Sidetrip: Mexico City

I thought I moved to Miami but in reality I am starting to realize that I just moved to another airport hub. Someone yesterday actually asked me why I have an apartment at all. And I definitely sometimes feel like I spend more time traveling than I do at home. In fact, in 2010 I wouldn’t be surprised if this was actually the case.

I spent this past week in Mexico City. The temperature difference between Miami and Mexico City was shocking from humid 90s to dry low 70s. Women were dressed for fall in suede boots and long-sleeved wrap dresses. We stopped into the Hotel Nikko in Polanco and from there jumped over to dinner at Solea at the W Mexico City. The meal wasn’t outstanding but wasn’t horrendous either, with decent guacamole and then a large salad. You could just feel that some type of restaurant transition had happened since my last visit since the menu was decidedly less creative and the oomph gone from the food. It was just fine hotel food.

On Tuesday evening after a day of visiting stores all over town, we headed for a more modern Mexican dinner at Pujol. Pujol is ranked as the #2 restaurant on TripAdvisor in Mexico City and is often touted as one of the top restaurants in town. I was excited, to say the least. The space was small and clean – light woods, white tablecloths. The service was exemplary – I love when the waiters all come to the table and serve everyone at the same time. It is like, ta da! Magic. While the rest of the table did a four course tasting I stuck to a starter and entrée and there were vegetarian options in both categories, which was great! When in doubt while looking at a menu in another language, check the prices. The lowest ones… typically vegetarian.

I started with the “Tamal de cuitlacoche, espuma tibia de quesillo y queso de rancho”, which was a mushroom tamale hidden under a sea of cheese foam. I am personally a foam lover, so I enjoyed this dish thoroughly, the strong flavors of cheese and mushroom both breaking through, which was wonderful considering I am often searching for the stuffing in tamales. With our starters, there was also bread served with two types of butter, one of which (I think) was a combination goat and cow butter. So interesting, it was almost goat cheesy but I was reassured it was indeed butter.

For my main course, the vegetarian entrée was “Molito de cacahuate, legumbres, coliflor frita, tortita de huanzontle, cilantro criollo,”. Honestly, I am not exactly sure what all of this was! But I did catch that it was a variety of vegetables covered with a delicious mole sauce. Mole is a wonderful creation that I could easily bathe all of my food in. I would say the same thing about a Thai Peanut Sauce or an Argentinean Chimichurri but now this mole just sits on my mind…

Along with the meal we drank some truly wonderful Mexican wines. I have had wines by the glass in Mexico, from Mexico, before and never been impressed. Times must be a changing in the Mexcican wine industry because we started with one, which I thought was great, and then our second bottle blew me away. It was the Textura 2, Estacion Porvenir, a blend of four grapes including petite syrah and that petite syrah must have made all of the difference. It was outstanding.

Dinner finished with a round of desserts (chamomile ice cream is a perfect dessert idea) and petit fours. And as we departed, sated and filled, a little gift bag of mango gelatins was in our hands, tied with a ribbon graced with the Pujol symbol. I had a flashback to French Laundry… until we walked out onto the crazy streets of Mexico City once again. It certainly isn’t Yountville!

The next day, we shook off the high class dining and instead ate a lot of tacos and quesadillas. I landed back in Miami definitely with some additional stature added to my frame. But, man, cheese in Mexico is so darn tasty.

Back in the Cities

Around and around I go and where I stop, nobody knows (except my Mom who demands to know where I am traveling).

Last weekend, I headed back to Minneapolis for a final farewell (to get my things with the movers)and a beautiful wedding of friends at the Guthrie. While there I found 24 hours of perfect August vegetable goodness. If there is one thing I haven't found in Miami yet, it is truly fresh local food, made with love and served simple and with heart. Even my Whole Foods in Miami has very little local food (considering the amount of produce grown in Florida, I am deeply disappointed),

I started with a dinner at Duplex where I fell in love with a beautful reinvented ratatouille dish, so simply prepared with white beans (thus the reinvention) and fresh squashes. While the dish looked so simple, the flavors were deep with summer and refreshing on a hot evening. I was also pleasantly surprised by the low $10 corkage fee at Duplex. If only I had known learned before I needed chug my wine collection in one weekend since it wouldn't survive a moving truck to FL.

The next morning, I stopped at one of my very favorites of Minneapolis, Common Roots Cafe where my perfect Montreal-style freshly boiled and baked sesame bagel was generously schmeared with a bright radish cream cheese and the very freshest of August tomato slices. It was pure heaven. I miss those Minnesota tomatoes that arrive in the dog days of August.

My late lunch was downtown at Be'wiched where I was absolutely blown away by the duo of cold summer soups they gently poured side by side into one bowl - a creamy sweet corn and a rich green zucchini and mint. My goodness, my tastebuds were in summer produce heaven. The egg salad sandwich was, as always, beautiful.

Sigh. Those 24 hours made me miss Minneapolis. I wasn't as impressed with a visit to the more expensive La Grassa, making the point that in August you don't need complicated in Minnesota, just fresh vegetables simply prepared.

Food Lit: Confections of a Closet Master Baker

Celebrity sister (of Sandra Bullock) and Hollywood lawyer turned bakery owner. Wow – this book was either going to be horrible or wonderful. Thankfully it ended up in the latter category as Confections of a Closet Master Baker by Gesine Bullock-Prado wrapped me up in its sweet goodness.

The story is the expected one: burned out business person moving to New England and opening a bakery. It is something that perhaps we all dream about but that she actually was able to do! But, wow, I wish I had a celebrity sister to help me gain fabulous PR liek Gesine. But I can’t blame her for it as I would do exactly the same thing if I could – you don’t say no to a huge celebrity talking about your products in magazines or working a surprise shift behind your counter. It’s smart business.

My hypocritical nature aside (since we probably really all can’t afford to run off from our corporate jobs and open bakeries), the recipes in this book were so delicious-sounding that I am craving a good baking session. Bullock-Prado is also quite a good writer so I rode along on a lovely journey of learning about the stresses of running a service business and the joys (and pain) of getting to know employees and customers.

Overall a fun book if you are a baker, fantasize about being a baker, or of just plain quitting your job. The fact that you will have to have dessert immediately after reading this book isn’t a horrible cherry on top either.

(A side note: as I looked for a picture of the cover, I have realized that the book has a new title: My Life From Scratch. Hmmm, wonder why the change?)

Sidertrip: New Brunswick, Canada

It’s summer, which means it is wedding season! My second wedding of the year brought me to a small town in New Brunswick. I love my friend who got married there at the family home but what made the potential for the weekend even better is that I was staying at in the “French Fry Capital of the World!”. Sounded like a heavenly vacation from the brutal Miami humidity to me so I jetted out of here on a Thursday, spent the night in Bangor, Maine where I stuffed myself with blueberry pancakes before jumping the car and heading north through the pines into New Brunswick.

This was my first visit to this Eastern Canadian province and I was struck by the combination of farmland with pine forests. In my mind, Maine is all about the forests and the moose (and, of course, blueberries and Stonewall Kitchen) so I had anticipated dense forests. Instead, as we spent the weekend traveling both sides of the St. John River, it was instead quite pastoral. The area we were in surrounding the small town of Florenceville was particularly filled with fields of low green potato plants.

Our first evening over the border, we picnicked with the wedding party at an airfield next to the river feasting on kebabs and salads. As the sun set into the horizon, a bonfire was lit and marshmallows were toasted. Most of the German guests at the wedding (the groom was German) had never roasted marshmallows before making it a whole new adventure watching people decide if they like their marshmallows caramely or fully burnt. The Americans in the crowd were surprised to see that this was the extent of the marshmallow tradition in this area as we couldn’t imagine roasting a marshmallow without the accompanying s’mores components. I immediately had to come home and look up the history of the s’more, as we don’t really have a whole of American food traditions that aren’t a direct influence from somewhere else. What I read was that the first printed recipe for a s’more is from an American Girl Scouts book in the late 1920s. Hmmm… maybe s’mores are so ingrained with me since I was indeed a Girl Scout growing up.

We tucked in to a beautiful evening in our B&B in Florenceville, awaking to a lovely breakfast before heading out on the road to see this “French Fry Capital of the World”. So, why is this the French Fry Capital of the World, you ask. Simply, it is the world headquarters of the McCain Corporation, one of the top frozen French fry producers in the world. Despite globalization and probably temptations to move to larger areas, the headquarters of this multinational remains in small town New Brunswick and the family active in the area. Much like the Mill City Museum in Minneapolis could otherwise be called the General Mills Museum with very little exhibit editing the same can be said for the Potato World Museum that we visited in Florenceville. We learned how potatoes are grown and harvested, the tools used and some history of the spud as well. The only disappointment with this museum is that their café is closed on weekends – no French Fries for us here!!

Next stop was down the interstate – the Covered Bridge Potato Chip Factory. Here we watched the spuds get sliced and fried into crispy chips. At the end of the self-guided tour, we were each given a bag of hot chips off the line to sprinkle with the 30+ seasonings available to taste. It was great messy fun. But we were still lacking French Fries in the French Fry Capital of the World!

After a quick spin to the longest covered bridge in the world (long, yes, quaint, no) we headed over to have lunch in Centreville at Grama’s Restaurant. Here we finally found French fries, delicious fresh cut French fries from local potatoes. The sweet potato fries were great too! And even better, this restaurant was also a bake shop so I had fresh bread on my egg salad sandwich and we stocked up on goodies for the car ride home. It was a long day of potatoes and now it was time for the wedding!

She was stunning, he was handsome. It was the affair of the season for Bath, New Brunswick!

In the morning, it was a pack up and go situation to make it back to Bangor for our flights! But I have to tell you that I am really excited to return to the Maritime Provinces of Canada and explore. The Anne of Green Gables 10-year-old inside of me can’t believe I didn’t make it up the coast!