July 19, 2016 Breakfast fruit with granola and yogurt. Lunch hotel real de Cobre in Santa Clara dinner. Mac and cheese with greens and a mushroom medley
We both had slightly upset stomachs so we decided to eat granola, yogurt, fruit with a bit of milk for breakfast.
Figs and papaya
We then drove to Santa Clara de Cobre to shop for copper sinks for my new bathroom. When we arrived there was a film production in progress so we decided to eat lunch under the portal facing the plaza in the outdoor seating area in front of the Hotel Real de Cobre. Suzette ordered squash blossom soup and I ordered filets Mignon. Both our dishes were pretty mediocre. My steak was thin cut with sautéed mushrooms and hotdogs in a brown sauce, sort of a Salisbury steak with a real piece of meat. Suzette’s soup was really bland with no sign of a squash blossom.
After about one hour the filming stopped and we were able to walk the square and shop.
We soon found a great shop, El Viejo Almancen where we had told to look behind a coffee shop under the portal, where we found sinks, wine buckets, and glasses. We spent 4000 pesos (about $230).
We then went back to the Museum of Copper, where Suzette bought key rings and then we drove around a bit to see if there were any shops we may have missed. Finding none we returned to Patzcuaro.
When we r returned to Patzcuaro we decided to walk around down town to better get our bearings. We walked to the main rod where the Pemex station is and walked that street to the market. After walking one street to the left we decided there was more activity on the two plazas that lie within a block of each other. We walked back to the market and at the corner of it we found a lady with tables full of fresh wild crepe and chanterelle mushrooms. She was asking 60 pesos for a kilo and after a little discussion as to the wisdom of buying wild mushrooms from a street vendor we took her suggestion and bought a ½ kilo (1 lb.) after she showed us the beautiful fluted undersides of the cepes. She had a metal holder that is the type used on a scale and Suzette and I picked about six or seven large nice mushrooms and then the lady reached into the pile of cepes and with two hands took a huge bundle of mushrooms to fill the holder. I guess the filled holder was the measure of ½ kilo. It looked and felt like more than a pound, but thanked her and walked toward the adjoining square.
Under the portal adjoining the portal we saw many fancy restaurants and soon came to the Tourist information office, which was opened and staffed by a knowledgeable attendant who spoke excellent English. We forget often that language skills do matter.
He provided us maps of Patzcuaro and the state of Michoacan and identified villages that specialized in crafts we were interested in, such as the lovely green glazed jars in the shape and decorated as pineapples and famous restaurants in Patzcuaro and the surrounding countryside.
We thanked him and resumed our circumnavigation of the two squares. We decided that we needed to make mushroom soup and needed Crema, so we stopped at a convenience type store on the square and were directed to another store under the other portal on the square where we bought a 200 gram container of LaLa crema for 9.50 pesos or about $.60.
We then walked the short block to the other larger square where the Balloon Festival stage had been located during the weekend and saw other restaurants and more touristy shops. After walking the half of the second square that ended nearest to our villa, we turned toward the villa and after a three block walked arrived at the villa and our small casita.
We rested for a few minutes during which we discussed dinner. Suzette suggested pasta with the mushrooms and the rest of the spinach and chard, which sounded fabulous to me. After Suzette cleaned the mushrooms, I sliced them into bite sized pieces. We now had a medley of three types of mushrooms, the white we bought at the supermarket yesterday and the cepes and chanterelles bought today.
Then I diced 1/3 white onion and two cloves of garlic. I then de-stemmed and tore the spinach and chard leaves from their stalks into bite sized pieces. Finally I chopped up about three oz. of Oaxacan string cheese and about three T. fresh beautiful Italian parsley.
While I was chopping Suzette had brought a pot of water to a boil and cooked and drained a package of lovely semi-circular large rounds of pasta. Here is a picture of one.
She then Sautéed the onion, mushrooms and garlic and added that hot mixture to the drained pasta in it's still warm pot and added the cleaned greens, cheese and two T. of crema and garnished the dish with chopped parsley.
We drank a bottle of award winning 2015 Las Moras Malbec from Argentina that we bought yesterday for 96 pesos. It was a solid bottle of wine with lots of character and very clean tasting. We liked it a lot with dinner even though it was a red.
We watched the PBS coverage of the Republican Convention for a few minutes, but soon tired of it and returned to the Netflix series called “Top Chefs”. The episode we watched tonight featured Dan Barber the chef associated with Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns. There were many interesting elements of his story and the restaurant’s story. One I liked was that he was that his mother died a when he was 4 years old of cancer and he was raised by his grand parents on their family farm in the Berkshires in Western Massachusetts named Blue Hill where actively participated in farm activities. Blue Hill was mainly a dairy cow and hay operation, but it taught Dan that you are withdrawing nutrients from the soil through cows’ grazing and you need to replenish those nutrients if you want to gain the maximum potential from the land, which related directly to flavor and even the composition of the food you harvest. Dan thus gained a mission. He almost single-handedly, with help from his brother and wife, created what we now refer to as the Farm to Table movement in American Cuisine. I recall the first time I ate at Blue Hill in NYC, near NYU, just off Washington Square. We ate the four course dinner and one of the items was bean salad. I asked the waiter if I could substitute a different item for the salad and the waiter suggested I try the bean salad. So I did and was amazed at how delicious it was. The beans were the freshest, most flavorful beans I had ever tasted, lightly blanched and served with a light vinaigrette.
The film included a segment to demonstrate how experimental and deep diving into food production Dan gets, by showing him interacting with the staff of Cornell’s experimental farm, where the staff and Dan decided to feed chickens red chile to see if the yolks of the chickens’ eggs would be colored red and they were. The red egg yolks were served at Blue Hill. The point Dan was making in a very visual way, is that it matters what the animal that is producing the food you eat is eating.
We loved the dinner and felt we had created a bond with Dan and his Farm to Table movement by making the best Mac and cheese we had ever made with a fresh wild mushroom medley, elegant pasta, crema, and fresh cheese with garlic and onion garnished with fresh parsley and a bit of Mexican sea salt; the freshest, highest quality ingredients cooked sparingly to produce their maximum flavor.
This dish is actually an adaptation of a dish we like and cook a lot that I call stroganoff Paprikesh, a combination of mushrooms, sour cream and cheese, except for this dish we substituted more mushrooms for the meat and paprika or peppers and tomatoes. So it converts it into something simpler and closer to Mac and cheese.
After dinner we ate the last of our desserts, Tres Leches cake and a slice of flan on chocolate cake, that we had bought at the market in Quiroga on Sunday.
We then grabbed the bottle if Don Simon red wine we had bought yesterday and went upstairs to talk to Bruce and Ann. Bruce had brought a chocolate whipped cream cake garnished with chocolate swirls and chocolate syrup he had bought at the same supermarket we went to yesterday for 25 pesos, which turned out to be surprisingly delicious in a Trifle sort of way that went well with the red wine. The Don Simon did not have the depth of character of the Las Moras Malbec, but it had been only about half the cost.
Ann also served a fresh panels cheese studded with flecks of fresh red and green chili that was delicious, especially with the red wine. What I noticed about our conversation was how well informed Americans of our age are on current affairs. Bruce was able to quote elements of the New Yorker interview with Schwartz, who had ghost written the "Art of the Deal" with and for Donald Trump, citing direct references to the article as Schwartz’s opinion that Donald Trump is a “sociopath”.
After a pleasant discussion and examining some terrific masks Ann had recently bought and a second dessert and bottle of wine, we said goodnight and walked downstairs to our casita after another long fun day.
Bon Appetit
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