Paletas. The perfect treat for the Mexican springtime.

A Paleta or Paleta Helada is pretty much like a Popsicle (US) or an Ice Lolly (UK). The difference is that a traditional Mexican Paleta is made with real fresh fruit juice, and sometimes chunks of real fruit in it.

While the history of ice cream is well known (probably originated in China, passed to the Middle East and brought to Europe by Marco Polo), the history of Paletas is not very well recorded, even less so in Mexico.

There is an old legend that says that the Aztec emperors had people who would bring ice from the Popocatépetl volcano and that they would eat it mixed with fruits, but none of this actually comes from a reliable written source. What we know is that during the Viceregal times, ice was regulated and monopolized by the Spanish crown, making people pay very high taxes to have access to it.

After Mexico became independent from Spain in 1810, this taxation was lifted, and there was a democratization of the ice market. More people had access to it and therefore, more people experimented with it. One of the most famous heladerías is La Michoacana, a family business that started in Tocumbo, Michoacán in the 1940s, and that popularized paletas all over Mexico.

To give you a better description, paletas are usually a rectangular frozen treat, traversed with a wood stick used as a handle. They generally measure 6 x 14 x 2 cm and they can be milk or water based.


The flavors vary widely: from the typical chocolate or vanilla, to watermelon, lime, mamey, guanábana, mango, coconut, rum with raisins, pineapple with chili powder, cucumber with chili powder, pecan, pistachio, tamarind, etc. Sometimes they are covered with chocolate or nuts, and sometimes they have layers of different flavors.


My all time favorites are the Mango with chili powder paleta,


and the Paleta de Pie de Limón, which I translate as the Key Lime Pie Popsicle.


The latter is just like having a key lime on a stick. Not very traditional, but it is sooo good! This paleta can only be found at a paletería in downtown Coyoacán. If you ever go to this picturesque part of Mexico City, please don't miss this paletería with no name in Ignacio Allende street, right between the Farmacia Coyoacán and the Burger King.

And you? Which one is your favorite?

Continuing with the nostalgy

The good old days

I was browsing at a souvenirs stall at the Xochimilco handicraft market the other day, and I surprisingly found the following gems.

Please, enjoy Mexico in the 1960's:








Xochimilco. When people could go and make a picnic by the lake.













Today it's all populated. Private houses, green houses and restaurants are all along the canals.















Pyramid of the Sun, Teotihuacan.







When people still could go all the way in front of the Quetzalcoatl temple main façace.



















Greetings from Mexico!











Hope you enjoyed them!

National cuisine might be protected

From:
Shoichet, Catherine E. "National cuisine might be protected". The News. Mexico, D.F. Number 152. February 8th, 2010. p. 4.


Mexico already has many of its monuments on Unesco's list of protected sites. Now the government is asking for international recognition for the country's cuisine.

U.N. officials will decide in April or May whether to add Mexico's food to the organization's list of intangible cultural patrimony, Mexican cuisine expert Gloria Lopez said over the weekend.

She said the methods of preparing traditional tamales and salsas should be protected as much as Mexico's recognized physical heritage, such as the pre-Hispanic city around the pyramids of Teotihuacan or Mexico City's historic center of colonial buildings and remnants of ancient structures.

"They are pure culture, pure wisdom about life", Lopez, who directs the conservatory of Mexican Gastronomic Culture, said in a presentation discussing the country's proposal to UNESCO.

The triad of corn, beans and chiles form the foundation of Mexico's food. with each region of the country adding its own ingredients and seasonings to the mix, Lopez said.

Food writer Jose Iturriaga said Mexican cuisine is a fundamental part of national identity. "We encounter it from our cradles to our graves", he said.

Traditional Mexican cuisine dates back 3,000 years to the Mayans, who based their diet on corn, beans and vegetables.

Mexico's pride in its cuisine longstanding, Lopez said, and increasingly important as globalization and pollution jeopardize traditions in many of the country's small towns.

Gourmet experiments. Traditional Mexican Candy paired with Mexican wine II

Once the sopranos finished singing the lovely traditional music, we continued our tasting. The second round of candies were a pure Mexican chocolate, a blackberry ate, and a moreliana. The sweets were paired with one of L.A. Cetto's most prized wines: the Petite Sirah. This wine is extremely complex: it's unlike any other wine I had tried before. It has a combination of so many flavors, that I would dare to call it the mole of the wines... yes, that's the impression that it gave me, very rich and flavorful.



It's no big secret the great combination that red wine and chocolate make (you can find this tasting/pairing combo at wineries around the world), but with the 100% pure, natural Mexican chocolate, the experience was quite different.



For those of you who aren't familiar with Mexican chocolate, it is worth mentioning that it doesn't contain any milk. All you have is the pure cacao sweetened with sugar. When you combine this with the Petite Sirah, the taste of cacao intensifies. The wine already has hints of chocolate, and when you add the real thing, these hints are highlighted and give a round, balanced and natural, chocolatey taste to the wine.

Another main flavor in this red wine is a Mexican berry called zarza. When it was time to try the next sweet, a very interesting reaction happened. Contrary to the chocolate, when we combined the blackberry ate with the Petit Syrah, the berry flavors from the candy blended with the ones from the wine and some other different ones came out, such as jamaica (hibiscus flower) or pepper.



The most interesting part of all this tasting was when we tried the moreliana. Morelianas are thin caramelized milk wafers. When we tried it with the red wine, a flavor came out that I had never tasted in wine before, and that is the milk... yes! Wine has milky flavors! Griselda, our sommelier, explained this to us: During the wine making, a bacteria known as the Lactic Acid Bacteria converts sugar and malic acid into lactic acid, the same process that happens with yogurt.



The moral of this experience is: Don't limit yourself, experiment. You can have wine with anything you like. You don't need a sweet dessert wine to pair your desserts. The idea of going to a wine tasting is for you to learn how to identify flavors and be able to know how to combine it with food... at least for me, I don't want to obsess over which wine is "better" or even "the best", I want to know which one goes best with my meal!

So go ahead and experiment. Next post will be about Mexican wine and what distinguishes it from others wines around the world.... stay tuned!

Gourmet experiments. Traditional Mexican Candy paired with Mexican wine I

I want to share a very interesting experience that I just had at the L.A. Cetto wine boutique here in Mexico City.

My friend Berith Tinajero, director of La Bella Época, and Pablo Torres from the L.A. Cetto wine boutique, invited me some weeks ago to a very unique event: a traditional Mexican candy tasting with wine pairing.

There is so much to tell about this interesting experience, that I'm going to divide it up into two blog posts. This first one shall be dedicated to the white wine experience.



The event was part of the "Noches de Arte y Vino" (Nights of Art and Wine) that the wine boutique usually organizes for their clientelle. The tasting was accompanied with a video telling the history of Mexican Candy, and the performance of two sopranos.

Our sommelier, Griselda Márquez Soto, gave us a very short introduction to Mexican wine. She explained all the characteristics that make our wine so different, rich and valuable (I promise to make a separate entry some day explaining all this). After that we started our tasting: 3 different candies for a white wine, and 3 different candies for a red.

The first three candies were a chicozapote ate, a meringue and a banana ate (ate is like a natural fruit jelly, originally made with quince), which were to be paired with a Chenin Blanc. The wine was young and soft, a little bit sweet with some hints of peach, pineapple... even guanábana: natural flavors from the Mexican soil.




This fruity taste went amazingly with our candy, and each one of them resulted a different taste. Combined with the chicozapote and banana ates (both very sweet candies), the acidity of the wine was highlighted, creating a very smooth and tasty balance.

When tasting the meringue, the sweetness of wine and candy blended and the acidity of the wine was neutralized. This made other flavors in the wine more distinguishable, like flavors of spices such as cinnamon and clove.


All the candies that we tried are made by the people of La Bella Época. The candies are made by following traditional recipes and are part of their gourmet product line called "De la Calle Real".

After this great first experience, the sopranos showed up and delighted the public with a set of Mexican bolero songs that helped us to reset our minds and palate before our next tasting: the red wine. I will tell you more about it in the next entry.

Mexico: not only outstandingly beautiful beaches, but now #4 cultural tourism destination in the world!

We here at More Mexico are some of the many people who day by day try to refute all the clichés surrounding Mexico and its culture. Our job is to send the message to the world that Mexico is not only a country of beautiful beaches and tequila parties, but also a serious cultural destination with amazing historic buildings and archaeological sites full of art, history and beauty.

It makes us very happy to read that Mexico has been rated #4 cultural tourism destination in the world by the Tourism Heritage and Sustainable Development Network of Spain (Ibertur)!

Click here for the original INAH (National Institute of Anthropolgy and History) article -the translation is not very good but this was the only article I found in English-. Y aquí para leerlo en español.