Professor Ernesto Kortright was born in México City, and lived there for a total of 15 years between 1959 and 1976. He’s now a Spanish instructor at the University of Alabama, and we sat down to chat about his experiences with and memories about Mexican cuisine.

Is there a particular dish that your family always made for holidays or that is particularly nostalgic for you?

Well, you know in México, at least for my family and in the area where I lived, for festivities—any kind of festivity, whether it was a birthday or a holiday or anything—we made mole poblano, which is like a sauce made of different spices and peanuts and chocolate. I think it has a lot to do with the Aztec cooking: it’s very particular to México and I love that, I really miss it because you can’t find it here—I mean you can find the bottled [mole], if you go to these supermarkets you can find it, but when they made it from scratch…mole was that sauce, that type of sauce that was put on rice and beans. You would either have chicken or a form of turkey. So, that was delicious for me. The times that I’ve been back to México that’s the first thing I eat. That was a special dish for holidays.

Do you remember the first time you had mole poblano?

No, I don’t. You start eating it when you’re a little kid. I was probably young, you know when you don’t have to take your formula, and you’re not a baby anymore that’s probably when you start eating that stuff, so I probably was four or five years old.

There are other dishes that, in my opinion are delicious that I really have enjoyed.

On a more regular basis, did your family usually make meals at home or did you go out to restaurants more often?

Most of the time my mom made the food. In México, it’s a little bit different—at least at the time—you have a very light breakfast, and then our supper was mostly after school around 3:00, that was the meal, and then at night you would have a lighter, a very light dinner compared to here. You would have a snack at school but we didn’t have lunch—like here you have breakfast, lunch, and dinner; in México you had breakfast, then the main meal around three after school and work, and then you would have a very light dinner, like pastries, milk, chocolate—almost like a snack.

When you go back to México City, is there a particular restaurant you enjoy eating there?

Yeah, I, you know that’s the two things I miss most about México City, and México in general, are the food, practically every restaurant—and the weather, the weather is, in spite of all the earthquakes you know like the one they just had, the weather is always wonderful, very little humidity. It’s year round, you know you can wear a tshirt. In the winter at night it gets a little cold, but in the daytime it’s almost like it’s spring all the time or fall. But, any particular restaurants I liked…there was one called Toks, I don’t know what it means but that served some of the best food I’ve ever tried. I particularly liked things like caldo tlalpeño—I can explain what that is: Caldo is like a broth and tlalpeño means probably that it’s from the area of Tlalpan in México, and it was just a very very rich soup, like a tortilla soup. Oh, it’s so delicious.

I would also have enchiladas verdes (green enchiladas), enchiladas rojas (red enchiladas)—they don’t have that here, I mean even in the best Mexican restaurant [here] it doesn’t taste the same. Tamales—I love those things, the way they make them, in Mexico you can find tamales that are from the central region, and there are tamales you can find in the southeast like Yucatan, and Campeche, Tabasco—those are made with like banana leaves.

Those are my favorite.

So you know?

Yes! They are so hard to find here!

Yeah! You can’t! And even if you find them, they don’t taste the same way.

 

We also have tostadas, which you know what they are—you can find something similar at Taco Bell. [laughter] But it [Toks] was so good, the toppings, the cheese, very fresh. The beans, very fresh. We also had sopes—sopes are like tostadas but they’re not on like a fried torilla, they’re more like a tortilla that’s not been fried—it’s very pliable, very soft and thicker. Those were really good.

 

And, of course you could have like a regular dinner, like a steak with potatoes and things like that. You could have a more global meal.

 

Are there any other Mexican dishes that you really remember enjoying?

 

Oh and we also have [in México]—this is kind of strange for Americans—we have what they call molletes, and you eat those for breakfast and they’re actually like white, like Italian bread—they’re called teleras—and you eat them for breakfast, and all that is you have beans, and sauce, like green sauce, and cheese, and people would think ‘well, why you eat that for breakfast?’ But with coffee it’s really, really good. The chocolate is also excellent. Those are the things that I would just eat. Oh flautas! Flautas are like very long tacos with fried tortillas—those are very popular.

 

And also, in the street, there are places called taquerias, and they have what they call tacos al pastor. What those are is, like—you know how if you go to a Mediterranean restaurant, in Birmingham like Makarios or a place like that, and they have shawarma? And they have this rotating column where you put the meat, and it’s just rotating and it’s getting cooked and it’s getting warm and they just cut off the meat? We have that in Mexico, those. So, you cut off the different types of meat and you put them in these little tortillas with cilantro and the onion and the different sauces. Ah those, after going to the movies or going to the theater, people always go to those [taquerias]. Very tasty. I really love Mexican cuisine—I really love it. It’s one of the things I miss the most about Mexico. I don’t miss other things, you know? But the food, definitely. I love it.

 

You kind of touched on it, a little bit earlier, but how do you feel about American Mexican food or “Tex-Mex”?

 

It’s not the same. I eat it—you know, I go to Mexican restaurants, and I eat…I would go to these, they’re fairly good restaurants, you know much better than Taco Bell, and they were okay, but it’s not the same. I don’t know what it is—it’s just not the same—I don’t know if it’s the ingredients or the way people prepare them, but it’s very similar, it just doesn’t have the same taste. Again, the first thing I do—I don’t go back to Mexico that much, I don’t have much family there left—but I’ve gone back and the first thing is: Eat. You get off the plane and go to the restaurants.

 

I also enjoy the beer; Mexican beer is very good. American beer tastes more watered down in a sense whereas the Mexican beer has a very good flavor. So, that was very good. And also, other drinks like atole. Atole is a drink which has as a base like corn meal. It’s a very thick drink. It’s drunk mostly in the winter time when it gets cold at night. You drink that with tamales and it’s very very good. I loved it.

 

If you had to pick one dish that captures the essence of Mexican cuisine, what would that dish be?

 

It would probably be mole poblano with everything: the rice, the beans, the tortillas, the sauces. That would probably be it. Or, the enchiladas are just very very Mexican, whether they’re green or red, you know, they have different chiles. I think the mole poblano and the enchiladas.

Thank you very much.