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(Published in Pacific Pearl magazine april 2020)
Standing out with bright yellow and red colors on street carts around the market, or on the beach balancing on the head of a street vendor; you may have seen Cocadas or Mexican macaroon more often than you think. And did you know there are several kinds: traditional, fudge or oven-baked. Why not indulge your sweet tooth with an artisanal Cocada? We all know there’s always room for dessert! Soft coconut cocadas are made with shredded coconut and piloncillo cane sugar. Their origin can’t be traced back easily, but Mexican coastal cities with a tropical climate have been selling them since the 19th century. And they continue to be a popular snack for hungry eaters of all ages. Cocadas are traditionally a toasted, golden brown color, though food coloring is sometimes used for extra flair. Around Mexican Independence Day on September 15th you can see patriotic Cocadas using the red-white-green colors of the Mexican flag. The process to make Cocadas starts with the dry coconuts that come from the plantations on Stone Island. The pulp is extracted, making sure to remove the brownish peel, and grated. The next step is to cook the grated coconut with sugar and water, stirring continuously until the sugar caramelizes. To make the fudge-style Cocadas you mix the coconut with sugar, milk and egg yolks. Using an ice scooper the Cocadas are placed on a tray to cool down. To create oven-baked Cocadas, the coconut domes are left to grill in a hot oven for 10 minutes. The Cocada artisans are usually small family-run businesses. So the next time you’re craving something sweet, keep these delicacies in mind! If you’re ready to learn more about Mazatlan’s culinary scene, make sure to contact me at [email protected] and save your seats for one of the Flavor Teller food tours.
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A confession: beans are my favorite comfort food. I love them boiled, mashed or refried, in a soup or on a taco. Lucky enough I live here in Mazatlan where beans are ever-present. There are 50 different bean varieties in Mexico, but the most popular types are: azufrado, mayocoba, black beans, peruano, flor de mayo and flor de junio. It is the perfect plant-based protein, but it also helps to reduce cholesterol as well as blood sugar levels. People in Mexico eat around 10 kg or 22 lb of beans per person per year, which is a 40% decrease from a decade ago.
Refried beans, with or without lard, are available as a side dish in any restaurant. But did you know there is a world beyond refried beans? Please meet Frijoles Puercos or Piggy Beans. The origin of its name is a controversy: some say it’s because it has pork, while others say it’s because the mixture looks messy (‘puerco’). How to make boiled beans? If you want to make Frijoles puercos you need to make boiled beans first. Most families prepare their beans in a pressure cooker or a special pan. You can also use an Instant Pot. INGREDIENTS: 500 gr beans (2 cups), Pinto or Mayocoba ½ onion, peeled 1 clove garlic 10 cups water PREPARATION: First you have to clean and rinse the beans, checking well for stones. Remove any beans that float. If you want to reduce the cooking time, soak the beans in water for a night. It is important that you do NOT add salt when boiling the beans. Place the beans and the water in a large heavy pot or pressure cooker. Cook for one and a half hour in a regular pot or 30-40 minutes in a pressure cooker. Reduce the cooking time if you have previously soaked the beans. Check if the beans are cooked. You should be able to mush them between your fingers. Remove the onion and garlic and add salt to taste. How to make Frijoles Puercos? Frijoles puercos are a favorite dish for birthday parties and ‘taquizas’ taco buffets in Sinaloa. Just like other specialties, every city has their own way of preparing it. Mazatlan’s frijoles puercos have a secret ingredient: canned sardines! I thought it was an urban legend, because who would put canned sardines in beans?!? So before getting started, I had to check it out with my local foodie friends. And guess what: nine of the ten people I asked actually put canned sardines or canned tuna, because “it really improves the flavor”. Now my kids weren’t particularly excited about trying frijoles puercos with sardines, “I’m definitely not trying it”. And they ended up LOVING IT! Getting people talking about local recipes, is the easiest thing to do. Because who wouldn’t want to share their favorite flavor. So several friends passed on their grandmother’s, maid’s or their own ultimate recipe. And these recipes are pretty much the same as the recipe in Doña Cuca Cardenas’ cookbook, just with canned sardines or tuna. A special Thank-You to Jesus, the owner of Cenaduria Chayito. He didn’t just share the recipe with me, but he also invited me into the restaurant to see how it’s done. I felt so humbled that he opened the doors of their kitchen and I could see the magic myself. FRIJOLES PUERCOS (serves 8-12 people) INGREDIENTS: 1 kilo (4 cups) Mayocoba beans, cooked and ground ¼ kilo pork lard ¼ kilo bacon, diced ¼ kilo Mexican chorizo 2/3 cup white onion, chopped 1 can chipotle chile (or any spicy sauce like pickled chili, salsa ranchera, etc) ¼ kilo Chihuahua cheese, grated Optional: 1 small can tuna or sardines, drained and shredded PREPARATION: Heat the lard in a large heavy pot. Fry the bacon and chopped onion until browned. Add the chorizo, continue frying and incorporate the canned fish as well as the chipotle chili. Use the kitchen spoon to mash up the fish and the chipotle. Finally add the ground beans and continue stirring. At this point lower the heat and make sure to keep stirring, otherwise it will burn. Stir and simmer for 5 minutes. The beans should have a thick consistency. Remove from the heat and stir in the grated cheese. Serve hot with tortilla chips or on a flour tortilla. Enjoy!!! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the canned sardines!  One thing I remember clearly from my days as a young bride in Mexico, is my mother in law swiftly introducing me to the Do’s and Don’ts of married life. Many had to do with making sure my husband was well-fed. Funny thing is that he was a much better cook than me and I was just taking my first baby steps into Mexican cuisine.
The essence of “well-fed” in a Mexican context means having tortillas, beans and salsa on the table at all meals. And even better if those tortillas were made from scratch. In the good old days tortilla bakeries (or: tortillerias) weren’t as plentiful as now and if you lived far away from one, you had to make your tortillas……. by hand….. every meal. Many young girls would learn how to make tortillas at a young age, helping out their mothers with this daily chore. So by the time they were the marriageable age, knowing how to make tortillas was a given. Decades went by and many girls started to go to school, making household skills less important. Modern life has led to only few knowing how to make tortillas. The tortilla universe can be divided in two kingdoms: the corn tortilla (tortilla de maiz) and the flour tortilla (tortilla de harina). Corn tortillas are preferred in central and southern Mexico, while flour tortillas are mostly available in northern Mexico. Tortilla bakeries are also divided: you can’t find flour tortillas in a corn tortilla bakery and vice versa. Mazatlan is luckily home to both types of Tortillerias. Next month my husband and I will celebrate our 17th wedding anniversary. As a test to see if I’ve been worthy of being a Mrs, I made flour tortillas using the cookbook of Doña Cuca Cardenas. To make sure I got the insider tricks, I also visited a local flour tortilla bakery ‘Sunny’. They said the secret of a good flour tortilla lies in the kneading of the dough. So I gave it my all, working that elbow grease. Another piece of advice was: making perfectly round tortillas by hand is almost impossible. Thank goodness I knew this beforehand… Flour tortillas are great for cheese quesadillas or for burritos. In the north of Mexico we love to fill them with scrambled eggs or shredded beef jerky (‘machaca’). TORTILLAS DE HARINA Ingredients: 1 kilo or 2.2 pound white flour 200 gr or 7 oz lard 1 tsp salt 2 ¾ cup hot water Preparation: Put the flour in a large bowl and add the lard. Mix with your hands until it gets a crumbly consistency. Dissolve the salt in the hot water and add it to the flour mixture. Stir vigorously with a wooden spatula, then knead the dough with your hands for 5 minutes. Make 31 little balls, cover with cling film and leave to rest on a cookie tray for 30 minutes. Then roll out each ball with a rolling pin. Heat a skillet without oil or ‘comal’ (tortilla pan) at medium heat and grill the tortillas on both sides until slightly brown. Make sure to not overcook them, otherwise they will be crisp. Let the tortillas cool down on a tea towel or a rack. You can store the tortillas in a plastic bag in the fridge and keep them for up to a month. MAKES 31 FLOUR TORTILLAS BUEN PROVECHO!!! ENJOY YOUR MEAL!!! Are you having fun in the kitchen these days? Chances are what may have once been a creative outlet has become more of a chore. What if you could submerge yourself in traditional Sinaloan cuisine, learn about local ingredients and finally deliver those delicacies you’ve always wondered how to make?
Not being able to host food tours for several months, has left a hole in my heart and it has only confirmed that people coming together over food have a tremendous healing power. Thankfully many of us have found a way to keep calm, keep cooking and keep sharing recipes. This got me thinking… why not create a community around Mazatlan’s traditional food? The silver lining in this scary time, is that it’s brought out the best in our community and I’m hoping we can find ways to support each other beyond words on a screen. The Mazatlan Cookbook Club There are many ways you can build a community, but in times like these we all want to learn new things, see the world through different eyes and experience food from a unique perspective. What better way to do this than through a cookbook club? Think of it as a book club combined with a (virtual) dinner with friends. The Mazatlan cookbook club is all about discovering specialties that Mazatlan and Sinaloa have to offer. You will be able to share your thoughts and experiences with other people. I will be using recipes from four traditional cookbooks that I believe are essential for a Sinaloa home. However Sinaloan cookbooks are hard to find and most are out of print. I have to give a big shout-out to Jaime Felix from the Conservatory of Mexican Gastronomic Culture, who was kind enough to share recipes from his private collection. In the history of Mexican cookbooks, the ‘classic canon’ has always implied a central and southern Mexico bias. That has left us with a limited recipe bank and omitted the delicious food from Sinaloa. Let’s change that, starting now! The majority of the recipes I will use come from the ‘bible of Sinaloa cuisine’: a cookbook named “Mis recetas de cocina” by doña Cuca Cardenas. Who is doña (translation: mrs.) Cuca Cardenas and why is she so famous? She has made it her life’s mission to put together Sinaloa’s recipes in one cookbook “Mis recetas de cocina”. And she has been able to assemble an amazing collection. The first edition of her cookbook was published in 1980 (it’s older than me!) and it’s been a wedding gift for many newlyweds in Sinaloa for decades. I met doña Cuca Cardenas last year at the UNESCO Creative Cities project when we interviewed the culinary godfathers (and godmothers) of Sinaloa cuisine. She is in her eighties, but still happy to share her story and her passion for food. Here’s what you can expect from the Flavor Teller: Starting next week, I will be sharing and cooking one recipe every week from one of these cookbooks. I will post a blog with the recipe and a fun background story here. If you want to be with me in spirit, please cook along. The final product will be shared on the Flavor Teller website and Flavor Teller Instagram page. You’ll get to know more about the local ingredients, preparation techniques and the history of each dish so you can become a more confident cook. Tell your friends to join too! Share your creations and tag Flavor Teller on Facebook or Instagram using our handle @flavortellerexperience and using #mazatlancookbookclub. I’m not a chef or a food blogger and that’s part of the fun of this. We’re going to figure it out together and I’ll be available to answer your questions as you cook your way through the recipes. If you can’t find a specific ingredient, just let me know and I’ll give you alternatives. Let’s get started! And please know that when we can get together in person again (because that day will indeed come), we’ll be putting together a cookbook club that we can all participate in face-to-face, from the comfort of our friends’ homes or from wherever we like. Happy cooking, Flavor Teller fans! Life is about eating the seasons. Sometimes you have to take advantage of a specialty, otherwise it will be gone until next year. Think mango season, think Noche de Muertos bread or think Mexico’s Independence Day specialty ‘Chiles en nogada’ or poblano peppers in walnut sauce. Every September you can find them in restaurants or instead you can make it yourself.
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Flavor TellerMaaike Hoekstra has lived in Mexico for over 15 years. She is passionate about Mexican culture and food. Here are the stories and recipes she finds along the way. Archives
June 2025
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