Eating Local in Puerto Escondido

I spend most mornings in Puerto Escondido picking up fresh provisions from the local Benito Juarez market. The produce is perfectly arranged in tidy piles, or tied into bundles, and is of utmost freshness. The most popular provisions such as nopales are cleaned and often pre-sliced and put into bags for five or ten pesos, making it easier on the consumer.

Separate rows with cheese makers, fish, chicken and meat vendors display their daily offerings in the open air and are absolutely spotless.

Besides the beach there is nowhere I'd rather be, especially on Saturday, the market day, when vendors and farmers make the long trek from their ranchos to set up make-shift tables or simply set things down on the ground to display their wares.

Let the fun begin.

Great bundles of hoja santa, the saint leaf - a staple of the Oaxacan kitchen. Its anise-like flavour and aroma enhances stews, moles and tamales, and is always available every morning, freshly picked.

Farm fresh eggs, their yolks a deep yellow colour from a steady diet of corn and garden scraps, are a welcome addition to my kitchen.

The local chile tuxta is everywhere right now, being sold in red, yellow or green, or in combinations of the three.

Ripe tomatoes are also everywhere and we are eating them every day. I especially love the pleated indigenous variety (criollos or tomates rojos tecos) seen below. Lovely sliced in a salad, something we've been eating a lot of this week.

A lovely woman and her young daughter were selling roses from their farm and made sure that we were aware that they were grown by her family, not in a huge greenhouse factory. A bundle is currently gracing our table.

Cilantro, at a couple of pesos for a small bunch, is sold with its flavour-packed roots. I threw the roots into a chicken broth one day. The leaves have been added to everything - from morning omelettes and guacamole to nopale salads and salsas. As it should be.

I'm also using a lot of purslane, available at the market in big bunches for only five pesos!

I've been serving it with a slice of queso ranchero, bought from Ines, one of many cheese-makers at the market. It's sold wrapped in a huge green leaf, that Ines said was from a water plant. It doesn't impart any particular aroma or flavour, just decoration. And it's so beautiful.

Knob onions.

Squash blossoms.

Cabbage.

Indigenous squash (calabaza).

Lots of freshly-made tortillas are for sale, piled high in white pails lined with plastic, and wrapped in multi-layers of embroidered linens to keep them hot.

Memelas are also for sale, packaged up fresh in plastic bags. All that's needed is a little bag of asiento - rich caramelized pork drippings - to spread on them, followed by a sprinkling of queso.

Tamale vendors are in full force on market day, and we enjoyed black bean and hoja santa tamales on a break. I call these session tamales because they're not too thick on the masa, making it easy to devour more than one. In fact, they are sold in sets of three, for ten pesos (around a dollar!).

We also enjoyed sweet tamales with squash and pine nuts, wrapped in banana leaves.

This slightly fuzzy leafed and slightly fuzzy photo is oreganon. Big leafed, its pungent aroma is a cross between mint and oregano. It's been exquisite to use in its fresh state, added to a pot of black beans and a chicken stock. (Update on oreganon: according to Diana Kennedy's book, Techniques and Ingredients, this plant is native to Africa and has taken root in many areas of Mexico, and shows up mostly in markets of Veracruz and Campeche. But now, I guess it's doing a bit of travelling and showing up on the Oaxaca coast).

Beyond foodstuffs, the market is chock-full of herbal remedies, including horsetail for your kidney ailments and stalks of chile de palo, used not only for flavouring foods, but as a tea for gastritis.

Calla lilies, one of my favourite flowers, are sold in big bunches, again, picked fresh from somebody's farm.

Herbs, chard, carrots, lettuce, garlic; the abundance and the affordability is outstanding.

And lots of fruits and vegetables I'm still unfamiliar with.

Including this alien life form tuber.

Jicama are displayed with their vines, but are cut away when you purchase some. Now, that's service!

Tiny wild tomatillos make a lot of work for any cook, especially compared to the regular variety, but are still a prized ingredient.

Chayote.

Inside the market, a vendor we regularly buy from, carries a wide variety of dried beans, chilies and spices. Everything is meticulously displayed.

Some ingredients that go into our daily diet.

Mandarins are also in season and are sold for pennies, or pesos, anywhere from five to eight pesos for a kilo.

We juice a kilo every morning for breakfast and later for sunset margaritas.

Although there are many restaurants and comedors to choose from in Puerto - serving everything from regional specialities to sushi and Italian pizza - the market is too good to pass up. Find a place with a kitchen and feast on a finely-tuned locavore diet - one that includes coffee, chocolate and mezcal. One that you can only dream about in Canada.

Chilaquiles Rojos with Huevos Revueltos

Coaxing nourishment and deliciousness out of what's leftover in the fridge can be either daunting or inspiring depending what the ingredients are and your mood at the time.

Feeling a tad shaky after a party the night before? Cold pizza while standing in front of the fridge just might do the trick. Thinking about an impending trip to a tropical beach in Mexico? Chilaquiles just might assist in feeling closer to your casita by the sea.

This classic Mexican breakfast dish is both nourishing and delicious and uses leftover tortillas to thicken the sauce, like one would use crackers in soup.

It's made with a sauce based either on tomatoes (rojo) or tomatillos (verde), chilies and a bit of onion and garlic. I've gone through my fridge to create my own rojo version with canned tomatoes, roasted jalapenos, leftover cheddar and the addition of scrambled eggs.

Jalapenos were first roasted, peeled and seeds removed. I used three of the chiles - the other two will be used for another purpose - and blended them with a small piece of white onion and close to a full can (796 ml.) of whole tomatoes.

In a deep saucepan, with a tablespoon of heated olive oil, I added the blended sauce, frying and stirring on medium until reduced somewhat. The flavours meld and lose any sharpness, it takes around 10 minutes. The consistency ends up soup-like, not too thick, not too thin. (The tortillas thicken it in the end). I threw in a few leaves of epazote for authenticity.

Meanwhile, I lightly whipped together the four eggs I had left. I first sauteed a tablespoon of minced white onion in olive oil until transparent, added the eggs and lightly moved them around until just set.

While most recipes will ask you to fry the tortillas first and break into pieces, I like to just break them into pieces into a bowl, without those extra calories from frying.

Pour the sauce on top, add eggs, cheese.

With eyes closed, this sturdying dish did the trick.

Vancouver's New Street Food Culture

It started with a city run lottery earlier this year. 17 new food cart spots were up for grabs. Nearly 800 people showed up.

A few months and a few bumpy starts later, Vancouver's downtown core offers exciting options for eating al fresco that goes way beyond the hot dog. (Although, I still have a soft spot for JapaDog, the innovator that now boasts numerous locations).

Let's get started, shall we?

Fresh Local Wild is not chef Josh Wolfe's personal profile but reference to his menu of sustainable seafood and accompaniments. The cart sits on Granville and Robson near a bench so you can hunch over and enjoy their tasty offerings.

The menu is simple and straightforward and the service spirited.

While waiting for the oyster po'boy, we ordered up the wild chanterelle mushroom poutine - only $3.00 when you order a sandwich.

Hot skinny fries slathered with mushroom gravy and cheese curds. Completely awesome!

A perfect setup for the plump, juicy beach oysters, battered and fried and heaped with coleslaw and secret sauce.

To be perfectly honest, I could pass on the bun. Then I guess it wouldn't be a sandwich now would it? I just thought it got in the way of enjoying those oysters.

You can't miss Roaming Dragon's big red truck. You'll find it parked weekdays on West Georgia between Thurlow and Burrard. Find an ambitious Pan Asian menu overseen by Don Letendre.

Chinese pork belly sliders on custom-made tiny steam buns set the tone. Slow roasted pork belly with the right fat-to-meat ratio was redolent with Asian spices and served with a lightly pickled and crunchy cucumber and Hoisin sauce. Okay. Asian spices. I noted star anise, szechuan pepper and cinnamon. Hoisin has a sweetness that could be toned down, but other than that, this is a welcome take on the usual burger sliders appearing on a uninspired pub-style menu near you.

Other Roaming Dragon offerings appear in their spot-lit museum-like showcase.

We enjoyed their soup du jour of curried shortrib with rice and vegetables, topped with a bit of feta cheese. Super rich and immensely satisfying on a damp westcoast day.

R.D. also makes their own beverages each day, and the lemonade with basil and lychee and hit of soda was pitch perfect.

Next up were the Korean short rib tacos. Kind of like a stir fry on a corn tortilla, it was brilliant. Slow braised short rib meat with spinach, shitake, carrots with a hit of kimchee and topped with nori and sesame seeds.

All the flavours were fearless and delicious.

Clearly Roaming Dragon has a lot more on the back burner in terms of a masterplan. Office party? Give them a call, they can pull right in to the parking lot. Want to start your own food cart business? Their Gourmet Syndicate posse can help. I do believe T-shirts are available.

Re Up, on Hornby and Georgia, serves pulled pork on a soft bun with coleslaw and a chipotle bbq sauce.

The name, urban slang for buying more drugs is apt. Welcome to your new addiction.

Not overly sauced, or overly slawed, but a proper balance of flavours with slow roasted pork butt generously portioned and served up with a smile. And an absolute bargain at $6.75.

Korea meets Mexico again at the corner of Burrard and Georgia with Cartel Tacos.

Cartel gets bonus points for being really street. It's open and just like the real street carts all over the world where you can get a hit of steam and aroma from the flat top. Yeah!!

We ordered both pork and beef, topped by hand with chopped fine white onion, cilantro and kimchee.

Absolutely incredible flavours. Again. The Cartel boys were making their own salsas but the powers that be said no, even though it was made fresh and held on ice. Weird. I hope they work that out but in the meantime, they offer a vast array of kick should you need it.

And the tacos made our Oaxacan friend, who was missing flavours from home, muy feliz.

In contrast to the fancier carts, I like Cartel's basic setup the best.

All the food eaten over the two days was bold and fresh, and everyone seemed genuinely happy to serve their customers and happy with their product. It's inspiring to experience and watch this turning point in our food culture. I hope they can all maintain the love, especially with their first winter just around the corner. I'll be supporting them as much I can, I hope you will too.

I've got a lot more carts to work through. I just need a couple more days.