Episode 6 Rick Stein's Road To Mexico

It was 1968 when I first came here to San Francisco.

I wanted to do my own road trip from the United States

to the Mexican border and beyond.

My dad had just died.

I'd finished school and I had no idea

what I wanted to do with my life.

It was the year after the Summer Of Love

and things like enchiladas, burritos, guacamole

I'd only heard of from the radio but they sounded wonderful.

But it wasn't just the food.

I wanted to live a little bit dangerously.

And I did.

Oh!

This is great. I've heard that the Mexicans,

anything for a bit of a fiesta in the street.

This is a wedding.

I'm in Oaxaca, and, on our first day,

we stumbled across this wedding dance.

Well, it's more like a carnival, really!

Once upon a time, this turkey would have been a live one

and revellers would have passed it from dancer to dancer.

And if the turkey's feathers stayed on,

and it was still breathing after a couple of hours of this,

then that would be a good omen for the marriage.

Just love those figures.

There's something curiously prophetic about marriage,

I think, the way they're bobbing and weaving aimlessly.

But anything for a bit of festival, and Mexicans just love it.

It's not my first time in Oaxaca.

They say this southern state is the culinary heart of Mexico,

so I had to come back

and make it part of my journey.

I can still remember everything I tasted the last time I was here.

Fabulous beef, really good cheese,

mezcal of course, and tlayuda, Mexican crispy pizzas.

The first thing that draws me like a magnet is the market

and grilled beef for breakfast.

This is sensational!

I mean, you could call it a sort of meat-lover's nirvana.

Just everywhere, it's mostly beef, it looks like skirt to me,

but there's just so much of it.

I mean, if you love your beef, you've got to come here

because this is what every beef-lover dreams.

Beef on charcoal, simply cooked.

Perfection.

The speciality of this part of the market are these semi-dried

sheets of pork and beef.

What I'm looking for is the tasajo,

and that's this very thinly sliced beef, and I'd like...

MAN SPEAKS MEXICAN SPANISH

That one. It's got more fat in it, hasn't it? Para me.

MAN SPEAKS MEXICAN SPANISH

OK.

So, this, I think it's cut from the leg very, very thinly,

and salted, pre-salted.

And, originally, it was because

they didn't have any refrigeration, so they preserved it like this.

But then it's going to be grilled over charcoal and with those onions

and the chillies and everything, and they'll give me some tortillas, too.

There can't be a meat lover watching this who doesn't think

"When can I get to Oaxaca?"

Fabulous.

Wow. So, tear off a bit of meat...

..maybe add a little bit of chilli. They don't look that hot.

We'll soon find out.

Obviously, an onion.

You're going to get yourself quite...

..quite dirty in this,

definitely a bit of salsa roja,

a little bit of lemon.

Incidentally, this is lemon, limon, it's not lime.

And then roll it up.

Excuse me.

It's really wonderful, absolute heaven.

I think this is why Mexican food is becoming so popular in the UK,

it's dishes like this. It's just so fresh and so impromptu.

You make up whatever you want in these tortillas to make your tacos.

With this beautiful beef, it's fabulous.

That lovely taco has got me thinking - I can map my trip

so far through the tacos I've had, funnily enough.

First, from Tijuana, a Baja Med special with seared venison.

This is going to be a religious experience.

Then shrimp ceviche in Ensenada.

In Puerto Vallarta, there was goat - the birria taco.

Tacos al pastor in Mexico City, with pork shawarma.

They might all look the same but they're not.

The taco, like Mexico itself, is full of variety.

As well as the fabulous beef, there's another very famous

speciality of Oaxaca - insects.

They're a big part of the local diet,

and we're told they're the food of the future.

Yes, I know what you're thinking but, honestly, they're OK!

Whenever you say to somebody that you've been to Oaxaca, if they've

been here, they'll always say,

"Did you try the grasshoppers, the chapulines?"

Well, I have tried them before, last time I was here,

but I tried those ones,

and they're all very little and they just taste like rather crisp legs.

So, this time, I'm going to go for some big ones. Oh, that's good.

Right.

Without further ado, one with a big thorax.

They're really nice.

Salt and lemon, I can tell that. Now, there's a big one.

They've got a sort of...almost a sort of vegetable taste,

funnily enough. Slightly leafy. They're not unpleasant.

Well, I don't think I'm going to eat all these.

-I know who will want them. The crew. Would you like some?

-No, thank you.

Grasshoppers, any of you? Oh, well, suit yourselves.

When DH Lawrence stayed in Oaxaca,

he wrote evocatively about this very market.

"Most extraordinary is the sound

"that comes out. It is a huge noise but you may never notice it.

"It sounds as if all the ghosts in the world

"were talking to one another.

"It's a noise something like rain or banana leaves in the wind."

He was here on what he called his "savage pilgrimage",

a period of self-imposed exile after World War I.

This is room 218, I think this is where DH Lawrence stayed

when he first came to Oaxaca.

I know it's a bit sort of pathetic but I actually really do like

standing in a room where a hero of mine stayed.

Obviously, it's changed, it's been done up but it still feels right.

The floor feels right, the doors feel right.

And, actually, the view would have been virtually unchanged

from the 1920s. I mean, that church is massively old.

So, I'm looking at what DH Lawrence was looking at.

Now, what would he be thinking about, I wonder?

Well, probably The Plumed Serpent, Quetzalcoatl,

probably some thoughts about the Mexican Indians.

He had a lot to say about them. Mornings in Mexico. The light.

And what I really love about DH Lawrence is

he tries to get to the truth about men and women.

I also like the fact that he knew my grandparents.

Yes, they were neighbours in Cornwall

where he wrote Women In Love.

His wife, Frieda, was German, like my grandparents.

Unlike them, she was thought to be a spy.

Probably because her uncle was the famous Red Baron.

The Cornish claimed she sent signals to the German U-boats

by the way she hung up her washing on the cliffs.

I think it's unlikely but that's why they were travelling -

because they were kicked out of Cornwall.

Although he was very ill with TB and malaria while he was here,

Lawrence described Oaxaca as a place of sun and roses.

He was a great observer of Mexican life.

Much is unchanged since he was here in the 1920s.

There would have been the shoeshine, oranges pressed on the street,

and the women making brooms from dried grasses.

I must say, I'm really fond of just sitting, drinking a bit of limon and

coffee in a central plaza like this, with the cathedral just opposite.

And I think, in a way, this is what Mexico's like.

It's a country where, if you look into the dark side,

it doesn't bear looking into.

But a place where you can sit on a sunny morning like this with

some lovely music, with the jacarandas in bloom,

and feel so happy with your life.

Driving north through this parched landscape,

it's hard to believe how much grows in the state of Oaxaca.

But this region produces foods loved all over Mexico,

particularly Oaxacan cheese, the finishing touch to burritos,

tacos and tlayuda from Tijuana to Tulum.

Some say the method of making it

was brought to Mexico by Dominican monks.

Another theory is it was the creation of a young girl

who let the curds boil dry out of carelessness

and rapidly added hot water to retrieve the situation,

hence the Oaxaca cheese.

I think that sounds like a true story. Why?

Because it's got a mistake in it!

And in cooking, well, cooking is about mistakes

and learning from them.

What everyone does agree about is where it was invented,

less than an hour from Oaxaca in a town called Reyes Etla.

On this farm, run by Lorenzo Reyes,

it's made from the milk of Jerseys and Friesians.

I must say, I love being amongst cows.

I was born and brought up on a farm

so milking is not strange to me whatsoever.

The smell of fresh cows is lovely.

And Don Lorenzo here is milking by hand, and it's really

important to him that everything that the cows eat, he grows.

So, first of all, they're feeding them today alfalfa,

but he also feeds them maize silage and oats.

Now, I suppose if you think about making really good wine,

you would want to have control on all the growing.

It's just the same with Don Lorenzo.

The first part of the process is very familiar.

Milk, buttermilk, rennet,

and salt are stirred together and heated into curds.

But that's where it gets interesting.

Lorenzo adds hot water and pulls and stretches

until he's made long ribbons of elastic cheese.

I must say, it is the most fascinating process.

The way he rolls it up, ties it up like that,

almost looks like some sort of Aztec symbol.

You could imagine it in stone.

There's a Mexican expression for chaos,

"More tangled than a Oaxacan cheese."

But I don't know why. It's as neat as a ball of wool.

DON LORENZO SPEAKS IN MEXICAN SPANISH

Gracias, Don Lorenzo.

Well, my first impression is this delightful toughness of it.

It's so sort of pleasant to bite through the teeth. It's salty.

It's got a lovely tartness to it. Utterly delicious.

And I can sort of understand, because it's so versatile,

why it is the most used cheese in Mexico.

DON LORENZO SPEAKS IN MEXICAN SPANISH

The only cheese I can think that's sort of anything like it

in Europe is probably mozzarella, buffalo mozzarella.

A good buffalo mozzarella has that sort of taste of pastures,

which this does as well. It is really, really good cheese.

Queso Oaxaca is fantastic to cook with.

And, back home in Padstow, it's given me the idea of making

quesadilla with courgette flowers, cheese, and jalapenos.

So, now, my first opportunity of making my own tortillas,

and I've got blue masa harina, that means blue maize flour,

and that's from a type of blue corn.

I'm just going to add some salt in there.

And then some water.

Now, it's very easy to make tortilla dough

because there's no gluten in maize flour, and, therefore,

you don't need to stretch it, you just mix everything together.

So, there we go.

Just beginning to gather that up from the bottom,

maybe a little bit more water here, just mix that into a ball,

and out onto my chopping board.

Cut it up into pieces, like that.

And just mould each one into a round ball.

Now, here is my tortilla press.

Note I've got two sheets of polythene here,

just a freezer bag, as it happens, cut open.

And that's because you never, not even in Mexico,

put the corn straight on to the press, because it sticks too bad.

And see, it's come out quite nice and round.

You're never going to get like Mexican-style round,

but that's not too bad.

So now here I have a double comal,

because I want to cook two at a time.

Very important not to get it too hot.

You don't want it to burn, you just want to cook the tortilla.

So just making the other one.

So just get your spatula, and if it goes underneath very easily

then it's ready to turn over.

And now the other one.

Yep, there we go.

Now then, I'm just going to take those off and put them into

my neat little warming bag, very, very lovely, this.

I've got two, one with a Mexican hat on and the other one

with a Day Of The Dead skull.

And that just keeps it for about an hour,

not only warm but also moist,

so you can see the steam coming out of there.

Good. Now to make the filling.

First of all, obviously, corn oil in the pan. Just add some onions

and sweat them down a bit,

and then add some garlic.

Just let that cook down a bit. Now, I've got a whole jalapeno chilli.

Just pull the end off and cut that up very, very finely.

Well, quite finely.

Now look at these.

I got these from my son Edward's garden this morning,

or he brought them in.

I mean, just... This is what fillings are all about, you know.

Beautiful. So I'm just going to chop up these tiny courgettes

and add those

and just let them fry for a little bit, just to cook down,

cos otherwise they'll be a bit too lumpy.

And now the flowers.

I just love courgette flowers, especially

when they're as young as this, they're so sweet.

So in they go, too.

A good pinch of salt from the salt pig.

And that's the filling now done, it's just...

Leave that just to cook down a little bit more.

And now to make up my quesadillas.

The tortillas go back on to the comal

for a moment, to warm up.

The best alternative to queso Oaxaca is mozzarella, it's obvious.

And instead of the fresh curd cheese, queso fresco,

I'm using lovely, crumbly Lancashire.

Now for the filling, just on one side.

God, that's smelling nice. Very, very nice.

Fold them over like that. As you can see,

the cheese is already beginning to melt.

Press them down, just to let the cheese cook a little bit more

and then flip them over the other side.

Let that go a little bit.

Then on to my chopping board, and chop in half.

And eat with great pleasure.

OK? Totally delicious.

I know I'm not the best tortilla maker in the world,

but delicious.

You can buy them, of course you can buy them online,

corn tortillas now.

But as I always like to say,

a sweet disorder in the dress

kindles in clothes a wantonness.

That's the way I feel about my tortillas.

They may not be perfect, but I love them to bits.

Mexicans call Oaxaca the Green City,

but I couldn't see why

until I looked at it in this light.

It's built from cantera stone,

which is almost glowing in the morning sun.

And, yes, it really is pale green.

I'm going to the museum to see a painting. It's about corn.

It's the work of Arturo Garcia Bustos,

who studied under Frida Kahlo.

Later, he became one of Mexico's great mural painters.

This one's very important, I think.

I mean, you've got this wonderful god up there in the clouds,

the god of corn, I suppose, with an ear of corn,

about to drop it down, pick up the water.

And there you've got the hand of, clearly, a manual labouring peasant

holding this ear of corn up, just showing how important

to the Mexicans corn is.

It's the centre of life.

And there's a very, very wonderful Mexican slogan, I suppose,

that says "Sin maiz no hay pais."

In other words, without maize, you don't have a country.

This region is where corn was first cultivated 7,000 years ago.

That's before the Ming dynasty,

the ancient Greeks

or even the pyramids.

And corn is still a major part of the local diet,

as shown by that favourite dish, pozole.

To see how it's made, I'm going to visit Nora Valencia,

an expert in Oaxacan cuisine

learned from her mother and grandmother.

-Hello, very nice to meet you.

-Welcome to Oaxaca.

-Thank you, thank you.

-You want to cook?

-Let's go cook pozole.

-OK!

Pozole is a corn-based meat stew

and one of the oldest and best-loved dishes in Mexico.

She shows me how to nixtamalize the maize,

a process that goes back to the earliest cooking in Mexico.

She makes an alkaline solution - in this case, chalk, lime and water -

and adds the maize.

She boils it until the husks are broken down

and the maize inside softens and swells.

OK, so now you can see

how this, you know,

dark yellow, and you can take one of these ones... Ah. It's hot.

-So you just can take it like this.

-Yeah.

And now we have the big difference, you know,

in between this one and this one.

-It's swollen up, hasn't it?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-It means the corn is ready and now we can wash it.

She starts again with clean water.

She adds poached chicken to the pot to enrich the stock.

Then she makes a bouquet garni -

an onion, a whole head of garlic split in half

and herbs and spices,

oregano, thyme, cumin, cloves,

and adds it to the pot.

A couple of ladles of chicken stock. It's smelling wonderful.

And a good sprinkling of salt.

Then she makes pipian verde.

This is a spicy green paste

made from toasted pepitas, pumpkin seeds,

red and green chillies

and tomatillos.

Then there's a herb. I've only had it in Mexico, hoja santa.

It's fresh and zingy. A bit like tarragon or perhaps fennel.

She blitzes them all to a thick paste.

Meanwhile, she takes the chicken out to shred it.

The paste is fried in hot oil, a very Mexican touch.

And that is added to the pozole.

To serve, the shredded chicken first,

then the pozole.

And it comes with lettuce, radishes,

jalapenos and raw onions,

and a wedge of lime on the side.

-Enjoy!

-Thank you very much indeed, Nora.

-And you can make accompaniment with some tostadas.

-Oh, yeah.

I just want to try this, but I'd love tostadas in it.

-Yeah.

-I'm loving that corn,

I don't think I've ever tasted it

like that before, it's sort of...

I mean, obviously it's the most popular way of having it,

but I only have sort of sweetcorn on the cob or tortillas.

-Yeah.

-But this is really good!

Well, now they are absorbing all the flavours

from the green pipian.

It's a bit like a sort of pesto, it's sort of slightly thickened it

and given it a bit of richness and a lot of flavour.

With the tomatillos and the pepitas, you know,

make it a really good flavour.

Pipian. I thought this was going to be really quite heavy, quite rich.

Well, you have three plates, probably, you know,

but this invites you to keep eating.

Oh, right, fair enough, fair enough!

I like it lots.

This is my last evening here in Oaxaca City,

and I find myself caught up listening to marimba music.

To be honest, before I came here,

I didn't know what a marimba was.

Of course, it was the Dean Martin song Sway that we of a certain

age know so well that made it famous.

I know it's nothing to do with food, but to me,

it's equally important.

APPLAUSE

Last time I was in Oaxaca, I must confess I stayed in the city,

because it was so fabulous, so much to see.

Churches, art galleries, the museum,

lovely squares to have drinks in the evening. Great restaurants.

There was no need to get out of the city. But this time I have,

and I do think that if you've got a chance, it's worth it,

because it's an agricultural region

and there's plenty of good produce to go and look at.

And also, great atmosphere in the country.

It's a really special part of Mexico.

It's Sunday morning, and I've come to see the ruins

of the ancient capital of this region,

Monte Alban.

Perched on a high hill above the city,

this is the work of the Zapotecs,

who were every bit as advanced as their more famous rivals,

the Aztecs and the Mayans.

After all, they had the technology to cut the top off the mountain

to create this enormous plateau

so they could build the city here.

Over 17,000 people once lived here,

and because I'm a cook,

I imagine the air would have been full of noise

and thick with the smells and sounds of Zapotecan life.

Corn tortillas toasting on griddles,

beef sizzling, smoke everywhere,

chillies roasting.

Lovely!

Trouble is, this is all guesswork.

I mean, that is just a beautiful view.

I don't mind that I don't actually know

what was happening here in Zapotec times.

I mean, was this a forum? Was it part of a marketplace?

Are these religious buildings? Nobody actually knows.

But it doesn't sort of matter to me, because I think architecture for me

is about sort of framing space in some way,

or framing landscape.

And if you think about the just fantastic view there,

it would be so much the less without these wonderful

buildings in front of me.

Despite what you might think,

the Zapotec civilisation hasn't completely vanished.

Almost a million Mexicans still identify as Zapotec,

and Oaxaca is the centre of their culture.

I'm going to a town with one of Mexico's oldest open-air markets.

It's known here as a tianguis,

and ethnic Zapotecans from all the surrounding villages come here.

What is wonderful about this market is there is

a sort of sense of innocence about it. There's lovely smells

in the air of watermelon

and roasting corn and

grilling chickens.

And everybody looks sort of pleasant and charming

and colourful. It's lovely.

Ha! I've finally tracked down mamey.

I've been told about this, I've been looking for it all day.

Could I have a slice?

I'd heard that mameys taste like a cross between

a pear and a melon,

and that's exactly right.

Oh, that is good.

It's really, obviously, sweet-scented,

got a lovely mouth feel,

to use a common expression,

because of the sort of fattiness.

It actually has the same feel in the mouth as avocado,

but it's deliciously sweet.

Now, the first chillies ever to be cultivated

came from northern Oaxaca,

and, like corn, have been part of the Mexican diet

for thousands of years.

There's something truly wonderful about the aroma of dry chillies.

I'm just going to run through four here.

Just for my own memory, almost.

First we have guajillo,

which is a very common dried chilli,

then guachon, which I've never heard of before.

Mulato, which I have heard before, lovely black,

lovely smell, sort of liquorice-y smell.

And, finally, ancho.

It's sort of fruity and slightly smoky

and very, very, "I must have more of this" sort of smell.

In some ways, a few bits of plastic apart,

not much has changed since the glory days of the Zapotecans.

There's still a big market for these metates,

grinding stones as big as tables.

I'd love to take one home, but they weigh a tonne.

Literally!

Not far from here is the village home of the five Mendoza sisters,

Zapotec cooks of international fame.

They are mistresses of the metate,

and I want to watch them at work.

I've seen it used before, of course I have,

but this is advanced level metate in Zapotec.

-Metate in Espanol?

-Yeah.

In Zapoteco is guitz.

-Guitz? ALL:

-Guitz.

OK.

SHE SPEAKS HER OWN LANGUAGE AND RICK REPEATS

LAUGHTER

The sisters give cooking demonstrations all over the world,

speaking a mixture of Spanish, Zapotec and English.

-No mas fino.

-No mas fino? You don't want it fino?

So good.

Just thinking you could do these in a food processor, in a food grinder.

SHE SPEAKS HER OWN LANGUAGE Oh, yeah.

But, um...

Oh, fab!

But you just wouldn't have the control. I mean, um,

they're saying that, um,

that Abigail's actually grinding it quite softly, quite carefully,

um, just to achieve the right grind that she exactly wants.

Rosario's grinding really hard

so that the chilli now has become all like a tomato puree,

like, so, so fine.

But I think it's about getting exactly the right results.

They combine the corn and the chilli paste in a rich, aniseed-y sauce,

thanks to more of that uniquely Mexican herb, hoja santa.

This is a seguesa, often made with rabbit,

but in this case, chicken.

Seguesa de pollo.

Delicious!

Lovely!

I love that herb, it's fab.

And there's a final toast in mezcal, the spirit of Oaxaca.

We offering a little mezcal,

to say to them, welcome.

To say to you, welcome.

-Now...

-So how do I drink this, then?

-You have to sip it with a little orange.

-OK.

And salt, with chilli.

So I put the orange and the chilli...?

There we go.

-Mezcal.

-Mezcal.

Mmm!

-Very good combination.

-Mm-hmm.

Lovely mezcal.

Very nice.

That seguesa has made me think about chilli sauce.

I actually think about chilli sauce quite a lot.

I've had so many chilli sauces in Mexico,

and they're delicious.

So I've decided to come up with one of my own.

I'm using two types of chilli.

First I chop the ends off all of them

and shake out the seeds.

To develop the flavour, they need to be toasted a little on a comal.

These big ones are guajillos, and they are a medium heat.

I'm using about four of them.

Then about 15 of these little arbols,

sometimes called birds' beak chillies.

They're hotter and they'll give this sauce a real kick.

They go into a pan with hot water

and three cloves of garlic,

where they'll simmer for about 15 minutes.

Practically everything I've tasted here has a red hot chilli sauce,

this is my Mexican store cupboard essential.

I should say at this point, it's a good idea to keep the windows open,

because of your eyes. It's very spicy.

Into a liquidiser with the cooking water,

A handful of fresh chopped tomatoes,

and oregano, cumin, allspice,

brown sugar and cider vinegar.

A good teaspoon full of salt,

and it's all whizzed up while it's still hot.

Now, this is the last stage,

and it's an important last stage.

It goes back into the pan for a few more minutes

so the sauce reduces and thickens,

which in turn intensifies the flavour.

Crikey!

I have to think of a name. I have to bottle it, call it,

Rick's...Rage.

Rick's Rage.

It's that hot!

I've noticed, as a chef would,

that people seem to like things hotter and hotter all the time.

This sauce of mine, I think, would make them very happy indeed.

About an hour south of Oaxaca,

through semi-desert,

lies a farm belonging to one of Mexico's top chefs,

Alejandro Ruiz,

where he grows vegetables for his restaurant.

Today, he's having a family party there,

surrounded by aunts and cousins,

and he's invited me to come along.

There's a huge vat of rabbit stew underway,

there's beef on the griddle,

and great piles of garlic being crushed.

Vast quantities of food in progress.

-We have beautiful nopales over here as well, so...

-OK.

..I think that will be good for our salad.

I notice you're handling them a bit carefully.

Yeah, because they have these...

I know, I don't want to touch them at all.

It's the prickle, and you don't even notice where you have them.

-You just feel like...

-Argh, itch, itch!

Yeah. You have to be... You have to have a special skill

to claim these nopales.

Gosh, I think you do.

Alejandro is gathering the last few ingredients from his vegetable plot.

The garden is abundant, brimming with fruit and vegetables

of all shapes and sizes.

That is really good rabbit. Oh!

It's just salt, maybe a bit of lemon juice...

..rabbit, bit of oil. Oh.

Sensational.

Alejandro is famous for his salsa molcajete

made fresh at the table.

The molcajete is a massive pestle and mortar.

I've heard it described as a pre-Hispanic food processor.

For me, doing this, it's an excuse to have a good meal, no?

-Enshrined in our culture, our way of life.

-Yeah.

-Our way of eating.

So I always put, like, raw onion in here, and lots of raw cilantro.

-When did you start cooking?

-Uh, my mother died when she was 21.

I am the oldest of five kids.

Two girls and three boys.

-Yeah.

-And I had to take over the kitchen.

-Wow.

-And I never, I was never taught to cook, I was only watching her

doing what my aunts are doing back there.

And learning by doing.

-When she asked me for cilantro I always got...

-The parsley.

..parsley, and she went, like,

"Silly boy. Now, go back and get the right thing."

I always like to put, like, a touch of sourness to this sauce.

This is enough.

If there's one recipe I really wanted to get right in Mexico, it's this.

Guacamole.

Alejandro makes it very simply,

with ripe Hass avocados,

onion, coriander and salt.

No unnecessary additions. No chillies,

no tomatoes, no lime juice

or indeed anything else.

There you are.

-Muchas gracias.

-De nada.

Before I came to Mexico, I was sort of wondering,

what is the right recipe for guacamole?

And that is it.

And it tastes fabulous.

Enjoy! Now we can make a perfect taco.

-Yeah, yeah.

-OK, let me get a tortilla.

-I always take the one in the bottom.

-OK.

Then, for a true taste of the region,

he makes me a taco with grasshoppers and flying ants.

-Chapulines.

-Little chapulines.

-There you go.

-Would you try some agave worms?

-I'd like some agave worms!

-Very good.

This would be a taco de insectos. Let me just roll it for you,

please, let me do the whole thing.

-There you go.

-Fab.

-Different?

-Delicious!

-Hot!

-Yeah.

Thoroughly... Really nice, actually.

It refreshes the experience, no?

With the salsa in there.

Um, the... The crunchiness is nice,

there's a lovely sort of vegetable flavour from them.

May I recommend

grasshoppers, worms

and ants?

But all this was just a foretaste. Now it's time for lunch,

a long, slow meal

where every dish looks fantastic and I want to try them all.

-Some beans?

-Oh, some beans?

-Yes, sir.

I tend to be inordinately fond of people that

love their food.

-If you don't love food then life doesn't make any sense, I think.

-No.

I think so.

Salud. Welcome.

-Lovely.

-Not bad!

-Well, thank you very much.

Next, an adventure. I'm going to Veracruz,

but there is no easy road, so it's a big loop round.

On the way I want to drive up into the mountains. Why?

Well, it's an area full of fabulous products

which I can't see anywhere else.

And it makes me think about the Spaniards who discovered the riches here in Mexico.

So many new tastes and flavours, fruit and vegetables,

they must have thought they'd hit the jackpot.

The Chinantla mountains are right in the centre of Mexico

and actually separate the state of Oaxaca from Oaxaca City on the west

to Tuxtepec on the east.

And there's virtually no roads through it,

which means that it's actually

virgin tropical forest, one of the few places

left in Mexico that is.

And right in the middle of nowhere we come across a village

with an astonishing number of bakeries.

This one, El Tio Tono,

is well known all across the region.

Tio Tono himself is no longer with us,

but his family want to keep his legacy alive

and carry on with the business.

They make about 20 types of bread, cakes and biscuits,

most of them to local Mexican recipes,

but with a few croissants thrown in, too.

Well, why not?

Before I get a chance to taste anything,

Mrs Tono gets me to help making the cinnamon rolls.

INAUDIBLE

I bet you I don't do it well enough, though.

I bet they'll quietly go and do them again.

It's funny, cos I get really nervous

about when they ask me to join in like this.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE Ah, OK.

And then when you start doing it you actually enjoy it much more.

-I'll just do that bit.

-Yeah.

OK.

You see how easy is it?

I feel... Always feel quite relaxed when I'm working with my hands.

Really? One more?

Uno mas?

So you can put this one up on the top.

-So, like that.

-Oh.

I say!

What's the paste?

The paste.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

Flour, sugar, cinnamon. I can't do now cos I've been

licking my fingers, so I'll leave you to it.

I think I'm just going to nick one, hope they don't mind, try it.

It's really nice, very, very moreish.

I can well understand why, um,

everyone's beating a path to Tono's bakery. It's fab.

What I've noticed driving through here is there's lots of other bakeries.

And I've discovered that they haven't set up in opposition,

it's just that Tono was such a far-sighted person

he encouraged all his apprentices to move out and open other bakeries

because he saw that, actually, the village itself could

sell the idea of brilliant bread, not just one bakery,

which I think is a very, very good idea.

Two companion plants, coffee and vanilla,

are grown in these mountains.

This story is interesting because it's a perfect

demonstration of how the food industry works,

and how our tastes can change lives in a tiny village

right in the middle of Mexico.

Raoul and Hector Antonio and their families grow both coffee and vanilla

like their parents and grandparents before them.

Hector and his wife, Patti,

are the coffee growers.

They've already harvested their coffee berries.

The way they process it here at home is very charming,

a bit Heath Robinson.

Muchas gracias, Patti.

Well, I'm going to say this, aren't I?

You need to come here and smell this, because it is just so

truly delightful, so deep,

so oily, so aromatic, so nutty.

I mean, it's... it's inspiring, I have to say.

It's worth travelling the world to find great things to smell and eat.

Just next door, and now this is what really excites me, is the vanilla...

..which only Raoul and one other villager still harvest.

This handful of straggly old vanilla pods

is worth a great deal of cash.

But it's not the easiest crop to grow.

Raoul, just tell me why you're cultivating vanilla here.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

He said his grandparents, who founded this village,

used to cultivate both vanilla and coffee,

but coffee proved much more profitable,

so the practice of growing vanilla died out.

But Raoul thinks it is so important,

such an important part of their culture and their tradition

that he's bringing it back for those reasons.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE

Oh, it's delicious.

Can't stop. That is...

..fab.

I didn't realise, but vanilla is a member of the orchid family,

and, like other orchids, grows in hidden locations.

Very shy.

It's a rough trek up into the forest to find it.

Raoul has just said we've got some vanilla here,

I suppose I'm a bit excited. It's a bit like finding a rare bird,

I suppose, I just love finding food that I've not seen in the wild.

HE SPEAKS HIS OWN LANGUAGE Can I pick them?

Why this is important to me is that this is actually

the only place in the world, in these Chinantla mountains

where vanilla grows wild,

and this is where it came from.

You might think it comes from places like Madagascar

or Tahiti, because that's where a lot of it is grown,

but it's actually from here.

Raoul's been to Turin to accept an award from the Slow Food movement,

simply because, I just think it's so important, and so do they.

And in fact, to know that I'm here, where it comes from,

as a bit of a foodie myself,

means a great deal. So he's a bit of a food hero, actually.

I could smell this roadside stall a mile or so away,

and so I was really pleased when we stopped for this train.

I just smelled this wonderful smell of pineapples,

and just looking at these and I just had to pick one up because...

..that, surely, for me,

is the biggest pineapple I've ever seen.

And, I mean, they are incredibly popular. And of course

I think it's really indicative

of how incredibly fertile this region of Mexico,

we're still in Oaxaca state, is,

and how it contrasts with the countryside

around Oaxaca itself, which is really dry.

This is lush, you've got sugar cane,

you've got mangos, you've got papayas

and these fantastic pineapples.

And now I've just got to have a glass of pineapple juice.

Mexicans eat pineapple for breakfast,

but they also have fantastic fruit juices.

I'll pay later.

Wish you were here.

My winding trip through the jungle has got me thinking.

There's a lot of talk about the gold the Spanish

raided from the New World,

but in many ways, the foods they brought back

had a much more lasting impact.

The gold is long gone, probably spent on wars,

but the chocolate is still with us.

This is the women's co-operative at San Martin,

and Carolina Pena is taking me to pick some fruit.

-Listen, it's this way.

-Oh, OK.

-Let's see the cacao trees.

-The cacao trees.

-So you see the fruit.

We're at the end of the main cropping period,

but Carolina's kept one perfect fruit on the tree

just for me.

-So we're looking for a lemon-y one.

-Yes.

-Is that lemon-y?

Yes, that will be it.

Yes, like this.

-Yes, this is it.

-Oh, nothing too difficult about that.

No, not at all.

It's a good one.

-It is, is it?

-Yes, yeah, it has 40 seeds inside,

and a good chocolate bar.

Just one chocolate bar?

No, you need a lot more, but to begin with it's a good bite.

-Depends on the chocolate.

-Yes!

Let's go back with our one trophy, unless we can find some more.

Yes, let's go.

When I think about it, chocolate's contribution

to the sum of human happiness is profound.

It's the ultimate comfort food. Warming, cheering,

and for me, a little bit addictive.

Oh, thank you, Martin.

Martin, aged three, already knows more

about extracting cacao beans from the fruits than I do.

Well, of course he does, he's grown up around them.

Once the beans are laid bare, they're left to ferment,

which takes around five days,

and then another five to dry in the sun.

I must say, it's very satisfying running your hands

through these drying beans. I'm just going to...

..crack one open.

And you can already see the sort of,

the chocolate inside the cacao inside.

And indeed, it's got a flavour like it.

But it has to be roasted.

It's quite bitter, though.

Always wonder how on earth anybody

could think this could turn into something as gorgeous as chocolate.

After drying, the beans are lightly toasted to bring out the flavour,

which makes the husks go brittle and papery.

That's a lot easier to get the shells off, now.

Ah, that's more like it!

That really now smells like cacao, like...

..you can smell the chocolate bar in that.

And, actually, it tastes much more like chocolate.

It's still very bitter.

It's got a lovely aftertaste, a lovely aroma, too.

At the co-operative,

they make little patties from cacao, cinnamon and sugar.

And to my surprise, the most popular way for locals to consume cacao

is as a rather bitter drink.

This is for drinking, it's not for making into chocolate bars.

But it's really nice, I love the way they put just

a little bit of cinnamon in with the chocolate,

sort of, almost every time I taste that I think, "That's Mexico."

It's lovely.

Do you know, if there's a chocolate dish on a menu,

it outsells any other dessert

by about two to one.

It's an extraordinary fact, but what does it mean?

It means that back in Padstow, there's only one contender.

I'm going to make chocolate fondant truffles

with pasilla chillies.

So I'm just adding some double cream to this hot pan

and I'm just going to heat it up.

Not to boiling, but just heat up enough to melt the chocolate.

And now I'm adding some pasilla chillies.

Now, I've taken the seeds out of these chillies

and then I've lightly toasted them just to bring out

the fruitiness. And when I say fruitiness,

I mean fruitiness, because chillies technically

are fruit, not vegetables.

OK, and then I ground them up in my blender, and there they go.

Lovely, deep reddish-brown colour. It's wonderful.

Now, they're not very hot, and I do want a residual heat in this dish.

So I'm just going to add a bit of cayenne pepper there.

Just stir those all in.

Now take them off the heat and stir in the chocolate

and allow that to melt.

I'm just going to add a little bit of salt to this,

it's always a good idea in a chocolate sauce.

Not a lot, just a pinch.

I was really attracted to this dish when I first tried it.

I mean, essentially they are what we call petits fours,

but they're deep-fried, and that's quite tricky to get right.

What I like is this idea of putting chilli with

something like chocolate.

So this just goes into the fridge... Oh.

There we go. Goes into the fridge for about two or three hours.

My wife's always complaining about my fridge,

I don't really understand why.

It's fine!

A couple of hours to chill, and then it's ready to form into caneles,

which are rugby ball shaped,

and then dropped into cocoa powder.

Mexico gave us so much, if you think about it.

Avocados, tomatoes,

corn and chocolate!

I mean, where would we be without chocolate?

The most wonderfully sinful ingredient known to man, I say.

And now just to mould them up.

There we go, that looks really nice.

I'm quite enjoying this!

So, they need to go into the freezer now,

because the point is, I'm going to deep fry them, and if they're not frozen in the middle they'll melt.

But if they're frozen they'll be just right.

Now to make the batter. Mix flour, baking powder,

caster sugar and salt.

Then an egg and a little milk.

And I want a reasonably thick batter,

so it'll cling to the chocolate balls,

about the consistency of double cream. And I fry them long enough

not just to brown the batter, but to melt the middles.

Well, that's the plan!

It only takes a couple of minutes.

There we go.

Coat well, and now straight into my hot oil.

Don't leave them in there too long, cos what's really good

if the chocolate in the middle is still a little bit cold.

One of the crew said, "Does it taste like fried Mars bars?"

I'm not against fried Mars bars,

but this is just a little bit more subtle,

with all that lovely chilli in it.

Lifting them out of the oil on to my kitchen paper,

and that's it.

They're ready to go. I would add here that

if you don't want to go through all that batter process,

just those balls are lovely rolled in cocoa powder

as a petit four.

Well, I know you're wondering, is it melted in the middle?

Of course it is.

Still a little bit cool, you've got that hot batter,

you've got the cool centre.

It's very luxurious. A real taste of Oaxaca, where this dish comes from.

It was a long drive into the mountains,

with lots to see on the way.

Finally, we arrived at our overnight stop, the Etla cabins.

And it turns out it's glamping, Mexican style!

We got here late, I was exhausted,

and it was only this morning that I saw how beautiful it is here.

Last night I slept the sleep of the just,

just went out, really with the murmuring of the river

and just a lovely scent in the air.

This morning I woke up and looked out and just thought,

"Why would you need anything more deluxe?"

I mean, this is, really, you feel

part of nature in a way, in a cabin like this.

What an oasis, the perfect place to end this part of my trip.

From San Francisco, I've come two and a half thousand miles

with another 750 to go

as I travel on to the Yucatan.

On the way to Veracruz,

there's a chance encounter with a Cuban barbecue.

Mayan ruins at Uxmal.

And, finally, my journey's end at Tulum,

the jewel of the southeast coast.