Mexico City Monday featuring San Juan Market

Every couple of months Saturday afternoon comidas at my mom´s feature really yummy food: tuna sashimi, fresh fish ceviche, chewy rough country bread with Spanish Manchego cheese and olive oil, grilled langoustines, perfect manila mangoes and soft mamey. Yummmmm….

While the meal doesn´t sound exactly Mexican the San Juan market experience certainly is! I have gone to the market on Saturdays for a decade now. My grandma “Abu”, my mom, my sister and I would pile into the car and take the tip to the crowded confusing streets of Historical Downtown Mexico City. We would always get lost (and incredibly still do) but finally after a lot of going around in circles we would park the car and enter foodies paradise!

Latley Abu hasn´t been to San Juan with us and Phia and Lu haven´t been fed mini mangoes and tostadas dipped in cream and cheese by the vendors yet but the San Juan´s Mexican foodie experience still means:

-Luis, the nicest most interesting philosopher-cheese merchant ever. While you try to choose among the cheeses and cold cuts from around the world Luis always asks what type of cheese you like and while you attentively listen to his very valuable lessons about people and life he magically produces a delicious “tapa” of sliced country bread with good olive oil a chunk of the cheese you mentioned along with a small plastic cup of wine. He then offers you dessert, bread with thickly spread mascarpone and honey along with a tiny cup of Espresso coffee. The best part is that he offers all this bounty BEFORE he knows if you are buying a 10 dollar kilo of Mexican Canasta cheese or a 400 dollar kilo Spanish Serrano ham.

Luis Roberto and his cheeses. Image by ebarrera

-Stalls that specialize in “gusanos de maguey” maguey plant worms, ants’ eggs and acociles, river worms eaten alive! In tacos of course.

-The fishmonger “Ricardo” warmly greets us by name (thanks to Abu who talked to everyone who could answer back). While we chat to Ricardo about his family he busily prepares free! samples San Juan style (small disposable plates of tuna and dordado sashimi with soy, sesame, lime dipping sauce or crab legs and shrimp with cocktail sauce). While we wait for our order Ricardo shares his secret for the yummy dipping sauce (Gram Masala spice that a costumer brought him from India).

-Four types of mangos, rambutan, jicama, pommengranede and papayas sitting side by side with commonplace bananas, apples and oranges, all carefully arranged to look like a beautiful still life.

Still life

-The smiling meat vendor who cheerfully explain that the miles and miles of white tripe are used to wrap the machitos (sheep’s testicle´s!!!!)

Photos are by ebarrera, but I promise to take my camera (and Lu) along on the next trip. By then she will probably be eating mango!

Mexico Monday featuering Jacaranda Trees

Jacaranda flowers carpeting the streets (of Buenos Aires in this image)

Image by Buenos Aires Photographer 

I am not a winter person: I hate wearing 10 layers in the morning and then carrying them around all day (in Mexico City a freezing early morning that turns into a warm afternoon is pretty common) , I get depressed when  apples, pears and  tejocotes replace mangos, litchis, peaches and plums and the sun setting at 6 makes me want to be in bed by 6.30. When Lu was born in the coldest November in hundreds of years the list of why winter is yucky only got longer: dry throat caused by the heater being turned on all day long, tiny fingers and toes hidden by layers and layers of clothing, quick nervous baby baths…

So this year when I saw the first Jacaranda trees blooming I was thrilled.  Jacaranda  are beautiful flowering  trees that fill that turn the city a magical blue lilac purple  color every spring. Every street in México City seems to have a Jacaranda trees and there are neighborhoods and parks that have them by the dozens. In March the skyline seems to turn purple and in April the color seems to slowly descend  to the ground as Jacaranda trees drop their flowers by the hundreds, carpeting roads, sidewalks and yards.  

Jacaranda Trees making Chapultepec Park magical

 

In my childhood Jacaranda trees meant making Jacaranda “soup” in my grandmother’s yard with my sister and cousins. Jacaranda flowers, as far as I know, are not edible but their do have white milky nectar that drips out of the flowers end when you squeeze it lightly between your fingers. So when the Jacaranda trees carpeted my grandmother yard we would gather the purple blossoms and using any small cup or jar we would “milk” the blossoms making doll food (this would have been the best “fairy food” but fairies where not fashionable in the 80´s) 

The milky flowers

Image by Good Acres Adventures in Flora and Fauna Photography

But Jacaranda trees also meant sweet  mangoes for dessert, wearing sandals and shorts sleeves (you never wear shorts in the city, no matter how warm it gets), weekends under the sprinkler , spring break and free tostadas and popsicles at school on Children´s Day (April 30).    

This year, with Lu being the most important par4t of our lives, the childhood “Jacaranda soup” past has taken a whole new meaning: a whole lot of today filled with  long, lazy mornings of  Lu wearing pretty dresses and happily kicking away while staring at the brightly colored flowers swaying in the breeze, while her mommy reads and kisses her toes. But also the dream of a tomorrow in which I will get to teach my baby girl the secret recipe for “Jacaranda soup”.

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