Breakfast with MexiGeek: quick migas

I've written about migas before, but it was migas en salsa verde.

Today I didn't have any salsa verde.

What I did have was leftover classic tomato and chile salsa, leftover carnitas, leftover queso chihuahua from Gringa Dairy, and some tortilla chips (totopos).

One of my favourite things to do with leftover salsa is fry it for a few minutes and then scrabble eggs in it. It basically makes huevos a la mexicana, but without having to dice the onions, chiles, and tomatoes first thing in the morning.

This morning I fried the leftover carnitas in butter (to keep it healthy), added the salsa, and then scrabble the eggs.

When the eggs were just cooked, I crumbled the tortilla chips in, then topped with queso chihuahua (Mexico's melting cheese).

One the many great Mexican breakfast dishes.

El Cartel - Finally a Mexican restaurant in Edinburgh I can support

This guac rocks. 

One thing I've never been able to do in Edinburgh is find a Mexican restaurant I can endorse.

Sure, I rave about Lupe Pintos deli, where you can buy all the ingredients to make your own brill Mexican food (and get awesome recipes from their cookbooks or just asking the staff), but I've never found a restaurant, cafe, street stall, whatever in Edinburgh that I could recommend to my readers.

Until now. El Cartel on Thistle Street.

Oddly enough, El Cartel was launched by the team behind Bon Vivant, which isn't Mexican. But in spite of that they got it spot on when they cooked this place up.

El Cartel has three things going for it, a kind of Holy Trinity of Awesome that will make them tough to top for the foreseeable future.

1. Simplicity

This may not come as a surprise, but I've often tinkered with the idea of opening a restaurant. But I always get bogged down by the complexity and richness of Mexican cuisine. I would want it to be a taqueria, a fonda, and a restaurante all in one.

That can't really be done. So El Cartel don't do it. This is basically a taqueria (taco shop), and a fecking amazing one at that. By focusing on tacos and getting it so, so right, they probably accomplish more than they could if they tried to add all the soups, tortas, moles, and platos fuertes in Mexico.

2. Authenticity

So they're just going to do tacos (and a few other things). Great. But what kind of tacos?

This is the all-important question, because tacos are probably the most eaten and least understood "dish" in all of Mexican cuisine.

Thanks to Taco Hell, I mean Taco Bell, and the dominance of flour tortillas in Tex Mex and California, most people outside Mexico don't really know what a taco is.

A taco, as I've said before in this blog, is ANYTHING folded up in a soft corn tortilla. None of that U-shaped hard shell crapola.

So whatever the filling, if it ain't in a soft corn tortilla, it ain't a taco. And at El Cartel they only do soft corn tortillas, which are obviously homemade by the way.

Look at the charring and the uneven edges: that's how you know you're eating a good tortilla!

But it also matters what you put in the taco. That ground beef and "seven layers" ain't Mexican either. 

Mrs MexiGeek ordered cochinita pibil, a classic of the Yucatan, complete with cebollas en escabeche. This is absolutely the first time I've dined in a Mexican restaurant in Edinburgh that has served something I've actually cooked at home. 

I chose the "duck carnitas". Prehispanic Mexico had no chicken or pork, so they ate wild duck, wild turkey, and venison. These things are still important parts of Mexican cuisine. Having said that, I've never heard of shredding duck into carnitas. Texture-wise this resembled the crispy shredded duck of Asian cuisine. It may sound odd, but Asian fusion is actually pretty big in the trendy bits of Mexico City, so I can imagine this being served in Mexico. And if it isn't, it should be, because this was delicious.

3. Vibe

Great food deserves a great setting. Though the "greasy dive" thing can work for some venues, most people don't want to eat in a shit-hole.

El Cartel has a great vibe. Almost everything is black, and the skeletal dia de los muertos decorations add splashes of colour - as do the snack-bar style spinning coolers of their frozen margaritas. 

The place is casual - walk-ins only, no reservations, but also user-friendly. If there aren't any tables, they send across the street to Bon Vivant and will come fetch you when a table opens up.

One drawback to the black decor is it was way too dark to photograph our food, so the photos in this post were shamelessly ripped off from their Facebook page.

In addition to this, El Cartel also sports some excellent starters, including excellent guacamole with pomegranates (yes, this is a real thing) served with plantain crisps (also a real thing), probably the most impressive selection of tequilas and mezcals of any restaurant in Edinburgh, and their own homemade habanero sauce.

There are other salsas on the table, but forget them. Go for their own brand. I literally couldn't make a better one myself.

Of course, being the aficionado I am, I have some suggestions as well. They use a soft crumbly cheese, which is basically like feta. I hope they look into sourcing their queso from Gringa Dairy. It would give their tacos that extra bit of authenticity.

And while they have ample tequilas, mezcals, and Mexican beers, I would really like to see michelada on a menu, and if any restaurant in Edinburgh is gonna do it, this is the one.

(Miro's Cantina has what they call "michelada" on their menu, but it's just beer and cholula.)

I've been waiting a long time to write a review this positive. I imagine a lot of people are interested in trying authentic Mexican food, but don't have the confidence in the kitchen to attempt these recipes. So I've always wanted to be able to name one local restaurant I could send them to.

And now I have one. El Cartel. The only Mexican restaurant in Edinburgh approved by MexiGeek.

Cinco de mayo: a tale of tamales and chiles poblanos

I stole this presentation from Rick Bayless. If it's good enough for #Obama, it's good enough for mi familia.

Last week was cinco de mayo. I meant to post this earlier, but I got a bit distracted by the election. And I'm not exactly swimming in free time either. But better late than never.

The first thing you need to know about cinco de mayo is it's NOT Mexican Independence Day. That's the 16th of September.

Cinco de mayo is the anniversary of the battle of Puebla, when Napoleon III of France tried to take over Mexico shortly after Benito Juarez took office as president.

The French lost.

The second thing you need to know is it's not a national holiday in Mexico. It is a regional holiday in Puebla.

When cinco de mayo is celebrated outside Mexico, any Mexican cuisine is appropriate, but I wanted to give a nod to good old Puebla, so although I made quite "generic" tamales, I used poblano chiles from the Cool Chile Company.

But because Puebla is Oaxaca's rival for culinary capital of Mexico, I've balanced it by using queso de Oaxaca from Gringa Dairy.

I've written about sweet tamales and "tamale pie", but I haven't written about savoury tamales, which is a glaring omission, as they are a classic of Mexican cuisine. In fact, they are older than the mighty tortilla.

A quick lesson in corn (apologies for the squeamish): if you've ever changed a nappy after chili con carne day at your child's nursery, you'll know that kernels of corn are practically indigestible. They go right through.

This is because they have a tough outer hull which resists digestion, meaning you can't absorb most of its nutrients. It also gets stuck in your teeth.

What the Meso-Americans found out, several thousand years ago, is that if you soak corn kernels in slaked lime (the same caustic substance used for rendering the stucco that covered their pyramids), the outer hull would loosen and could then be rinsed off.

Then the soft, inner flesh of the corn kernels could then be ground into a nutritious dough. This process is called nixtamalizacion (nixtamilization), from Nauhatl nextli "ashes" (referring to the slaked lime) and tamalli "dough".

So tamales, which are basically corn dumplings, would have been one of the first things they made with their discovery. Tortillas probably came later.

So, the thing about tamales is, they take a hell of a long time to make. In fact, you have to start the night before.

There's actually no one right recipe for tamales, and there are countless regional variation as well. And as they're quite fiddly, people tend to stick with the recipe that works for them.

The one I use comes from Two Cooks and a Suitcase. 

To make these tamales you need:

• 200g masa harina
• 100g melted butter or lard
• 250 ml chicken stock
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• salt

You will also need a lot of corn husks.

A note on the lard: in this age of health-consciousness we are all a bit frightened of lard, and rightly so. And I certainly wouldn't suggest you get one of those cloudy-white blocks of lard they sell in supermarkets.

On the other hand, pork lard (manteca de cerdo) is a big part of traditional Mexican cooking. To get manteca I usually skim off and sieve any rendered fat from pork dishes, especially bacon, though it takes a long time to collect a decent amount.

Or Gringa Dairy has provided this recipe for homemade manteca.

If you're still not comfortable using lard or butter, you can try olive oil, though I never have.

First you have to soak your corn husks in water overnight. The recipe will probably make 12 tamales, but you'll need to many more corn husks because some will be ripped or too small or otherwise unsuitable, and you'll need extras to cut into strips so you can tie the tamales.

The day you intend to serve, you have to make the tamal dough.

Sift the masa harina and baking powder into a bowl.

Add the melted butter.

Then gradually stir in the stock until the liquid is fully incorporated. It will be kind of pasty and spreadable.

Then you need to assemble the tamales.

Spread out a good sized and undamaged corn husk.

Spread a heaped dessert spoon of the tamal dough over the widest part of the husk, leaving about a centimetre of space at the top and sides. 

Shit. I forgot to leave space at the side. 

Now put a dessert spoon of filling into the middle. Fold the tamal from left to right and then fold the bottom up to create a little parcel. 

Tie the parcel up with kitchen string or with strips of smaller corn husks (the traditional way). 

As you can see above, I've folded the top down too. That's optional, and a lot of people leave the top open. I do it myself about half the time. 

When you've assembled the tamales, stand them upright in a steamer and steam on high for a good hour. 

In Mexico they have special tamal steamers (with extra-tall steaming chambers). You can get them by mail order from MexGrocer.com, but I just use a standard steamer (even though my tamales stick out the top. 

However, you cannot make tamales without a steamer, so if you don't have one, make tamale pie. 

So what fillings did I use. 

Well, I had some leftover carnitas, so I filled four of my twelve with that, omitting the spicy red chile sauce you would normally have so my kids could eat them. (My 5yo daughter loved them but my 2yo son just ate the corn dumpling and left the carnitas.)

I haven't written about carnitas yet, but I donated this recipe to Gringa Dairy. It works every time. 

Carnitas, or Mexican pulled pork.

I also poached and shredded some chicken breasts and fried it up with rajas con crema (strips of chile poblano fried with sour cream) and salsa verde. I used this for four more tamales. 

These are rajas, ready to be fried.

The last four I stuffed with rajas and queso de Oaxaca, inspired by Tamal.co.uk. 

I actually had one left over, so the last tamal had no filling. This is called a tamal sordo (literally a "deaf tamal"). 

I served the tamales on a bed of frijoles de olla (stewed black beans) and topped them with a string or two of queso de Oaxaca and some more salsa verde.

Here's the money shot again, just because I like it: