Life & Style | Travel
Quest for the perfect quesadilla
The search for the quintessential tortilla leads to a plateful of treats in Mexico City.
- By Manuel Roig-Franzia, Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
- Published: 23:32 September 26, 2008
- Manuela Serrano stirs a pot of green chilli salsa
- Image Credit: By Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
A cartload of bagged white corn kernels blocked the narrow aisle.
A woman in an apron danced to salsa rhythms, shimmying her hips. Half a dozen guys with shopping bags stood stalled and frowning.
I had hit gridlock in the diffused light of El Mercado de la Merced, Mexico City's bigger-than-life and steroidal central market.
I had gone there in search of the perfect traditional-market quesadilla.
I've been eating in Mexican markets for years, swooning over piles of cilantro-flecked shrimp at the archetypal Tostadas Coyoacan in the market near The Post's bureau in southern Mexico City and gorging on all manner of grilled tacos.
But I had never nailed the consummate quesadilla — a foundational Mexican treat made all the more complex by its utter simplicity.
I needed help. And that's why I called Nick Gilman.
Popular foodie Nick
I call Nick the “professional urban dweller''. A transplanted New Yorker, he has lived most of the past 20 years in Mexico and knows the city's hidden nooks like no one I've ever met.
Last year, Nick published a book, Good Food in Mexico City: A Guide to Food Stalls, Fondas and Fine Dining, which has developed a kind of cult following in the foodie world. He's always up for the game.
At La Merced I meet Gerardo Ramirez. He nods approvingly as I plant myself on a plastic stool next to the counter at Antojitos Dona Celia, a five-stool stand at the western edge of the market's main building.
The handwritten menu offers quesadillas with brains, quesadillas with stewed meat and quesadillas with pickled fat.
I am feeling adventurous but not that adventurous. I opt for a squash-flower quesadilla and it doesn't disappoint.
Folded over, my quesadilla is blue (made from blue corn), 10 inches long and seared on a comal (a flat, cast-iron cooking surface).
Inside, the chewy white Oaxacan cheese —think string cheese but not as dense or salty — oozes to the edge of the tortilla.
I top it with Gerardo's salsa, a silky purée of red chillies, onions and garlic. “The secret is the cheese: There are only one or two places in the city where you can get the real stuff, the real Oaxacan stuff,'' Gerardo tells me.
Lost in appreciation
But I can barely focus. I was in quesadilla nirvana, far from the under-grilled tortillas of my past, from the barely melted cheese, from the watery salsa.
We loop down the stairs of the subway station that pops up in the centre of the market. Three stops later, we are tracking towards the San Juan Market, Mexico City's swankiest place.
We beeline for the market's southwest corner, Stall No 283. There, behind a basin-size ceramic bowl, Manuela Serrano swirls a long spoon through a smoky, simmering pot of something mysterious and wonderful.
Serrano, a restaurant-trained chef, is there every Saturday morning. The smart crowd shows up early or they know they'll miss the pozole, a rich, chilli-infused broth with strands of stewed chicken and marble-size kernels of white corn.
Juarez's cheeses
In the market centre, we stop to see Jose Juarez, who charmed my parents last Christmas with his endless samples of imported cheese.
Juarez is always surrounded by regulars who know they can make a meal out of the hunks of bread and cheese he doles out at no cost — and the oaky Spanish refreshment he pours.
We head for the chic Roma neighbourhood and its Medellin market — an airy, light-filled space so named because it specialises in Colombian and other regional fare, along with the Mexican classics.
We race past the Peruvian Inca Cola and the Colombian empanadas, then settle in at La Morenita Ostionera which has its own version of a quesadilla but it's nothing like the one at La Merced or any quesadilla we would get in US.
We select a shark-meat quesadilla. It arrives in a deep-fried shell. The mild meat is chopped, sautéed in a fish broth with grilled onions and garnished with chopped tomatoes and white onion chunks.
One other thing: It has no cheese. We throw in shrimp seviche for good measure.
A fitting dessert
We're both champion eaters but it appears we've finally reached our limit. We head for the door but an ice-cream man catches my eye.
He stuffs a scoop of raisin ice-cream — sweet, made in the style of his native Cuba and creamier than anything I've ever had in Mexico. I am transported to Havana, one of my favourite cities.
I think back on our day. We've eaten grilled quesadilla's and fried quesadilla's, tacos, pozole, seviche and ice-cream, not to mention all Juarez's cheese samples. And it cost a grand total of $22 (Dh81) for both of us.
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