Mexico City Memories and Cheese

What I remember when we would visit Mexico City in the late 1970’s is food, music and a different way of living.

Being a second generation kid from Texas, my mother took me and my two older sisters to Mexico City to visit our cousins. I was the youngest and shy, so I was glued to my mother’s hip. My cousins were much older than me and my sisters but that didn’t stop the connection between us. We would sit and listen to music, mostly Chicago, Cat Stevens and some Bee Gees thrown in for ya know culture; it was the late 70’s remember. We played a lot of Backgammon then and I learned Canasta when I visited with my mother as a 20 something. I got really good which upset my Aunt Bertha. I didn’t understand a ton of Spanish which I think was probably a good thing. But I did understand her punching out her cigarette butt in an ashtray, lighting another and changing from drinking coffee to a tequila while the next hand was being dealt.

But I remember the foods and all flavors as a preteen to this day. My favorite breakfast was a toasted bolillo, a wonderful bread like a French baguette, topped with the most incredible sweet cream butter I have ever had to this day. Now this is not your average butter, no skimming of the cream and grass fed (before this was a marketing term). I would not drink milk in Mexico because of the cream that plugged the bottle and as an 8-10 year old, I was not having any part of that weirdness. Had I only known.

But the next food adventure took me and my family to a restaurant know for their tacos and specifically Tacos al Carbon. As a kid growing up we had tacos……. but not like these. Two small corn tortillas stacked on top of each other, topped with perfectly grilled beef, cilantro and raw onions. But the one dish that I will forever remember and I rarely if ever order in the States is Queso Flameado. Its exactly as the name says, hot melted cheese under a flame. To eat this cheese, you use a knife to scrape the sides to get the crispy bits of cheese and work your way toward the center to pull the melted strings of cheese and put in a corn tortilla as enjoy before your tacos come to the table. The cheeses are mainly Queso Oaxaca and Panela.

I will always be in awe of these two woman, my Aunt Bertha and my Mother.

¡SALUD!

¡PROVECHO!