Moser Good Eats and Good Times: Oaxaca, Mexico Trip

Church of Santo Domingo de Guzman

Our trip to Oaxaca, Mexico has been a long time coming. Scott has spent months at a time traveling Mexico back in the ‘90s and for just about as long as he’s been going, he’s encouraged Verne and me to visit Oaxaca. We were very close to going in the fall of 2014 when Jana was diagnosed with cancer and the trip cancelled. Last spring Scott called and reminded me that if we waited much longer we’d probably be too old to go. We committed and before we could renege he made all the reservations.

To sum up our vacation: It was amazing! We would not change a thing if we could. We visited ancient ruins, artisan villages, local markets, and even took a cooking class. We walked, and walked, and walked some more, averaging eight or ten miles a day. For the first five days we stayed at the Quinta Real Oaxaca located in the downtown historic district. It was built in the mid-1500s originally as a convent, later a prison, and now a luxurious hotel with beautiful courtyards, gardens, and fountains.

Quinta Real Oaxaca

Room rates double and triple on the weekends when the hotel is often booked for weddings as was the case during our stay there. Consequently, we spent our final three days at Casa del Sotano, more modest than the Quinta Real and without the colorful history, but not without its charms, such as this beautiful view from its second story cantina.

Casa del Sotano

Having been a crafter most of my life, if I were to choose one experience as a favorite, it would be our visits to the artisan villages. Teotitlan, a town north of Oaxaca City is known for its beautiful hand-dyed and woven rugs. The wool is washed, carded, and spun into yarn. It is then colored using natural dyes from local plants, such as chamomile, indigo, and marigold. A red dye is made from crushing cochinilla (a parasitic insect that feeds on the cacti). It is considered by many as the perfect red. The yarn is then woven on large pedal looms. The designs range from simple, yet ancient geometric patterns to more complex designs that reflect the history of the local area (Zapotec and Mixtec). A large rug with a complex design can take several weeks to complete.

Dyes from local plants

Weaver working the large floor loom

Another day we traveled to Tilcajete, a small village about 20 miles south of the city and known for its brightly painted wooden animals called alebrijes, which are made from the wood of the Copal tree. Interestingly, the resin from this tree is also used to make incense. The figurines are carved and then brightly painted using the very smallest of brushes to create intricate designs. That same day we stopped at a village where the beautiful Oaxacan burnished black pottery originated and is still made today. Much of the pottery that we saw was the same from shop to shop and nothing as beautiful as the piece Scott brought back to me over 20 years ago.

Largest folk art store in Oaxaca

Wood carvings for sale at small village shop

We toured two archeological sites, both within an hour of Oaxaca City, Mitla and Monte Alban. Each was a day long adventure with incredibly knowledgeable guides, one a former archeologist and the other a former tour guide for the government. The most important of the two sites and also the largest and oldest is Monte Alban. It is located on the top of a mountain with several of the buildings excavated, including a ballcourt, palace and tombs. Mitla, built several centuries later, was Oaxaca’s main religious center. The walls are covered with geometric mosaic designs of the Zapotec, patterns that are still used today in the weavings, on the painted wood figures, and on the pottery. Interestingly, the blocks forming the buildings at Mitla were not mortared, but fit together like puzzle pieces. This is the only example of its kind in Mexico.

Up from the burial chamber at Mitla

Beautiful mosaics at Mitla

Monte Alban

Scott at Monte Alban

The markets in Oaxaca were another highlight and like nothing we’d ever experienced. The sheer size of the markets, noise, colors, smells were at times sensory overload. They are enormous with hundreds of stalls offering fresh produce, dried peppers, fresh meat, baked goods, tortillas and other prepared foods, crafts, clothing, shoes, and more. They cover what felt like was a square mile. We made it part of our routine to walk through markets several days we were there, which included an indigenous market in a nearby town that is only held on Sundays. They were a foodie’s paradise and I must admit an American’s horror as we saw stall after stall with freshly slaughtered, unrefrigerated meat hanging from racks or lined up on counters with an occasional attendant whooshing flies away. Most memorable are the bright yellow chickens lining countertops of every meat stall. When we took our cooking class from a local chef we learned that the chickens are fed a strict diet of corn and marigolds thus producing the skin’s bright yellow color.

Yellow chickens at the market

Meat at the local market (note the pig heat on the counter)

Our six-hour cooking class started with a visit to one of the local markets where we purchased the ingredients required to make our masa, tamales, mole, guacamole, and salsas. Afterwards, we drove to our teacher’s home to make our five-course dinner.

At the local market with our teacher

Ready for our cooking class at our teacher's home

We sampled chapulines (fried grasshoppers), dried worms (I found them a little chewy), and discussed the fermented corn (huitlacoche) that we’d be using in one of the dishes. After four years of making and drinking kombucha on a daily basis, I felt prepared to see and eat the swollen fungus-covered corn that is considered a delicacy in Mexico. Wrong! It was quite off-putting. But, we were there to experience the culture, food being a large part of it, and I tried everything.

Fermented corn

The fresh corn (not the fermented ear) had been removed from the cob and treated with a lime water solution. It was dried and ready to grind. Where’s Bob’s Redmill Masa Harina when you need it??? Skipping ahead, we made the ground corn into a masa and used it in our banana-leaf wrapped tamales stuffed with shredded chicken and mole and then steamed while we prepared the rest of our dinner.

Verne and Scott grinding corn for masa

Oaxaca is known for its mole, seven different varieties to be exact. We made a red mole sauce that was actually more yellow in appearance. The color depends on the type of chiles that are used. We are a family of pretty experienced cooks, including Scott and Lauren, so the many steps to making mole was definitely not troublesome to us. Verne could have taught the section of the class on working with dried chiles, as it’s his part of making and canning salsa every summer. Just as our chef taught us, Verne cleans the chiles of the top and seeds, leaving only a few for heat, heats them over an open flame or sautes them in a pan, covers them with boiling water until they’re soft, and voila! – they are ready to use. We were not in the least intimidated by the process of making mole and Lauren and I plan to do it when she’s home at Christmas. We bought several bags of chiles that are not available to us locally, although we could probably get them at the Grand Central Market in Los Angeles (next door to Jana and Andy), as they have a large section of Mexican imported food items including a few dozen bins of dried chiles. However, they were inexpensive, light in weight, and fun to bring home as a reminder of Oaxaca’s markets and our wonderful culinary experience.

While corn is a basic staple for Oaxacans, there are two other culinary items that come to mind with the mention of Oaxaca – chocolate and mezcal. Oaxaca is one of the Mexican states that produces and exports cacao and chocolate. Cacao is used in food, such as mole, and as a drink. Lauren recently started eating chocolate again after a 15-year hiatus (that’s another story) and fell in love with Oaxacan hot chocolate. She went home with bars of chocolate and a molinillo , a wooden tool like a whisk that is used to make extra frothy hot chocolate. Oaxaca is also known as the mezcal capital of the world. Like tequila, mezcal is made from the agave plant. It has a smoky taste that varies from light to intense depending on manufacturers. One of our dining experiences on our trip began with a complementary mezcal-espresso drink I’ll never forget. It reminded me of kalhua, a coffee flavored liquor that was popular when I was much younger. We brought home a bottle of mezcal and I’m determined to make something similar to that kahlua-like drink I had. If I can’t recreate it, I may just get back to an occasional glass of kahlua.

We spent a week immersed in the culture of Oaxaca. Even after becoming a tourist destination since Scott first started going there, it remains authentic. Little English is spoken and a day didn’t go by that we weren’t appreciative of Scott’s Spanish. I could write pages about our experiences, but a picture is worth a thousand words, so will let the following photos tell the rest of our memorable story.