Across the border

 

 

True story: Lindsay's fiance's parents like to do house exchanges. Living in Ventura, it's pretty easy to find people in other countries who want to take a vacation in Southern California. This is a cool, relatively inexpensive way for people around here to take vacation and get to explore other countries.

One of the couples hailed from Great Britain. As they were recounting their stay to Ryan's parents, they mentioned how one day they went out driving. They didn't know how far they'd gone, but they managed to stumble across a "quaint little Mexican village." Since Ventura is a good three hours from the Mexico border, and since crossing that border usually entails some kind of checkpoint, the Guziks questioned the couple further about this "Mexican village" and after a short while determined it was Santa Paula, a town just east of Ventura.

People in Ventura County will immediately start laughing. There is a very strong Mexican influence in Santa Paula, with some of the best Mexican food and groceries around, so it is conceivable that someone from England could get confused.

Or at least that's what Rob and I were thinking, and laughing about, when we decided to make a trek to Tresierras, which has some of the best Mexican groceries around. Once of the things I've noticed is that most white people are afraid of the Mexican markets. Down the street from where I live is the main Mexican strip in Ventura. There are three markets, a carciniera, a couple of panaderias, along with restaurants, liquor stores and mini marts. Most people I know have never set foot in any of these markets.

It is a bit intimidating. First, the primary language is Spanish and some employees don't speak English at all. Those who do speak English tend to speak Spanish, especially when white people are around. Then, a lot of the foods are unfamiliar. The first revelation is the meat counters at the Mexican markets. They still employ butchers. You can get them to cut up, chop, grind, saw anything you want. It's amazing.

You know all those cooking shows where someone who hasn't been out shopping for at least a couple of decades -- read Martha and Rachael Ray -- will say something glib like "have your butcher ... blah blah blah?" I don't know about you people, but my local Vons butchers are completely worthless when it comes to preparing the meat. They get theirs from pre-cut chubs, which they break down into company-mandated packages and they rarely cut to order. The Mexican meat markets carry a much wider array of meat products than the severely limited standard grocery stores. You can get the organ meats, which are available in abundance and there are treats like pigs feet (a personal favorite), cows feet and all manner of pig and cow pieces.

The Mexican markets are where you can find all kinds of obscure, gourmet items. As you would expect, there are tons of chiles. There are Mexican squashes, sugar cane, tomatillos, cactus, Mexican-style green onions (which are great grilled on top of your meat) and about a gazillion unfamiliar Mexican and Latin American cheeses and creams. Tresierras also makes tortillas on the spot, along with fresh gorditas and huaraches.

Rob and I had a great time just exploring the store and checking out all the unfamiliar items. I started buying selected treats with no real plan in mind. The first thing I got was chicharones con carne or pig skin with some meat. My family on my dad's side has a real pork affection. My dad used to spend summers at his uncle's pig farm in the Ozarks and I don't know if it was just lard becoming part of the family DNA, but you don't want to be around Gamblins when there are things like crunchy pig's skin to be munching. My dad once had a pig roast and I thought the guy doing the cooking was going to start hitting us with his spatula because were were all sneaking little bits.

I had some real difficulty making myself understood about my order because the counterperson didn't speak English. Fortunately another customer started translating. I also got some menudo, which is a tripe soup Mexicans traditionally serve for hangovers. I'd always been curious about it and wanted to give it a try.

Rob made gagging noises when I told him what I'd bought. There were all these bags of little wheel-looking things called duritos, so I got a bag. I was curious about the huarache, which is an oval-looking thick corn tortilla kind of thing, so I bought them. I also got some nopales salad because I've always wanted to try cactus -- it looks so good. Tresierras has the best pico de gallo in the area and they fry their own chips. I also snagged some weird-looking peruano beans out of curiosity. We added some guacamole and Rob bought a chicken that was being grilled out front. The cool part about it was that we didn't spend very much money at all.

We went home and I started trying to figure out what I'd bought. I found out that the duritos are made from flour-based sheets that are cut out and fried to become puffy. They tasted like shrimp crackers with the same texture, but porkier. They are commonly eaten with a little lime juice and some hot sauce, like Tapatio. I tried them with the hot sauce, but found I really liked them best plain. The huaraches are fried and often served with nopales salad. So it actually looked like I knew what I was doing when I bought both items. I love when that happens. I started munching on my pork skins, much to Rob's great disgust. I tried the menudo, but it didn't have any hominy and was disgusting and greasy with just the tripe. I threw it out.

I'm going to have to change some of my menus to Mexican this week to take advantage of our bounty. It's such a shame we have these wonderful resources and opportunities to explore and discover all kinds of new things, but so many people are afraid to venture to the "Mexican" side of town or they hate "Mexican" food. It's really too bad. They're missing out on a lot.