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An Updated Look at Zihuatanejo

Forty years ago, Zihuatanejo was empty, isolated and spectacular, rocky mountains plunging to a curving bay. It wasn't hard to guess that one day this quiet Mexican village would boom with tourists. Only the flashy resort Ixtapa just up the coast stole its thunder, and Zihuatanejo faded into a worker community.

This has changed too. Now both are such hot destinations that they go by a single name, Ixtapa-Zihuatanejo. And tourism has replaced agriculture as the main industry.

The land is thick with coconut palms, mangoes, papaya trees, tamarinds, cashew trees and other tropical riches.

Corn is important too. Perhaps that is why restaurants liven up plain white rice with a few golden kernels.

Just-picked coconuts supply refreshing water to drink. The dried meat goes into candies such as the little pyramids of shredded coconut in the photo above.

Zihuatanejo's municipal market shows off piles of mangoes, guanabanas, jícamas, different types of local bananas, avocados, thin-cut meat hung up to dry, spices and herbs. 

Rather than the neat sprigs of cilantro one sees in the United States, cilantro here is plucked in long stems with feathery tops.

Market shops display soft cakes of tamarind, some of it red with chile, also sea salt, and sacks of coffee grown in the hills of Guerrero, the state where the twin resorts are located.

Fish stalls sell such varieties as cocinero, rongo, salema, medregal, cuatete, ojon and boba.

More familiar varieties such as robalo, dorado and atún (tuna) are there too. Or you can buy dried fish, such as that at the sidewalk stall of the woman at right.

Seafood is so abundant that it is almost taken for granted.  But what every inhabitant eats most often contains no seafood at all. It is the meat and corn stew pozole. The official day to eat pozole is Thursday, and restaurants hang out signs announcing that they'll have it that day.

An unusual variation made with seafood turned up at a tasting during Food & Wine magazine's recent culinary festival (right). But on that occasion, dishes were spruced up to impress visitors.

What local people prefer is white pozole with pork. And what they drink with it is mezcal, not from Oaxaca but produced in the hills of Guerrero from Agave cupreata, known in this region as papalote.

In the early days, one flew from Mexico City into Zihuatanejo in a tiny propeller plane that bounced scarily through the clouds. There were no stewardesses. You helped yourself to drinks and snacks from a drawer.  The terminal consisted of two banana trees, an open air structure that shaded a counter with a typewriter, a water bottle and a couple of bathrooms.

This has been replaced by an air-conditioned building with gift shops and other airport amenities--and long, slow immigration lines.

The simple home cooking of the past  has given way to Italian restaurants, sushi bars, gelato shops and hamburger joints.

 
Ruben, who opened the hamburger place in the photo above, cooked for 20 years at Playa La Madera in Zihuatanejo before upscaling to larger quarters in Ixtapa.

The grilled burgers are very good, I hear. They're served Mexican style, with pickled vegetables and jalapeños.  I saw this view of Ruben's several times a day from my hotel. It was frustrating to be so close and not have time to go there.

The well heeled stay at places such as The Tides Zihuatanejo (at right)  and La Casa Que Canta (at top), where room rates can soar beyond $1,000 a night,  

The super rich have their own majestic villas, molded onto steep, rock-crusted hillsides. The mode of architecture, using natural components such as palapa roofs and earth tones that blend with the landscape, is so typical that it is known as "Zihuatanejo style."

It's a big change from the past, but the seafood is still good, and it's easy to get there, only a couple of hours nonstop from Los Angeles.

If luxury isn't your style, you can hang out at market fondas.

Delia (right) offers a comida corrida, a set meal that includes rice, beans and handmade tortillas with the main dish.

Or you can mingle with locals at places such as the Cenaduría Callita on Nicolás Bravo in downtown Zihuatanejo, not far from the market.

You go to Callita for fried tacos dipped in guajillo chile sauce and buried under lettuce, tomato, pickled lalapeños and crumbled queso fresco. Or tamales with atole, followed by fried bananas in syrup. Not fancy but a real feast, just like the old days.

Cilantro Chicken--for Breakfast

In Mexico, breakfast is BIG. I've watched skinny women dig into  huge plates of eggs and meat, beans and rice. How did they stay so slim? By leaving half or more of their gigantic meals uneaten.

The breakfast buffet at the Dorado Pacifico in Ixtapa, where I stayed when I went to Food & Wine magazine's recent food festival, was loaded with meat.

 

There were things like cochinita pibil, cilantro chicken, chicken in cream sauce, pork in green sauce and Mexican style beef steak in addition to eggs, chilaquiles with red or green sauce, fried bananas and, one morning, grilled nopal cactus.

The cactus is on the plate above, along with red chilaquiles, a chunk of fried banana and a couple of sweet breads.

There were salsas too, red, green and fresh chopped, as well as thick crema, to top anything you wanted.

The bread and dessert section always included a loaf of flan along with a variety of pan dulce, cookies and bouncy orange and green gelatin squares.

You could start with fresh fruits from the area such as bananas,  pineapple and papaya along with juices including, one morning, a green blend of grapefruit, nopales, celery and parsley.

What really brought out the best in breakfast was a beautiful view out toward coconut palms, with netting underneath to protect anyone sitting at the tables outside from getting an unexpected bonk on the head. 

Although I'm a light eater in the morning, I really liked the cilantro chicken. Another festivalgoer, Ruth Alegria, who lives in Mexico City, told me how to make it.

Ruth is the International Association of Culinary Professionals' country coordinator for Mexico. Check her blog for culinary tours if you're headed to Mexico and to see photos of the Food & Wine festival.

Ruth cooks the chicken in a green salsa made with tomatillos, chiles and lots of cilantro. For more intense flavor, she recommends using the miniature variety of tomatillo called tomatillo milpero.

I see these often in Mexican markets in Los Angeles. If you can't find them, select the smallest tomatillos available, not those that have become large and yellowish rather than bright green.

POLLO AL CILANTRO
Cilantro Chicken
With thanks to Ruth Alegria

3 pounds small chicken thighs
Water
Salt
1 pound tomatillos milperos or other small tomatillos
1/2 small onion, cut into wedges
2 large cloves garlic
2 serrano chiles, seeded, coarsely chopped
2 cups cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons oil
2 cups reserved broth

Remove the skin and the fat from the chicken thighs.  Place them in a Dutch oven.  Add water to cover and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, partially covered, 45 minutes. Let cool in the broth.

Preheat a griddle over medium high heat.  Remove the papery husks from the tomatillos. Roast them on the griddle until flecked with brown but not burned, turning as needed. Remove and cool slightly.

Place the tomatillos in a blender container. Add the onion, garlic, chiles and cilantro.  Blend until pureed.

Remove the chicken from the broth and set aside. Strain the broth and reserve 2 cups.  Use the rest for another dish or a first course soup.

Clean the Dutch oven.  Add the oil and heat.  Add the pureed cilantro mixture. Rinse out the blender with some of the reserved broth and add with the remaining reserved broth to the Dutch oven. 

Bring the sauce to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Taste and add salt as needed.

Place the chicken pieces in the sauce and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes, or until heated through.

Serve with rice and tortillas.

Makes 6 servings.  

Alaska Airlines, Shame on You

I'm just back from Food & Wine magazine's first Mexican food festival, held in Ixtapa Zihuatanejo.

The festival was great. I have loads to write about--restaurant reviews, recipes and more. That is, as soon as I recover from a nasty experience on the flight home.

My round trip on Alaska Airlines was routed from Ixtapa Zihuatanejo back to Los Angeles on Aeromexico.

And what a sad arrival at LAX. I didn't recognize my suitcase because it no longer looked the same. The brand new blue luggage strap meant to distinguish it from other black bags was gone. The TSA lock was gone too.

Alaska's rep at LAX was macho, mean, rude and a bully.  Are we passengers now just annoyances, to be shouted down if we're nervy enough to protest?

Of course the airline wouldn't do anything about the loss. Didn't I know they had to move mountains of luggage around? Why was I surprised that mine was damaged? (What are they doing, playing soccer and catch with our stuff in some fun free for all?) I guess it's lucky I even got the bag.

Of course, he wouldn't register a complaint. Nor did he apologize.

I didn't look at the contents of the suitcase until I got home. That's when I found that strange hands had pawed through my things.

My two cosmetic bags were packed in clear plastic bags to guard against spills in flight.  The plastic bags had not been opened the normal way but torn apart. The cosmetic bags inside were unzipped and left that way as was a small bag of eye makeup (at least they didn't take my mascara).

In a legitimate inspection, things are left as they were packed, and a slip verifying the inspection is placed in the suitcase. I know this, because it happened to me once, when I was transporting bottles of wine. My old lock was cut off that time. This is why I bought the TSA lock, to comply with regulations.

A real inspector would not have missed the little bottle of clear liquid that was also wrapped in plastic. More suspect than a cosmetic bag, it went through untouched. Was it the makings of an explosive? Only if that's the way your system reacts to mezcal.

And what about the suspcious bag of white powder, double-wrapped in another plastic bag? It also was not discovered. (The powder was dangerous too, but only to the unclean. It was detergent.)

No wonder people are carrying their luggage on board, huge bags too. This used to annoy me, but now I understand.

So shame on you, Alaska Airlines, for bad attitude, irresponsibility and welcoming this traveler home with an ugly slap in the face.  

What's New Over the Border

Any trip over the border turns up much that is new--new retaurants, new projects, new wines and food.

Even the old seems new as it changes or you spot something you hadn't noticed before.

With Bill Esparza of Street Gourmet LA pointing the way, I saw and ate more than I would have believed in just three days. Our route went from Tijuana to Ensenada and the Guadalupe Valley wine region. 

At the open-air Mercado Miguel Hidalgo, which is Tijuana's central market, our group of five sipped super sweet foamy sugar cane juice, squeezed through a tall clanky machine on the sidewalk outside a juice and snack shop.

Then we roamed the stalls, marveling at produce that glowed with freshness and color.

Candy stalls tempted with a wealth of traditional sweets. I bought biznaga (cactus candy) so juicy that eating a slice was like sipping a drink.

That same stall had jamoncillo (milk fudge decorated with pecans) that was so soft and tender it might just have been made. Sugary whole oranges had been hollowed through a small hole and then candied.

Several stalls displayed cartons of honey that contained bits of the comb. The vendor said the honey he sold me came from somewhere near Mexicali.

The tortilleria in the market now offers tortillas made from corn masa blended with nopales. The tortillas are thin, dusky green and make great quesadillas. They were 90 cents a package.

John Rivera Sedlar of Rivera Restaurant in Los Angeles, who was in our group, tipped me off on Colima sea salt, and we both bought 5-pound sacks for $3.

The granules are large and fluffy, easy to scoop into pasta water, soups and anything else. And they'll add a nice crunch when you want that effect.

The salt has been iodized, as the word yodatada on the bag indicates. It's more flavorful and subtle than the ordinary table salt I keep on hand.

If you go to Ensenada with Bill, you will inevitably stop at La Guerrerense, the seafood cart at the corner of Alvarado and 1st Street.

From the assortment of ceviches and other seafood, I ordered the same sea urchin and lincod half and half tostada  as usual, this time topped with sliced Pismo clam and avocado.

And I tasted Bill's fish pate tostada, expecting a slab of conventional pate, but the topping was delicious smoked tuna in a creamy sauce.

Sabina Bandera Gonzalez, who runs this busy street cart, brought over a taste of her new pineapple salsa (the jar in the center of the photo). 

It's a bright orange concoction that's "puro pina" (all pineapple) combined with japones and pico de pajaro chiles, she said.

Heading into wine country, we stopped in San Antonio de Las Minas at Los Globos, where you can taste and buy regional cheeses and unusual jams such as strawberry-chocolate and a combination of peach, quince and fig.  

The change here is a spacious new wine room with tables where you can try a few sips.

The expansion makes more room for the lineup of cheeses. Standouts were a soft queso fresco and a cheese with basil, made in Real del Castillo.

The biggest change was at La Casa Vieja, which specializes in wines made with grapes from very old vines.

The big palapa where I tasted the current releases is the new home of the Argentine restaurant Las Brasas, which moved from a rustic outdoor structure on the other side of the tasting room. 

Now there's a wood burning oven for pizza and bread, a long open kitchen and what I guessed were locally made wooden tables and benches shaded by a thatched palapa roof, as if you were at a Mexican beach resort. 

The arrival of a pastry chef from Argentina has expanded the menu to include alfajores, an apple streusel dessert (at left in the photo), a chocolate roll filled with dulce de leche and pasta frola de membrillo, a lattice-topped pastry filled with quince paste (center).

The pasta frola was excellent. The best of the current wines is the 2008 Mission from vines that winemaker Tom Toscano estimates are 150 to 200 years old.

Moving on to Emeve, we sneaked in after hours to taste the 2009 Chardonnay, the winery's first. The juice was fermented in stainless steel and spent three months in contact with the lees in new French and Hungarian barrels.

It's light, bright and fresh--"muy frutoso" (very fruity), said Bertha Sosa of Emeve, who let us in and poured a few tastes.

The trip included extraordinary food at five top restaurants and taco stops in between. It was an eating marathon, worth every bite.

Oaxacans Hold a Special Fiesta

It was like any sunny Sunday in the zocalo of Oaxaca city. Bands played. Dancers in indigenous costumes stomped, tapped and whirled through dances from the seven regions that make up Oaxaca state. Families relaxed and chatted, and teenagers eyed each other as they spooned up ice creams in such exotic flavors as mamey, tuna (cactus fruit) and leche quemada (burnt milk). 

But this wasn't Oaxaca. It was Los Angeles. And it wasn't a zocalo but the parking lot of St. Cecilia Catholic Church on south Normandie Avenue. 

And it wasn't just any Sunday gathering, but one of the most significant events of the year, a fiesta honoring Oaxaca's patron saint, La Virgen de la Soledad (The Virgin of Solitude).

It started with Mass, celebrated with dancers and band music. Then came a procession to the parking lot led by marmoteros--men who transport the enormous fabric balloons called marmotas that are essential to fiestas in Oaxaca.

Priests, dancers and the faithful followed, bringing a large portrait of the Virgin, which they placed in a white tulle frame. 

Then the dancing began, continuing for hours as folkloric groups and bands took their turns.

A Mixe dance started somberly, then erupted into action. In La Flor de Pina from Tuxtepec, girls danced with pineapples balanced on their shoulders. 

Interludes of saucy banter punctuated another sequence, provoking laughter from the audience, and a boy and girl flirtatiously charged at each other as if they were a bull and bullfighter.

Dancers swayed to the nostalgic "Cancion Mizteca," a song of longing for the homeland, and boys in tall headdresses performed the Zapotec feather dance as if they were energetic young warriors from centuries past.     

Of course there was food, prepared with enthusiasm because the purpose was to support the dance groups and bands.

If restaurants were involved, as was the case with Guelaguetza in Palms, they were identified only by the name of the group they wanted to promote. The eating began long before the ceremonial procession arrived.

Women patted out masa to form memelas and  bean-stuffed huaraches. Or they flattened the masa into tortillas by hand or with a wooden press.  

Fried quesadillas with such fillings as mushrooms and papas con chorizo (potatoes with chorizo) were slathered with black beans, then topped with lettuce, cheese and Mexican crema. 

Tortillas con relleno (above) were lined with black beans to form the base for a layer of nopales, a freshly grilled black Oaxacan chorizo, lettuce, cheese and salsas.

Tlayudas (right), large masa rounds topped with beans, meat, cheese and other savory ingredients, were so large they had to be folded in half to fit on a plate.

There were tacos, tortas filled with Oaxacan cecina, tamales verdes (with green sauce), tamales with mole, hamburguesas and drinks such as ponche, champurrado and brightly colored aguas frescas.

Soledad Lopez of Guelaguetza (right) served plates of barbacoa de chivo (goat), barbacoa tacos and chicken taquitos smothered with lettuce, cheese and avocado salsa.

And she brought the prized fruit tejocotes, which look like tiny yellow apples (manzanas) and so are also know as manzanitas or manzanillas. These are essential for the holiday drink ponche, but she had cooked them in cinnamon-flavored syrup (they're in the pink bowl below).

A pile of handpainted, bowl-shaped jicaras at the front of her stand were containers for tejate, a frothy prehispanic drink. Making it is dauntingly laborious, and a mixer or food processor can't do the job. Lopez stirred and swirled the mixture, first with her arm, then with her fingers, until it began to bubble and foam.

The ingredients included mamey seeds, cacao, cacao flowers, peanuts, almonds and dried corn boiled with cenizas (ashes) to make it easy to peel. Corn for masa is cooked with cal (lime), but this would taint the drink with a chemical taste, Lopez said.

Diluted with water, the ground mixture was not sweetened, but servers spooned a little sugar syrup into each jicara as they filled it. The nutty flavor was concentrated in tiny granules called florecitas that floated on top.

Typical Oaxacan ingredients were on sale too. There were fresh chiles de agua, smoked dried Mixe chiles, the string cheese called quesillo, chapulines (grasshoppers), tasajo (dried meat) and breads such as pan de yema and pan amarillo brought from Oaxaca.

A stand of religious goods offered framed portraits of the jeweled, black-robed Virgen de la Soledad, whose basilica is one of the most important sites in Oaxaca city. 

The music drifted from the church into the neighborhood, and families sat outside to eat, drink and listen until the fiesta ended as light faded. 

From Pizza to Parrilla in Baja

What's a young guy who ran a pizzeria in Buenos Aires doing thousands of miles from home?

He's still cooking, not pizza, but Argentine grilled meats in Baja California wine country.

Angel Eduardo Garralda left Argentina seven years ago with his brother. Their first venture was a pizzeria in Ensenada. When the brother went home, Garralda moved on to his dream, grilling meats just like at home.

He's found the perfect place for a parrilla restaurant, a winery ranch that is as much like gaucho country as you can get outside the Pampas.

Each weekend, he grills away in a rustic open-air structure at La Casa Vieja winery. Visitors may be surprised to hear tango as they sample the wines. This is a clue that Garralda is on the premises.

The two enterprises complement each other perfectly. La Casa Vieja is one of the oldest properties in the Guadalupe Valley. Its grape vines are so old that no one knows when they were planted. The wines are historic, individualistic and just right to drink outdoors, with Garralda's food.

There's a red produced from Mission grapes, which may be a cross between European and indigenous grapes, says winemaker Thomas Toscano. Still in barrels, it will be released in April, 2010.

And there's a fragrant, dry, unfiltered Palomino, a white wine made in such small quantity that the latest batch is almost sold out. To show how casual this place is, the label is a handwritten strip of masking tape.

La Casa Vieja means the old house.  And that's what it is, an adobe house from the 1800s restored by Colleen and Humberto Toscano, Thomas Toscano's parents.

Sitting on the terrace, one looks out on olive trees and Las Brasas, the parrilla restaurant.  Garralda cooks steaks, ribs, Argentine style chorizo and other meats, brushing them with his own chimichurri, which he has bottled and sells.

But he hasn't forgotten pizza.  La Casa Vieja is constructing an outdoor adobe oven. When that's ready, Garralda will probably be the only pizza chef in Baja who sips mate while he works.   

Las Brasas is at La Casa Vieja Winery, Km 93.5 on Highway 3, the Ensenada-Tecate highway, near the town of San Antonio de Las Minas. Tel: (646) 113 6783. The restaurant is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to sundown.

La Casa Vieja Winery has a wine bar, sandwiches, cheeses and other food to accompany tasting, a shop selling local arts and crafts, homemade jams and jellies, olive oil and other products. Tel: (646) 155-3153. For more information, go to www.lacasavieja.baja.com.

    

A Roadside Stop for Quail

Let me eat at a stand by the side of the road, as long as that stand is Las Gueritas.

The road is northern Baja's Highway 3, which runs from the coast above Ensenada to Tecate. 

Las Gueritas appears where it bends at the town of Francisco Zarco. If you're driving and keep your eyes on the road, you'll miss it.

It doesn't look like much, just a small sunbaked stand--actually a cart--in an expanse of dirt. But it has the best quail (codorniz) around--grilled over a wood fire, marinated Chinese style, cooked with mushroom cream sauce or in estofado, a thick tomato stew.

Las Gueritas has been there for many years. The name refers to the fair-skinned daughters of Lucia Villasenor Padilla, who does the cooking and runs the stand with her husband's help. Before, her mother-in-law was in charge.

The day my friends and I stopped by, they had run out of wood. This meant no grilled quail. Instead, we had quail that had been marinated overnight with oyster sauce, onion and garlic, then cooked in butter.

Our lunch included rice, salad, hot tortillas and cold Dos Equis beer and a taste of the stand's other specialty, pork (cochinita).

But the quail stood out, brown and slightly sweet from the oyster sauce. I liked it so much that I copied it at home. No quail in my larder, but Cornish game hens made a good substitute.

CORNISH HENS LAS GUERITAS

2 Cornish game hens, quartered
1 small onion, halved, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced
1 cup oyster sauce
3 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons oil

Combine the quartered hens, onion and garlic in a large storage container. Add the oyster sauce and mix thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate overnight, turning once or twice.

Heat the butter and oil in a large skillet, preferably non-stick. Drain the hens and place in the skillet skin side down. Brown over medium high heat 10 minutes, turning once. Do not crowd the pan. If necessary, brown in batches, 4 pieces at a time.

If the skillet is large enough, combine all the pieces. Otherwise, place half in another pan, along with some of the cooking juices. Cover and simmer until just done, about 15 minutes.

Drain the hens and place on a platter. Cover and keep warm until serving time.

Makes 4 servings.

Las Gueritas, Highway 3 at the entrance to Francisco Zarco in the Guadalupe Valley, Baja California. Open only during the day.  Read more about it at  http://streetgourmetla.blogspot.com. Search for Las Gueritas.

A Taste of Puebla in Ensenada

Fish tacos, margaritas and shopping--that sums up Ensenada for most vacationers.

But head away from the tourist shops and their shiny purses, T-shirts, shell bracelets and semi-porno beer mugs, and what do you find?

Great Mexican food, real Mexican food, in restaurants where you're not likely to come across another tourist.

Take, for example, El Huarache Poblano. It's not glamorous, just another corner place with the name in big letters so that you can't miss it.

Poblano means from Puebla, a city famous for mole poblano, tinga (shredded meat) chiles en nogada and many other specialties. A seasonal dish, the chiles are stuffed with meat and fruits, topped with a creamy nut sauce and sprinkled with pomegranate seeds.

In Puebla, almost every restaurant serves chiles en nogada in the fall. El Huarache Poblano has them now and will continue to serve them on weekends well into September. It's run by a family from Puebla, so the cooks know how this food should taste.

The chalupas are very good. The base is a small, thin tortilla made at the restaurant, not a thicker commercial tortilla pressed into service. The topping is shredded meat in a red or green sauce and crumbled cotija cheese.

The mole, which is the restaurant's own formula, is dark and rich, not overly sweet, and has a nice kick of heat. It's delicious on chicken enchiladas, laced with crema.

The huaraches, shaped like the sole of a sandal, come with several toppings, among them tinga, chicken mole, potatoes with chorizo and rajas, which are creamed chile strips.

Like the chalupa tortillas, the huarache bases are made at the restaurant, and you can watch how this is done. The masa is placed between sheets of wax paper on a tortilla press and pressed in several stages. Each time, the end is slid further outside the press to get the oblong shape.

The shaping and baking take place at a corner work station dominated by a large, round, gas-powered grill.

A simple agua fresca de tamarindo (tamarind drink) indicates the care taken in the kitchen.

The drink is made from tamarind pods, not a bottled concentrate, which would have been much easier. Tangy, with just enough sugar, it is perfect with this food.  (My recipe for the drink appears below.)

Dessert is flan, jello or cake, but something not on the menu, made for a youngster, caught my eye. That lucky boy was going to eat a plate of fried bananas soaked with sweetened condensed milk and crema, sprinkled with nuts and decorated with a cherry.

Nice touches include serving the food on Mexican pottery plates. And the restaurant is strung with intricately cut colored sheets of paper, traditionally used in Mexico for festive occasions.  Look closely, and you will see that some of these spell out the word "huarache."

El Huarache Poblano, Riveroll 420, corner 4th Street, Zona Centro, Ensenada. Tel: (646) 161-6746. Open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday. Closed Monday.

AGUA DE TAMARINDO
Tamarind Drink

½ pound tamarind pods (about 10)
6 cups water
¾ cup sugar, or to taste

Remove the shells and strings from the tamarind pods. Place them in a large saucepan and add 4 cups water.

Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and boil gently for 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and let stand until cool enough to handle easily, 45 minutes to 1 hour.

With your fingers, remove the pulp from the seeds and discard the seeds. Also remove any small strings and hard bits of membrane.

Place the pulp and the cooking liquid in a blender container, making sure that all seeds have been eliminated. Blend thoroughly. For a really smooth drink, put through a sieve, but you don't have to do this.

Pour the puree into a pitcher or large storage container. Add the 2 remaining cups of water and stir in sugar to taste.

Add ice to the pitcher if serving immediately. Or chill and serve later over ice in tall glasses. The tamarind pulp will settle to the bottom, so stir well before pouring.

Makes 6 cups, or 6 servings. 

 

Winery Tastings, Good and Bad

You pay to taste at Baja California wineries, and that's the way it should be.

But you don't always get what you pay for.

Ripoff is a mean word, but that's what I would call paying $10 for skimpy tastes (see the photo) of three mediocre wines.

The culprit? Baja's oldest winery, Bodegas de Santo Tomas. Located in the heart of Ensenada, it's an easy walk for tourists taking a break from the shops. Otherwise, they'd have to drive to the Guadalupe Valley, where most of the wineries are located.

No question, the atmosphere is great. The long tasting bar, made of old French oak barrels, lines a cavernous room that also houses the winery restaurant and huge wooden tanks in which wines were once fermented.

The wines poured the day I went in were a thin, semisweet 2008 Colombard, a raw, harsh 2007 Tempranillo, and, the best of the lot, a tannic 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, wines priced at $8 to $16 a bottle. 

The next day's tasting was just the opposite--four very good wines, including one from the top of the line, for $3.50. 

The place: Vinisterra, which is located in San Antonio de Las Minas, the first town as you head into the Guadalupe Valley.

Little more than a barrel storeroom when I went there in 2005, it's now a handsome brick winery with vaulted ceilings, a tasting room, fermentation room and separate barrel room, where the floor is inlaid with tiny lights.

The tasting started with Domino Tinto 2006, a blend of Grenache, Tempranillo, Cabernet Sauvignon and Mourvedre, aged in oak for 16 months. At $14, this was the modest end of the line, but not a modest wine. 

Next came two upper level wines, Macouzet Cabernet-Merlot 2005 and Macouzet Tempranillo 2005. They're named for Guillermo Rodriguez Macouzet, who is the winery founder and owner/partner.

The blend combines equal parts Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Aged 17 months in oak, it is young and lean, with bright acidity and wonderful layers of flavor.

The Tempranillo was fresh, fruity and so appealing that I bought it ($23).

The last taste was Pedregal, one of Vinisterra's top wines ($36). The grapes came from a rocky vineyard, and that determined the name (rock is piedra in Spanish).  

This smooth, elegant wine is 67% Syrah, and you can see some of Vinisterra's Syrah vines through the tasting room door. The rest of the blend is Mourvedre.

Along with the wines, we nibbled on cow's milk cheese from Ojos Negros and slices of chistorra, a slim, firm sausage made by an Argentine purveyor in Ensenada.

Agnes Cameleyre, who runs the tasting room, instructed us to pair the Tempranillo with delicious grainy, cinnamon-flavored Mexican chocolates.

Vinisterra is open only on weekends. The annual wine festival is in progress now, and the winery had staged a Oaxacan-themed party the night before we arrived. Agnes gave us leftover party favors--red carnations for the women and, for the men, wooden tubes from which Oaxacans drink mezcal.

Winemaker/partner Christoph Gartner dropped in, as did Rodriguez,  who says he plans to add more vineyards and, eventually, a restaurant.

The nearby town is worth a visit too. You can buy local products in the shops, and a couple of outdoor restaurants are good places to stop for lunch after a visit to Vinisterra.

Bodegas de Santo Tomas, Av. Miramar 666, Zona Centro, Ensenada.  Tel: (646) 178-3333. Open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturday from 3 to 5 p.m. Closed Sunday.

Vinisterra, Calle Sexta (6th Street) 984-3, Zona Centro, San Antonio de las Minas, on Highway 3, which  goes from Ensenada to Tecate. Tel: (646) 178-3350. Open Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.  For more information, go to http://www.vinisterra.com. 

 

What's That in My Soup?

It took years for me to solve a culinary mystery, and a journey from the state of Veracruz in Mexico to Medford, Oregon.

Here's how it came about.

In Jalapa, Veracruz, I often ate at a restaurant called La Sopa, a casual place with lunch specials that were not just cheap but very good. La Sopa is in the Callejon del Diamante, a narrow, steep alley lined with modest restaurants, coffee houses, galleries, shops and outdoor book displays.  

One day, lunch started with a corn and zucchini soup in which floated golden red strands of--something.

"What is this?" I asked the waiter. "Corn silk," he replied. The soup was delicious and would be easy to copy at home, I thought.  All I had to do was buy some fresh ears of corn and extract a little of the silk. 

This did not work out. Fresh corn silk is pale and soft, not at all like the deeply colored stands that floated in La Sopa's soup. End of experiment.

Then, recently, I was shopping in El Gallo, a well-stocked Mexican market in Medford, Oregon. There, on the spice rack, was a little sack of exactly what I had seen in that Mexican soup--barbas de elote--sturdy strands of red corn silk. 

As soon as I got home, I made the soup and put in a few strands--only a few for color, because the barbas are quite wiry.

Since then, I have seen them again, at a market in East Los Angeles.

It turns out that this is an herbal remedy, not a culinary seasoning. So barbas de elote are probably in botanicas and any place that Latino people shop for herbal medicines. I just hadn't known where to look.

Here is the soup. If you can't find barbas de elote, you can add parsley or cilantro at the end for color. Or sprinkle each serving with paprika.

CREMA DE CALABACITAS Y ELOTE
Creamy Zucchini-Corn Soup

1 ear corn
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 small clove garlic, chopped
Generous dash white pepper
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups chicken broth
1/2 pound zucchini, quartered lengthwise, then sliced crosswise into chunks
1 cup milk
2 tablespoons whipping cream
1 tablespoon barbas de elote, optional
1 large sprig thyme
1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

Spray a stovetop grill with nonstick spray or oil it lightly. Heat over high heat. Place the ear of corn on the grill and roast until flecked with brown on all sides. Remove from the heat, cool, then slice off the kernels with a sharp knife.

Heat 1 tablespoon oil in a large saucepan. Add the onion and garlic and cook until softened, 4 to 5 minutes.

Add the pepper and flour and cook, stirring, 1 minute.

Stir in the broth, then add the zucchini. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, covered, until the zucchini is very tender, about 12 minutes.

Cool the soup slightly, then puree in a blender or food processor or with a hand blender.

Return to the saucepan. Add the milk, cream, corn kernels, the barbas de elote, thyme sprig and salt. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat and simmer, uncovered, 5 minutes, until the corn is cooked through. Remove the thyme sprig before serving.

Makes 4 servings.