Day 27 - Oaxaca

I thought I'd take some time out to talk a little about Mexican cuisine. I think I have already gone on record as claiming it is all basically the same plate of food but with a slightly different method of presentation. I can now reveal that to be almost entirely true. Well true, but with a few minor qualifications. Everything comes with mole. I'm not going to make a joke about that, we all know what mole is. Actually, I have no idea what mole is actually made of, only that it is grey/brown and the Mexican version of pate. It goes on everything as a sort of undercoat for either chicken or pork with chilli's, the only three other ingredients available nationwide. And by everything, I mean tortillas. Yes yes, I know they give them different names, but it's all the same, flour dough squashed into a disk and then covered with mole. The only real variety there is in Mexico is what you do with your tortilla. You can deep fry it, or you can griddle it, or...... no, that's it. Either way, you can fold it into a little filled pasty, and deep fry or griddle that, or make 2 of them into a filled sandwich and deep fry or griddle that, or fill and roll one of them like a wrap and deep fry or griddle that.
So there you have it. Mexican cuisine. They tart it up around the edges to fill out a menu with little twists, like, add some (rubbish) cheese, some peppers maybe, corn is big over here, and I've mentioned grasshoppers already, but your rule of thumb is as I've described above. So if you've ever seen a larger Mexican person, that'll be a deep fried kinda guy, the slightly smaller (and I use that word to be kind) person will be a griddler.

Despite the above sounding a little dismissive, I should confess to very much enjoying deep fried things, and griddled things, and chicken and pork and chilli, in moderation. So I've not starved, but have had to take some care over the calories - and that is a pretty bold statement for me, I'm a proper dustbin if I get my eye in. So I've sought out some of the less obvious menu items for both the sake of variety and waistline.

Quick heads up - I'm moving on and have another torturous bus ride ahead, so no blog tomorrow unless a volcano explodes or something.

Your standard two's up tacos with nachos and dips. Normally red is dead, green is clean, right? Not in Mexico. Red is dead, green is dead. They like to keep things simple.

So crispy pork tostados turned out to be pork scratchings on toast - which I didn’t particularly mind - and probably should have guessed to be honest, but I had something a little more.... porky, and a little less.... skin-ey in my head when I ordered it. It did go well with my Corona though, I’ll give it that at least. I’ll give it that. 

Your deluxe meat feast compendium platter for one, the 'gut buster', and traditional Mexican starter