A Trip to Oaxaca’s Mercado de Abastos for Oaxacalifornia at Origen

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Friday is a good day for the Mercado de Abastos, Oaxaca city’s wholesale market. On Fridays and Tuesdays the señoras come from different parts of Oaxaca to the market to sell their crops. They’re sitting on stacks of newspapers, shelling peas or peeling nopales. Pulling tightly wound plastic bags of roasted ground corn that smell like crispy tortillas. Hustling piles of coral snap dragon-like flor de frijol.

I’m with Rodolfo Castellanos, cook and owner of Origen in Oaxaca city, and my boyfriend Josh Gil, who’s helping to cook a special anniversary dinner at Origen. Julio Aguilera, a chef who recently moved from San Francisco to Oaxaca, is in on it as well, and they’re calling it Oaxacalifornia.

While Julio seems to know what he’s cooking, Josh and Rodolfo are planning on figuring it out. After a night of heavy mezcal drinking, late night lechon tostadas on the street and drunkingly optimistic plans to meet at 9 a.m., I’m pretty impressed that we’re sitting in Rodolfo’s car at 10:30 and we’ve figured out the morning.

The outside of the market is lined by stalls, mostly with fresh goods although there is the occasional blender and watch stand, tamarind candies, and people walking the market coming up close to ask if I’d like to sample from their handmade cardboard box carrying carts of mezcal.

A man opens an ear of corn to show us the kernals consumed by gray huitlacoche, the corn truffle delicacy. Rodolfo hands us a passion fruit, the sweetest I’ve ever had, then a mamey, and almost the whole time I’m spilling coconut horchata on my dress. Josh and I try all the herbs, things we don’t see at home like fragrant chepiche, earthy chepil and moringa. In between the banda music blaring out from the fish guys, there’s lots of hawking.

Inside the market the stalls get a little narrow, and the yellow chickens splayed on the tables stand out even brighter against the floors covered in hairy gray garlic roots. Herbs and piñatas hang overhead. There are hamsters and chickens, and a toddler in a pink toy car is stuck behind a blockade of about seven turkeys.

We eat at a stall with a Jackie Chan movie playing on a small TV, and a stuffed skunk that looks like it died very scared sits next to it. The cook, who has about ten pots on the counter, looks like she might be partially blind, but I’m so overwhelmed that I assume I’m the one seeing things. Rodolfo orders higadito, an egg and chicken liver scramble poached in broth. Never has a hangover food made more sense than combining broth and eggs. The menudo is dark and flecked with herbs.

They walk away with several bags of produce, a plastic bottle of pulque, and a vague idea of what to cook.

At dinner, among many great flavors, I tasted a pulque granita in the salad, the herbs and flowers in the tortellini, the guajillos with the quail, and the huitlacoche next to the coconut foam (there had to be some foam, didn’t there?)

Oaxacalifornia 1/9/2016

Beef tongue taco

Shrimp tortellini in avocado seed broth

Salad of foie, beets, támala

Huachilango, coconut and huitlacoche

Quail with nixtamaled vegetables

Tejate cake

Photos of the dinner by Oaxacaking here and here.

Rodolfo offers market tours and cooking classes by appointment, contact the restaurant for details.

Three Food Markets in Merida

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On my return to Merida after ten years a lot has changed. Back in the day if you said the word vegetarian you’d get a bewildered look and a plate of beans (or for that matter, chicken). But now they have a slow food market with whole wheat muffins, locally made herbal supplements and organically grown veggies. The owner of a health store told me that vegan is all the rage. And the restaurant scene has made a complete transformation.

But, as always, I don’t look to restaurants first for the best food in Mexico. Because it’s when meals are homecooked, served on the street or hidden in a busy corner of a market that they taste best. Here are three markets in Merida to sample the city:

Mercado Lucas De Galvéz
This is Merida’s main market. The vegetable and fruit section really doesn’t visually compare to markets in other major Mexican cities like Oaxaca or D.F. All the banana leaves, papayas and chiles are there but I always feel bad for the sour oranges sitting in perfect pyramids, the top one losing any glory to the gross concrete backdrop of the parking lot-like market building.

There’s an entire butchery section, the majority of stalls covered by curtains of beef and pork cuts, and a small section in the back with turkeys. If you’re cooking in Merida you may want to know that turkeys are the only animals at the market raised de patio, literally meaning in people’s backyards just like other animals used to be raised. This (plus their range in size) makes them a little more expensive, which is why a lot of typical Yucatecan dishes in restaurants that should have turkey now use chicken. If you’ve been in Merida for a few days, you may already be familiar with recados. These are the spice mixes that flavor a lot of dishes like relleno negro or tikin-xic. I was lucky enough to be shown around the market by Mario Canul of Los Dos Cooking School and he pointed me in the direction of his favorite stand, called Escamilla. I personally fell in love with a company making recados called Semilla de Dioses but more on them later. I was at the market in the days before Hanal Pixan, the Mayan version of Dia de Los Muertos. Literally meaning Food for the Soul, there was a lot of food preparation going on. A woman cut pieces of candied pumpkins, camotes, yuccas, and a year-round treat, sweet papaya into plastic baggies, spooning in a ladle of caramel-colored syrup.

For tortillas, head to La Flecha, where they are still grinding their own corn to make real corn tortillas (although they also make tortillas with processed corn flour, called Maseca). For a solid snack, head to the row of cochinita pibil vendors and look for the stand La Socorrito. The owner has long greasy hair and tattoos, reminding me a little bit of a pirate (albeit a very courteous one). You have two options here, taco or torta. The torta is smaller than most, be sure to ask for it mojado (with the drippings) and ask for it sin grasa (without the fat) so that you get the more meaty pieces. They’ve got a few juices here too.

Mercado Santiago
This is a small local market next to a lovely church and plaza in the Santiago neighborhood, just a five to ten minute walk from the centro. One thing I love about Mexican markets is how they change so drastically from one product to another. Turn the corner from the tortilleria and there’s a tailor, flip around from the lunch stands and you’ll see a pile of marigolds. And right across from the beauty products there’s a really great place to eat breakfast and lunch.

Breakfast in parts of Mexico often means tacos or tortas, things that I typically eat for lunch or dinner at home. But the market is mostly closed by the later afternoon, so I went to La Lupita for second breakfast around 11 a.m.
I guess my ears picked up the chopping sounds, because right outside of the stand were two men in black aprons and blue shirts with a heaping pile of chopped white onions sitting next to them as they rapidly knocked their knives against the wood cutting boards. The blue cursive lettering of La Lupita matched their shirts, which made me feel like there’s some extra thought going into this stand to be so matchy-matchy.

I ordered one taco of cochinita pibil, it came rolled up, juicy and flavorful. I also ordered a polcan, a thick disc of masa slit on one side and stuffed with small white lima beans, tiny pieces of breaded and fried pork, onions and lettuce. It’s a little dry without salsa and all the fried makes it a little heavy for the morning, but overall it’s delicious and filling. Apparently, pork tacos are no longer heavy for me in the morning but polcanes are.Slow Food Market
My first morning in Merida a friend took me to the Merida Slow Food Market. She ran into friends right where the organic bread stand met the stand of bottled chiles. Suddenly I didn’t feel so far from Temescal.

I think this is more of a haven for locals of a certain income and ex-pats than for tourists, but I certainly learned a lot just strolling the market. Don’t miss:-Natural supplements from Maya Natura. What can I say? The guy running this stand had skin like it had been airbrushed. We had to ask what he used. Apparently, it’s the herb called Moringa, a powerful antioxidant. He showed me the plant and suckered me into buying a bottle of capsules for $12. He grows and dries all his herbs.

-Chaya, chaya everywhere. Towards the end of the market there’s a woman selling organic vegetables, cocos, agua frescas, and chaya snacks. Chaya is a local green that seems to have taken off like kale. Everywhere you look you’ll see green juices spiked with chaya and at this stand you can find chaya tortillas, chips and the plant itself. The corn tortillas looked beautiful, speckled with green almost the color of Balinese rice fields— nothing compared to the dull and mysterious green of “spinach wraps” that tend to make me violent. -Cold tea from Yum Kaak. Next to fruit juice there’s nothing I want more than a cold caffeinated beverage to survive the heat in Merida. I’ll admit that I had at least three Frappuccino-like beverages during the week and one of them came with whipped cream. The bottle of iced black and green tea infused with tamarind I got from this tea stand was a delightful relief. The vendor also took the time to teach us how to make it (brew black tea and then add a little bit of tamarind pulp and sweetner to taste). She also had a passion fruit tea blend. I told her to start a franchise, she’s starting with a store on Paseo Montejo.

There’s a mix of locals and ex-pats making cheese, tamales, dips, and selling vegetables. Some of them are making good food and doing nothing related to slow food, like the couple from New Hampshire who have a smoker and smoke things. Like the salmon they buy at Costco. Can I report them to the slow food police please? Still, this is a fun market with a diversity of products you probably can’t get elsewhere in Merida.
Got the travel bug?
Markets are morning activities and are usually closed by the late afternoon.
Mercado Lucas De Galvéz
Calle 56A, roughly between 67 and 69, Centro
http://www.los-dos.com Does a cooking class and market tour worth checking out. Mario also does a street eats tour, which sounds like a whole lot of porky fun.

Parque Santiago
Calles 59 and 70

Slow Food Market
Centro Comercial Colon- Avenida Reforma with Avenida Colon
9 am- 2 pm

TAP

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Two Pop-Up Markets in San Francisco and Oakland

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I am careful with what food events I attend in San Francisco. A few months ago at a pop-up food event downtown I overheard a guy say that he was the Steve Jobs of salsa. What does that even mean? Do child laborers in China make your salsa? Are you a jerk to your employees? All the guys were in plaid, everyone looked like they were in their 20s, and most of the vendors weren’t even around to talk about their products. Maybe it was trendy, but I was bored.

Anyway, I went to two evening pop-up markets recently that felt different. They reminded me of why I like going to markets and food events: to try new things, to share an experience, and to gather with all kinds of folks who can be brought together for a fundamental and common desire: to eat good food.

Bayview Community Pop-Up Market
This is a weekly food event with vendors selling affordable foods of all different styles: afro-carribean food, bread loaves, almond butter and candied nuts, classic soul food, honey, wine, southern style sweets made in the Bayview, and jams made in the Castro. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many generations enjoying the event too: I sat with a table of elderly ladies, I chatted with a professor at SF State, and several toddlers stumbled over my feet. In the back of the room, illuminated by the stage lights were eight self portraits done by teenagers through a mural project at the A Philip Randolph Institute. I spotted a few of the teens sitting proudly in front of their portraits, legs dangling over the stage.
Here are a few of the vendors:

Angelique and John, the mother and son team of Comfort Foods National are much friendlier than their corporate-sounding business name implies. On Thursday they prepared a sweet potato waffle and fried chicken sandwich and a light yam salad on a bed of greens. The waffle was legit (sometimes I feel like a good piece of fried chicken weighs down the waffle in a chicken and waffle sandwich, but not this one) and had a little spice to it. The plate looked so pretty with all those orange and green tones that at least five people who passed me by asked me about it. Check them out for your next event in need of catering.

This was Elizabeth’s first fair and her products were simply adorable. Her new business, Sugar and Honey makes several kinds of almond butter, honey, candied nuts and jams in San Jose.

Yvonne of Yvonne’s Southern Sweets is the kind of person you want to hug every time you see her. I’ve met her several times, and I know she doesn’t usually remember me, but she still gives me a huge smile. Her pastry shop in the Bayview serves up homestyle southern sweets like pralines and pecan pie. I liked the beignets.

Kitchener Pop-Up
This incubator kitchen in downtown Oakland just successfully funded a take-out window on Kickstarter. The snack bar, to be shared among small food businesses operating out of the kitchen, will serve breakfast, lunch, dinner, and late night snacks. A takeaway window serving late night snacks in the area where I am most frequently drunk? I can’t wait.

The space is very small, but they usually manage to squeeze in at least seven different food vendors, and a little wine and beer bar. There are some tables outside to sit, but otherwise you just kinda stand around feeling like you’re in the way. Still, I will gladly get in the way for some of this:

The husband and wife team from Mini Trini Bistro cater Trinidadian food (think caribean meets indian). They served their dal and dumpling soup with beef shank— hearty, to say the least! The habanero salsa added a fiery kick.

Sugar Knife, another family team (with a beautiful teenage son and daughter manning the booth) was live torching s’mores with flavors like Town Biz (cookies and cream with Baily’s irish cream marshmallow with dark chocolate on honey grams) and Hella Nutella (bourbon vanilla bean and frangello marshmallow with nutella on honey grams). They obviously had me with the name Hella Nutella.

Also in the house was Keena’s Kitchen with a tasty gumbo, and Javi’s Empanadas, who puts the empanadas I used to eat living in Chile to absolute shame. He is also much more handsome than the old lady I used to buy my empanadas from, so he’s really winning!

Got the travel bug?
Follow Kitchener on Facebook for upcoming events.
Bayview Community Pop-Up Market will be starting at a new location Thursdays at the YMCA, 1601 Lane St at Revere. 5-8 pm. Looks like the one on March 6th has been postponed so follow on Facebook for updates.