We drank café lattes at a table inside a small, modern coffee shop on the zocalo, the central square downtown, and we agreed that Mexican coffee is made differently than coffee in the States. While the vanilla and cinnamon scented foamy cream on top was awesome, the color of the drinks were beautiful to look at, and the Madeline cookie that the barista just tossed on our saucers for free did evoke a couple thousand pages of memories, there seems to be something missing when I’m drinking coffee in Mexico and I always long for U.S. coffee. It’s a mystery to me why a country that grows coffee doesn’t generally make it very well.

Similarly, chocolate, another New World Food is a different beast altogether in Mexico. We are very familiar with chocolate in the north here, but the chocolate we are familiar with is European-style chocolate.

Originally, chocolate came from Mexico. It is still grown there today, and while European-style chocolate is available there, i.e., M&Ms or Hershey’s style chocolate bars, you really have to keep your eyes peeled for that type of chocolate. I’m always on the lookout when I’m there because I am a huge chocolate fanatic…a fiend really….a chocolate freak…the authentic Mexican-style production chocolate is much more widely available.
We went to a Mexican chocolate store and found that it’s not at all like our See’s candies, for instance, or any
of our mall-type candy stores. In Mexico, one goes to the counter and asks the man for the raw, fermented cocoa beans to be mixed with sugar, and optionally with vanilla and/or cinnamon and even possibly almonds,
if you like. These are the most typical of the chocolate additives. Then, the man behind the counter will sell you
the beans/sugar/cinnamon mixture by weight and pour your ingredients into the hopper of a large red and silver grinding machine about the size, roughly, of the automatic dishwashing machine you have in your home kitchen and then he flips the switch…it sounds like a dishwasher too, BTW…Your personal pound or kilo or whatever of chocolate is then extruded like hamburger from the front of the grinding machine and he catches the sweet, delicious freshly-ground-right-in-front-of-your-eyes chocolate in a clear plastic bag, ties it off, and hands it to you, still warm from the grinder. Then you pay him some pesos but really, it’s quite inexpensive…and wholly different from U.S. or European-style chocolate.

K was my traveling companion at the time and we met at LAX airport on that evening in March. It was very nice outside. She spent more time in a cab coming down from Santa Monica than I did flying in from Las Vegas. We waited together in the international terminal for hours, ate some junk food out of machines, and then we finally got on the plane and flew all night from Los Angeles, California, U.S.A. to D.F., Mexico. We were chefs, so we were, by definition, exhausted.

I was in the window seat looking down most of the time, pretending to sleep, and I was struck by the lights of Mexico City, and how they just kept going and going hour after hour down below us in the middle of the night as we flew over this massive sprawl of orange city lights. K caught a few more z’s than I did.

We touched down on a cracked and broken runway where weeds and cactus and grass grew up through the blacktop pavement of the airport landing strip’s surface as the sunlight brought the whole scene to life and K woke up and I go,  ”Hey, check it out.” And she’s like,  ”Oh, cool.”

We got our bags down and caught a green VW beetle taxicab to Coyoacan, an impressive tree-lined, well-manicured city district where a cathedral, blackened by pollution and guarded by automatic rifle bearing Mexican soldiers, dominated Frieda Kahlo’s old neighborhood.

Fatigued from weeks and months of working endless hours as Executive Chefs in each of our respective
restaurants, K and I tipped the cab driver too many pesos and we zombied out of the little car and staggered over to the first food stall we could find. We ate fried empanadas filled with huitlacoche, a black corn mushroom that is considered a delicacy in Mexico that is actually quite delicious especially with a screaming hot chile arbol puree in a red plastic bowl on the counter to dip your empanada in. We had zucchini flower blossoms stuffed with salty queso requeson and batter fried, served with fresh green jalapeno salsa on those little white styrofoam plates and white plastic disposable forks…classic outdoor utensils in any language, in any country.

It’s 8am and we’ve just started eating our way through Mexico.

Price is the most misunderstood part of a restaurant. People think there are huge markups and large profit margins that bring in tons of money. However, that is not the truth. Watch this video to gain a better understanding of the small margins restaurants deal with.

Food for Thought: Restaurants Trim Fat

Last night, in the kitchen, about a half past six I pulled my flan out of the oven and was so happy to see that my little flans were all perfect and delicious in their hot water bath, happy as they could be, and all of them just ready and waiting to be eaten all up. It’s not always the case…sometimes even I find it to be a challenge because flan is temperamental and wants your attention. Flan loves you. Yet this simple custard made with the same basic ingredients as pastry cream, crème brulee, crème anglaise, vanilla ice cream…of these traditional desserts, flan gets the bad reputation. Why?

Because there’s a lot of bad, inedible flan out there in the big ugly culinary jungle, that’s why. Most flan that people try and serve you just doesn’t taste good. It’s about time someone started making flan the correct way. So let me give you a recipe. It really isn’t that technical. Go slow now…you can do this.

Here’s we go:

To make 6 incredible individual flans that you can serve to your family and friends, you’re gonna need a little equipment such as:

6 ovenproof flan a.k.a. custard cups that will hold 8 to 10 ounces of liquid. These can be made of porcelain or glass, metal or pyrex. If you don’t have the cups, teacups will do. Just something with smooth sides that you can run a knife along the inside of when you want to unmold the flan. You will also need a high-walled pan to put the cups in during the baking process.

Ingredients:
2 cups whole milk
2 cups half and half

1/2 vanilla bean, split lengthwise

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup water

6 large eggs
6 large yolks
1 14-oz. can sweetened condensed milk

Instructions:
Position rack in center of oven and preheat to 300 degrees F. Combine half and half and milk in heavy medium saucepan. Scrape seeds from vanilla bean into mixture; add the bean. Bring it to a boil and as soon as it boils, turn it down to super low.

Meanwhile, combine the sugar and 1/3 cup water in another heavy medium saucepan. Stir over low heat until sugar dissolves. Increase heat to high and cook without stirring until syrup turns deep amber, swirling pan occasionally, about 10 minutes. Quickly pour 1.5 ounces of caramel into each of your six custard cups. The caramel colored sugar will harden into the bottom of the cups like it was glass. Now set your cups into a large baking pan.

Whisk eggs, egg yolks, and the sweetened condensed milk in medium bowl just until blended. Don’t incorporate much air into this mixture. Gently will do it just fine. Now, using a ladle, add the hot milk to the mixture a couple ounces at a time while stirring the mixture utilizing a spoon in your other hand, until you have added all the milk mixture into the egg mixture. Now you have the warm yellow custard all in one bowl…works out good like that.

Pour custard through a small sieve into a pitcher and then from the pitcher into your sugared cups, dividing
evenly (mixture will fill ramekins). Pour enough hot tap water into baking pan to come halfway up sides of ramekins. Now your flans are in their water bath. Put the pan into the oven and bake about 45 minutes or until your flans are just setup. Take the pan out of the oven and let the flan cool down in the water bath for about three hours.

To serve, run small sharp knife around flan to loosen. Place a small plate face down on top of the flan and then invert it. Turn over onto plate. Shake gently to release flan. Carefully lift off ramekin allowing caramel syrup to run over flan. Repeat with remaining flans and serve topped with whipped cream.

Did you know that 2000 was the first year that all 50 states officially observed Martin Luther King, Jr. Day?

Hope you made it up to Snowbasin to see the Dew Tour.

The skies were blue and the air was clean.

The action was pretty amazing too.

I remember as a teenager walking through Chinatown getting a bahn mi sandwich and a Coke at a little Vietnamese deli. There were 2 of these Vietnamese delicatessens right next to each other that seemed to be in a competition to see who could have the lowest price on bahn mi sandwiches, for what seemed to me to have been a couple of years. They went down in price from $2.50, a quarter at a time, on large hand written signs made by fat markers on neon green, pink, and/or orange signs until finally, one deli sold them for a buck seventy-five and the one next door was a buck fifty.

The bahn mi is a delicious hard French roll about 7 inches long sliced in half and with a liberal slathering of sweetened vinegary mayonnaise, miniature batons of crispy daikon radish and carrots, several leafy stalks of cilantro, long spicy slices of crunchy jalapeno or serrano chiles, a fat swiping of coarse Chinese pate, and sliced grilled sweet and salty soy sauce-marinated chicken. You can order it with headcheese, which is less delicious but nevertheless, if you get it at the deli where it’s only a buck seventy-five, you will definitely get a better banh mi. You could get two at such a low price, but you’d have to save one for later because nobody could each that much sandwich.

Apparently, none of the old ladies with a live chicken in a cage at the deli counter seemed to care when I crammed up and ordered my stuff, and there was nowhere to sit down inside either of these places so you have to buy a Coke and get out and stand out front to eat where everything smells like meat, fish, grease-stained fish oil, and powdered shark fin blackened sidewalk but it added to the ambience. And no, of course you can’t just leave Chinatown without eating it. Once you get out of Chinatown you can’t trust a banh mi. Over the years, I’ve had banh mi sandwiches at delis in San Francisco, Seattle, Oakland, and even Las Vegas…There just has to be at least one in the SLC and/or Ogden metro area?

I haven’t had a banh mi for quite some time…can someone direct me to it? Let’s get Ogden on the map.

For more information about the Dew Tour, click HERE.

Recently, someone asked me for a recipe to make mole, one of the most fascinating of Mexican foods. I wrote down a recipe suitable for home use. For the uninitiated, mole is a chile sauce made with fruit and nuts and containing many ingredients. That is one way to put it. One of my favorite dishes in the world ever is Gallina en Mole, aka, Chicken in Mole. It’s so real good. But if you have some wonderful mole sauce set aside that does not have chicken in it, but has pork instead…pork carnitas is my favorite thing in the whole world and if you are unfamiliar with carnitas, you come down and eat it at the restaurant. It is amazing.

It is similar to pulled pork but with this mole sauce on it. The rich flavors are so satisfying I can’t describe the joy I receive when I make this. Or the pleasure I derive from eating it. But I think of a recipe as my attempt to help you make it in your home kitchen because it’s an awesome experience. And if you try it on pork you’ll be equally as stoked because it’s so good.

Dark Mole Poblano

8 dry ancho chiles
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic
1/4 c. vegetable oil
3 T. raw skinless peanuts
3 T. raisins
4 roma tomatoes
5 c. boiling chicken broth
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. black pepper
1/8 tsp. cinnamon
1/8 tsp. coriander
1/8 tsp. cloves
1/2 c. sesame seeds
1 toasted corn tortilla or a few tortilla chips
2 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, chips are fine…

chicken breasts
2 T. sesame seeds
a couple sprigs of fresh cilantro
white rice

Core, seed, and devein the chiles and toast in a dry pan for about 2 minutes, until they smell roasty. Transfer to a large bowl and pour the broth over them. Let them sit for 15 minute, until the broth cools down and the chiles become soft.

Toast the peanuts in the dry pan, until oily and toasted. Add vegetable oil, onion, garlic, sesame seeds, and the raisins. Cook with the peanuts for 5 minutes, until the onions are translucent. Add the cut up tomatoes, spices, the tortilla and cook for 5 more minutes.

In a blender, puree the chiles/broth mixture until very smooth. Pour it into a large pot. Then puree the rest of the hot, cooked solid ingredients till smooth, utiizing the chile liquid as needed. Add to the same pot. Simmer on low heat for 15 minutes. Add the chocolate.

Your mole should have the texture of BBQ sauce or ketchup. If it is too thick, add more broth, or water. Check the salt, add more if you like, then simmer the mole for 30 minutes to 3 hours, depending on the amount of time you have. Finally, pour the sauce over grilled or pan fried chicken breasts, garnish with toasted sesame seeds and cilantro. Serve with white rice.