tortillas – Ex-pats in Mexico

This post is all about real Méxican food, particularly food from the Yucatan Peninsula where Mayan culture is important — especially at dinner time. If you’re not hungry right now, you will be in the next few minutes. So grab some chips and salsa and pour yourself a cold Pacifico or make a pitcher of margaritas.

Since we arrived in México, especially since we made it to the Yucatan, Leslie has wanted to take a cooking class. We struck that one off the list yesterday (June 28) at México Lindo Traditional Kitchen, Workshop & School in Puerto Morelos, between Cancún and Playa del Carmen.

*A place setting for our lunch. One dish we made was ceviche, upper right.*

Leslie and I joined five new friends from Florida to learn some basics in the art of Méxican cuisine, and to taste hot chocolate, green juice, and Méxican coffee with cinnamon and orange rind.

After learning about different kinds of chiles and picking up some knife skills for cutting tomatoes and onions, the Florida group departed. That’s too bad, partly because they were fun people and partly because they missed an incredible lunch!

*We made, or helped make, all these items.*

Leslie and I got individual attention for the next few hours as we prepared our meal with instruction from Chef Alexandra, the owner of México Lindo. The recipes we used were her grandmother’s recipes, although Chef admitted she has made a few revisions over the years.

*Leslie preparing tilapia for the ceviche we made.*

We made ceviche, shrimp broth, green rice with poblano peppers, black beans and red snapper filet, all Veracruzana style. And we polished it off with flan. As we cooked, we also learned about Méxican cooking.

There was a lot of hands-on work. I chopped and diced, using my new-found knife skills, and got to use the blender a few times. Leslie did a lot of the actual cooking — stirring and seasoning, asking questions and writing down notes. We each got copies of all the recipes, and we got to keep our “I Cooked In México” aprons.

As we sat down under the big palapa, Mari was making tortillas by hand. She invited us both to try our hand at making them. I couldn’t get the hang of it. Several times my work started to look like a tortilla, then some of the masa stuck on my fingers, leaving holes in the round of dough, forcing me to start over.

*I failed at making tortillas but succeeded wildly at eating them. Mari has beautiful classic Mayan features. You can see this same face on sculptures at ancient Mayan temples, or in museums.*

Leslie fared a good bit better. Mari is a Mayan woman, probably in her 70s, who has been making corn tortillas by hand since she was eight. In addition to making the tortillas (among the best I’ve ever tasted), Mari also worked very hard in the kitchen all day, mostly cleaning up. As we arrived, she greeted us in the Mayan language.

If you’re ever in Cancún or Playa del Carmen on vacation, you should take the class. The menu is different every day, so check with Chef, online or by phone, before you sign up. It’s a full day and there’s some work involved. But the meal is definitely worth it, as is sharing food and conversation with Chef Alexandra and sous chef Claudia.

Lunch-0962 — *Ready to eat the meal we prepared!*

But wait — there’s more!

Last Thursday (June 22) , we joined guide Francisco on the “Walking Food Tour of Downtown Playa del Carmen.” Nine different stops, only four of them actual restaurants and only one in the main tourist area known as Quinta Avenida, or Fifth Avenue. We spent about four hours with Franciso learning where the locals eat out, and getting a little history lesson too.

The first place we stopped was a taqueria that was full of locals. No touristas in this joint. In fact, we were the only non-Méxicans in any of the places we went. We sampled tacos al pastor as well as beef tacos, ceviche, Méxican ice cream, fruit juices known as aguas frescas, and tamales from a street vendor.

fish-1680 — *Ceviche at Buzo’s Seafood Restaurant in Playa. It was excellent.*

“You might be concerned about eating street food in México,” Francisco said. “The one thing you should not worry about is tamales. These ladies make the tamales at home and bring them here. In fact, I think many restaurants in Playa serve tamales that one of these ladies cooked in her home and sold to the restaurant.” I thought it was one of the best tamales I’ve tasted. On the other hand, Leslie thought the sauce was too spicy for her taste, and didn’t care for the masa.

We finished off the evening at a more familiar (and more touristy) place called Ah Cacao. It’s like a Méxican version of Starbucks, only way better. Their motto is, “Let’s Look After Our Planet — It’s the Only One With Chocolate.” They serve a variety of drinks made with coffee and cacao, and a number of chocolate-laden pastries as well. I had a Chocolate Maya drink — cacao and a variety of Mayan spices. Wow!

street-1687 — *This young man is making a “*marquesita” for a member of our group while guide Francisco (left) watches. He cooked a very thin waffle on this pan, put a sliced banana and some Nutella in it, twirled it into a cone and presented it. You can see that he works fast to make this classic Mexican street food. The whole process was probably less than two minutes.

Just a little over two weeks now before we end Phase One of our search for a place to retire, then we head back to Chicagoland. We’re going back for some routine, but necessary, doctor appointments and to see friends and family we have missed very much.

More on that later. For now, hasta luego!

CORRECTION: In the last post I said my paternal grandparents had eight children who lived to adulthood. It was seven. My sister corrected me. Thank you, Linda. I must’ve counted a favorite aunt twice!

We’ve had some issues this week, so it’s taken awhile to do a new post. Sorry about the delay. Leslie had been experiencing back pain that kept getting worse, and we both thought it was the extra-hard bed in Casa Walker, where we were living. A visit to an emergency room doctor confirmed that, so we found a new place. For the next three weeks, we are living in Casa San Antonio. We’re still in the same neighborhood and even a little closer to the Santiago mercado. The owners, a retired physician and his wife, are from San Antonio, Texas, where Leslie and I used to live. They are actually there right now! Smart. It’s only 75° F. in San Antonio today. Here, it’s 100° F. with a “feels like” of 107°!

So we had yet another encounter with medicine in Mexico, with a similar outcome to the one we had in San Miguel de Allende. The woman doctor spoke moderately fair English but Leslie understands a good bit of Spanish and there’s always Google Translate, so they had no trouble communicating. You probably know how much an ER visit costs in the States. Many hospitals in the U.S. want your insurance information before they even figure out whether you’re dying or not! At Clinica Mérida, they just asked if we were going to pay cash or with a credit card. Easy answer. We put all medical expenses on our USAA Federal Savings Bank card so we can more easily track medical expenditures for tax purposes. I think we were out of there in less than an hour with a diagnosis and prescriptions. Total bill: $340 pesos. That’s less than $20 USD. Even better, Leslie’s back is much better now.

Leslie and I have been attending church at St. Luke’s Anglican Mission. It’s a bit smaller than the Anglican churches we attended in San Miguel and Puerto Vallarta.

*St.Luke’s meets in the family chapel of a private home in Merida’s La Ermita area. On the first Sunday in June, they will move to new digs closer to us.*

Last week there were six in worship. Yesterday, we had a total of eight. Father José, a native of the Azores (Spain) who has spent considerable time in Canada and the U.S., does a service in English at 10 a.m. and in Spanish at 11:15 a.m. The Spanish service is considerably larger. Even with a tiny congregation, this church does outreach work. On Saturday, Leslie joined a group (English- and Spanish-speakers) that meets weekly to make pulled pork sandwiches. Those sandwiches are distributed Sundays to poor people who tend to gather at one of the local hospitals.

*Father Jose uses a tortilla instead of bread for communion. Isn’t that appropriate?*

Before getting sidetracked by the need to relocate, we went to the Gran Museo del Mundo Maya de Mérida, an impressive collection of Mayan culture and history. Much of the first section is devoted to how a meteor strike in the Yucatan Peninsula millions of years ago created cenotes that the Maya believed to be sacred. There was also a lot of recent Mayan history, including how the Spaniards brought Catholicism and how descendants of the Maya are contributing to Mexican society today. As we walked through, I thought, “This is not what I was expecting.” I started to think this place was a bust. Then we turned a corner, and there was a statue of Chaac Mool, the Mayan rain god. “OK,” I thought. “Here’s where the real stuff starts.” We saw works by pre-Colombian Mayan craftsmen and artisans, and enjoyed some excellent interactive exhibits. What’s really cool is that the majority of the signage in this impressive modern building is in Spanish, English and Mayan — Yucatec Mayan to be more specific.

Chilam Balam 2 — On the ceiling of the museum is a Mayan calendar (we think), a drawing from the Chilam Balam of Ixil, which a wall plaque describes as “an example of the persistence and power of Mayan memory.” Written in the 17th and 18th centuries, these books preserved important traditional knowledge in which indigenous Maya and early Spanish traditions coalesced. But they also contained material that is clearly pre-conquest.

Then we spent a day at the beach in nearby Progreso. Mérida is about 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. If you want to go to a beach, though, just wait along Calle 64 in the Centro and watch for a bus that says “Progreso Directo.” Flag that bus down (there’s one at least every 20 or 30 minutes), just like you would hail a taxi in downtown Chicago, and for $40 pesos (a little more than two dollars), two people can spend a day at the beach. Of course, it’s $40 pesos more to come back!

Not the greatest beach we’ve ever seen, but we appreciated the cooling breezes. There were lots of locals on the beach on a Monday, most with small children. It was fun to watch them playing in the gentle surf. Seaweed had washed up along the length of the beach, and that wasn’t very nice. But we remembered that, “A bad day at the beach is better than the best day at work.”

Some of the restaurants along Progreso’s malecon (boardwalk, or esplanade) have beach chairs with umbrellas and bar service. We found one of those and staked out a spot, ordering some bottles of water and a few drinks. But their lunch menu was not inspiring, so we found a restaurant just a few steps down the beach that gets high marks on Trip Advisor: Crabster. I had some fantastic shrimp tacos and Leslie enjoyed coconut-almond shrimp that was crunchy and very tasty. And we enjoyed the whole meal with our toes in the sand.

In the next post, I hope to provide some cost of living details. Here’s a teaser: We had lunch several days ago at our new favorite place in the Colonia Santiago. It’s called Maize, Canela y Cilantro — a very small, very cozy, breakfast and lunch place. We had soup, entree with small salad and rice, warm corn tortillas, black beans, amazing salsa, and four glasses of jamaica (hibiscus) tea. Total bill with a healthy tip was $270 pesos. That’s a big lunch for two for less than $15 USD.

*A closing shot. You see this all over Merida — people saving parking spaces, just like in Chicago when it snows. Except, there’s no snow here.*

Tag: tortillas

Mexican food takes center stage

A small bump in the road, but a nice new home for us