After a successful market shop, we returned home to turn our gorgeous pork into delicious carnitas. Watch part one and two of the video to see it made (along with a few other goodies).
Also, check out the carnitas and salsa verde recipes to make it yourself.
For more great videos about life in the Yucatan, check out intheyucatan.com.
Our friend Erich at intheyucatan.com just posted a video of Brent scouring Mérida’s central market for ingredients to make carnitas. Brent is preparing to lead a series of three-day culinary workshops on Mexican cuisine for MexicaChica Getaways, and thus we’re cooking up lots of dishes to see which ones will make the final cut.
Although the classes in September and December are fully booked, we just heard that Claudette is opening up a few additional spots for remixto fans only. So if you fancy a fantastic seven-night getaway complete with food, accommodation, haciendas, and all the Mexican culture you can eat, contact Claudette and tell her remixto sent you. After seven days of culinary bliss, we guarantee you’ll be well sated.
Regrettably, we must skip the remixto brunch this month. The owner of Casa Mexilio, our current venue, has decided to use the space for other purposes and so we are rendered homeless. Hopefully we’ll find a new venue soon so that we may return with more yummy dishes to explore. As we search, we are taking the opportunity to dream up other remixto events to enjoy – perhaps an intimate multi-course lunch served communally. We will keep posting updates so check back often.
We want to thank you for you continuing support, and look forward to serving you again in the near future.
This is getting to be a regular thing. Our third remixto brunch was a hit. The pink mimosas flowed and the croque señora was a hit.
Thanks to our friend Eric at In The Yucatan for shooting some video of the event (see below), and to Yesenia over at Girl Friday Mérida for lending a hand last minute when our reservation book started exploding. When not helping us out of a brunch pickle, Yesenia offers pet-sitting services, immigration assistance, translation skills, and more. With reasonable rates, she’s very handy.
At our first brunch back in May, we served bacon, candied with piloncillo and chipotle chilies. It was a little experiment that turned out to be quite popular, so much so that we were lovingly scolded for not returning it to the menu for our last brunch.
Well it’s back, this time in the form of a sweet potato hash with candied bacon on top. Today we are making up a few kilos of the stuff and snacking on a little as we go. Hopefully we’ll have enough to keep everyone happy and us from scorn 
Every month we set a schedule for how brunch will come together in the form of yummy morsels for our guests to enjoy. This month is no different. Last weekend, we finished testing our dishes and finalized the menu, yesterday we made a plan, and today a shopping list.
At t-minus five days, our kitchen is starting to smell like work. We started by milking four fresh coconuts and caramelizing them into a thick curd. Now we are busy boiling up some freshly crushed pineapple into jam. As we write this (on a break in our air conditioned office), the pineapple jam is on a rolling boil as it inches its way to 105°C.
Our last task today is to pick some lemongrass, combine it with some ancho chilies and pour a gallon of vodka over it to infuse for a few days. If some accidentally spills into our mouth, it will be a good end to the day.
Something’s up this month. Just one week after we sent out the announcement for this month’s brunch, we’re completely booked. Not that we’re complaining. It’s nice to know we’re loved.
Freed from the chore of reservation taking, we can return our attentions to the final week of prep. We have some chipotle salsa to play with and a coconut jam that’s demanding perfection.
If you’re curious to see what’s making an appearance, check out the draft menu for the month.
On Sunday, July 25, we’re returning to serve up mouthwatering brunch classics infused with modern Mexican flavor.
This month’s menu will feature a croque señora (our twist on the French classic), the chef’s special chipotle chilaquiles (we guarantee it ain’t anything like your local cocina economica’s sloppy version) and gooey piña pop tarts, baked in house. Also by popular request, we are reprising our candied bacon, lechon benedict and slushy sorbet mimosas. We’ve no official menu yet. For now, view a sample from last month.
Brunch will be served in the beautiful garden at Casa Mexilio between 10am and 2pm. As always, seating is limited, so book your table now.
Three times this week we’ve eaten in a nice restaurant and in every case we spotted a disturbing trend. Every main dish arrived garnished with cherry tomatoes. The same, plastic-looking cherry tomatoes.
As it’s not tomato season in the Yucatan, we can safely assume that none of these products was grown locally, let alone regionally. So where did these things come from? Costco of course – encased in plastic for 27 pesos.
The trend was particularly jarring last night at Local 3, a fancy-pants restaurant on Montejo. Given their name, we expected better. With items on their menu that included sea bass from Chile (a species of fish edging close to extinction), fresh asparagus (in the tropics, in July?), and the requisite beef imported from the USA, we had to ask ourselves, isn’t their name a little misleading?
This feeling is not new. A few weeks back we ate at an upscale Italian restaurant in Playa del Carmen. As the seafood pasta arrived, we got chatting with the owner about the origins of his seafood. Turns out, not one of the six species of sea creatures on our plates was from the waters we were dining alongside.
While we appreciate that Costco and Pacsadeli (a mini-Costco that’s Mexican owned) provide a service that is attractive to restaurants, must we eat from these food factories every time we dine out? The fact these restaurants opt for the same tasteless products, grown and shipped from abroad seems sad. Not wanting to pick on cherry tomatoes, but it’s also a bit uninspired to drop a few of these on a plate in a transparent attempt to add “cachet”? This is especially true when they add nothing to the rest of the dish.
Mexico has a fantastic bounty of produce and flavor. To name a few, think ibes, caimito, prickly pear, jicama, huitlacoche and escamoles (perhaps listed in order of the capacity to challenge). If you’ve never heard of some of these items, it’s because they seldom make it to a restaurant table. Why can’t we eat more of these things and less imported asparagus?
Posted below are some photos of some of the food, drinks and fun at last Sunday’s brunch. Alternatively, you can check out the latest Casual Restaurant Critic review of the event.
