Oaxaca -- mucho mole and Trotsky's brain

Highlights from a December trip to Oaxaca.
First post, please excuse the newby mistakes.

I stayed at a bed and breakfast, so I won’t go into the breakfast except to say they were excellent and it was Las Bugambilias, which is a few blocks northwest of the Zocalo.

La Olla
Nice small restaurant next to the B&B. Seems to be a lot of ex-pats.
Flor de Calabaza soup – small cubes of queso freso in the bottom of the bowl and 4 blossoms at each corner of the bowl. The waiter poured a fragrant, creamy broth over them. Very fresh, organic taste. The blossoms appeared as if freshly picked. The queso added a nice chewy texture. The broth tasted of cream layered with onion, and some pepper. I got the recipe later by taking a class with the chef.
Mole Negro with chicken. They give you a choice of chicken leg section or chicken breast. His question threw me off because my Spanish is poor, and I went for the breast. But I think the leg section might have been best, more fat. The mole was like listening to someone speaking Spanish very quickly. I picked up separate tastes, chocolate, pepper, raisins, almonds, but if I just quit listening for specific ingredients I got the whole thing. Let’s just say I wiped the plate clean with the homemade corn tortillas. The chicken was moist and tender, but just a means to deliver the mole.
What I learned from this trip was that, there may be bad moles, with burned chocolate, too much lard, or maybe bad almonds, but I don’t think you’ll find that in Oaxaca. Some one may add more chocolate or peppers to taste, but it’s all good. You just have to search for your favorite. It might take me years, but I’m willing.

Flor de Oaxaca
Near Zocalo, dark store front, few tourists, friendly staff. Sitting there I started to wonder about something. The TV was playing Mexican pop music in the dining area. One of the common features of a good ethnic restaurant seems to be a TV playing music videos or movies common with the ethnicity. Could I move to Oaxaca and open a Chicago/American sandwich shop with hot dogs, Italian beef, tater tots? And if so, what would I show on the TV in the dining room? I’m thinking Brady Bunch, Law and Order reruns, and country music videos.
Chapulines -- the restaurant version is the same as the street version, only it comes with avocado; crunchy with lime, chile and lots of salt. Not bad, but the little legs get caught in my teeth.
Nopales salad – small cubes of nopalito and avocado in a vinegary dressing. Very light and refreshing.
Mole Coloradito Pollo – Mole negro is thick and fills your mouth with flavor, Amarillo has layers and more of a kick, this mole has fewer layers, more of a one tone, or two tone, but very good, harmonized tones.
If I would have had more time, I’d try this place again.

Casa de las Sabores
Actually a cooking school by the chef of La Olla. Pilar takes you to a neighborhood market, La Merced, and cooks up the ingredients for a great lunch, and if you’re lucky a sampling of local mescal. We cooked a tomatillo salsa, squash blossom soup, and a green mole. I’ve had green mole before, but not made fresh with fresh chayote and green beans. One of my favorite meals. But a lot of a meal has to do with the surroundings and the company. Pilar is a great cook and lovely hostess. Her tour of the market was a memorable experience mainly because she knew all of the vendors, from the old ladies selling garlic to the man running the fruit stand.

Alice’s Restaurante (Hierbe de Agua)
I biked up to Hierbe de Aqua with Pedro Martinez, a former member of the Mexican National Team. He grew up near here. Alice and her family run a small place, an open area with a dirt floor, chickens running around, open fire stove, with a large comal. Alice was an older zapotec woman whose smile spoke centuries and made you feel warm. She made huevos rancheros, eggs fresh this morning, chile de arbol sauce made that day, and tortillas cooked on the comal from homemade masa. She also threw corn with husks onto the fire stoking it with small sticks. The corn came from mountain fields just that morning. It was field corn, not sweet corn, with white and purple kernels, a little burnt and chewy. This was my favorite meal, it could have been the atmosphere, or it could have been that after climbing up a steep, dirt mountain road on a bike, I would have eaten insects. No, no did that earlier. Riding back (uphill again) we came across an impromptu tollbooth manned by 3 men and an empty bottle of mescal. Fortunately Pedro knew them and threatened to tell their mothers.

El Naranjo
Beautiful dining room, open, high ceilings, comfortable not stuffy. After I got the menu I wished I’d eaten here every night. I asked for a copy but they wouldn’t give me one. They said to check their webite: http://www.elnaranjo.com.mx/oaxaca/ingles.html
They brought out the best bread I’d had in the trip with an orange chile butter (that I’m trying to replicate), a chicken liver spread and a chile de arbol sauce. From there it kind of went downhill.
Gazpacho – lovely yellow orange broth with avocado, onion, pepper on the side. It was bland. I expect gazpacho to be a spring symphony of flavors. This was just a light flavor of tomato with some vegetables added for texture. But it looked good.
Pollo with pepian mole -- okay, not truly one of the 7 moles, but it’s Oaxaca and El Naranjo, so I’m not calling it pepian sauce. A beautiful dish, a calming restful light green. The chicken was perfectly cooked, the sauce a light nutty taste with little or no chile. Good, but not great.
A beautiful setting with perfect plating, but no knockout tastes. I was disappointed. More show than go.

This thing is already too long. To avoid boring you too much, I’ll end the meals here and just comment on some general eating.

Lunches
Festival in Benito Juarez Park (Las Llanas park) – Quesadilla Amarillo. Dozens of stands with big comals where the special is mole amarillo. She puts this huge tortilla in a big comal, stuffs it with chicken, chayote, epazote, and a smoky hot orange colored sauce. Pure heaven. I’m not that big a guy. I ate one with 2 Jarritos tamarindo and half of another before I called it quits. These things were big and messy. The amarillo was almost too hot, and for me that’s pretty hot. I liked it a lot. This is the mole that put a smile on my face, onion, garlic, chiles, everything my tastebuds wanted and more.
20 de Noviembre Mercado – the place is just overwhelming. the main part of the market allows you to sample moles, fruit, chapulines, etc. But on Saturday, the section where they barbeque meats was just too much. I had to go back outside, catch my breath and go back. It was just too much to take in all at once. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I ate cecina at 3 different places. That is a lot of food for lunch, and it was all good, no great.
Mercado at La Merced – great small market, much more accessible than 20 de Noviembre or Abastos. I went for the chocolate atole at the small fondo in the far corner of the market. It’s very filling. Corn and chocolate is one of the great overlooked combinations in my humble opinion, but then I also think everyone should like chile in their brownies. So maybe it’s just me.
Abastos – Big. Go for the experience, grab a tlayuda anywhere and enjoy.
Organico – puts any farmers market here to shame. I wanted to buy stuff and bring it back. I bought fruit I didn’t recognize and didn’t get the name. it looked like rainier cherries, tasted like cider. They also had great aqua fresca tamarindo.
Paletas – I have a weakness for paletas. Michoacan paleta/nieve stands everywhere. Best, pepino con limon, pina con chile, mango con chile, and tamarindo.
Sidewalk paleta sales -- Popeye best flavors although not frozen as solid as Michoacan.
Nieve, mamey, pepino con limon, cerese.

Also I’d recommend the Rufino Tamayo exhibit at the Museo de los Pintores Oaxaquenos, and the photo museum which has an interesting exhibit of crime photos from the 20’s and 30’s which includes a photo of Trotsky’s brain. Not the best part of the exhibit, but it sure helps this byline. The next exhibit will be nudes from the 20’s and 30’s.
I’d also highly recommend mountain biking with Pedro Martinez Bicleletas, but it’s not for beginners.

Schuyler,

Excellent post -- the restaurant you linked to that serves a different one of the seven moles every day of the week looks fantastic.

Chapulines are one Oaxacan menu item that seems almost impossible to find in Chicago, though I'd jump at the chance to try them (just to round out my understanding of Oaxacan cuisine -- the insects I have eaten have all been pretty much the same, meaning: lots o' crunch but not much taste).

I -- or rather, The Wife -- had a bad experience with paletas in Mexico. In Yucatan, she ate some watermelon ones and (we believe because of that) became quite ill with a stomach bacteria...but who knows where one might pick up these things.

If you have more to say about Oaxaca, I'm all ears.

Hammond

All quotes are attributed to Schuyler :roll:

First post, please excuse the newby mistakes.

Great first post I you don’t mind, I’ll add a few visual aids

I stayed at a bed and breakfast, so I won’t go into the breakfast except to say they were excellent and it was Las Bugambilias, which is a few blocks northwest of the Zocalo.

I’m jealous, this was the scene outside our hotel



Actually, aside from the difficulties with the hotel, we had a great short stay in Oaxaca over Thanksgiving. I am being lazy writing a post, so I am just going to provide a few pictures of similar activities. You should consider imitation, in this instance, a sincere form of flattery. Actually, I am a newbie at posting with pictures.

El Naranjo
Beautiful dining room, open, high ceilings, comfortable not stuffy.

I agree, I loved the pate and everything would have been a knockout, but for the fact you were in Mexico’s food Mecca.

We took a class with Chef Iliana. She made a very simple soup by simply browning/sautéing pecans, stale bread and a few cloves of garlic in butter and blending with pan roasted tomatoes and canned chipotle peppers with whole milk, strain and re-heat.








After demonstrating the dishes of a full meal (and hands on for parts) Chef Iliana took us on a walking tour of the market.

Dozens of stands with big comals where the special is mole amarillo. She puts this huge tortilla in a big comal, stuffs it with chicken, chayote, epazote, and a smoky hot orange colored sauce.

I had mine way in the back of the Abastos Market. My friend, Kelly, couldn’t get enough of the fresh Oaxacan cheese, particularly the one with epazote and chiles.




Check out the piles and piles of garlic at the market. Some of it went into Cacahuates Fritos, Spanish peanuts fried with garlic and chile de arbol a very addictive cocktail snack. The garlic is rendered mild by the frying and is eaten along with the peanuts…the chilies are only eaten by the brave and drunk.

20 de Noviembre Mercado – the place is just overwhelming. the main part of the market allows you to sample moles, fruit, chapulines, etc. But on Saturday, the section where they barbeque meats was just too much. I had to go back outside, catch my breath and go back. It was just too much to take in all at once. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I ate cecina at 3 different places.

Kelly is not much of a meat eater, and has a few issues with red meat slung over counters as a means of stirring the appetite. Meat Avenue, as Kelly and I joked about what its name might be in English, was finally hopping on our last day in Oaxaca. She saw the look in my eye (and of course having denied all other requests to dine on Meat Avenue, suggested that I stay and eat while she went back to the hotel…or else I’d just blame her for the rest of her life.

It was smoky, crowded and bustling. I felt like throwing on a paper hat and working one of the grills like a college student at Mr. Cinder’s steak house. I was in a meat vapor-induced dazed. [BTW, that haze is meat grill smoke and not just my normal poor photography skills]



Hablo pico Espanole . Crap…where do I begin . Luckily, after walking up and down the Avenue a few times, this kind young lady to mercy on me. She patted my tummy and said, in more or less perfect English, “You look hungry…come…eat.”




She took a small basket with a bunch of onions and a two chiles (light green, name?), then selected some steak and chorizo (Carne Asada and Chorizo, two words I could manage in Spanglish.






Everything in the basket is grilled, the onions, chile, steak and chorizo….


Another vendors sells tortillas and another sells a cold drink…I think this is all done individually, the young lady assisting me seemed to keep a tab running and I paid at the end.

However, this was her reaction when I tried to explain GWiv’s theory about not tipping on tax (no propeno e taxacion)



I finally managed to get seated with some college kids that didn’t fess up to being able to speak English until the last possible awkward moment. The meal, the place, the atmosphere, THE PRICE (about $2.89, $10.00 with tax on tip )… beats any four star restaurant.

Go for the experience, grab a tlayuda anywhere and enjoy.

These ladies just down the street from our hotel were our first stop each morning. The folks on there way to work could not have been more pleasant as we gawked, pointed, ate, moaned, spoke Spanglish, got in the way and took pictures. Sheezz I need to be more friendly to the tourists as I walk by the Sears Tower on my way to work.

They also had great aqua fresca tamarindo.

Did you try the agua fresca made with squash? I would not have even thought about it until Chef Iliana suggested it. It was good and different.

Paletas – I have a weakness for paletas. Michoacan paleta/nieve stands everywhere. Best, pepino con limon, pina con chile, mango con chile, and tamarindo.
Sidewalk paleta sales -- Popeye best flavors although not frozen as solid as Michoacan.
Nieve, mamey, pepino con limon, cerese.

YES. All of the funky flavors. Muchos Gracias to RST and Dickson for helpful hints and re-posts to encourage me to try some of these treats. I hope to find some in Chicago someday.

I’d also highly recommend mountain biking with Pedro Martinez Bicleletas, but it’s not for beginners.

For beginners…a half hour trip to the Monte Alban ruins of the Zapotec peoples is just the ticket.




Viva la Oaxaca

Pdaane,

Aqua fresca with squash is very interesting. I assume they add some sugar to the mix, no?

Marvelous pix.

Hammond

Schuyler and PDaane,

Great posts, informative, interesting and wonderfully evocative, makes me want to jump a plane.

Peter, nice pics, I especially like the Meat Avenue pic with the ray of sunshine highlighting the meat counter.

As an aside, I caught an episode of the Thirsty Traveler the other night which was centered on Oaxaca. Not the most in-depth programming available, but interesting nonetheless.

Enjoy,
Gary

pdaane wrote:However, this was her reaction when I tried to explain GWiv’s theory about not tipping on tax (no propeno e taxacion)

Peter,

Wait one Blooming Onion of a Minute here!! That's your theory not mine. In fact your ferstuchnkena theory almost got me permanently kicked out of Davis Street Fishmarket, I really wish I had a pic of you standing on the back bar doing your no-tip-on-tax dance.

Anywhoo, she doesn't look all that annoyed, and you seem to have eaten pretty darn well in Oaxaca. Nice pics, or did I already say that in my previous post.

Enjoy,
Gary

David Hammond wrote:Aqua fresca with squash is very interesting. I assume they add some sugar to the mix, no?

I believe the squish is either baked with brown sugar or brined in sugar and cal (calcium oxide, same as nixtamale process), but it has a bit of its own sweetness...think pumpkin pie smoothie.

BTW, thanks for the kind words on the photos, its getting to be a very high bar around here...

I mean have you seen the MikeG produced: 2005 Year in Food Photos


Actually, I know you have, but that is a little treat for some friends and relatives that I have directed to this thread.

I'm still a little sloppy with the digital, I'm just glad some of the meat avenue pictures turned out, it really was a highlight...notice how the photographer stopped shaking so much and seemed to move with lethargy.

I didn't try the agua fresca with squash, but did try one with cucumber. I still haven't figured out how to post images on here, so that have to may come later, but I have some good ones of the hotel, Monte Alban, Mayordomo chocolate, etc.
I recognize pdaane picture of the nieve stand from El Tule. I got mamey and nuez. I wish I would have taken a picture of the mechanical horse around the corner, like the ones they used to put in front of grocery stores back in the 50's. The theme song on it was from the cartoon Dudley DoRight. Seemed incongruous with the location, but I liked it.
I had one of the kids give the tour of El Tule (huge cypress tree) and he pointed out the figures in the tree; religious symbols, the home of the the 7 dwarfs, and Monica Lewinsky's behind. He had a better imagination than I, although I must admit it was one big ass tree.
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El Tule is one big tree. We went to see it on the way to the airport. I had assumed Kelly would not want to see it and then when I mentioned it she said, "that would be kinda cool." We only had enough time to get there and back to the airport...so we missed Monica's butt. Oh well, maybe next time. The nieve stand was more colorful than my pictures from inside the market. Our favorites were tuna (prickly pear fruit, not the fish) and mango with chilli. We tried several over the 5 days, but Tuna was one of the best, cheese was the most unique without being unpleasant.

I hope this works. Thanks to Pdaane even if it doesn't.

Las Bugambilias


Cooking class Casa de Sabores


Monte Alban


Hierve de Agua


Alice's Restaurante


Casa de Salud (health clinic in small town) seemed hilarious at the time.

Schuyler wrote:I had one of the kids give the tour of El Tule (huge cypress tree) and he pointed out the figures in the tree; religious symbols, the home of the the 7 dwarfs, and Monica Lewinsky's behind. He had a better imagination than I, although I must admit it was one big ass tree.

You must have gotten the "gringo" tour. Instead of Monica, when I was there with locals it was "las pompas de Olga Briskin" (the buns of Olga Briskin, a 70's-era dancer with a rather impressive body. . I had actually seen Olga Briskin's scantily-clad pompas and could not see them in the tree either.

Bill/SFNM

One more try and then back to reading.
I was at Charlie Trotters on Saturday. it may take me weeks to write that one up.

Las Bugambilias B&B


Alice's Restaurante


Mayordomo chocolate grinders


Hierve de Agua


Monte Alban


The Casa de Salud -- small town clinic. At the time this seemed really funny.