Original subtitles

♪

Mexico is known for its street food.

Everywhere in Mexico City, there are stands with food,

selling tacos, enchiladas, but my personal favourite

are the ones that sell corn.

Now, this dish is called esquites

and it is delicious, and you cook it with onions, garlic,

there's aromatics, there's (Unclear) into it.

And then you serve that in a cup with a little bit

of cotija cheese and mayonnaise or aioli.

Man, oh, man, what an experience this is.

And I want to show you something lovely.

Look at this. Lovely silk, eh?

This, in Mexico, we use it to make tea. It is delicious,

very nutritious. A bit of honey or sugar into this.

Now, for our esquites,

serrano pepper.

It is spicy, you've got to be very careful,

but it goes delicious with the sweetness of the corn.

It's a pair made in heaven.

In Mexico, we love our heat.

And serrano peppers are probably my second favourite chili.

My favourite chili's morita.

It's a chili grown in Oaxaca, and it's spicy and it's smokey.

♪

(Laughing)

♪

To start my esquites, I'm going to start sautéing the onions.

We want a high heat pan because we want to caramelize the corn

and get all the sweetness out of it.

(Sizzling)

Now, don't forget serrano peppers for this.

And of course, esquites can not be esquites without

the main ingredient, corn.

(Sizzling)

Oh man, that serrano's going to be spicy.

♪

Okay.

The corn is nice and caramelized.

Now we're going to start adding my herbs.

Now, this is bay leaves and epazote.

Now, epazote is ancient herb used by the Aztecs

and the meaning of it meant "skunk".

What they meant is that the epazote is very pungent,

it's earthy,

it's just like if you're smelling a pine tree almost.

It's going to be delicious.

I'm going to be using cilantro and oregano for the esquites.

Now, I want you to know that the importance of cilantro

and oregano in Mexico are huge. They're grown everywhere.

I'm going to show you a little trick here.

I want to use the stems only, not the leaves

because I want just to extract the flavour out of these

beautiful, beautiful herbs.

I'm going to make a little bundle of them, so at the end

we can remove the stems,

so we don't end up chewing into something woody.

This takes me back to Mexico.

There's a big street called Reforma,

probably the most important street in Mexico City.

They have tonnes of these vendors.

When you're walking by it smells...

(Sniffing)

Oh man.

Just ridiculously good.

Instead of throwing out cob away, we're going to use this

to add more flavour. We want an extra kick there.

At this point, I already roasted the corn.

I'm going to be adding a bit of chicken stock.

(Sizzling)

I want to add a tiny bit of acidity to it.

I'm going to use our favourite fruit, the lime.

As the steam is bubbling up you can smell the lime

coming through.

You just want to wait for the broth to simmer a little bit.

It's almost ready. Just going to get to try.

Man, it's going to be delicious.

♪

Oh man, it's going to be sweet, sweet, sweet.

I'm going to add a tiny bit of butter into this.

Well, I shouldn't say a tiny bit because it's a lot of butter.

Look at that. It's just perfect. Look.

Just creamy. The corn, the stock.

Isn't that beautiful?

I cannot wait to try them.

I'm going to show you how we eat esquites in Mexico.

The vendors will put a lot of mayonnaise,

or aioli in this case,

cotija cheese.

So, cotija is-- it's like a salted feta cheese.

They will crumble it all up.

And then we're going to add a bit of cilantro

and oregano. Don't forget the oregano.

And then here you have it. Ready to try them.

Mm.

I can hear the traffic

and the thousands of people walking around and I just--

I would feel that I'm in Mexico city right now.

Mm.

It's something that I love about this dish,

as you're biting into it, as you're chewing into it,

you hear the crunchiness in your ears...

(Crackling)

of the corn.

The juiciness comes into your mouth, the sweetness comes in,

the saltiness just plays at the very end.

It's delicious.

But you know what?

Let's not kid ourselves.

When we think of Mexican street food, we think of?

That's right. Tacos.

♪

♪

Everyone loves tacos. Don't you agree?

Now, let me tell you, Mexico is the city of the taco.

Heaven for taco lovers.

And my favourite taco is chicken tinga.

The tenderness of chicken with avocados,

with queso fresco,

cilantro on a taco with some tomatoes.

Oh! I can just taste it right now.

Now, for my sauce, I'm going to be using tomatillos.

I want you to take a look at this.

Tomatillo is like-- it's the cousin of a tomato,

but it's very tart and acidic.

And I peel it almost as if it's a flower.

Isn't this beautiful?

She loves me. She doesn't. She loves me.

We use tomatillos for a lot of dishes in Mexico because

they grow everywhere.

♪

And now, tomatoes in Mexico, they're called jitomates

and they're longer and thinner than this.

♪

Now, I want my pan to be really hot.

We're going to add a bit of oil.

And I want you to hear this, eh.

(Sizzling)

That's the sound that you're looking for

of the oil with the tomatoes and the onion and the garlic.

The tomatoes are talking right now.

Perfect.

I'm going to add a bit of oregano.

Cumin, which was an introduction by the Arabs to the Spanish

and the Spanish to us.

The smell! Man, the smell. Oh my god.

It's like perfume.

These are chipotle peppers.

In its original state they're ancho peppers,

but then the ancho gets roasted and then get marinated

in this adobo sauce that we're going to be using

for our tacos. Just add all of it. It's really, really good.

They're not very spicy, but they're smokey.

Now, this is the base of my sauce.

Just imagine, eh. The acidity, the tartness of the tomatillos

with the sweetness of the red tomatoes,

and the spiciness and smokiness of the chipotle chili.

Man,

it makes for a very, very, very well composed sauce here.

Now, I want my sauce to be a little bit more smooth,

so I'm going to add a little bit of chicken stock.

Now, if you don't want chicken, you can add vegetable stock

or just a little bit of water because remember,

there's a lot of flavour already here.

Now this is the fun part.

We're going to add mi pollo, which is chicken.

So, I cooked this chicken in oil and look how it breaks.

It's just falling apart

almost without putting any force into it.

Look at that.

The chicken is going to absorb all the flavour in my sauce

and it's going to make it super, super, super tender

and flavourful. This is probably going to be

one of the best tacos you'll ever make.

Now I just want you to take a look at this.

Blue tortilla. How cool is that, eh?

Blue tortilla is an ancient grain that was found in Mexico

and the corn in itself is blue.

But what we're going to do with this, we're going to toast them.

(Laughing)

♪

First thing's first, cheese.

This is one of my favourite cheese. It's called panela.

It's firm, it's squeaky, almost like a cheese curd.

That's what this reminds me of, cheese curd, that's what it is.

So, if you don't get panela, use cheese curds for this. Perfect.

What the cheese is going to do to these tacos is just

lower the amount of heat that we get from the chipotles,

just in case we added too much, this is going to be helpful.

Now the avocado, it's going to do the same thing as the cheese.

It's going to bring a bit of creaminess into our taco

and reduce the amount of heat that we may end up having.

Just want to cut this like that.

I'm almost ready for the taco, I cannot wait.

I'm already salivating.

The final moment, we're going to start making our tacos.

You want to make sure you have enough of the sauce

with the beautiful, beautiful smokiness of the chipotle.

We're going to grab a bit of cheese.

And remember it's street food, so if it falls apart,

that's what it's supposed to do.

And then, a bit of avocado.

Tiny bit of cilantro.

This doesn't get anymore Mexican.

Mm.

Wow.

The only thing I needed right now is good shot of tequila

and I feel like I'm back in Mexico. Yeah, baby!

Mm.

The spiciness of the chipotle,

the smokiness goes phenomenal with the avocado and the cheese.

And this is the fun part because can, you know, you eat

the taco from one end, you eat it from the other end.

Just have fun with it.

When I was a kid, me and my brother used to have

a taco competition.

Whoever ate the most would not end up paying for the bill,

right.

I'll tell you something, if I was with my brother right now

I would challenge him 'cause I could totally eat the whole pot

right there.

And as much as I want to eat this whole pot of chicken tinga

I need to save some room 'cause the next dish, oh my god,

it's filling.

♪

♪

Man, those tacos were delicious.

Now, I'm going to show you the way of the torta.

And let me tell you, Mexico is the king of the sandwich.

(Sizzling)

We call them tortas.

(Sizzling)

In Mexico, we would go to these tortarias

and they would be serving you this fresh bread full of

refried beans, chicken, ham,

but my favourite one was chorizo.

(Laughing)

♪

In my torta de chorizo,

I like to mash the black beans with the chorizo itself.

Look how beautiful they are.

They're full of iron, they're delicious, a lot of nutrients.

They just go so well with the chorizo and the onions.

(Sizzling)

I'm mashing them with the chorizo.

Everything is getting all together.

All the flavours of the chorizo have been releasing the fat

and they're adding it to the beans.

In Mexico we love to use crusty bread.

Has to be fresh on the inside, but it's all about the crust,

that's what you're looking for.

Look at this.

You want to remove as much dough as we can from inside,

so we can stuff all that goodness into it. You see?

Now, the thing is, I want my sandwich to have a lot

of fat into it.

And I want to be rolling some lard into it.

This is going to help us to toast the bread

before we add the chorizo inside.

So, now I want to toast my bread.

(Sizzling) Here that sound?

We're just about to be finished here.

This is exactly how I want my bread to be.

Now we're getting to the fun part.

Just going to put it on my plate 'cause it's going to get messy.

We're going to fill this sucker to the moon.

It's going to be a very sexy sandwich.

This, my friends, I think you guys call it a Sloppy Joe's?

We're going to call it a Sloppy Jose.

Now the cheese. I like panela cheese.

It's like a farmers cheese.

It's a little squeaky, chewy,

but it melts very well with the chorizo.

And let's not forget about our avocado.

Yeah.

Oh man, this is going to be a very nice sandwich to eat.

Just a forewarning, I apologize in advance for what you're

about to see.

♪

Mm.

♪

This is just delicious.

Phenomenal.

But this is just missing Mexican ketchup.

Hot sauce.

The creaminess of the avocado, wow, with the cheese,

bit of the chorizo and the beans.

I'm telling you, when it comes to street food,

nothing beats la torta.

But I have a dessert in mind that come close to it.

♪

LUIS: First I have my esquites.

Then I had my tacos.

I had my tortas.

And now, I just feel like having dessert.

♪

I'm making arroz con leche, which is rice pudding.

Probably the most famous dessert in Mexico.

Your kids would fall in love with this.

Now I just want you to take a look at this.

This is bomba rice. Isn't this beautiful?

There's enough starch in it just to start the creaminess going.

I'm going to start toasting the rice

just to get that sort of nutty quality to it.

You have to be careful with this rice.

Bomba rice is so starchy that if you keep moving it a lot

then it turns into a sushi roll almost.

Now, my favourite dessert has always been rice pudding.

My Grandma used to make it in the nights

and the whole house would fill with the scent of orange

and vanilla and cinnamon.

Now, at this point we're going to add water.

The rice is already toasted, you see?

Now you might be thinking, "Why are you using water, not milk?"

It's because the milk may end up burning,

so we need to start the process of the rice being cooking

with water.

Once this cooks down a little bit,

I'm just going start adding my milk.

♪

Perfect.

Just a little bit of milk on top. Just to cover, okay?

'Cause we're going to be adding milk as the rice is needing

the milk. So for this you have to pay attention.

It's almost as if you're waiting for the rice to tell you,

"Get me more leche! Leche! Leche!"

That's when you add the milk okay?

'Cause leche is milk.

Now at this point I'm going to be adding vanilla.

Now, in Mexico, we usually use vanilla beans.

I'm going to get some sugar into it.

You know what? What the heck. Let's add more.

Now we're just going to mix it.

We just have to wait just a little bit for the rice to cook.

And, oh man, this is going to be the best dessert ever.

♪

Look at the cinnamon here. Wow.

(Sniffing) The smell of it is just phenomenal.

I just want my rice to be a little more creamy.

And for that I'm going to be using my egg yolks.

Now, you never want to be adding egg yolks into a boiling

or simmering water

because you're going to end up having scrambled eggs.

But for that I'm going to show you a little trick.

I'm going to get a bit of cornstarch.

And we're going to add that cornstarch into the egg yolks.

That is going to prevent the egg yolks to cook.

Perfect.

Now, we're going to remove the pan from the heat.

We're going to be putting all the egg yolks into it.

Look at the colour, look how creamy it got.

Man.

I'm just going to add raisins to it.

As you mix them with the rice,

they're going to start soaking all that flavour

from the milk and the cinnamon and the vanilla.

And they're just this like, little sweetness.

That's it. We're ready to eat.

Now, who doesn't like a good arroz con leche?

Oh man.

This is perfect.

(Sniffing)

Ah!

I can see my Grandma here.

For her final touch she used to put a little bit of cinnamon

on top of it.

This is for you, Grandma.

(Scratching)

(Sniffing)

This is-- this is incredible.

Man, it's just-- the creaminess with the egg and the milk.

Man, look at this beautiful goddess,

a little raisin there.

Packed with flavour, the juiciness comes out.

I can taste the cinnamon, the vanilla just at the very back.

You know what my favourite part?

Carrying the orange into it...

just brings a different dimension in your mouth.

It's just-- wow.

♪

Wherever you go in Mexico City, I guarantee you,

you'll find the best food ever.

♪