After the last episode of my blog, I want to move on to lighter things, so as promised I am going to tell you a bit about Mexican food and I have got a few stories, you may or may not want to have a little chuckle at.
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| Wild coconuts are a bit of a delicacy for me, but damn hard to get into |
OK, When you think of Mexican food, what do you think of..?
Well, if you are from the UK and like me, I bet you had chili con carne on your mind. So entering Mexico, I was thinking "great!", this is one of the three meals that I could make reasonably well (if I say so myself) and sustained me the whole way through uni (James W would know). Therefore, I really couldn't wait to try some CCC made by the locals to make a comparison. Boy was I wrong. This dish that so many British people associate with Mexico is actually non-existent. I hunted high and low for this baby; scoured the menus that I could find and even asked at a few local comedors for it, but all I got was blank looks shooting back to me.
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| Can I eat this? |
Now you are probably thinking, "What have these Mexicans got up their sleeves then?" And I am going to reveal their dirty little secrets...
Their big secret. Contains one word. Chilis. Mexicans love chilis. If you do not like spicy food I would advise strongly to avoid Mexico like the plague. I mean these guys put chili on everything. You ask for a hard-boiled sweet, it contains chili; take a bite of any packet of crisps and they are going to be twice as hot as the fiery red kind of Doritos we get in the UK; then to top it of, you get some bastard adding a bit of chili powder to your mango... WTF. All your food is going to come partially spicy, whether you like it or not; but then to add the icing on the cake they will normally ask something like: "¿Què tipo de salsa quiere, roja o verde?", translating to "Do you want red or green chili sauce?", but the great thing is in every restaurant the hotter sauce is always different to the resturant before, so it is pot luck on whether you get the hot or the unbearable-hot sauce to go with your already spicy meal.
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| Do you want chili with that? Mangos like no others! |
Winge over. What does Mexico really have to offer... If you have been reading my other blogs you will already know in parts of Mexico fresh blood from the head of an Iguana is a bit of a delicacy; but what else have they got in store. Well, me being classed as a beginner at speaking Spanish, I have found it extremely difficult to understand what the hell I am about to go and order, plainly because few of the food words are remotely similar sounding in Spanish and therefore I may pick up one or two words like "chorizo", "carne" or "arroz" during the waiter's ramble about what they have to offer. So my food experience have been somewhat of an adventure in itself, especially when trying to convey what I want to eat. You may say, why don't you just translate the menu or point at it. Well, I will tell you why I was unable to do that chappys; because there is fuck all menu to translate. The menu is nearly always verbally spoken, at what seems to be an auctioneer's vocal pace. Therefore, I have been presented with some quite extroadinary palates, including: black beans and chorizo dumped onto a plate (not forgetting my side of chilis), egg with chorizo and just chorizo by itself (can you see the general trend and guess why...), obviously these all come with tortillas too...
On one occasion my waiter looked particularly confused and after she brought me a coffee, which I ordered successfully (a good start), albeit without milk. So I asked the waiter "Con Leche, por favor" (blank look returned) probably my pronunciation, so I repeated "Leche con cafe por favor" and she seemed to understand the second time. To be honest, I thought this was pretty straightforward request, but after about 5 minutes I was wondering the hell she was up to. A minute after that, she returned with a hot glass of milk and dumped a full jug of Nescafé coffee granules next to me. I smiled and accepted it gratefully.
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| Me with my host Glenda in La Paz, Mexico, chomping on some Mexican cuisine |
There has also been some absolutely cracking dishes that Mexico has provided me. Things like Molè, which is typically a chocolate-based sauce you have with your meal, pozole, which is a soupy based dish with rice or maize as the carb, based around one or two types of meat, atolé, which is a typically a chocolate-based hot drink and ischada, which is a sweet drink made from rice and one of my favourites, Tomales, a kind of mashed up sweetcorn thing with chilis or carne inside. Not forgetting the standard hot spicy whole roast chicken and carne asada. With every dish you get a standard side of hot salsas, which can place on your food to eliminate all the flavour from the dish, along with the standard mountain-sized portion of home-made tortillas and a small side of chopped tomatoes and peppers.
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| Pozole, in a quaint little resturant with my fellow WS hosts |
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| Home-cooked food from another WS host |
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| Molè with carne asada. A meal fit for a king. |
One of my fondest memories of Mexico is the 20 de Noviembre Market of Oaxaca. This market could be described as one massive kitchen and how it works is you go through segments of the market including: meat section, vegetables and bread and finally beverages. This market probably isn't best if you are a vegie, because of the facts there is tons of raw meat hanging on these stalls looking particularly delightful, including plucked chickens, big steaks of beef and much more. I went for the standard half kilo of beef steak cooked medium with a side of bread and orange juice, but you could buy and cook this meat by the kilo, which was simply dreamy for a meat fanatic like myself.
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| 20 de Noviembre market (photo pinched from internet) |
In general the food is not at all pretenious, like the fancy shit you sometimes you get in these nice resturants in England. It is not flamboyant or delicately presented, it is solely really good tasting food with a tint of spice, which I adored. At the end of the day, who the hells wants a tiny spoonful of thyme-infused mashed potato with a pinch finest sea salt from so-and-so place, who gives a F. I speak sense, right? In Mexico, almost all of the time, all the food is cooked in front of you on a wood-burning hot plate in plain view, which is always a bit of a show and I enjoyed greatly. Overall one happy camper...
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| Work them tortillas baby |
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| This is how my meals compare, pasta or rice with a side of tomato sauce and tuna. D-E-Lightful |
Moving on. Drink. What can I say. The beer in Mexico is sooo cheap and all the premium brands we have in the UK, like Sol, Estrella and Corona are the equivalent to Carlsburg's price in sunny Mexico, so you can only imagine how I got my fill. Some of the more interesting beers I had a chance to try included brands like Indio, Tecate and León; and these all were good. The spirits are also extremely cheap and a high-quality bottle of Tequila or Mezcal you can grab for less than a tenner, which inevitably meant I had to endure a few nasty hangovers on the bike. I even became slightly famous by the locals after a big night out in Oaxaca city, by making quite a scene in the late night take-away taco place. The following morning, when I was crawling past the same place to soak up my demons, a few Mexicans came out to greet and laugh at the state of me.
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| Tequila tasting in the city of Tequila |
OK, that is all for food and drink, now on to another episode of to Tom's Cool Facts (TCF) and this time they are going to be about Mexican food and drink, so here goes:
- To truly be a good Tequila and Mezcal should be drunk with a worm at the bottom of the glass to enhance the smokiness of the flavour. Well, sorry to be a party pooper but this is all a bit of marketing gimmick and doesn't really affect the flavour.
- Mexico is one of the top 4 megabiodiverse environments in the world and it actually contains between 60-70% of all the types of environment in the world. Therefore despite popular beliefs, a lot of food originally originated from Mexico, including: dragonfruit (considered asian, super tasty tropical fruit), vanilla (despite being very expensive in Mexico) and tomatoes (a lot of people think these originated from Italy) among much more...
- Tradional Mexican restaurants must contain a Mayoria, which is a female sous chef and translates to a female head chef. Although with the modernisation this has only become a part truth and nowadays some Mexican resturants do not even have one. A sad truth.
Wildlife update: dead monkey road kill, green iguanas, vampire bats (these lil' bastards spread rabies), a lot more species of lizards, crazy fireflies and a lot of interesting birds (including what I thought were birds of paradise, with a crown of feathers for their mating ritual).
I know you are all dieing to see my beard growth, but I am not going to give you that. I am going to give you something better. Behold...
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The calves, a.k.a the sheds, the turkeys or the tumours by many people
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| Even I thought that they were looking particularly grotesque. But I know the ladies dig them. I did it for them. |
Thanks for reading fellows and hopefully it has put a smile on your face,
Love from your adventurous duo - Tom and Ingrid
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