When in Oaxaca - seriously that's a word Vorderman would love. Apart from barely being able to say it, we didn't know much about the town other than it was the food capital of Mexico - and that's all we needed to know.
We pulled up after another long-ish and rather gross journey...(someone had fogotten to flush the toilet and that combined with about 3 hours of winding mountain roads had left the toilet looking like your ceiling after a blender accident. Nice.)
Anyway, we pulled up to a rather nice colonial town which seemed very pleasant at first look. The first thing I did when we got to Oaxaca was search out a cooking class - Oaxaca boasts some of the best chefs working in Mexico today and as a result of all the food tourism, there are a number of cookery classes available ranging from half day lessons to whole weeks spent at villas in the countryside. We, of course, are on a budget, so we opted for a half day class which included a trip to a nearby market to buy food for our class.
Firstly Oscar asked us to choose a number of ingredients and dishes to cook. I was really pleased that we weren't just going to cook from a set menu but could choose ingredients that were both in season and that we liked. Our menu was going to contain one of my favourite ingredients; courgette flowers - i literally only know one way of preparing them which is stuffing them with goats cheese and frying them but today we were going to make tortillas out of them and also a wonderful soup.
Our entire menu was as follows:
quesadillas and tortillas with cheese and courgette flower accompanied with a green and a red salsa and fresh guacamole, a courgette flower soup, a stew made from huitlacoche, a dark mole served with chicken, and a chocolate and chilli ice-cream. We even made a lime water drink to wash it all down.
And the best part ... we got to eat it all !
The next day we visited another larger market called '20 de Noviembre' which had cafes within the market that you could eat snacks or whole meals at. We tried a couple of dishes;
Chaupalines which are (wait for it...) deep fried spicy grasshoppers, a famous tradition. The women who make these literally pick each grasshopper in the early mornings. The piles must have contained thousands of them !
Stuffed, we decided to find out what else the town had to offer...Rob had spotted a poster for a Lucha Libre match in town in a couple of days and being big fans of all wrestling and Nacho Libre we decided to check it out. I'm not sure what we were expecting but it wasn't wrestling ring under a gazebo in a park with only two lights taped to the gazebo to shed any light on what was going on in the ring. And then it began to rain!
We pulled up after another long-ish and rather gross journey...(someone had fogotten to flush the toilet and that combined with about 3 hours of winding mountain roads had left the toilet looking like your ceiling after a blender accident. Nice.)
Anyway, we pulled up to a rather nice colonial town which seemed very pleasant at first look. The first thing I did when we got to Oaxaca was search out a cooking class - Oaxaca boasts some of the best chefs working in Mexico today and as a result of all the food tourism, there are a number of cookery classes available ranging from half day lessons to whole weeks spent at villas in the countryside. We, of course, are on a budget, so we opted for a half day class which included a trip to a nearby market to buy food for our class.We walked up the road from our hostel to the cooking class which was held in a lovely house with a courtyard called Casa Crespo. We chose this cooking class as the cooking focuses exclusively on the traditions of the Oaxaca region so we were to learn something completely new.
Our entire menu was as follows:
quesadillas and tortillas with cheese and courgette flower accompanied with a green and a red salsa and fresh guacamole, a courgette flower soup, a stew made from huitlacoche, a dark mole served with chicken, and a chocolate and chilli ice-cream. We even made a lime water drink to wash it all down.
And the best part ... we got to eat it all !
The next day we visited another larger market called '20 de Noviembre' which had cafes within the market that you could eat snacks or whole meals at. We tried a couple of dishes;Tlayudas which are giant tortillas, fried crispy and topped with avocado, tomato, beef. onion gucamole and salsa.
Carne adobada which is a thin pork steak marinated in a spicy thick sauce.Chaupalines which are (wait for it...) deep fried spicy grasshoppers, a famous tradition. The women who make these literally pick each grasshopper in the early mornings. The piles must have contained thousands of them !
Stuffed, we decided to find out what else the town had to offer...Rob had spotted a poster for a Lucha Libre match in town in a couple of days and being big fans of all wrestling and Nacho Libre we decided to check it out. I'm not sure what we were expecting but it wasn't wrestling ring under a gazebo in a park with only two lights taped to the gazebo to shed any light on what was going on in the ring. And then it began to rain!Luckily we able to keep dry and unelectrocuted and ended up watching loads of great fights! And we had to buy a mask of course!
The next day we decided to get a bit more culture and decided to go on a excursion to various sites in the region of Oaxaca considered must see sites. I won't bore you with a descrition of each site but it went as follows:-
really huge massive tree
incredible ruins
tradtional weaving
pertrified waterfall
mezcal (a type of tequila) distillery
A strange and interesting list of sights you'll agree but we had a really fun day and felt better for having seen a bit more of what the region and Mexico had to offer.
Oaxaca ended up being a real mixture of things for us. We went expecting to be wowed by the food which we were but we were also caught by surprise at how many other things there were to do. A real gem in Mexico's glittering array of places to visit.
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