As Juarez's violence breaks hearts, El Paso’s food pacifies a yearning for Mexican border specialties.
By Elaine Corn
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Friday, 09 July 2010 |
08:31
Cheap liquor and street licuados don't tempt many anymore to Murder City. Ciudad Juarez, a city of 1.3 million people, is where more than 2,250 people were killed last year alone in drug turf wars. Just last month, a shootout between Mexican federal agents and suspected drug dealers left bullet holes in the El Paso city hall.
This breaks my heart.
El Paso's specialties
Salpicon: Made famous by Julio's Café Corona back in Juarez, the legend continues at its El Paso outpost off Interstate10 near the airport. The dish came to the area with the ancestral owners from the interior state of Zacatecas. Salpicon is brisket simmered in broth seasoned with cloves, onion, garlic and star anise. It cooks until it's shreddable with two forks pulled in opposite directions. It's mixed with chipotle, then cubes of white cheddar, avocado, tomato, raw onion and minced cilantro. The volume's turned up with a dousing of lime. It marinates. You eat it at room temperature spooned on flour tortillas.
Queso Fundido: Flaming cheese, but not literally on fire. Sure, you can replicate this dish with melted Monterey Jack, but the real melty cheese of the border is acadero. When it bakes in a small casserole with long strips of local green chiles, it comes to the table so hot that bubbles of butter-colored milkfat pool on top. Dip in a big spoon and lift high. The cheese stretches like caramel.
El Paso salsa: Salsa is habitual and always free. It's the first thing on the table, and it arrives with a basket of thick, sturdy tostadas (tortilla chips) made at the restaurant you're in, or in a nearby factory that morning. The house salsa can range from soupy to chunky, and from hot enough to melt your teeth to so hot it will aerate your Eustachian tubes.
Gorditas: Translation, little fat ones. Corn masa is seasoned with enough red chile so it cooks up the color of cheddar cheese. It's dropped by handfuls into a skillet of frying oil. The corn inside is so fresh that natural gases puff the dough, which after frying is drained, split and filled with spicy beef, tomato chunks and lettuce.
New Mexico-style enchiladas: The uniquely New Mexican way of putting together a plate of enchiladas stacks them flat with cheddar cheese in between and a dark red chile puree ladled all over. The true mark of New Mexico-style enchiladas is an egg, sunny-side up, cracked on top just before the enchiladas finish baking, to help calm down the spice. The yolk must be runny to insinuate itself into the sauce.
When I reminisce about spending my teens across the border in El Paso, Texas, I pine for a steak at the old Martino's, one of Juarez's elegant restaurants with suited waiters rolling flambe carts. I fear I'll never again eat the border specialty salpicon at the original La Cafe Corona.
We moved to El Paso from the East Coast when I was 12 and "A Hard Day's Night" was released. For a teenager, Juarez beckoned with regional rites of passage: easy contraband and grown-up privileges.
I drank underage at the Kentucky Club, a skank bar on Juarez Avenue that saved Wednesdays for dime-shot tequila for "ladies." I did this during my high school lunch hour despite our cafeteria's red and green enchiladas that remain the standard by which I judge all enchiladas. At any rate, 50 cents later [math: 10 cents per shot], my friends and I made it back to El Paso in time for my next class -- modern dance. I fell down in my leotard and got suspended.
Don't call it Tex-Mex
It's been years since the drug wars that rage on began in Juarez . The last time I ate in Juarez was four years ago. I was visiting from California and was taken to the four-star Mision Guadalupe just over the Cordoba Bridge in an area called the Pronaf.
Instead of rustic tacos street-style, we ate mini tacos filled with refried black beans. Huitlacoche, known as corn smut, tastes something like white truffles filled a chicken breast. Cabrito can be had over on dusty Juarez Avenue, where goat kid carcasses strung like paper dolls dangle in the windows. At Mision Guadalupe, kid is cooked in wine and served on banana leaves. Before we left, the chef gave us a tour of the wine cellar stocked with wine from Baja.
That was the last time I saw Juarez. But what I've lost until things right themselves on the Juarez side of the border is more than compensated by the glories of El Paso's distinctive tastes and traditions.
In this wide open country twinkling under purple-pink sunsets against a fence of bare mountains, is a compelling reason to arrive hungry. El Paso is the place nobody knows is the spiritual homeland of the No. 1 dinner, the mother lode of Mexican food whose vein of salsa and spice has flowed through the Southwest for more than 500 years.
El Paso's culinary style is authentic, very spicy and plainly presented -- and no one ever calls it Tex-Mex. Evolutionary advancements in what is now regarded as modern Southwestern cuisine dot the landscape. But El Paso's fare -- the food I devour -- lives in glorious stagnation.
The minute I get off a plane from California, I must be picked up and taken directly to one of several cravings, including Salpicon from Julio's Cafe Corona.
True Julio's Cafe Corona style uses white cheddar cheese. Most El Pasoans use Monterey Jack. The final taste should be refreshing from lime, smoky from chipotle and spicy enough to be exciting. The leftover beef broth is flavored exotically, the perfect base for Mexican caldo.
Salpicon, El Paso party style
Serves 8 to 10
Ingredients
For the meat: 1 flat-cut brisket, 3 to 3 ¾ pounds
1 quart beef broth
4 whole garlic cloves, smashed
1 white onion, quartered
1 teaspoon dried oregano
8 whole cloves
2 star anise
½ teaspoon allspice
10 black peppercorns
For the marinade:
3 canned chipotle chiles in adobo
⅓ cup white vinegar
½ cup fresh lime juice (about 4 limes)
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
1 cup olive oil
For the salad:
1 red onion, cut in ¼-inch cubes
5 Roma tomatoes, seeded, cut in ½-inch cubes
2 fresh jalapenos, seeded and minced
White cheddar (Julio's style) or Monterey Jack, in ¼-inch cubes
2 avocados, in ½-inch cubes
½ bunch cilantro, chopped Romaine leaves
Directions
Place brisket in a large pot with remaining meat ingredients. If necessary, add water so the liquid covers the meat by 1 inch. Bring slowly to a simmer; cover and simmer over very low heat for 4 hours. Let cool in the liquid, cover askew. (May leave overnight.)
Set meat on a cutting board. Pull all fat off meat and discard. Skim fat from cooking liquid; use as soup broth at a later time. Shred meat with two forks pulled in opposite directions. Set shreds in a big bowl and fluff.
Puree marinade ingredients, except the oil. Whisk in oil last.
When ready to serve, mix shredded beef with marinade until evenly moistened. Toss gently with remaining salad ingredients. Set on Romaine leaf, or serve spooned onto warm flour tortillas.
Elaine Corn is a James Beard Award-winning cookbook author and food editor. A former editor at the Louisville Courier-Journal and the Sacramento Bee, Corn has written six cookbooks and contributed food stories to National Public Radio.
Photos, from top:
Salpicon.
Brisket ready to be used in Salpicon.
Credits: Elaine Corn
Taste of Juarez in El Paso
Great piece. Peter just bought some organic free range beef from a ranch he is working on that seems perfect for this recipe. And I'll bet Chino's here has some "corn smut' we can can add to the table too!
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
Elaine
I'm trying to guess which of my friends and family is responsible for which embellished comment.;
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
...
Yo tengo hambre!
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
Elaine Corn's El Paso
I'll join the guest before me--if I can catch him/her--and jump on the plane for El Paso. I'm a vegetarian at heart, but I'm thinking of making the Salpicon this weekend. Elain Corn is so good. A treasure! Thank you.
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
Taste of Juarez in El Paso
My family used to enjoy the "chile con queso" served at the old Julio's Cafe Corona down on 16th of September, once upon a time. Not your gooey Velveeta and phony jalapenos, but a rich soup of long green chile strips, asadero cheese, onion and a hint of garlic, seved into bowls. It was the precursor to tortilla soup. Back in its day, we would dip the corn tortillas into the bowls to eat the sumptuous treat. Elaine has nailed the days vividly with this article! Hooray!
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
taste of juarez in el paso
There she goes again! What makes Elaine Corn a treasured food journalist is that she knows what she's talking about, knows how to write and makes the most cooking-intimated reader feel as if it's possible to duplicate her recipes. Corn makes you feel how center food is to culture -- and how to appreciate all cultures despite political turmoil surrounding many of them. Thank you!
a guest ,
July 09, 2010
...
Reading this story makes me want to jump on a plane to El Paso and eat my way though some very good food.
Great piece. Peter just bought some organic free range beef from a ranch he is working on that seems perfect for this recipe. And I'll bet Chino's here has some "corn smut' we can can add to the table too! 
; 
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