November 28,
2014 A day of shopping, cooking and
eating real Mexican food with Mavi Graf
A little
after 9:00 we drove to PV for our 10:00 appointment with Mexican chef, Mavi
Graf. We arrived at the Marina a few
minutes early but it took us about ten minutes to locate her condominium
complex in the forest of other condos.
As soon as we met, Mavi immediately loaded us into her Jeep Cherokee to
go shopping. She said she was unable to
find the raw milk and rennet for the chongos Zamoran I had asked about. Mavi teaches a menu of three dishes for U.S.
$140.00 person. We had agreed to learn
Rellenos Nogadas and as we shopped we asked for instruction in the cooking of
octopus and nopales, since we could not find squash blossoms for the huiclochote
and squash blossom quesadillas.
As she drove
us to the food markets in the center of PV a little after 10:00, Mavi asked us
if we had eaten breakfast and when we said no drove us to a small taco stand located
on the north side of the block just west of the intersection of Peru and Panama
streets that slow cooks lamb in a maguey leave lined horno pit with heated
rocks. The maguey leaves catch the
juices of the cooking lamb. I had a delicious
bowl of lamb consommé and we each ate shredded lamb meat tacos. According to Mavi this is a pre-colonial form
of cooking. Both the lamb taco and the
consommé were delicious, so I was already feeling good about our day of
cooking.
I thought I
knew the markets in PV, but according to Mavi their locations have changed in
the last few years. The ones along the
river are all gone. We visited two of
the other three, one on San Salavador street about seven blocks up the hill
from the beach and the other is about three blocks up the hill near a children
school, where the fish market is located.
I think Mavi said that the third that we did not visit is Libertad
Market in the center of town, near the river.
After we ate
breakfast we visited Mavi’s favorite butchery shop named Carneceria Zoraya at
No. 210 Honduras, where the owner was hand cleaning the silver skin and tendons
from the beef and pork that his two assistants were cutting. Mavi ordered a kilo of beef and a kilo of
pork for her lesson on Saturday and a ½ kilo of each of beef and pork chopped
and mixed for today’s rellenos Nogadas.
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| Chopping our lunch meats |
We then went
to the fish market and saw an amazing array of fish including several I have
never seen before such as a big ugly sea bass named something like chalacone. Here is a picture of its head:
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| pulpa de tamarindo |
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| octopus salad |
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| octopus tostado |
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| stuffed chile relleno |
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| stuffing a relleno chile |
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| adding the sauce |
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| nopales salad |
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| the view from the table |
We saw
lovely medium sized octopus and I asked if we could have a lesson in cooking
octopus and Mavi said yes and bought two octopus.
We had been
talking about spices and chillis for our intended Holy Mole buffet at Christmas
Eve, so Mavi said she would help us find some of the ingredients. .We then
visited the other food market looking for vegetables and chillis. The
Californian store at the second market did not have squash blossoms but did
have the largest selection of dried chillis.
We bought both dried mulato and dried cascabel chilis plus a couple of
bananas and carrots. MAvi bought poblano chillis for the rellenos and star
fruit and a bag of thinly sliced nopales from a vendor on the street. We then walked across the street to the
Cremeria de Vallarta and Mavi bought a bag of requesón for the sauce for the rellenos and we stopped to taste three
types of queso fresco, one with whole milk, one with skim milk and one perhaps
with more salt and skim milk.
Then around
1:00 we returned to Mavi’s condo at the Marina to cook, when we arrived we were
greeted by her helper, Elisa?, who had made a small platter of guacamole. We started by making a salsa in Mavi’s
volcanic stone Molcajete (mortar and pestel).
I took the duty on of smashing the 1 clove of roasted garlic, ½ of a
roasted serrano and about ¼ of a roasted onion into a paste and then smashing
three roasted Roma tomatoes into the salsa. We tasted the salsa and it was delicious with
the fresh grease fried tortilla chips that Eliza had made for us.
Then things
took off in three directions. Mavis
showed us how she cooked octopus in a pot of simmering water with celery,
carrots and onion and two strips of papaya skin (the secret) for no more than
twenty minutes to prepare an octopus salad.
They also
simmered the ingredients for the Rellenos stuffing starting with the chopped
beef and pork, with comino seeds and cloves and then made a pastor sauce to add
the chili flavors to the dish by rehydrating three or four different dried chilis
(a guajillo, a ?, an ancho, and a pasilla) in 1 cup of water and then blending
them and adding the meat of three tomatoes and then adding chopped almonds and
finally raisins and walnuts.
Mavi
explained that Rellenos Nogadas was a dish dating from the Mexican Revolution
of 1821 when the troops were marching on Mexico City and stopped in Puebla,
because Puebla was one day’s ride from Mexico City. The troops had to be fed with whatever was available
and they put together this dish with the assortment of fruits, nuts and chilis
that they had.
It was at
this point that Mavi asked us if we wanted to try her favorite type of
Margarita. Of course, we said yes and
she made us margaritas using the following recipe per margarita:
1 shot
tequila
1 shot of
Damiana licor
Juice of 1/2
lime
2 heaping
Tbsp. of tamarind pulp
She then moistened
the rim of a margarita glass with lime juice and dipped the rims into a sugar
and chili mixture she had bought somewhere.
Needless to
say we loved the fruity sweet margaritas.
Here is some
information on Damiana from Wikipedia
Damiana is a
relatively small shrub that produces small, aromatic flowers. It blossoms in
early to late summer and is followed by fruits that taste similar to figs. The
shrub is said to have a strong spice-like odor somewhat like chamomile, due to the essential oils present in
the plant.[4] The leaves have traditionally been made into a tea and an incense
which was used by native people of Central and South America for its relaxing effects. Spanish missionaries first
recorded that the Mexican Indians drank Damiana tea mixed with sugar for use as an aphrodisiac.
Damiana has
long been claimed to have a stimulating effect on libido, and its use as an aphrodisiac has continued
into modern times. More recently, some corroborating scientific evidence in
support of its long history of use has emerged. Damiana has been shown to be
particularly stimulating for sexually exhausted or impotent male rats[5][6] as well as
generally increased sexual activity in rats of both sexes.[7] It has also
been shown that damiana may function as an aromatase inhibitor, which has been suggested as a possible method of action
for its reputed effects.[8]
Damiana is an
ingredient in a traditional Mexican liqueur, which is sometimes used in lieu of triple sec in margaritas. Mexican folklore claims that it was
used in the "original" margarita. The damiana margarita is popular in
the Los Cabos region of
Mexico.[10][11]
Things were now coming together quite quickly. Eliza blistered the skins of the poblano
chilis with direct heat from the gas burners on the stove and made a slit in
the side of each and removed the seeds. I
peeled and removed the seeds from a fresh pomegranate while Mavi made the sauce
for the rellenos with the requesón and milk and few other ingredients and
finished the octopus sald with lime juice, rounds of cucumber and slivers of
onion and threads of red and yellow bell pepper and made the nopales salad, a
little onion sliced thinly and then some lime juice, ground sage, some parsley
and threads of yellow and red bell peppers.
On the way
to Mavi’s condo we had stopped at the local Europa liquor store and bought a
bottle of Mexican olive oil (160 pesos) and a bottle of 2011 Madero Winery’s
blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot (240 pesos) to drink with dinner.
Mavi filled
high ball glasses first with the rounds of cucumber from the salad and then the
rest of the octopus salad.
After we ate
the octopus salad Mavi plated up the rellenos by filling each poblano cavity with
warm nogada filling (the stove had been turned off, but the lid had been kept
on the filling) and then garnished each relleno with a liberal amount of the
requesón sauce and finally a liberal sprinkle of fresh pomegranate seeds. Mavi
said you can use pecans instead of almonds as they do in Texas and New Mexico,
but Mavi uses her Mexican recipe learned from her Mom in Sinaloa.
After we ate
our octopus salad, which was fantastic, Mavi said she wanted to give us several
other ingredients we needed for our Christmas dinner so we followed her to the
garden area of her condominiums and she cut us fresh leaves of hoja santa and
avocado and bagged them for us. She also
cut off the seed ends from her epizote and bagged them, but I think we forgot
to take them when we left after lunch.
Mavi’s table
on her balcony overlooking the marina was set for lunch for two and soon after
cutting the leaves and she plated our rellenos nogadas and filled small
ramekins with nopales salad, we were ready to eat our lunch. We took seats at the table and poured wine
and ate our lunch and talked some more about how Mavi got into the culinary
teaching business.
The wine was
surprisingly good and better than many of the wines of Mexico from the past. Actually Mavi said Madero is one of the oldest
wineries in the hemisphere dating back to 1597.
In 1597, Casa Madero was
founded by Lorenzo García in the
town of Santa María de las Parras (Holy Mary of the Grapevines) as the oldest
winery in the Americas.[2] This area of Coahuila soon became a major
wine producer due to its climate and good supplies of water. The vines that were established here were later exported to the Napa Valley in California and South America.[3] , Wikepedia. We thought the wine was okay, but not up to
French or Spanish standards for an $18.00 bottle of wine.
Alternatively,
the food was excellent. The Relleno had a warm mixture of meats,
fruits and nuts and the white sauce was creamy while being a bit tart and the
overall tartness of the dish was enhanced by the pomegranate seeds’ tartness.
The nopales
salad was slimy, as usual, but tasted very refreshing and healthy, so I gladly dug
through the slime. Suzette is under the
weather with tourista so she did not eat much ofher lunch and Mavi and Eliza
was kind enough to pack up the leftover rellenos for us to take home.
At around
4:00 we thanked Mavi for the day of shopping, cooking and eating and said good
bye.
The road was
crowded but we arrived back at the condo in Sayulita at around 5:00.
While
Suzette lay down for a nap, I went to the beach and the flag for releasing baby
turtles was up, so I made a mojito and got Suzette around 6:00 and we went to
the beach and watched as three batches of turtles were released. I think that turtle eggs are gathered from
beaches near Sayulita and incubated here in the sand and then when the babies
hatch they are released at sunset on the day they hatch. It seems that the turtles lay their eggs in
the sandy beaches from June to December. This is the second time we have seen
releases of baby turtles near Thanksgiving.
We then went
across the street to El Jackal where I ate a seafood crazy coctel with bay
scallops, shrimp and octopus. It has turned
out to be a good day for octopus (100 pesos) and a Corona beer for 25
pesos. Suzette went across the street to
the Artists’ Café where there was a Latin jazz band, which turned out to be a
female singer, who played the guitar and a percussionist, who played several
different drums including the Argentinian drum.
She sang Mexican and Argentinian songs ala Marta Gomez and we listened
to three songs.
Suzette is
still suffering from turista, so went home and she went to bed while I drank a
cup of tea and a shot of brandy and ate the rest of the chocolate mousse I
bought last night and blogged.
Bon Appétit
