I spent the last two weeks eating great food in Oaxaca City, and to celebrate and commemorate I prepared a 3 course dinner for 4 people inspired by the cuisine.
, where these are handmade
Context
In my last post, I committed to finishing the buildspace project(s) that I started in the previous few weeks, and to finish the 6 week program. Soon after the post, 3 close friends arrived and stayed with us, and we all travelled to Oaxaca. Despite my best intentions, trying to fit in the work wasn’t possible! Instead I decided to unplug for a bit and enjoy some time off. No regrets!
I tried dozens of new dishes, loved many of them, and I wanted to try my hand making a few to commemorate the trip.
I chose to make 3 dishes in particular to learn about and recreate:
Pipián verde
Tascalate
Pulque
Process
On the way to Oaxaca we stopped for brunch at Fonda de Santa Clara in Puebla, two hours east of Mexico City, and we had pipián verde. It’s a favorite (one of many) of my partner P. It’s essentially a green sauce made from green tomatoes, pumpkin seeds, and spices.
P boiled the tomatoes and seeds, then used the blender that no Mexican kitchen worth its mole is without:
and then stewed a kind of setas (mushrooms) in the sauce and served them on freshly toasted sopes with sauerkraut (homemade!) and toasted amaranth seeds.
Every day we ate well in Oaxaca. One breakfast we stopped by Itanoní to try local traditional corn based dishes, like tetelas and memelas. To drink we were served tascalate , which is most popular in the Chiapas and Tabasco states. I had it without sugar (as it was done by locals before the Spanish introduced sugar), and I loved the earthy, bitter, and smoky flavors.
Back at home, I gathered the ingredients I needed: achiote , cacao , canela (cinnamon), toasted corn (I used sopes ), piloncillo (sugar), blended them, and added a pi shaped ice cube (another cooking aid I discovered on the wall of trinkets).
I was running out of natural light to take the photos, so I rushed outside to get the last of the day and it was drizzling. I liked the effect of the raindrops on the black clay.
, a chef’s table style Oaxacan-Japanese fusion restaurant. My mouth exploded with each of the 6 or 7 dishes, prepared in Japanese handroll style with Mexican ingredients. For dessert we were served a mango piña sorbet in a semi-frozen _pulque (_fermented agave) with tuna (prickly pear) and crushed cacao beans - this stuck with me and I wanted to do it myself.
In particular, the interplay between the fizzy, funky ferment of the pulque , the sweet sorbet and pear, and the bitter crunchy cacao really got me going. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find the pulque in a store in Mexico City, it’s only really served fresh in pulquerias , apparently because it keeps fermenting and doesn’t bottle well (that’s probably also why you don’t find it outside of Mexico).
My hacky solution was to mix coconut milk and kefir, and freeze and crush it. Using the same blender that served me well in the last 2 dishes, I made mango sorbet, and sprinkled some baked cacao nibs on top.
Learnings
I haven’t really tried to make a ‘restaurant style’ dish before, usually I lean towards delicious and nutrient-dense but not necessarily pretty or surprising. Making a meal with complimentary dishes, and making dishes the combined different textures and contrasting flavors, and plating on the black clay was a fun challenge
I love bitter and earth flavors with subtle sweetness, like the combination of achiote, cacao, and cinnamon in the tascalate
While cooking it’s easy to forget about documenting the process instead of enjoying the smells and flavors. I actually redid the dessert the day after to get a photo of it for the post
Next steps
Try fermenting tascalate or do a tepache or tejuino
Try making a few other Oaxacan dishes like garnachas , mole, or something with chapulines
Start a ‘jar club’