Tag Archives: food

Mexico, summer 2011

We spent 2 excellent weeks in Mexico visiting my family.  With the new member of the family in tow we didn’t do a lot of tourism so I do not have that many “publishable” pictures this time, but below you can find some.

The rest, as usual, in the set.

Jícamas, 3 kinds of mangoes, prickly pears, mameyes, guavas

Lots of fruits you cannot find in Finland: jícamas, 3 kinds of mangoes, prickly pears, mameyes, guavas

Mole de olla

My mom's wonderful mole de olla. I've had it in restaurants and it isn't nearly as good.

México, U-17 World Champion

Mexico won the U-17 world football championship while we were there and the whole country celebrated.

Tuna / Prickly pear

How to peel a prickly pear. Stuff that grows wild in Mexico costs 7€/kilo here and doesn't taste as good.

Pancita

Pancita, cow's stomach soup. Might sound disgusting, but it's great for hangovers.

Mexican breakfast

A healthy hotel Mexican breakfast. No wonder we can stand without having lunch until 3 or 4 p.m. after one of these.

Beach in Ixtapa

Beach in Ixtapa, Guerrero, in the Pacific coast.

View from my hotel room

View from our hotel room in Ixtapa

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Globalization is…

Tacos al pastor
Eating a taco based on a Lebanese recipe in a taquería run by the descendants of Japanese immigrants to Mexico.  You would only notice they’re Japanese-Mexican for the plea to aid the victims of the Japanese earthquake and the fact that their grilled onions are served in soy sauce.

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Finnish-Mexican fusion cuisine part III

My friends at Café de Nopal have been offering birria tacos (goat Jalisco style) with broth for some time now, so I decided to try to prepare reindeer the same way.  The result was excellent, probably one of the best attempts at Finnish-Mexican fusion I’ve gone for.

Reindeer birria, tacos & broth
Birria de reno, consomé, pico de gallo & arroz a la mexicana

Ingredients (serves 4)

  • 16 tortillas
  • 1 kg of reindeer meat without bone (luuton sisäpaisti)
  • 2 cloves of garlic
  • 6 dried Chile de árbol chillies (without seeds, sliced and diced)
  • 1 dried chile ancho (without seeds, sliced and diced)
  • 2 teaspoons of cumin
  • 4 tomatoes (sliced and diced)
  • ½ onion (sliced and diced)
  • salt
  • Cooking oil
  • Coriander
  • Mexican salsa roja or taquera
  • Green lemons/limes

Warm the oil and fry the garlic, onion and chillies until they’re soft.  Add half a litre of water and the cumin.  Let boil a few minutes.  Blend this mix and then sift it.  Return the sauce to the fire and add4 litres of water.  Cut the meat in small cubes and add it together with the tomato.  Leave cooking for 3-4 hours, add more water if necessary.  Serve the broth separately from the meat.  Warm the tortillas.  Offer some sliced and diced onion with coriander and lemons on the side for people to put together their own tacos.  Serve with Mexican rice and pico de gallo on the side.

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Proper Mexican food restaurants worldwide

As you probably know if you read this blog, one of my passions is food, especially of the Mexican kind. Unfortunately, most of the Mexican food you find outside of North America is not really Mexican, so I make a point of testing Mexican restaurants when I’m traveling to make sure they are more Mex-Mex than Tex-Mex so that I can recommend them to friends.

You can find an abridged list after the map below (they’re listed by how far away they’re from Finland, with the first being the farthest out).

  1. Viva México, Singapore, Singapore. Pretty decent decor. Indian & Pakistani staff wearing Mexican dress. Some of the items in the menu are Tex-Mex as that’s what people know so far away from the land of nopales, but the chef is from Oaxaca so he can recommend what to eat. I had caldo tlalpeño and chiles en nogada when I was there and they were very good (photos). From what I hear, they have to import a lot of the foodstuffs, even the rice (kinda funny as it’s in Asia).
  2. Fonda de la Madrugada, Tokyo, Japan. A restaurant in a huge basement, descending those steps transports you from Harajuku to an Hacienda. Mexican movies shown in a corner. The chef was Mexican, even if the owners weren’t. The staff speaks Spanish and Japanese (few things cuter than a Japanese girl in a huipil), but no English. While it’s not the cheapest place to eat out, the food was absolutely worth it: we had guacamole, caldo tlalpeño, enchiladas and even carnitas a la michoacana (photos).
  3. El Mexicano, Shanghai, China. Small place slightly out of town. Mexican owners. The pollo en salsa verde was not great, but the tacos al pastor more than made for it (photos).
  4. La Palapa, New York, USA. A restaurant that wouldn’t be out of place in Coyoacán, even if the portions are American-sized. Their quesadillas were to die for (photos)
  5. Tehuitzingo Deli & Grocer, New York, USA. The best taquería I’ve been to outside of Mexico City (no wonder as it’s smack in the middle of Puebla York). Once you get inside past the grocery part of the locale, you will reach a small corner of heaven in Hell’s Kitchen. Tacos de lengua, pastor, chicharrón or suadero, sopes, quesadillas de flor de calabaza… all washed down with a Pacífico (photos).
  6. Rosa Mexicano, New York, USA. You realise the Mexican food market in NY has matured as they’ve gone from Tex-Mex to Mex-Mex to haute cuisine Mex. A selection of tequilas that will leave a connoisseur drooling, their arrachera & shrimps plate was very good and worth the price tag (photos).
  7. Barriga Llena, Madrid, Spain. Part of a mature Mexican-owned chain in Spain, the food is close enough to its origins and the sense of humour is a breathe of fresh air.
  8. Ándele, Barcelona, Spain. I used to visit Barcelona every year for work, and I always tried to visit this small place. The tacos are quite OK and they also sell Mexican foodstuffs and tequilas (indispensable if you live far away like me).
  9. Anahuacalli, Paris, France. This is the only one I haven’t visited of the restaurants in this list, but everybody I know and trust who has eaten here recommends it. The founder has lived in France for 40 years.
  10. Mestizo, London, UK. Mexican-owned as well. Also a little bit pricey, but the food was excellent. We had ceviche, tacos al pastor, pato en mole con ciruela, tamales, pozole, flan & crepas and it was all good (photos).
  11. Taquería La Neta, Stockholm, Sweden. For a while the closest source for proper Mexican food, this taquería was opened in 2009. Their menu is simple: tacos and their relatives, but the results are excellent as they have their own tortilla-making machine (photos). Mexican-owned.
  12. Café de Nopal, Helsinki, Finland. Recently opened. I just wrote a review about the place. They offer a “comida corrida” lunch every weekday with a choice of two/three main courses and brunch on weekends (photos). Mexican-owned.
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Authentic Mexican restaurant in Finland: Café de Nopal

Café de Nopal, the only authentic Mexican restaurant in Finland

When a Mexican moves abroad, one of the first things he or she misses is the food (obvious if you’ve read this blog for a while or know me personally). The Mexican food supply in Finland is very limited, so obviously many of us have had the idea to open a proper restaurant here where we could show our Finnish brothers what and why we long for: real tacos, sopes, tortas and other far-away delicacies.

Nobody had had the guts (and the knowledge) to do so until now.  A couple of friends opened Café de Nopal in Lönnrotinkatu 9 a few days ago and my prayers have been answered ;) . In a few days I’ve already had avocado soup, lentil soup, gringas de pastor, tacos dorados, chile relleno, flan, pan de elote and Chiapas coffee. The taste was good enough to remind me of Mom. I guess I’ll continue visiting often.

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Tunas de 140 pesos el kilo

Mientras en México se preocupan por que no exportamos ni siquiera nopales y tunas que crecen de a gratis en el campo, me encontré los “higos de cactus” (como los llaman acá) arriba de 140 pesos por kilo como se ve en la foto.

Tunas a más de 140 pesos el kilo

¿Cuándo nos vamos a dar cuenta que hay más mercados que el estadounidense en este mundo para conquistar, y más productos que el petróleo y la maquila con los cuales hacer dinero?

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Finnish-Mexican fusion cuisine, part II

In many cultures it is common to take advantage of all parts of an animal, not only the average meat.  As I had been missing beef tongue tacos (a Mexican delicacy) for some time, I decided to try the same with reindeer when I found it sold in my local supermarket.  The taste was very good, if a little gamy.

Tacos de lengua de reno

Salad, rice, reindeer tongue taco

Ingredients (serves 2)

  • 500 g of reindeer tongue (2-3 tongues)
  • 1 full head of garlic
  • 1 white onion
  • Couple of stems and leaves of hierba buena (or spearmint)
  • Couple of stems of dill (or dried dill where available)

Peel the garlic. Cut the onion in 4 parts. Add the hierba buena, dill, and the tongues and boil everything in water for 1.5 hours. Peel the tongues and cut in small cubes.

Serve with warm tortillas.  Salad and rice as good optional sides.  Don’t forget a good sauce (a taco without sauce is a sad taco), we had some salsa taquera but I’m sure some pico de gallo would also work great.

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Tacos in Stockholm

Tacos al pastor & de bistec in Stockholm

I had heard that a proper Mexican taquería had opened in Stockholm recently, and this week I had the chance to visit.  As in any such places back in the land of nopales and chilangos, they don’t serve any of the elaborate traditional dishes like mole and such (which doesn’t make their food any less good), focusing on the humble taco in its varieties.  They prepare bistec, pastor and a variety of quesadillas, as you can see in their menu and they even have a tortilla making machine.

The reviews have been very positive, and I’m glad as the food is great and the real deal.  I wish them well.

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Finnish-Mexican fusion cuisine

What started as an emergency procedure during my student years has become a more common practice, and every once in a while I like combining Finnish ingredients with Mexican spices to produce something unique.  Two of my more celebrated recipes are below, I hope you like them.

Some of the spices needed can be bought in Meksikolainen.fi or Mexgrocer.co.uk.  I just bring them from Mexico when I’m there ;)

Salmón Pibil

Salmón pibil: After
Ingredients (serves 2-3)

  • 1/2 bar of achiote paste
  • 250 ml orange juice (pressed or otherwise)
  • 1 small (100 g) tin of chipotle chillies
  • 1/2 small pineapple or 1 orange
  • 1/2 red onion
  • 500g of salmon fillet

Grate the achiote and dissolve in orange juice until you get a bright orange liquid.  Put salmon in a flat oven-safe recipient and add achiote marinade.  Add the chillies (be sure to rub them with the salmon).  Cut the onion in half rings and add.  Cut the pineapple/orange in slices and decorate salmon with it.Leave in oven at 170 °C for 1-1.5 hour until ready.  It should be crisp but with enough liquid.

Mole nórdico con reno / Manchamanteles negro con reno

(we’re still debating the name of this one)

Manchamanteles negro de reno

Ingredients (serves 3)

Blend everything but the meat together.  Cook sauce and elk together slowly with a little of added water to give even more time for the flavours to ripen in the fire.  Should be ready in 45 minutes to an hour.

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Finnish berries

One thing that I couldn’t quite understand before I moved to Finland was the sheer amount of berries in these parts.  You can pick them from the forests, from the hills and sometimes from the sides of the roads, and depending on the time of summer you will see different ones available.

The funniest thing about it all is that I’ve learned their names in Finnish, so I needed to check in Wikipedia what were their Spanish names and lo and behold, most of them were fruits I already knew, but didn’t know what their appearance was.  Some examples below:

Grosellas

Grosella = Redcurrant = Punaviinimarja/Punaherukka

Frambuesas

Frambuesa = Raspberry = Vadelma

Blueberries

Mora azul= Blueberry = Mustikka

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