Gastronomy

September. The crescendo of patriotic festivities gathers force.

Fire works shatter the dawn, explode in the midnight sky.

School drum-and-bugle bands trudge noisily down the calles.

Drunken youths stumble through the night streets singing and shouting “Viva Mexico!”

Chiles en nogada

The toy sellers in the jardin have doubled in number, adding Mexican flags to their inventory, flags that now festoon nearly every building in town.

Restaurants offer the seasonal delicacy chiles en nogada, with its colours of the national flag: whole green chile peppers smothered in a white-cream sauce of meats and fruits and spices and nuts, topped with red pomegranate seeds.

Excerpted from On Mexican Time by Tony Cohan. Published with permission from the author. 

16 September is Independence Day and a national holiday.

Mestizo – Restaurant and Tequila Bar
103 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 3EL
Tel: 020 7387 4064
www.mestizomx.com

Attempting to fill a yawning culinary gap, this stylish restaurant opened its doors in March.

Mestizo is the brainchild of Marysol Alvarado, who previously ran Si Señor in London’s Soho. This is altogether more sophisticated, showcasing the complexity and diversity of high-end Mexican cuisine.

It’s a dawdle from the tube stops at Euston Square or Warren Street.

The decoration on the spacious groud floor is modern and casually elegant; cream with dark red accent walls and ceiling. White banquette seating with dark wood furniture. More reminiscent of the burgeoning cosmopolitan restaurant scene in Mexico City than of the bland stock menu of kitsch-Mexican we’ve become accustomed to in the UK.

I was able to check the place out one evening last month while attending a photo exhibition opening in the downstairs tequila lounge. Climbing the stairs to leave and catch my train, I was intercepted by Marysol, and invited to sample the “cerviche acapulqueño”.

Five minutes later… I was perched on a stool at the bar and scooping up chunks of fresh halibut onto tortilla chips. The fish is marinated in lemon juice, serrano chiles and fresh cilantro. It is served with slices of advocado and the chips. It was far more filling than it had first looked and a little picoso; the choice of serrano chiles certainly gave it some ‘bite’.

* * * * *

Last weekend, I was finally able to properly try out some of the dishes in the company of friends and family.

As the name of the restaurant suggests – the vast menu reflects the many culinary influences from beyond Mexico’s borders prevalent in Mexican cuisine today.

The selection of “Mexican-style tapas” – antojitos - warrant a slim menu of their own. Of course, this is not tapas at all, but so-named to convey that there are small bites of things on offer.

I must admit to a penchant for the “Jaladas”. Four jalapeños stuffed with cream cheese and sour cream. And just as delicious as I remember them from Si Señor.

Of special note is the “ensalada de nopales”, something you would never find on the menu in a Tex-Mex. Left to an unknowing chef, nopales can be a gloopy disaster. Here they were fresh and tasty.

The tender chunks of marinated cactus paddle were garnished with tomatoes, onions, jalapeño chiles, coriander and crumbled ricotta cheese.

The serving was generous and would make for an excellent, healthy low-fat lunch. Good value at £5.50. Just one of several options for vegetarians.

For a main course, we chose a signature dish, the molcajete “mestizo” – and opted for a mole poblano with small chunks of chicken. We all agreed that the mole was rich, velvety and complex. Spicy, but not hot. Excellent. The corn tortillas (brought in a reed basket) could have been warmer and we had to ask for a side bowl of rice, which we felt could have accompanied the dish.   

As good as this all was, even a cracking Mexican meal can end tamely. In Mexico, you get used to the ubiquitous crème caramel ‘flan’ or gelatin-set dessert.

We were pleasantly surprised by the arrival of our “pastel de queso y coco” postre (£2.75). A neat round cheesecake nestled in a swirl of zesty mango coulis. The coconut taste isn’t overwhelming and the presentation superb!

* * * * *

On my first visit, I had been offered glasses of house-made aguas frescas, lightly sweet water-based drinks in flavours like Jamaica (pronounced hah-MY-ka) made from hibiscus blossoms, and tamarindo (a sweet-tart brew made from tamarind pods).

I had also requested an old favourite, horchata (or-CHA-ta), and – hey presto! – I was brought a refreshing rice-based drink with a cinnamon-tinged flavour.

On Sunday I made do with mango juice; apparently, most diners – especially Mexicans – order a cold Mexican beer straight up.

While we tucked into our meal, we were visited frequently by Marysol. She takes a very ‘hands on’ approach and spoke animatedly about her plans for a week-long ‘themed’ exploration of regional Mexican cuisine in September. Recipes from Yucatan, Oaxaca, Puebla, Veracruz and Guerrero, among others, will be featured.

Downstairs, a tequila bar and lounge create an altogether different atmosphere. Plush red banquette seating and dimmed lighting lure hip young Mexicans living in London for ‘Taco night’ on Thursdays. Tacos start at £1 each. And it gets packed to the nines. On other nights it is usually much quieter and a good place to relax with friends.

Next time we will go on a Saturday when pozole (a hominy stew) is on the menu – just like in Mexico. And I’m dying to try out the pollo pibil, a real Yucatecan speciality.

It’s worth repeating that while the immediate surroundings are anonymous and many only venture here to sample the culinary delights from the East on offer in nearby Drummond Street, Mestizo is just 10-15 minutes journey time from Oxford Circus. (Hampstead Road is the northern continuation of Tottenham Court Road when it crosses Marylebone Road).

The bill will be brought to your table inside a small lacquered chest that is typical of Guerrero. Expect to pay about £60 for two people, including drinks and the service charge.

The team deserve merit for culinary ambition and Marysol plaudits for her courage and infectious spirit.

Highly recommended. Definitely more La Condesa than Camden.

Over the holidays, I was interested to read Claire Marshall’s BBC report that in Mexico, producers are warning that pulque is in danger of extinction.

This is certainly borne out by Don Lotter’s excellent column – Pulque: Mexico’s unique and vanishing drink – for NewFarm.org, which is well worth a read.

Don Poli milking a maguey

My father-in-law extracts the sap from the flower stalks of the maguey cacti in his garden (pictured left). This he then strings up beneath a mesquite tree to ferment for his own use later on. (Distill pulque and you get a form of mezcal – a close relative of tequila). The result is a drink with a very tart flavour and milky hue. Doña Reyna, a neighbour, also uses pulque as a leavener for making her wonderful bread.

Nevertheless, I think Don is right when he asserts that “most middle class Mexicans turn up their noses at the mention of pulque”, considering it a crude drink that is often abused by campesinos.

This is Gicela’s delicious pan de muerto (‘bread of the dead’), almost ready in our home oven this afternoon. Reyna will be doing the same back in Toliman.

I prepared the hot chocolate.

Reyna preparing bread

With Day of the Dead drawing near, my thoughts once again drift back to Toliman. This time, I think of Reyna, the bread maker in the community. She is renowned for her ‘pan de muerto’ (‘bread of the dead’).

Her brieze block house lies just off the main highway into town, set on a rise overlooking the barrio’s dusty dirt soccer pitch. Wary of the dogs, customers make a point of stooping to pick up a loose stone or branch before making the approach up the steep rutted bank to the front door.

Inside, the bread room has one bare bulb and a concrete floor. Her dark and sooty adobe-and-brick bread oven is capable of baking 300 bolillo loaves and sweet pastries each day. She uses the dregs of the pulque pot as leavening for the bread and the results are redolent with pulque’s subtle aroma.

The oven is lit with firewood in the morning and has heated the oven by late afternoon. By 7:00pm, another room will be stacked with warm baked bread fresh from the oven. We would often arrive early and eager. Still unbaked loaves rest on a second rack. We make our selections using the ubiquitous metal tongs, hand over our pesos and head back to the house. Setting some aside for breakfast the next day, we’d sit around the kitchen table and bolt down the rest, occasionally pausing to dunk a piece in our hot chocolate or atole.

Now in its tenth year, I can personally recommend the Red Hot Chile Fiesta at the West Dean Estate near Chichester, West Sussex this weekend – 7 & 8 August.

The wonderful walled gardens are given over to unrivalled chile devotion, with pride of place to the more than 250 chile varieties on display in the restored Victorian glasshouses. Worth it alone for the home-made chile ice-cream.

Planeta.com has published a very palatable piece by Soll Sussman who tells the story of how Diana Kennedy became the ultimate authority on Mexican cooking and culinary history. The Observer profiled her in an excellent article last year.

Diana’s most recent book is the simply brilliant My Mexican Kitchen: Techniques and Ingredients (Amazon UK, US).

Elisabeth Malkin reports on the Maize and Biodiversity Symposium in Oaxaca for The New York Times (free registration required).

More cool maize resources from GourmetSleuth.com and Planeta.com.

In the week ministers say GM crops can – on certain conditions – now be grown commercially in Britain, members of the public, academia and government gather in Oaxaca for the Maize and Biodiversity Symposium.

The Environment Secretary, Margaret Beckett, told Parliament on Tuesday that ministers had agreed in principle to the growing of a single variety of GM maize in England. Meanwhile, the debate rages on in Mexico, the birthplace of maize, where it plays a pivotal role in the country’s culture. Mexico is the crop’s “centre of origin” – the source of all original maize varieties from which all modern types have been bred – or genetically altered. In this excellent article, AgBiotech Buzz testify to the importance of Mexican maize to the rest of the world.

The article quotes Bill Lambrecht, a Washington, DC-based correspondent: “Food is a cultural issue,” he says. “The notion was overlooked by many people who started GM.” ‘Working through cultural issues is a formidable task, he notes, recalling Charles DeGaulle’s response to the question of how to govern France, “How can you govern a country with 300 kinds of cheese?”‘

The North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) has organised the Oaxaca symposium to consider how ‘transgenic material’ will affect maize diversity in Mexico and the social and cultural effects associated with GM maize production. Forbes reports that Mexico “faces competing pressures of deep trade ties with the US and Canada, both strong promoters of the use of GM crops, versus the will of a large peasant population whose culture and religious beliefs drive them to protect their dozens of native varieties.”

Since the advent of NAFTA a decade ago, Mexico has been transformed from being maize self-sufficient (producing 98 per cent of its needs in 1994) to a major importer. While a US farmer invests about 5 minutes per bushel of corn, Mexican farmers may invest more than 24 hours per bushel. NAFTA, and maize subsidies in the US, are driving small farmers out of business. The ancient maize ‘races’ – and maize biodiversity – are disappearing with them. This is especially true since maize cannot grow without human intervention.

While we’re on the subject of our tastebuds, there’s an article about Mexican food markets (California-style) in yesterday’s Santa Cruz Sentinel that is worth a read. An accompanying piece does a pretty good job of demystifying some common foodie terms, popular ingredients and cheeses.