Diego Rivera (see last post) wasn’t the only one obsessed with Mexican food markets. It’s funny that Americans think of Mexico as a place where all the meals are based on dried corn made into a bread (tortillas), dried chiles made into sauces, or dried beans made into burrito fillings. Given their druthers, most Mexicans eat fresh fruits and vegetables as their dietary mainstays. True, they do love to grill and deep-fry some foods, but the key to the Mexican table is fresh food. That could include some pretty exotic stuff.
The basket of small gray stuff in the left pane above is huitlacoche—fresh corn infected with what American farmers call ‶corn smut.″ It’s a fungus that makes the kernels ooze with an inky, musky mushroom flavor that’s a delicacy in Mexico. When we used to grow corn in the Connecticut Valley, we would throw away ears infected with it. But traveling to Mexico broadened our minds and our palates. We think of it as Mexican truffles. Dirt cheap in the fresh food markets of Mexico City, huitlacoche in a jar is a pricy proposition.
A cut above
Some stalls in Mexican markets make us feel like we’ve wandered into a Ronco TV commercial from the 1960s. ‶It slices, it dices, it cuts a tomato so thin it only has one side….″
To be honest, between the cacaphony of the market, our less than perfect command of Spanish, and her accent, we couldn’t deciper the patter of the woman above. But we didn’t need to. She was swiftly reducing a pile of vegetables into slices, shreds, and fancy figures. She did it all with a plastic tool that had a couple of metal cutting blades. For 25 Mexican pesos (about US $1.16), we too could have the single tool that would do it all in the kitchen. How could we resist? Since we already have a great set of knives and other cutting tools, the plastic gizmo doesn’t get a lot of use. But we pulled it out over the weekend when we were going to make a big tossed salad with the first lettuce from our garden.
¡Corta, corta en cuadritos, corta un tomate tan delgado que solo tiene un lado!