A noted champion of British food, chef Rick Stein makes a long-awaited pilgrimage to the city of Oaxaca to reveal his secret love of all things Mexican.
There's an avenue in the middle of the Mercado 20 de Noviembre in Oaxaca that is wreathed in smoke, which snakes up to the vaulted, corrugated-iron rooves on either side. There must be 20 charcoal grills here, each a carnivore's delight, laden with delicacies such as thin slices of beef, some lightly salted, some fresh. There are escalopes of pork, too, and strings of little pork sausages with a flavour similar to chorizo. As I roam from stall to stall, tasting each vendor's ware, I find that each meat is subtly different and that each stall attracts its own faithful clientele.
In between, I buy tortillas, guacamole, large salad onions, coriander ('cilantro' as they call it) and fresh salsa roja. The idea is to have your onions grilled, as well as your beef or pork, then sit at one of the long, white formica tables with a pile of tortillas, rolling up ever-varying combinations using the chewy but flavourful beef, which tastes of fire from the grill. I drink a beer to ease the food's heat, all the while rubbing shoulders with cheery, reassuringly well-fed Mexicans.
I suppose that a chaotic, overcrowded market south-east of Mexico City may not be everyone's idea of heaven, but those in Oaxaca (pronounced 'wah haka') are quite something. The Mercado 20 de Noviembre, in particular, is like a childhood memory, a sweet shop, a wonderland of colour and fragrance with piles of fruit, colourful tins, jars and bottles, and tantalising sacks of spices and chillies everywhere.
Indeed, there's no better place to see the huge variety of chillies grown in Mexico. From the large, mild, green poblanos, which are stuffed with cheese or chicken, to the fiery, lantern-shaped and many-hued habaneros, chillies are a ubiquitous ingredient. The two most popular are jalapeño and serrano, both business-like but not agonising in their heat. Chillies are also available dried and smoked, each with a different name to its fresh counterpart. Thus the jalapeño, when dried, becomes the coffee-coloured chipotle, while the pasilla, a long, chocolate-coloured chilli with the flavour of smoked raisins and liquorice, was once a fresh chilaca.
I had long wanted to visit this colourful city. When I first travelled to Mexico, in the Sixties, aged 21, it was Oaxaca that I was heading for; that is, until I met a French Canadian girl in Acapulco, and decided to go to Montreal instead. Back then, there were always popular meeting places for backpackers: I think of Kathmandu, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, and the beaches of Goa. Oaxaca, for me, is up there with these destinations because it's the home of mezcal. This fiery spirit, the poor man's tequila, is made from the maguey plant, and is only genuine if it contains a little cactus worm in the bottom of the bottle. It has a manly, smoky taste, which comes from roasting the plant's heart in a charcoal-fired mound before fermentation. I love it.
So it was after many years of waiting that I finally arrived in Oaxaca. This anticipation was further honed because I'm a big fan of the writer Malcolm Lowry, whose 1947 novel Under the Volcano, though written in Cuernavaca, 200 miles to the north, owes much of its eerie atmosphere to Lowry's time in Oaxaca. The tale of Geoffrey Firmin, doomed, alcoholic British ex-consul, living out his final, delirious days from the bottom of a mezcal bottle - has a haunting resonance, made all the more compelling by its setting. As Lowry wrote: "It's not the mezcal which kills us, it's Oaxaca".
Indeed, Mexico is the ideal place for such a macabre tale. The people have a unique, celebratory acceptance of death, vividly illustrated in the ubiquity of the image of Christ on the cross that adorns every church. It's also evident in the annual Day of the Dead celebrations, held in November, in which offerings are made to departed souls, often at an all-night picnic-cum-vigil in the cemetery. "How alike are the groans of love to those of the dying," wrote Lowry. This may seem ghoulish, but somehow it makes me applaud the gaiety and colour of Oaxaca, the eating, the drinking and the countless fiestas that celebrate the transience of life.
The Mexicans may be fond of their festivals, but they're just as passionate about their food. Everywhere I went there was something to tempt my tastebuds. The central square, the Zócalo, is filled with colonnaded bars and restaurants beneath huge, shade-bestowing laurel trees. Del Jardin and Terranova both serve great Margaritas, while La Primavera has a first floor with a great view of all the action going on in the square below. They do a great sopa à la Mexicana, too, made with tomato, chilli and avocado. Most of these places serve terrific moles - sauces made using blends of ingredients such as chillies, herbs, spices and chocolate. At El Naranjo, I had mole coloradito, a red chilli sauce with sesame seeds and almonds; I tried mole negro (a chocolate and chilli sauce) with chicken at El Topil, north of the Zócalo; and I ate a delicious mole verde of coriander, garlic, beans and chilli at Los Pacos, behind the church of Santo Domingo.
The one food that is unique to Oaxaca is chapulines. In the market, farmers' wives sell these grasshoppers from wicker baskets of small, medium and large. Apparently, the best-tasting ones are found on corn and alfalfa crops. The chapulines I tried were vermilion from the powdered chilli and looked rather desiccated, although the large ones had plump, off-white bodies. I ate them as they were - spicy, salty and quite sour from a generous sprinkling of lime juice - although they are just as good wrapped in a tortilla with chilli and a lick of salsa de tomate verde, made with fresh green tomatillos, a close relative of the tomato.
A rather more familiar gastronomic delight is offered by the market's chocolate stalls, where the chocolate is ground and mixed with sweet spices, mainly cinnamon, cloves and vanilla. The warm, rich smell is irresistible. I sat and drank my chocolate at one of the comedores (cheap eating places) nearby and bought some soft, sweet bread to dunk in it.
But it's the tortillas I love the most. I savour the delight of rolling chicken, beef, cheese or vegetables in those corn discs. I find it beguiling that a type of bread so bland on its own should contribute so much when used to encase avocado, meat or fish. I relished the legendary tlayuda con asiento, a giant tortilla spread with pork fat and the local goat's cheese, quesillo, that pulls apart in strings.
But nowhere did the tortillas taste better than at breakfast in my hotel, the Camino Real, a cloistered and heavily beamed former convent. Here, the huevos rancheros consist of two fried eggs on a tortilla with chilli and tomato sauce spooned over, served with a side pile of frijoles refritos - refried beans sprinkled with a little quesillo. Wash this down with a cup of strong, black coffee, and you're just about ready for the coming day's gastronomic adventure.