Mexican food

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March 10, 2011 | 5:27 PM | By

‘Click if you like our champurrado:’ Taqueros embrace social media

Photo by mswine/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Tacos and champurrado, hot off a taco truck, December 2006

The other day, I mentioned in a conversation that I’d begun following the acclaimed Nina’s Food (@BreedStScene) on Twitter. The old-school Boyle Heights quesadilla expert, who placed first in last year’s L.A. Vendy Awards, has a Twitter feed that’s sporadic but has more than 1,200 followers. How great it would be, my friend mused, if more traditional vendors like Nina’s embraced social media and prospered. “Some of them could do pretty well,” he said.

Turns out there are quite a few taqueros who have had this idea, embracing the ways of the non-taco trucks that sell things like, say, grilled cheese. Earlier this week, the blog LA Taco published a list of some traditional taco trucks that have taken to the Libro de Caras, i.e. Facebook.

I liked this no-nonsense entry from Tacos El Gallito last month:

In this weather, would you buy our champurrado if you could? Click like if you like our champurrado.

Yes, El Gallito. Thanks for reminding us that there’s nothing like a steaming cup of champurrado on a cool evening – and that so far, the Kogi trucks don’t sell champurrado. We’re heading over.

FILED UNDER: Economy, Mexican food, Taco trucks, Taqueros
February 12, 2011 | 12:25 AM | By

Five Valentine meals to share with your amor

Photo by jonathanb1989/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Their romantic dinner might taste like plastic - better to share some shabu shabu or an Ethiopian stew.

Forget momentarily about chocolate, oysters and the rest of the usual food suggestions that accompany Valentine’s Day, about aphrodisiacs and expensive dinners. As a favor to lovestruck foodies in the Los Angeles area, a few colleagues and I recently came up with an unscientific but well-loved list of some of the best date-friendly offerings to come out of our immigrant enclaves.

Five favorites:

Photo by Eekim/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Ethiopian There’s something very intimate about sharing a meal from the same dish, eaten with your hands. The spongy injera bread serves as a both plate and utensil with which to scoop up savory stews, called wot, and other dishes, making the meal a tactile experience. The food itself is fragrant, seasoned with garlic, ginger and other spices.

One place to find it: Nyala at 1076 South Fairfax Ave., Los Angeles, (323) 936-5918

Japanese Shabu Shabu Much like with Chinese hot pot or Swiss fondue, shabu shabu involves dipping and sharing. Participants in this communal meal cook it together, dunking thin slices of raw meat and vegetables into a boiling pot, leisurely enjoying each morsel. Dip, swish, eat, then afterward share the delicious broth that’s left in the pot.

One place to find it: Shabu Shabu House, 127 Japanese Village Plaza Mall, Los Angeles, (213) 680-3890

Photo by Sarahbest/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Oaxacan Instead of a box of Godiva, why not a meal of rich mole negro as it’s prepared in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, dark and redolent with chocolate? Ridiculously complex, its ingredients are too many to mention, but they combine to make a sauce that is earthy and subtly sweet. I’ll take a plate of pollo en mole negro over chocolate truffles in a heartbeat.

One place to find it: Guelaguetza, the undisputed heavyweight of Oaxacan restaurants in town. Two locations are open, one at 3014 W. Olympic Blvd., Los Angeles, (213) 427-0608 and the other in Plaza Mexico, 11215 Long Beach Blvd. #1010, Lynwood, (310) 884-9234. Another location in Palms is closed for remodeling.

Persian One of the best things about Persian cuisine is its fragrance. Food is perfumed with saffron, cardamom and rosewater, a staple ingredient in desserts. Roses are lovely to look at, but a meal that ends with rose-scented lacy zoolbia or doughy baamieh is proof that roses are just as lovely to eat. Though taking a bite of your bouquet wouldn’t go over well – opt for a scoop of rosewater ice cream instead.

One place to find it: Shamshiri Grill in Westwood, 1712 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 474-1410. Nearby is Saffron & Rose Ice Cream, 1387 Westwood Blvd., Los Angeles, (310) 477-5533

Photo by librarianishis/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Spaghetti This most plebeian of Southern Italian staples, messy and kid-friendly, is the perfect meal if you have kids and can’t get a sitter. Boil up a pot, rent a copy of “Lady and the Tramp,” and let the tots slurp and enjoy the movie while you giggle over shared noodles like Disney’s canine lovebirds. Add a nice bottle of red to make up for the fact that you’re, well, home eating spaghetti watching a cartoon.

One place to find it: Thanks to the great wave of Italian immigration a century ago, everywhere.

Happy Valentine’s Day. And if you go out, bring a little extra cash, as the immigrants who will most likely prepare and serve your meal will appreciate the tip.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Ethiopian food, Italian food, Japanese food, Mexican food, Persian food, Valentine's Day
January 27, 2011 | 1:43 PM | By

Introducing the giant Frankenjalapeño

Photo by bunchofpants/Flickr (Creative Commons)

No, it's not big enough to ride like a horse

Perhaps it’s because I grew up in a part of L.A. where people grew chiles in their backyards, but I did a double take the other day upon coming across a press release heralding the introduction of a giant genetically modified jalapeño.

It has a rather creative name, the NuMex Jalmundo. From the release: …”the name Jalmundo is a contraction of jalapeño and the Spanish word for world (mundo), implying that it is as big as the world.”

That’s a lot of rajas. Though according to the chile’s breeders, the mega-jalapeño is intended not so much for tamal consumers as it is for the patrons of chain restaurants that serve jalapeño poppers, to be used as a plus-sized vessel for cheese. The release bills the chiles as “perfect for poppers.”

I’d somehow perceived chiles as a humble, untweaked crop. As it turns out, the NuMex Jalmundo – a cross between a standard jalapeño and a bell pepper – is one of a number of engineered chiles. It was developed by the Chile Pepper Institute of New Mexico State University, which has a chile breeding program.

Not that tweaked chiles go over well with everyone. A documentary on genetically modified chiles recently captured the back-and-forth over plans to engineer New Mexico chiles in their home state, where people take chiles seriously as a regional tradition.

At least being closely related to a bell pepper doesn’t seem to rob the new giant jalapeño of too much heat. It’s considered medium-hot, with a heat level of 17,000 Scoville Heat Units.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Chiles, Mexican food
December 3, 2010 | 10:58 PM | By

Tamales, champurrado, a cold December night

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

Cold revelers, hot tamales. December 3, 2010

Tonight I braved the southbound I-5 to make it to a favorite annual holiday event in San Diego, December Nights, which draws what seems like half the city to Balboa Park for two nights to eat, take in the lights, duck into the museums and listen to carolers. Mostly, though, to eat.

My favorite tamales cart was parked near the same spot where it was last year. There’s nothing like an outdoor meal of steaming tamales and hot champurrado on a cold, damp night.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Mexican food, Tamales
November 26, 2010 | 11:43 AM | By

Got masa?

Photo by Leslie Berestein Rojas/KPCC

Dry masa mix on the shelf in a Westlake grocery store, November 2010

Now that the turkey thing is behind us, it’s officially tamales season, the time of year when bags of dry masa mix begin flying off grocery shelves. Ready for your tamaleadas?

I’m not, but I’ll be hitting the grocery store this weekend for my Maseca and hojas.

See you back here Monday. In the meantime, I’ve tracked down a couple of good tamal-making videos, one for Mexican-style tamales (starring a hip hop-loving chef), and one for Central American-style tamales. No language comprehension necessary – the demonstrations are easy to follow.

A good holiday weekend to all.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Mexican food, Tamales
November 25, 2010 | 10:29 AM | By

A Thanksgiving retweet

Photo by Lane & Anne/Flickr (Creative Commons)

The table is set, November 2007

RT @NeffStarr Turkey with my white family @1pm Then my mexican family @6pm

I caught a retweet of this little gem from someone in Houston yesterday. I liked it because it captures, in less than 140 characters, the transitioning between cultures that is also a big part of Thanksgiving Day for many in Southern California, where families are of mixed ethnicity, mixed race and mixed status.

For recent immigrants who celebrate it, the holiday is part of their adaptation to a new culture. For those who have been here a long time and have raised children here, it is a tradition that captures a cross-generational blend of voices, attitudes and languages at the table.

And for those of us raised here, the second and third generations (and the 1.5s like me), it’s a day of transitioning between the old and the new, the families that raised us and the families we have perhaps married into, which, in this part of the country, might be from a different culture altogether.

It’s a big table that we set in Southern California, with meals that can bear little resemblance to traditional turkey and stuffing (turkey with mole, anyone?), and new Americans who bear little resemblance to the passengers of the Mayflower. It’s a table that I’m proud to sit at.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Now I’m off for the rest of the day to cook and eat.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, 1.5 generation, Mexican food, Twitter
November 23, 2010 | 6:30 PM | By

Three turkeys, three cultures

Photo by cobalt123/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Okay, so there are four turkeys here and not three, whatever. November 2005

It’s two days to Thanksgiving and a turkey dinner prepared with…mole? Fish sauce? Heck yeah.

This morning I came across two posts on two different ways to prepare turkey, and they have nothing to do with basting it with butter or Mrs. Cubbison’s.

Tasting Table Los Angeles featured a post on the secrets of Oaxacan-style turkey cooking as practiced by Guelaguetza restaurant chef Maria de Jesus Monterrubio, one of which involves a bird seasoned with chile paste, spices and chocolate and served with rich, chocolatey Oaxacan mole. KCRW’s Good Food blog had a recipe for Vietnamese-style turkey seasoned with coriander, ginger and fish sauce.

Mmmm. Of course, Thanksgiving turkey made the immigrant way is about the only way I’ve ever eaten it at home. In my family, the bird is soaked overnight in mojo criollo, the garlicky marinade made with sour oranges that Cubans typically reserve for roasted pork. My parents must have decided that if they were going to assimilate and eat turkey instead of pork, they were going to do it on their terms.

The result has always been delicious. The same goes, I’m sure, for the tasty-sounding birds mentioned above. Enjoy the holiday preparations, folks.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Cuban food, Guelaguetza, Mexican food, Vietnamese food
November 23, 2010 | 12:11 PM | By

On Mexican food, farmers and NAFTA

Photo by April J. Gazmen/Flickr (Creative Commons)

Enchiladas en mole poblano, October 2007

Last week, when I was excitedly tweeting about UNESCO‘s designation of Mexican food as an “intangible cultural heritage of humanity” – right up there with French cooking – I didn’t think too far beyond how this long-misunderstood underdog of the world’s most sophisticated (and yes, delicious) cuisines was finally getting its due. But the chef of one popular L.A. Mexican eatery did, and what he wrote about it is worth noting.

In a recent guest post on the L.A. Forward site, Lotería! Grill’s founder and executive chef Jimmy Shaw wrote:

Perhaps with the interest in discovering more of the beautiful flavors of Mexico there can be a healing of its agricultural community, which has been decimated post-NAFTA, with Mexican farmers being displaced by large agribusiness. With that growing industrialization, many of the indigenous ingredients and techniques that are the very roots of this special designation are being lost.

Sadly, Mexico now imports many of its basic ingredients such as corn and chiles, some from countries as far away as China. Chiles from China?  I hope with the growing interest we have seen in the past few years for the more complex flavors of Mexico, we also have an environment where we can protect the indigenous ingredients and customs of this great cuisine, and promote the cultivation of high-quality, native ingredients in Mexico, by Mexican farmers.

Leave it to a chef to see beyond the kitchen to Mexico’s supply chain, turning a story about cuisine into a platform for discussing the North American Free Trade Agreement, whose repercussions have been felt perhaps most dearly by Mexican farmers. And which, in turn, has contributed more than a little to U.S.-bound migration as farmers and agricultural workers in Mexico have been displaced.

Then, of course, there’s still the food. He concluded:

Great Mexican food is so delicious.  It makes you happy.

Can’t agree more. What the cuisine’s designation as one of the world’s cultural treasures (a protected status that the Mexican government sought from UNESCO a while back), may do for Mexico’s farmers, time will tell. But the recognition is already a source of tremendous pride.

FILED UNDER: Culture/Identity, Economy, Mexican food, North American Free Trade Agreement