long while -- La Concha, despite the quality of the cookery, suffers a lack of clientele due to its isolation from the main touristic centers and lack of advertising budget.

Such problems do not afflict La Concha's neighbor, a Huatulco establishment called La Finca De Los Vaqueros. Whereas La Concha is all about the surf, Los Vaqueros is 100% turf, and they're not ashamed to declare that their meat selection is "lo que nos ha hecho famoso" (that which has made us famous). This boast is not without basis.

Arrachera. Charcoal grilled skirt steak sliced thinly and served with a thick and oleaginous salsa de chile de arbol that was hot enough to make you regret not having made a will. Mrs. Culinarian and I spent a whole afternoon pounding arrachera tacos and desperately sucking on Victoria beer to put out mouth fires. Embracing the "what the hell, we're on vacation" mentality, we added a bowl of piping hot queso fundido, melted Oaxacan string cheese.

By afternoon's end we were lying supine and groaning on the bed, gutting through the meat sweats and periodically worrying that our pores were oozing cheese.

And that's basically what we did in Huatulco: eat. Every morning our hostess would prepare for us a Oaxacan specialty for breakfast. Every beach had its own little palapa-covered restaurant serving just-caught seafood. Beer flowed plentifully.

We had a great time. And while we were certainly happy to return to Washington, coming back was still bittersweet largely because we missed the food. And not just the Huatulco fare, but that of the city of Oaxaca, which I've detailed previously.

I guess we'll just have to temper our desperate longing for Oaxacan cuisine with years of marital bliss. That, and a bottle of aged mezcal...

The Family Culinarian

After months and months of over-hyphenated glory, The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian is no more...

She is now, officially, irrevocably, indubitably, indelibly, irrepressibly, incoherently...

MRS. CULINARIAN

Please update your records.

Culinarian Abroad -- Oaxacan Weekend

It was late Friday night, and The-Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Culinarian and I were wheels-down in Oaxaca, Mexico after enduring a long day of traveling and some of the worst barbecue Houston International Airport's Terminal B has to offer. Food was on our minds, and after a hurried buenas noches with Sra. Conchita, the incomparable dueña of Casa De Mis Recuerdos, we struck out for Casa Oaxaca.

The restaurant, which sits just across the street from the splendiferous Templo de Santo Domingo in downtown Oaxaca, has been a sort of culinary yardstick for us ever since we first visited last year and had one of the best meals of our lives. It was one of the (many) reasons we fell in love with the city and chose it as the site for our wedding.

So back we went, and we were not disappointed. As hinted at in my previous post, Oaxaca is all about mole, and Casa Oaxaca does mole right. The suckling pig you see here was surrounded by a lightly tart mole verde that had a mild, fruity heat and light notes of anise. TSTBMC went for the mole almendrado, which had a building heat and powerful tomato flavor that slowly melted into almondy sweetness. To accompany our mole feast we had crisped blue-corn tortillas served with fiery hot pickled chile de agua and a salsa roja prepared tableside in a molcajete.

That our visit started on such a resoundingly high culinary note was a good thing, as the majority of the next two days were consumed by wedding planning (15 separate vendors on Saturday alone). But that doesn't mean we didn't eat well. Far from it, in fact.

Part of the planning agenda was an elaborate tasting put together by the Camino Real hotel, where TSTBMC and I will have our wedding reception. We had always been of the opinion that the food at a wedding really isn't all that important -- if the music was good and the flow of booze unrestricted, then people would enjoy themselves regardless of what was on their plates. "Forgettably good" was the standard we thought was appropriate. Camino Real has disabused of us that notion. And they did it with soup.

Pictured here are three of the soups we sampled -- sopa Maria Sabina, a traditional Oaxacan soup with wild mushrooms; crema pasilla, cream of pasilla chiles; and sopa campesina, or country soup. The crema pasilla was remarkable: devilishly hot with chunks of sweet fried plantain lurking at the bottom. And then there was that sopa campesina with its copious quantities of huitlacoche -- a savory corn mushroom that looks like death but tastes like heaven. 

The planning madness carried over into Sunday, though at a much less hectic pace, allowing a little time to do some restaurant exploration. That led us to Los Danzantes, which specializes in putting moden twists on classic Oaxacan recipes. Their shrimp tlayuda (pronounced, unfortunately, exactly as it's spelled) was crispy, savory, and wonderful, but it paled in comparison to the hierba santa leaf stuffed with quesillo, seen here. The almost medicinal flavor of the leaf paired beautifully with the mild tartness of the cheese and salsa verde.

And lastly, a word on nieves. I'm almost to the point where I can't properly express my love for these smooth-yet-crystalline balls of frozen fruit and milk. As part of our menu tasting at Camino Real we partook of three different varieties: lime, tuna (the fruit of the prickly pear cactus, not the fish), and leche quemada (literally, "burnt milk"). They disintegrate the moment they touch your tongue and leave behind an intense, fresh, clean flavor. They're just... I can't even...

Anyway, that's really just a cross-section what a very busy 48 hours in Oaxaca can get you. We also sipped on mezcal cocktails, devoured unhealthy amounts of queso fresco, ate more mole than should be legal, and chowed down on worms (they're great on huevos rancheros). It's a city where you're guaranteed to eat well, because it really doesn't give you any other choice.