Adventures in Cuisine

Before I left the UK, more than one person suggested to me, with varying degrees of malicious glee, that I might find Mexican food rather too hot to handle, having something of a hypersensitivity to things like chillies. A foreboding which, I must admit, I shared.

My first real encounter with Mexican cuisine came on the second Tuesday I was here, which was also the first time I met David, my Boss Proper, he having been in Nairobi at an Important Meeting. He’s very funny, sharp and often self-deprecating, full of strong opinions and interesting stories. I don't always find him easy to read, but I like him a lot.

So this Tuesday the whole Communications team went out for a meal en masse in honour of my arrival and the birthday of one of the team, up to El Molino de las Flores, which was once a mill and is now a national park – crumbling colonial buildings and handfuls of restaurants, where hordes of escapees from Mexico City apparently come at weekends.

I was saved from the agonies of choice by Mike, who ordered a load of food for me to try whether I liked it or not. I recommend this method of dealing with menus. First up was some tasters of mole, which is a kind of soupy sauce apparently painstakingly prepared with millions of ingredients, with as many recipes as there are cooks. Mole verde was rather hot, and I did begin to have misgivings, but it was followed by mole rojo, which was also rather hot, but exciting because it is savoury yet made with chocolate, and quite strangely chocolaty and tasty.

It has been suggested to me that Mexican food basically consists of lots of things with different names that are all in fact all tortillas with stuff on, and I can’t really refute that, as all kinds of delicious tortilla-esque things arrived in a neverending stream at our table. Tlacoyos, my new favourite food, are a kind of maize tortilla in the shape of a pitta bread, with refried beans inside (or other things), and on top onions and slices of cactus and cheese and a herb that I suspect is coriander but I’m rubbish at herbs – and man they are so good! I also just had to try a quesadilla (tortilla with stuff in) with huitlacoche, also known as maize smut and a bit of a local delicacy. People thought they would put me off by telling me it’s a fungus that grows on stored maize, and with its murky black colour, but as if I wasn’t going to be excited by the opportunity to eat smut… and very tasty it was too.

No Mexican meal is complete without some form of cheese, preferably fried, so I had a quesadilla with cheese too, and tried some of Mike’s con flors (fried squash flowers, delicious, and both pleasing and peculiar to be eating flowers), and politely declined my colleagues’ offers to try their quesadillas with sheep’s brains. The best thing about all this was that it’s customary to add the hot sauce yourself from a dish on the table, so I could be – very – sparing. I’m planning to build up my tolerance slowly…

All of these delicacies were washed down with bottles of guava juice and tamarind juice in exciting colours (baby pink, dubious brown) – though this being Mexico there is more sugar than fruit involved…

It is also traditional for a motley crew from the centre to go out for dinner on Tuesday evenings, which I have been doing religiously in an attempt to be friendly and get to know people. So obviously I had no choice but to go out for dinner twice in one day… to an Italian restaurant that does decent pizzas and ‘white coffee’, warm tequila in espresso cups (they’re not licensed to sell spirits)!

My other Tuesday night excursions so far have included:
- a Japenese Sushi restaurant, with a distinct Mexican twist. My meal included – of course – fried cheese.
- a superb Italian restaurant owned by one of Mike’s wife’s brothers/cousins, with Mike’s son’s art on the walls – it’s that kind of town. My food was amazing, and I think every course did involve cheese – cheesy herby bread, caprese salad, the best steak I’ve ever eaten (not that I’m exactly a connoisseur) topped with cheese and tomatoes and stuff. I could even have had cheesecake for dessert, but we were all too full. Periodically the lights went out; I thought this was a perfect murder mystery scenario and someone should be found dead when they came back on again, but everyone else seemed to think this was a bit weird…
- a Mexican restaurant, unofficially ‘The Hole in the Wall’ that has apparently had the same menu for at least 17 years. Shockingly, my meal contained no cheese, though they do do a mean starter: a dish of melted cheese, with optionally a couple of mushrooms or bits of bacon or whatever floating in it…

Did I mention that Mexicans like cheese?