lunch box mission

My mom's birthday took place while I was in Oaxaca, so before my trip I brainstormed gifts that would be practical, enjoyable, and last through her birthday.

Given that my mom works for the post office and sometimes pulls 12-14 hour shifts, she seldom cooks and usually just cobbles meals together. I thought it would be convenient if she had ready-to-eat meals she could take to work, so from there the lunch box mission was born.

One day, when Cris and I were at her house, we hung out until after she left for work. Then we scoured the fridge for any and all ingredients we could use. Turns out my mom had a boatload of vegetables, as well as masses of unidentifiable proteins in her freezer. Lots of chopping and defrosting commenced.



After a good three hours of prepping and cooking, we had over a dozen dishes ready. For starches we had rice (with corn), fried rice, ramen noodles, spaghetti and rice flour buns.



For proteins/sides we had sweet & sour shrimp, sauteed green beans (with fish balls & another with meat), moo shu vegetables, chinese "fajita" stir-fry, dumplings, leftover barbecue & chili from lunch, etc. Impressive just how much we were able to make without even a trip to the supermarket.



We filled all of my newly purchased tupperware boxes one by one, each with a starch and several sides. I made sure that no two boxes were alike so Mom wouldn't get bored of eating them.



Also, as a bonus, we made fruit salad and filled several boxes with just that, so she could take them on the days she felt like having dessert.

By the end of everything, we had a veritable mountain of lunch boxes. Enough to last my mom a month!



It was tricky getting all of the boxes to fit in the freezer but we did it!



According to my sister, my mom loved her lunch boxes and ate one almost every day. That's what I call a mission accomplished!



Note: It was funny, my mom didn't discover the surprise until a week later! She just kept wondering who stole her vegetables or how they might have disappeared...

last things

Starting from yesterday there was the imminent sense that we were about to depart Oaxaca and needed to accomplish everything left on our list.

First up was Chef taking us to the 20th of November Market for dinner. There's this line of grilled meat stands, all serving the same meats at the same prices, and you cruise on over to your stand of choice and tell them how much of whatever kind(s) of meat you want and they grill it to order.



There's an area with tables where you sit and wait for them to bring the grilled meat to you, along with the tortillas and whatever accoutrements you want. We had avocado, pico de gallo, radish, cucumber, grilled spring onions and chile. It's a very primitive setting, no utensils or plates, but the simple flavors are so satisfying. Reminded me of a backyard barbecue, where everything is smoky and shared.



After dinner we did a stroll around the Zocalo (city center), and encountered these miraculous little gelatins. Can you believe the flower designs are made through syringe injections? Apparently there's a Mexican lady in San Francisco that does this. I need to learn from her.



After dinner all of us in the program went out for drinks (Chef joined us) and karaoke (Chef didn't join us). The karaoke is different than any other kind I've done before - instead of a private room or public stage, everyone is sitting in the audience and you sing with a mike from your table. It's dark and club-like so there's no real sense of exposing yourself. The real Mexicans sang sorrowful ballads, which kind of killed the mood for us Americans but served as a cultural experience. I'm just glad we all got a chance to go out before the program was over.

Today was spent with a last lunch at El Quinque, then a trip to Rufino Tamayo, the pre-Columbian museum. Rufino Tamayo was a painter that personally collected all of these art/artifacts. There were hundreds of figures and objects to look at, all over a thousand years old.



After that Cris and I went guayabera (traditional dress shirt) shopping. We bought five shirts, including one as a gift for Julius for being a great roommate and all around nice guy (he let me borrow his waterproof jacket that mushroom foraging day it poured rain, preventing me from certain death).



After whiling away the afternoon, we attended the program's farewell dinner at La Olla, Chef Pilar's restaurant. The table was set beautifully, and we were treated to yet another 4-5 course meal.



And so ends our three week stay in Oaxaca. I will probably never come back, but the food and the experiences of making it will always stay with me. The ingredients and techniques I learned will most likely make it into the future dishes I create. I can see it already, mole negro ice cream. Oaxaca has become and will always be a part of me.

mexican pastries

Today we spent the day at the workshop of two bakers (and couple), Marc and Angela. They not only had a great space for us to work in but a packet full of recipes for us to choose from.

Cris and I made sweet tamales, filled with rice flour dough, pastry cream and peanuts and raisins.



We also made encocadas, which are the Mexican version of coconut macaroons.



One thing I really enjoyed making was tamarind candy, because tamarind is less commonly used in the US and I really like the tangy flavor. They had pulp that was already de-seeded, that only needed to be cooked down with water and then strained. The straining was the hardest part because the cooked pulp wouldn't pass through the sieve. After I finally got most of it through, it was mixed with sugar, chili powder, salt and lime juice.



That mixture was then cooked down further into a thick paste. That was cooled and shaped into balls, then rolled in sugar to coat.



The crowning success of the day, however, had to do with the dough we made. It was for conchas, the slightly sweet Mexican buns that have a shell-like pattern on top (hence the concha name).

Marc taught me the technique for getting the dough balls really tightly formed, and it had to do with pressing the ball down and moving my cupped hand in a circular motion, lightly releasing as the ball gained in tension/tightness. At first I had trouble doing it because I thought my hand was too small (the ball stayed flabby beneath my hand, as if it wasn't being pressed by a big enough hand), but I realized it was because I wasn't applying enough pressure. I had a grand old time figuring it out.



Because the recipe called for cinnamon and sugar, I automatically thought of cinnabuns, and so I reserved a part of the dough to make exactly that.



The shell pattern was applied using a different dough (a short dough, more like pie or tart dough) and a shell-pattern cutter.



Both things turned out well, although I enjoyed the cinnabuns so much more because it seemed like something I had invented - Mexican cinnabuns. They were topped with frosting (milk + powdered sugar) and some with goat's milk caramel that we had made. Delicious.

el origen

Today we went back to El Origen, where we had our welcome dinner and our session with La Teca. However, this time we were being taught by El Origen's chef himself.

Chef Rodolfo took us to Mercado Abastos to shop for produce - conveniently the one big market I hadn't gone to yet. When we came back to the restaurant he sat us down and gave us the low-down on the five course meal we would be creating. And by low-down, I mean everything he came up with between the market and the restaurant. Because he didn't have a set menu.

In the kitchen, Chef didn't divide us into stations. He had his hands in everything, and so did we.

The first dish on the menu was sopa de guías, or soup of the guides, so named because it utilizes all parts of the squash plant (the squash vines guiding you to all parts of the plant).



Besides squash blossoms, vines, leaves and the squash itself, the soup also had corn and lots and lots of fresh herbs. Whose leaves had to be picked by hand, by Jen and I. (And this is why fine dining restaurants are like sweatshops.)



The second dish was the famed grilled octopus salad, which we had the chance to enjoy before at the welcome dinner. Beside octopus there was purslane, other herbs, radish, avocado criollo (local, with edible skins), mustard vinaigrette and artichoke chips.



The octopus was cleaned and boiled in a court bouillon until soft (at that point it tasted almost like boiled pork!) Then it was cut apart, marinated in a chili paste and grilled over wood charcoal. Krizol and I helped with cutting it.



The third course featured seafood - namely crawfish and grouper, beautifully presented. Hidden between were caramelized spring onion and carrot, garlic chips and an orange shrimp sauce to go with.



For this one I helped halve the crawfish, which were then seasoned with oil/salt/garlic and grilled. The grouper was poached in seasoned olive oil.



The fourth course featured pork tenderloin, and was accompanied by a creamy quince sauce and mole manchemantel (onions, ancho/guajillo chiles, thyme/oregano, cinnamon/clove/allspice). As is typical in mole manchemantel, plantains/sweet potato/pineapple were all present.



After being brined in a flavorful liquid including oranges, the pork tenderloins were wrapped in hoja santa and then bacon. I got to wrap one :)



The last dish was a twist on baked alaska. Mamon bread (Mexican sponge?), cooked pineapple, leche quemada (burnt milk) ice cream, and torched meringue on top. I helped make the tuna (cactus fruit) coulis which dotted the plate.



All in all very fine dining, and very contemporary Oaxacan cuisine. I have a feeling I would learn a lot just hanging out with Chef Rodolfo...

forage & fish

Today Susana took us mushroom foraging and then to a trout farm. The morning started out with an hour-long drive up into the mountains, some 10,000 meters above sea level. The scene that greeted us was rather prehistoric-looking, like we were lost in the land before time with these giant agave plants.



We trekked and trampled about in three different forest areas to find mushrooms. The first two hikes generated very little finds. Almost all of the mushrooms we did find were inedible. Like this one.



And this one.



In the middle of the second hike I found this mushroom and got very excited. Sadly, the guide pronounced it no good because it smelled bad (or, as Chef Mark put it: "Jo found a doo-doo mushroom!").



The high altitude and the hiking and the lack of mushrooms tired me out really quick. I spent most of my time looking down on the ground and photographing flowers.



Toward the end of our second hike, it started raining. Hard. Despite our best efforts to book it toward the van, we still got really really soaked. And once inside the van, some of us (including me) didn't bother to get out again for the third foraging location, even though the rain had stopped by then and the edible mushrooms proved plentiful.



Then we drove to Doña Lucia's, a cabin in the woods with trout ponds in front of it. We dried ourselves off by the wood fire in the back of the house, then netted enough trout for us each to have one.



The freshly caught trout proved very jumpy - almost leaping out of the bucket that contained them. We were shown how to gut and clean the fish, but I was reluctant to because I didn't want to make a jumpy fish a non-jumpy one. So I waited until the fishes became non-jumpy in the bucket and then gutted and cleaned an already dead one.



Inside the cabin, the cleaned trout were cooked for a late lunch. Some were grilled over coals.



Others were seasoned (chipotle or garlic) and cooked in foil wrappings.



Although we were all starving by the time that food was ready, everything was worth the wait. We had breaded and fried mushrooms, marinated mushrooms, mushroom soup, then all of the fresh trout. Fish never tasted so good.