Travels via food (2): Mexico via tortillas

This week’s episode continues to pay homage to masa harina, the ubiquitous white maize flour in Central America. I was shocked to find PAN brand Masa harina at my local independent supermarket, in a small city 2hrs outside Sydney. Always expect the unexpected..

In 2016, I took a break from "normal life". I had finished my specialty training in 2015 and was at a loose end. Somehow, I received an opportune email advertising the critical care fellowship at the University of Toronto. To this day, I have no idea what drew me to this, but inside me a strong voice told me to apply for it. The upside of the job was that I would have several months to go travelling before it started. I decided on Central America because it seemed obscure and a good budget place to pass a few months.

I got a cheap flight to LA and a cheap one way flight to Cancun. I had no particular plans for when I arrived in Cancun. Little did I know, my trip had started along with thousands of spring break students from the US. By the time I landed in Cancun, I knew I had to run away from the throngs of excited 20-somethings wanting to get drunk. 

I have a little game for times like this, called "where does the next bus/train go?" Incidentally the first bus out of Cancun went to Playa del Carmen, a party town that I hadn't even heard of. Arriving there a short time later, I was overwhelmed by the number of tourists and touts. So I used the same "where does the next bus go?" strategy, and the next bus brought me to Tulum.

Tulum is also super touristy, but the bus station was far away enough from town that I could not tell this at first sight. I wandered around aimlessly till I found a hostel, and collapsed into bed from heat and exhaustion. When I woke up, I was hungry and excited about the prospect of my first meal in Mexico. I asked the old lady at the tiny grocery store where to lunch, mimicking with my hands. I have no idea if I actually went to the place she intended, but I found a roadside shack with a few worn tables and brightly coloured plastic stools.

Soy vegetariana was the first phrase to come back to me from the Spanish I learned from a previous trip. Soon after, they brought me the first of countless tortillas I would eat over 3 months. 

I always thought Mexican food was like what the West associates with it - corn chips, spicy mince, heaps of stringy cheese, bland tomato salsa.

Tacos in Mexico are a different thing altogether. Made from finely ground corn flour, they are usually served fresh and still warm from the griddle. I ate plenty of rubbery or hard tortillas too, but the best ones were soft and pliable with the right amount of chew. The topping was lined up along the middle of the tortilla, so that it was easy to pick it up by the edges and hold it in the hand. Usual adornments were a simple wedge of lime to squeeze over, and a variety of hot sauces.

They sure love their hot sauce in Mexico!

After a few days in Tulum, I was sick of the noisy parties and drunk American college students stumbling around. I asked my friend whose brother travelled in Mexico extensively for a recommendation. He sent me an email saying

"Here is a list of places I enjoyed:

1. Bacalar lagoon"

A few days later he sent an email apologising for not finishing the list, but by then I had already decided to head there.

The bus took me to the outskirts of Bacalar, and it was a long 20 minute walk in the heat to the lagoon. The first glimpse of the lagoon was breath taking - an impossible shade of blue glimmering under the sun. 

I stayed at a hostel right in front of the lagoon, the setting was beautiful but the hostel was awful. The bed was unbelievably dirty and uncomfortable, and I had to sleep in my sleeping bag liner. I shared a room with two German girls, who woke up screaming in the night because one of them was allegedly bitten by a rat. I say allegedly because we couldn't find the rat even with all our torches at 2am. I don't know where they went in the end but I stayed alone then in the smelly room, fitfully tossing in bed. In the morning, the toilets became blocked in the only bathroom and the stench was overwhelming. I was exhausted from the light rat-fearful sleep I had, and melancholic being a long way from home.

I resolved to move. The day before I had seen a nicer guesthouse nearby, with flowering trees in the huge yard and a full lagoon frontage. When I showed up to enquire about a room, the German owner said they were completely full. Maybe because I felt tired then, I must have looked super forlorn when he told me this. He offered me the little caravan, which was parked in the yard. I had to use the bathroom in the main house, but I loved being away from everyone and close to the water - it was just perfect for me!

The German owner, who had two lovely German shepherds (mother & son), had moved to Bacalar some years before when he met a local woman. They set up the guesthouse there and retired to the slow life.

"You are Australian!" He exclaimed when I presented him with my passport for registration. "It's so rare for us to have two Australian guests at the same time!"

After my walk around town that day, the guesthouse owner he waved me over and excitedly introduced me to a girl who was sitting quietly with a book. His vigorous introduction was somewhat awkward, as if two random Australians out of 25 million, meeting in a tiny town in Mexico was a celebratory event.

Meeting people on the road is such a whimsical thing. Sometimes you share just a few lines of conversation, sometimes you end up travelling together for a few days or even weeks. Everyone has a "social needs" quota, much like hunger or thirst. I learned through many years of solo travel to take it as it comes – sometimes there would be long periods of solitude, other times one would meet people very easily.

It’s strange now to think back to that time in 2016, when Sam and I first met in the Bacalar guesthouse. Her name was saved as "Sam Bacalar" in my phone for ages. It seems so obscure that any two people in the universe could meet, and we are all somehow connected by invisible strands. We have stayed in close touch ever since then – meeting up in Guatemala, Melbourne and Sydney. 

Bacalar is a small sleepy town of 11,000 people. There’s no real “tourist attraction” other than the pretty lagoon. The crystal clear water had an unusual stripe of turquoise in the distance, signifying the shallow part where you can stand up (if you swim out that far!) It was a wonderful place to relax for a few days. 

 

We wandered the few streets and bought fruit (somehow, a very important activity). Another day, we went for a kayak in the lagoon while her then partner took a swim across the lagoon to a small island.

We found a hipster cafe, because hipster cafes are now everywhere even in rural Mexico. We went there a few times, hanging out in the cool courtyard.

We ate this delicious chocolate mole, which consisted of 22 ingredients! 

It’s hard to remember exactly how those days in Bacalar passed. When one leaves home, it's like going to another planet. I didn't care for the noisy parties of Tulum, but I loved the tranquility and easy languor of Bacalar. After a few days there, I felt the rhythm of travel returning to my bones...

 

 

Tortillas… in Newcastle

1 cup masa harina

1 cup water

Pinch of salt

Knead together to a rough dough, rest for 10 minutes then knead till smooth

Divide dough into small golf-ball sized balls

Place one ball inside a zip lock bag and squash with something hard and flat

(Note, if you squash it with a Jamie Oliver frying pan, the tortillas will be branded Jamie Oliver)

Serve with toppings of choice and a squeeze of lemon… here a simple stir fry of zucchini and red beans with garlic and green chilli; also roast parsnip, and a simple salad of lettuce, snow pea, radish and cherry tomatoes from my own garden. What a feast!

I dedicate this post to my wonderful friend Sam, because (A) we both love eating and (B) the world operates in strange ways to bring us together!

Travels via food (1): El Salvador via pupusas

Since international travel is off the cards for Australians, I decided I will reminisce about places I have been to and remember the foods that I ate in those places.

Somehow, my mind wants to start with Pupusas.

Growing up in Australia, there was very little contact with Central American culture. Maybe I learned about the Aztecs and Mayans in primary school, but they were so far removed from our reality that I thought they were ancient extinct tribes. I had no idea that Indigenous people in Central America are actually direct descendants of these people. Though Spanish colonisation brought about widespread change in language and culture, the local traditional culture is still strong.

I had never heard of pupusas until I went to el Salvador. All the neighbouring countries have some similar variety on this theme – a cornmeal dough, wrapped around a filling, flattened and cooked on a griddle until it is crispy and warm inside. In Mexico these are quesadillas and in Honduras these are baleadas.

I crossed the border by public local bus into El Salvador with a couple of German guys I met in Honduras. We changed buses a few times, each time laughing at the lurid colours that these retired US school buses were painted. We stayed for the night in La Palma on the border and then I went on my own way to Juayua, while the boys continued on to San Salvador. It was perhaps no more than 100km I travelled over these two days, but the local bus had its own rhythm. It would stop randomly on the side of the road while people and chickens hopped on and off. Sometimes the bus driver would get out and buy things from the roadside stall “for his sister”. There was always a continuous throng of people coming to sell their wares, local snacks and pass out bible pamphlets.

Colourful street murals in La Palma

Juayua is a tiny town in the north western mountains of el Salvador, a tourist destination along the Ruta de las Flores. “Tourist” was quite a strong word, as there were not many international tourists in el Salvador. Certainly it lacked the popularity of the adjacent countries due to its reputation of violence and some countries recommending its citizens avoid it.

I stayed in Juayua in a guesthouse run by a Salvadorean man who had lived in Europe. He had backpacked a lot and knew exactly what travellers needed – a communal space, a sense of sharing, a kitchen to make simple meals. He had two kids with a Dutch woman but they got divorced and he headed back home to Juayua. He set up this splendid guesthouse with a beautiful garden and lots of secret reading spots. I felt immediately soothed by the environment and wanted to stay forever.

That first night, I had my first taste of the pupusa. I can’t remember who told me about this ramshackle place now, it was just a non descript corner shop with no sign. My Spanish was good enough by this stage to discern what the fillings were and ask for a vegetarian option.

The dough for pupusas is quite thick but retains airy lightness. Usually pan fried or cooked on a griddle with a smearing of oil, the shell of the pupusa becomes crisp. Inside the fillings usually have a mix of beans, cheese and pork, but it was easy enough to find a non-meat version. The filling had simple savoury flavourings with not particularly strong spice profile.

Pupusas were always eaten with curtido, a pickled cabbage slaw which often contained pops of mouth numbing chillies, and a salsa roja (red sauce) made from tomatoes mixed with onions and coriander.

I ate these piping hot pupusas fresh off the griddle and fell in love with El Salvador. Later, when I lived in Toronto, I was excited to find them again in a Salvadorean restaurant, but they were never the same.

Maybe because there was always an element of danger in El Salvador that made them more delicious. After eating my first pupusas, I headed back to the guesthouse for an early night. One of my personal rules for travel is to minimise the time I spend out in the dark streets on my own. I lied in bed reading a book that night, listening to the firecrackers going off in the distance – It must be a festival of some sort? I thought as I fell asleep.

The next day I asked Maria, the lovely housekeeper who spoke no English, what the firecrackers were about. In between my choppy Spanish and charades, I tried to mimic the noises of la fiesta. She laughed and told me that it was no fiesta, rather it was la mafia! She mimed a gun shooting herself in the temple and pretended to die, giggling that the simple tourist thought shooting the banditos had been a celebration.

The day after that I became quite ill with a virus. 2016 was quite the time to be travelling in Central America when there was a zika outbreak. I felt the characteristic fever, chills and the start of a terrible ache in my muscles. The slightest movement induced severe head fogging and fatigue. I knew I was going to be laid low for a few days, so I thought I would make a trip to the supermarket to get some supplies before I could no longer walk.

I stumbled out of the guesthouse and walked down the street. Juayua is a tiny town with perhaps 5 or 6 streets in its central area. The 5 minute walk to the supermarket seemed an eternity, and I had to pause on a street corner to catch my breath. By the time I got there I was exhausted, so I quickly shoved a few things into my bag, paid and left.

Except I could not leave.

Standing in front of the automatic sliding door, it would not open. There were several other equally confused people near me, and we stood waving madly at the sensor. One of the supermarket employees came to us and fire off a rapid string of Spanish words that I could not catch in my viral daze other than Polizia being mentioned several times.

Then I heard the firecrackers again. Firecrackers? But Maria said it was no fiesta…

We stood impatiently inside the glass barrier separating us from the firecrackers. Inside, people kept shopping, loading their baskets with milk and bread as if nothing was happening. Was the outside world really separated from us just from this single glass sliding door?

Then as if it was some mirage, I saw a bunch of police with machine guns running down the street. They shouted at the “bad guys” that we could not see around some other corner. The police were dressed in baggy bulletproof clothes that seemed comically huge up close. Somehow the scene was chaotic and noisy, nothing like the streamlined, almost beautiful attacks that one sees on TV. Shots were fired and a woman screamed outside. Children started crying.

Inside, I felt numb. Maybe it was the viral illness, or the sense of disbelief that I was really here in the middle of a police vs mafia shootout. Who were the good guys anyway? I felt annoyed by the inconvenience and wanted to go back to my bed. An apple rolled out of my bag and I bent over to pick it up. The simple exertion of this task made me so dizzy that I had to lean on the door to prevent myself from passing out.

I closed my eyes and waited as the firecrackers continued to pop off into the distance, a strange staccato rhythm. Soon it was over and the supermarket employee opened the door to let the throng of shoppers out. We emerged into the dazzling sunlight and scattered off in all different directions, as if nothing had happened.

I went back to the hostel and slept for three days. I had high fevers and severe body pain that seemed to ravage even my bones. On the days I could not even get up, Maria brought me water in a little jug to my room. A Hawaiian woman I met in the hostel just before I got zika brought me plain rice and bread. The guesthouse owner was worried about me and asked if I should go to the hospital. I asked him where the hospital was and he said it was in San Salvador, but he could borrow his friend’s car to drive me down the mountains. I was struck by the random kindness of all these strangers I met in Juayua. I asked my ICU friend on Whatsapp for a consult, but how does one summarise one’s illness in a text message? She asked if she should contact my insurance company and I went back to sleep.

Eventually the body healed and I gathered enough energy to sit in the garden again. The owner asked me if I had even been outside the guesthouse to see the sights of Juayua – there were waterfalls and hiking trails, he explained. But I was tired and just wanted to have another pupusa.






El Salvadorean Pupusas (in Newcastle)

(My own, completely mashed up version from several internet recipes)

Curtido
1/4 wombok, finely sliced
1 carrot, peeled into fine strips
1 tbsp sugar + 1 tsp salt mixed with ~ 2 cups of apple cider vinegar and hot water 

Mix and leave in fridge for 6 hours to develop flavours


Salsa roja
1 small red onion, roughly chopped
3 sprigs fresh thyme
1 can Italian whole tomatoes

Blitz in a food processor till a coarse paste forms. Season and add chilli flakes
Cook on low heat till reduced and thick, approx 20 minutes

Pupusas

Filling – mix 1 can refried beans with shredded mozzarella, season to taste

2 cups masa harina (fine white corn flour)
2 cups warm water
Mix the flour and water till a rough dough forms
Rest for 20 minutes then knead till smooth, a couple of minutes
Form into balls (I made 10)
Flatten and fill with a generous tbsp of the fillng, then seal into a ball and flatten again
Fry in a dry frying pan until browned on both sides, approx 3-5min each side



Et voila! It's amazing how food can transport you back to a place. I dedicate this post to Maria the guesthouse housekeeper and Vivian the Hawaiian girl I met in Juayua - hope you are well wherever you are!

In my kitchen: August 2020

What a strange year 2020 has been. After the first lockdown, there was a time of optimism that we had done so well in Australia to have averted many Covid-19 infections & deaths. The last month has seen some unravelling of this optimism in Victoria where they have gone back into lockdown. Despite all this, life and eating (and IMK) goes on...

In my garden...

Lots of my lettuce is thriving. There is something so wholesome about watching a tiny little leaflet emerge to become a full bodied confident leaf. 

There have been so many snow peas, and I have taken to the joy of eating one off the vine as a treat after work. 

 

On the baking front...

There have been several spectacular loaves this month. 

I tried sourdough baguettes again. My first attempt last winter was a flop as I had not let the yeast develop fully. I made these when my friend J came to visit for the weekend and they were really, really good. The crust was dark and crunchy but the interior was meltingly soft. The creamy texture of the crumb makes it feel like it's already been buttered! Definitely looking forward to making this again. 

My friend sent me an article about sourdough one day and I had a loaf proving, so I was keen to try out the bread-face Picasso style... 

I also celebrated my birthday this month, amid a very busy clinical week and some tragic news from a friend. Not to do anything by halves, I had 3 birthday cakes!

I baked this very simple apple cake for my family, with a tender moist crumb and whole mouthfuls of apple in every bite (4 in the whole cake!)

The next day my friend from work brought this extravagant chocolate hazelnut torte from Baked Uprising in Maryville. This was intensely sweet and went perfectly with some strong coffee.

The last cake was an orange almond cake which I made for my quartet. 3 whole oranges from my friend's tree boiled for an hour and blitzed together with half a bag of almond meal, half a dozen eggs and a generous splash of poppy seeds... the orange flavour was full on crazy! 

Finally, onto the Food and Music series....

I went up to Kirra to visit my friend L along with her mum and another music friend from Brisbane. We had a lot of fun playing the strangest combination of instruments - a piano quartet in our sense comprised piano, recorder, violin and trombone! We also played some simple Haydn piano trios with me on cello.  

I brought Barney my sourdough with me to Queensland, in hindsight it would have been funny to print him a border pass as a souvenir! We ate some spectacular rye loaves that were baked fresh while we were playing music. I love simple lunches like this with lots of fresh produce and warm crusty bread. The smoked salmon from her local place in Coolangatta was out of this world (red - chilli, green - dill)

My birthday menu with my quartet was this slow roasted lamb shoulder rubbed with yoghurt and spices. The musical menu was the Scherzo movement from the Brahms Piano Trio no. 1 (one of my favourite movements of all time), the Beethoven Op. 3 string trio and the Borodin piece for 2 violins and cello in G minor, based on a Russian folk song.

I'm sending this to Sherry who hosts the IMK series - thanks Sherry!