One of the sublime pleasures of living in Mexico is being able to savor her homemade chocolate. Chocolate, the word, comes from the Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs. In its original tongue, it is spelled Xocolatl, pronounced show-koh-lah-tel. In reality, the t and the l in the final syllable are slammed together, but for our purposes, this transliteration will do. T
To keep Mexico with me while I am in the USA, I like to prepare hot chocolate with brewed coffee — a mix of about 1/4 to 1/3 hot chocolate and the rest coffee that, of course, I bring back from Oaxaca’s Mixteca Alta or from the Chiapas highlands. Chiapas is known for her coffee plantations and her chocolate beans, which are exported all over Mexico and sometimes beyond. The Spanish brought coffee beans to Mexico in the 1700’s and started cultivating it in Veracruz, likely with slaves from Africa who also worked the sugar cane fields.
Every family all over the country has their own recipe for making chocolate. Usual ingredients are vanilla, cinnamon, sugar or panela. Maybe one family might add a bit of chile for throat tickler. Sometimes, they will add almonds, too. But, the primary ingredients are toasted cacao beans, native to Mexico and used as money or barter in pre-Hispanic times. The chocolate maker will buy the raw cacao beans in the market, take them home and toast them on the comal over an open fire, stirring with a brush so they toast evenly. Then, she will take all of these ingredients to the molina in the proportions preferred by each family.
Ibarra and Abuelita and Mayordomo brands just don’t do it, but if you are hard-pressed to find Mexican chocolate and these are the only available, then go for it. Your local Mexican market might have other options.
The chocolate I’m using today was made in Xochistlahuaca, Guerrero. I bought it from the family who prepared a delicious homemade lunch for our group during our visit to Tejadoras Flores de la Llanura weaving cooperative. What I love about this chocolate is that it has very little (or no) sugar. Each piece of chocolate, formed like an oblong ball or bola, is wrapped in a hierba buena leaf. The presentation is beautiful. The chocolate delicious. I add sugar to taste.
Of course, chocolate is super healthy, with anti-inflammatory properties, especially good for those of us as we age, and it is excellent as a cup of hot chocolate on its own. Remember: In Mexico, we drink hot chocolate with water, never adding milk! In Oaxaca, we dunk a concha into hot chocolate for breakfast or for a pre-bedtime snack.
Posted onMonday, October 30, 2023|Comments Off on Day of the Dead in Teotitlan del Valle: Altars + Artisans
While we spent most of the day in Teotitlan del Valle learning about the Day of the Dead traditions here, we started out in Santa Maria El Tule at the home studio of flying shuttle loom weaver Alfredo who uses naturally dyed threads to create clothing — blouses and shawls. Oaxaca Cultural Navigator tour partner Elsa Sanchez Diaz, a natural dye master, dyes many of the threads that Alfredo uses in his work. She explained the different fibers and colors to our group of fourteen travelers on a beautiful Oaxaca morning filled with clear air and sunshine!
Alfredo + ElsaAgave fiber for weavingNative coyuchi cottonNatural dyes on Oaxaca silk
Alfredo also makes tablecloths, napkins, table runners, dish towels, and bedspreads. For these, he uses natural white manta cloth of fine quality, however the colorful threads incorporated in the weaving are synthetic dyes, much more economical and will withstand years of machine washing. As we know, stains are inevitable and using natural dyes in home goods is impractical!
Natural dyesPan de MuertosAna’s workCathy models indigo dyed blouse with hand crocheted details
Alfredo does not practice a formal religion though he was raised Catholic. He tells us that Day of the Dead is not a religious holiday but a cultural one, hearkening back to the pre-Hispanic ancestors. Building an altar is his way of honoring his grandmothers and grandfathers who taught him to weave. He works on several looms that he inherited from his grandfather that are more than ninety years old. They have been repaired repeatedly and the wood frames are pocked with insect holes that accumulated over the years. Nothing here is discarded and age in whatever form — human or inanimate — is revered.
Above video features all the different fibers and dyes that Alfredo uses in his studio. His partner Ana is a book artist who also makes boxes covered in handmade paper and fabric. She is a talent in her own right!
The difuntos carry new basketsSurprise visitorsBeginning to create the altar to honor the deceased
We made three more stops during the day. First to Galeria Fe y Lola to smell and feel the emotional connection with the altar, learning about the importance of celebrating in the home. We were welcomed with the perfume of copal incense, candlelight, and marigold flowers — all important for guiding the spirits of deceased loved ones back home for this twenty-four hour period when they return from the underworld to visit us.
Shopping for sugar cane for the altar
The difuntos enter our world through the sugar cane arches flanking the altar and this portal is necessary to ensure an easy passage. Almost everyone here will have their altars complete by November 1, just in time for the spirits to return at three o’clock in the afternoon. They will stay with us until November 2, consuming the ceremonial foods we have put on the altar for them. At three o’clock on November 2, the church bells will ring and announce the time for the difuntos to return to their resting places in the cemetery. We accompany them, leading the way with copal, to ease them back to the underworld, offering prayers for a smooth passage and a promise that we will see them next year.
Copal incenseFruit stallsMural, Teotitlan del Vallean abundance of Pan de Muerto
For the children who have died before their time, families build small altars and give special prayers on November 1, too. In the city of Oaxaca, there will be comparsas (processions) of parents and children to give special tribute to the young ones who have passed.
Plenty of fruit for altars and gravesNew baskets for altarsSugar skullsTeotitlan del Valle market filled with flowers and more
The offerings on the altars in Teotitlan del Valle include chocolate, bread, and candles. Other foods can include those favored by the deceased: beer, mezcal, coffee, coca cola, tortillas, tamales stuffed with mole amarillo (a village tradition). There will always be peanuts and pecans, eaten here long before the Spanish arrived.
Anabel crushes cochinealFrothing hot chocolateEstela makes chocolateThe most delicious memelas for lunch
After a weaving and natural dyeing demonstration, we went to lunch where nutritionist Joanna prepared a meal of memelas topped with bean paste, Oaxaca cheese, and seasoned pork cubes. We were offered toppings of guacamole, roasted tomatoes, and pickled onions. To wash it all down, what else but hibiscus fruit water (agua de jamaica).
A piece de resistance of the afternoon was a demonstration of chocolate making, followed by a cup of steaming hot chocolate and pan de muerto (a Day of the Dead egg bread), which we dunk into the deliciousness.
Cathy and Mark enjoy hot chocolate Oaxaca style made with water
Our last stop before returning to the city was a visit to Estela and Edith who weave beautiful small tapestries colored with natural dyes that they make into totes and handbags, trimmed with leather straps. It takes about two weeks to make a bag and the craftsmanship is superb. Everyone on the tour got a chance to make a pompom to adorn purse, hair, or use as a hatband, a special gift from the artisans.
Pat and Lorraine fell in love with this rug woven and dyed by Lola Santiago Arrellanas
On Wednesday, November 1, we will spend the day in San Pablo Villa de Mitla, starting off at the cemetery with Don Arturo where his family is buried.
An offering of nuts and fruitLola toasts cacao beans on the comal for chocolate
Everyone knows Oaxaca chocolate is sublime. The chocolate at Mama Pacha Chocolate Shop is sublimest. I must use the superlative here for many reasons: Unparalleled quality cacao beans to start with, the chocolate is small batch roasted, tempered for hours, resulting in a smooth as silk finish. Different from the sugary, grainy chocolate we use in the villages for mole and hot chocolate. This is EATING chocolate.
Last night, Chef Mario Ruben Ramirez Lopez treated twelve of us to an over-the-top four-course chocolate dinner hosted by Antonio Michelena, founder of Mama Pacha. This was a Pop-Up. A one-night stand. Over in three hours. From appetizer to dessert, the tastes were sensational. Toño provided the chocolate. Mario provided the culinary adventure.
Mario, me and Toño at Mama Pacha Chocolate Shop
Mario is from Santiago Juxtlahuaca in Oaxaca’s Mixteca region. Cooking is in his blood and honed in Oaxaca city. He is building a name for himself and all accolades are deserved. Keep your eyes open for the next pop-up opportunity to eat what he creates.
This night, our first course was a chocolate tetela. This is a pancake made with masa (corn meal). In our case, the masa was infused with chocolate and the pancake filled with minced beef. The topping was startling: a blood-red beet and white chocolate molé, the beets and chocolate puréed into a flavorful paste that could stand on its own. The dish was adorned with arugula and broccoli flowers.
Mario told us he named this dish Yalitza after the Mixtec actress who starred in the film Roma. The color of the molé is like Hollywood, but it tastes like the Mixtec people, he said.
Okay. What’s next? A soup course poured from a jicara bowl — Chile Atolé Con Chocolate. Traditional atolé is a pre-Hispanic beverage of toasted corn meal and cacao, and sweetened. Mario adapted this to become a savory broth, adding chile pasilla and pouring it steaming hot over a nest of pickled red cabbage and organic corn kernels. Yummy. It had started to rain by then, that early evening Oaxaca summer downpour that turns humidity to fresh air. A chill entered the small workshop space given over to dining room. At that moment, the soup was perfect.
Bellies filling. Pour another glass of red wine. Pass the basket of fresh made sourdough bread from Pan Con Madre. Take a breather. Connect with our table-mates: a U.S. caterer/cook, a Columbian chef, a linguist, a jewelry maker, a food culture guide, a James Beard finalist cookbook writer, visitors from Australia and Ecuador.
From an infinitesimal corner of the space emerges plates of Molé Coloradito with chile pasilla from San Pablo Villa de Mitla. Oaxaca’s Valles Centrales (central valleys) are the source material for our food. Corn, for example, was first hybridized here over 8,000 years ago. The molé puddled on the plate, an underskirt for Oaxaca polenta made with cacao butter and mezcal, topped with whole shrimp and verdolagas –aka purslane.
Those are chocolate bits on top — 90% cacao!
The ultimate dessert was, of course, a molten Mama Pacha chocolate brownie, topped with quesillo cheese ice cream with fresh mango sauce. The chocolate bits on top were crunchy, sending me to the moon.
Need I say more?
Oh, other than this extraordinary meal was priced at 550 pesos per person, including wine. It’s no wonder why so many visitors are flocking to Oaxaca.
The cuisine here has always been exceptional, delicious, noteworthy and a full-mouth sensation — course after course, from humble street food, to worthy comedors, to elegant dining rooms. Traditional food is evolving into experimentation — taking the basic ingredients we know and love here and giving us one more surprise.
For the life of me, I could not find a buttercream frosting recipe that uses real, homemade Oaxaca chocolate, the kind made here in the village. Oaxaca chocolate is a dietary mainstay. The cacao beans are roasted at home and then taken to the molino (mill) to grind along with cinnamon, cane sugar, vanilla bean, almonds and perhaps chiles. Each family has their own recipe handed down by the abuelas.
During the grinding, it comes out of the mill as a warm, thick paste and is poured into pans where it solidifies, then cut into two-inch or three-inch cubes large enough to make a pot of hot chocolate (with water, of course) — an early morning and late evening staple, perfect for dipping conchas.
I decided to adapt chocolate buttercream frosting recipes I found online. Most of them call for dark semi-sweet chocolate, or cocoa powder, or chocolate chips. None included Oaxaca chocolate. I know from years of being in the kitchen that it is the cacao butter in chocolate that makes it creamy. With Oaxaca drinking chocolate, you taste the sugar granules. So, I decided to combine four cubes (about 8 ounces) of traditional Oaxaca chocolate with about four ounces of Oaxaca-made Mama Pacha artesanal chocolate for eating — the amount I had on hand. (Here’s how to buy Mama Pacha.)
Swirls of Oaxaca chocolate buttercream frosting
Making a buttercream frosting is easy. It takes about ten minutes once the chocolate is melted. You just need a hand-mixer, a spatula, a spoon, a Pyrex measuring cup and a mixing bowl. The secret is to melt all the chocolate, but cool it to the touch before adding it to the creamed butter. If the chocolate is too hot, the butter will melt and your frosting will be ruined.
Ready for chocolate cake and my homemade pumpkin pie with cornmeal crust
How to Melt the Chocolate: put all the chocolate in a 2-4 cup Pyrex measuring cup. Microwave the chocolate in 30-second increments, stirring and cooling for several minutes between each 30-second zap. The chocolate should be combined, soft and paste-like. Put a finger deep into the center to be sure the mixture is not hot.
Ingredients:
8 ounces of cubed Oaxaca chocolate
3-4 ounces of artisanal 70% cacao semi-sweet chocolate
2-1/2 cups of powdered sugar (azucar glace´)
2 sticks of unsalted butter, room temperature
2 T. almond milk, plain or vanilla flavored
1/4 t. pure vanilla extract
dash of salt (omit salt if using salted butter)
Directions:
Melt chocolate as described above.
Put butter into medium size mixing bowl. Cream with mixer until smooth and fluffy. Color should be a creamy beige.
Add cooled chocolate and continue to combine into creamed butter with electric mixer.
Add 1/2 the amount of powdered sugar and stir into the chocolate butter mix at lowest speed of hand mixer. Add remaining powdered sugar. Scrape sides of bowl until all is mixed.
Add vanilla extract and almond milk. Mix in thoroughly.
Chill for a few minutes.
Will frost an 8-10″ layer cake or 12-18 cupcakes.
The Cake:
In Oaxaca we have a Mexican supermarket called Chedraui. The best one is in Colonia Reforma. It has a complete selection of imported products, too, including those that are gluten-free. I am experimenting with a gluten-free and milk-free diet, so I did buy a Betty Crocker gluten free chocolate cake mix and substituted almond milk for cow milk. It turned out to be delicious.
My Zapotec friends raved that this was the best frosting they ever had, too! I confess it doesn’t look like much. Not smooth as silk (because of the granulated sugar). But it is delicious.
My Australian friend Tracey Ponting came back through Oaxaca this week on her way from San Cristobal de las Casas to Distrito Federal and on to England to visit her parents. Tracey and I met on the bus to San Cris in January when we stayed at the same posada. From there we traveled together to Palenque. I convinced her to spend a couple of days in Teotitlan del Valle for rest and relaxation before starting the next leg of her journey. In April she will begin a seven-week pilgrimage on the Camino Frances part of the Camino Santiago de Compostela in Spain before going back to Perth.
What better way to relax than to settle in at Las Granadas Bed and Breakfast and get instruction from some of the best cooks in the village, the magic trio of Josefina, Magdalena and Eloisa? Tracey asked for Oaxacan Mole Rojo, which is her favorite of Oaxaca’s seven moles. I participated with her and I’m happy to share this incredible recipe (receta) with you!
Josefina Ruiz Vazquez’ Family Recipe for Mole Rojo
75 grams (2.6 ounces) ancho chiles
26 grams (0.91 ounces) pasilla chiles
55 grams (2 ounces) guajillo chiles
50 grams (1.75 ounces) sesame seeds
75 grams (2.6 ounces) raisins
25 grams (.88 ounces) almonds
4 to 5 medium sized fresh red tomatoes
150 grams (5.25 ounces) tomatillos
100 grams (3.5 ounces) cooking chocolate, semi-sweet (preferably Oaxacan chocolate, which includes cinnamon, almonds, sugar)
6 cloves
2 pieces of dried ginger
6 black peppercorns
5 grams (0.18 ounces) cinnamon sticks
1 small onion, halved
20 grams (.70 ounces) garlic (or one small head)
1 T. dried thyme (can use 2 T. fresh)
1 T. fresh oregano
2 slices toasted white or wheat bread or 1 toasted medium dinner roll
1/2 C. olive oil
4-6 chicken thighs and legs
Toast the chiles over high heat on the comal, over a gas flame or in a shallow frying pan until charred and soft. Remove seeds and stem. De-vein. Take about 1/8-1/4 teaspoon of the chile seeds and toast them. Set chiles and seeds aside in a bowl.
On the comal, toast together the onion, garlic (with peel), sesame seeds, raisins and almonds until browned. Add the herbs and spices to this mix. Stir and toast.
Cook the tomatoes and tomatillos together in 1 C. water for 10 minutes. Reserve liquid.
Peel the garlic after it is toasted.
Soak the chiles in the tomato water until soft.
On the metate (or in a machine) combine the raisins, thyme, oregano, cloves, cinnamon, peppers, raisins. Once the paste is fine and all the ingredients are indistinguishable, add all the roasted sesame seeds. Continue mashing until seeds are pulverized into paste. You are looking for the consistency of clay. Remove paste to a small bowl.
In a 6 quart pot, bring 4 cups of water to a boil with 1 T. salt, 3 cloves of garlic and 1/2 onion. Add the raw chicken parts. Bring water to a simmer, cover and cook for 30-45 minutes until chicken is tender. (Do not use breast meat, warns Josefina. It does not have enough flavor. You can substitute turkey, but it will take 1 to 1-1/2 hours to cook.) When finished cooking, remove chicken and reserve stock.
Add onions, chile and garlic to the metate and crush.
Grind bread into a fine crumb.
Put olive oil into a large sautee pan or casserole over medium heat. Add 1/2 C. of mashed tomatoes and mole paste to oil. Sautee the paste for 2 minutes until oil is absorbed. Strain the chile juice into the tomatoes and add this to the cooking paste.
At this point, you can keep the past for 2 months in the refrigerator, but if you add all the tomatoes as follows, you will need to use immediately.
Add a third of the mashed tomatoes and 2 C. of the chicken stock to the mole paste. Continue adding the tomatoes in thirds, stirring until liquid is reduced.
Break the chocolate into pieces and add to the casserole. Stir until dissolved. (Magdalena roasts her own cacao beans and makes her own chocolate.)
Add 1/2 the breadcrumbs, stir and correct for thickness. The mixture should be like a very thick sauce that sticks to a wooden spoon.
Correct the seasonings. Taste. You may need to add a little more salt, more chocolate or a tad of sugar according to taste.
Toast 3 avocado leaves and add them to the casserole and stir. If needed, add the remaining breadcrumbs.
Serve with rice, tortillas and steamed fresh vegetables such as choyote squash, carrots, green beans, broccoli and cauliflower.
Serves 4-6.
Josefina attributes this recipe to her grandmother Rufina Gabriel and her mother Marina Vasquez Gabriel. She knows her grandmother learned it from her mother and the mothers before her. It is made completely by hand using the stone metate and mano de metate. Less ambitious and weaker cooks will want to pull out a food processor or blender. Just beware that the texture of the paste will be different, says Josefina.
She also notes that different families use different quantities and types of ingredients. Some mole rojos are sweeter, some more picante, some don’t use organic vegetables. Josefina prides herself on the face that she grows her own tomillo (thyme), oregano, tomatoes and onions. Mole rojo is reserved for special occasions like Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) and Fiesta de Julio Sangre de Cristo (the village saint day) since it takes about three or four hours to shop for and prepare the ingredients.
Of course, we are wearing our Zapotec aprons (mandils): left to right, Norma, Josefina, Eloisa and Tracey.
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