My Mexico     T A B L E_T A L K Old-world retail: Discuss the lost art of bargaining in the Wanderlust area of Table Talk   R E C E N T L Y Deep in the heart of Thailand, Texas By Roger Beaumont Wild-eyed expats swap yarns and squander fortunes in Bangkok's Lonestar bar (01/27/99) Hurricanes and hope in Honduras By Rachel Louise Snyder As the storm-battered Central American country rebuilds, dreams take root (01/26/99) A passion for Pelago By Tanya Shaffer An unlikely village hosts a Rainbow Gathering meets Burning Man meets rave music festival in Italy (01/25/99) This week in travel Wanderlust's selective guide to travel-related news from across the globe (01/22/99) Can this planet be saved? By Don George Mark Hertsgaard discusses his new book about the human toll of global environmental devastation (01/21/99)   Browse the Wanderlust Passages archives     Wanderlust's Official Travel Book Partner		________mymexico Mexico's foremost food writer celebrates the culinary traditions of Campeche. [ E X C E R P T ] - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - MY MEXICO BY DIANA KENNEDY CLARKSON POTTER 550 PAGES Editor's note: A renowned and beloved authority on Mexican cuisine, Diana Kennedy has produced a new book that is part memoir, part travelogue and part cookbook -- and that deliciously synthesizes her 40 years of cooking, tasting and writing about Mexico's varied foods. In this excerpt, Kennedy wanders through Campeche and celebrates that region's rich "soul food." BY DIANA KENNEDY | Provincia azul, donde es azul el cielo, donde es azul el mar." "Blue region, where the sky is blue, where the sea is blue." I thought of this quote (from Carlos Pellicer) the other day as I was driving across the long bridge that links La Isla de Carmen to the mainland of Campeche. The sea and sky, both a pale lustrous blue, seem to converge at a hardly discernible line. There was nothing else to be seen but a few seabirds and an occasional fish jumping in the still water. I wondered if I dared stop on the bridge to take a photograph, but the trailers and trucks were coming up behind at a fast lick. When I come back, I thought. On the journey back a storm had blown in and all was gray with silvery-green reflections of the mounting clouds in the water. Again it was impossible to stop as I watched the oncoming traffic in the rearview mirror -- and besides, I would need a wide-angle lens to do justice to the beauty of that turbulent scene. Campeche, the town, has always been a very special place for me. My first extended stay there to study the food was in the summer of 1969. The Malecón (promenade) stretched for several kilometers along the rim of gulf, and the landfill between that and the town itself was dotted with a few buildings of hideous design and construction (I cannot use the word architecture). The baluartes, fortifications, built to defend the town against the most daring of pirates in the eighteenth century stood back partially crumbling with neglect, the still elegant, whitish stone mottled with grays and blacks. Behind those walls lay the town itself; it was white and clean with immaculate small plazas overhung with flowering trees and shrubs surrounded by houses of simple but beautiful design that I have come to associate with that of the southern ports. Tlacotalpan, which is almost intact, and Veracruz, Alvarado, and Ciudad del Carmen, as they used to be. The home cooks that I visited and cooked with still prepare daily their traditional recipes and take great pride in them; it is their "soul food." Strong Mayan influences can be seen in the preparation and ingredients of many of the local dishes, while others show a complete melding of Mayan and Spanish, and still others have a distinctive Lebanese influence -- there are large Lebanese communities of long standing in the Yucatecan peninsula. For those families who still follow traditional eating patterns, there is a predictable weekly sequence to the dishes prepared: on Mondays it is comida de floja (the lazy woman's meal -- although it still requires a lot of preparation), frijol con puerco, beans and pork. On Tuesdays beef is served in some form or other, often thin steaks in a tomato sauce, breaded, or stewed with charred onion and garlic, seasoned with oregano, and served with plain white rice. To digress: I am very partial to the rice grown in this state -- it has a very satisfying, earthy flavor that reminds me of the rice from Guayana that I remember eating years ago on the Caribbean islands. Sadly, as with many other good things, production is dwindling because of the low prices paid to the producers. Wednesday is the day for preparing a simple puchero, or stew, with chicken or beef with vegetables, and Thursday for cazón (dogfish) in any one of its various preparations. On Friday my friends and their cooks like to choose a whole fish, or fish steaks, often seasoned with tomato and chile dulce and cooked in a banana leaf. Every Saturday cattle are slaughtered to ensure an abundance of beef for the Sunday puchero de tres carnes (stew of three meats). The fresh offal is immediately bought up for chocolomo, a hearty soup/stew served only on Saturdays. In spite of the hot climate freshened somewhat by breezes from the sea, Sunday is a day of heavy eating. In the early morning there was a steady stream of people going to their favorite cook, usually a man, of cochinita pibil. A small, but not suckling, pig is seasoned with a paste of achiote and spices dissolved in bitter orange juice, wrapped in banana leaves, and cooked in a pit barbecue. The stomach and large intestines are stuffed with and cooked with the meat. A slice of this buche and the roughly shredded pork is stuffed into the Campeche-style French bread roll, for breakfast. The main meal of the day is a puchêro de las tres carnes, the most substantial of stews with pork, beef, and a fat hen (the hen is very important for flavor). The meat is served with the vegetables, a bowl of the broth on the side along with a helping of rice and the typical relishes of the region: chopped onion in Seville orange juice, a salpicón, radishes chopped with cilantro and chile, again in orange juice, and (another relish) chile habanero charred and crushed. Now, I like my food piping hot, so I never know where to start first; picking at this and that at random, I am full far too early in the game, to my annoyance. A Sunday puchero is an excellent prelude to a long siesta. If there is meat left over, it is shredded and added to mashed vegetables for tacos. N E X T+P A G E | Heated arguments over dogfish