Tlayudas

This posting has to do with food, so prepare yourself. We have a taco stand in our back yard (almost literally) and the food is glorious. The stand is called Ana Marie’s.

Jason convinced me to try one of Ana Marie’s tacos after a couple of weeks of living in Oaxaca. You can’t get more convenient than a taco stand behind your house and the smells that waft up from the grill, that of bbqu’d steak and costilla (pork) are enough to get a person all riled up. I haven’t found cooking in Oaxaca to be the most rewarding experience. If I were going to be here for another year, I would work harder, but at this point, I cook and we eat about three or four of the same dishes every week. Needless to say, tacos, tortas (grilled sandwiches) and tlayudas, all served by Ana Marie, are welcome in our casa.

Many people who visit Oaxaca rave about the tacos al pastor (tacos with barbequed marinated pork and pineapple) or chicken mole. We have enjoyed some amazing plates of Oaxacan food since arriving in August, but probably my favorite is the tlayuda. What is a tlayuda you ask…I had never heard of a tlayuda before coming to Oaxaca and to be honest I was a bit scared to try one.

Ana Marie changed my mind. She’s the young-looking grandmother who runs the stand behind our house. She starts up the fire every night around dark. It takes about ½ hour to stoke the fire and prepare all the fresh ingredients which she brings with her each evening. Her taco stand is a metal box. It’s about 8’ by 12’ in floor size. She runs it with one of her 15 grandchildren (Ana Marie is 52 with 5 children and yes, 15 grandchildren). She’s great, always wearing a baseball cap while she cooks as she prepares her masterpieces. She’s a chef for the neighborhood and we all emerge to the scent of her grilled meat.

Ana Marie knows me as juera (blondie) and frankly, we’ve become close. After 3 months in Oaxaca, there is nothing that I crave like one of Ana Marie’s tlayudas. It all starts around 10 in the morning when I walk home from the gym, sore from my pilates work out. I usually have my cappuccino in hand, but it doesn’t matter. I pass that tlayuda stand and I start craving the product. From 10 AM on, I think about bbqed steak, cut up into small pieces, plopped on a large corn tortilla, folded in half…this is put on the bbq again to melt the quesillo (Oaxacan string cheese) to perfection over those chunks of steak, with a light smattering of refritos (beans) salsa, lettuce, hot sauce and avocado. At 6:30, when she is unlocking the metal booth, I am at her side, ordering my tlayuda for the night. I’ll have to wait until 7:00 to pick it up. By that time, I am starving, feeling very European as I bite down on my late-night cena, Ana Marie’s delectable tlayuda. Thank God for the metal taco stand in my backyard.