TASTING SAN
MIGUEL
Leslie Harlib, IJ reporter
Wednesday, March 23, 2005 -
"The tintinabulation that so
voluminously swells from the ringing and the dinging of the bells."
- Edgar Allan Poe, 1849
Bells are the perfect metaphor to describe San Miguel de Allende. They clang ceaselessly in this little city of 90,000 that's a cultural oasis, surrounded by the cactus-packed deserts of Guanajuato, Mexico.
The bells tell time. They sing of fiestas, weddings, funerals. They toll of the abiding solemnity of Catholicism, wedded to preservation, that has sustained San Miguel since its founding in 1542. They are its pulse - just as the Jardin, a tree-shaded, flower and bench-filled plaza alive with people and activities 24 hours a day - is its heart.
So many churches raise their spiky or bulbous towers over this hilly city of ochre, umber, peach, pink, rose and sand-toned adobe buildings with the most beautiful doorways outside of Morocco, it's impossible to escape the bells wherever you walk. Or sleep. Or dine.
I ate piping-hot churros: Crunchy, cruller-like tubes of fried dough, and sipped thick hot chocolate zippy with cinnamon in San Augustin, a slick restaurant across from the church of San Francisco. Its huge brass bells rung every 15 minutes. They were so close, so resonant, my bones shivered with their sound even as my body shivered at the pleasure of perfectly fried pastry and chocolate as dark as Mexico's colonial past.
Strolling through the daily mercato - a multiblock-long labyrinth of candy vendors, herb sellers, fruit and vegetable merchants, butchers, cheese mongers and what seemed like a thousand artisans of everything from pottery to candlesticks to rugs - I was accompanied by sonorous bells. The wizened faces of Indian grandmothers who begged on street corners, or the baby faces of the tiny 5-year-olds selling gum to tourists, seemed scoured, or gentled, by the iron sounds clanging ceaselessly from the churches.
I ate enchiladas, Argentine steak with chimichurri, hand-made pasta and wood-fired pizza, black bean cakes with pistachio and mango salsa, chilaquiles and banana chocolate bread to the omnipresent background music of the bells.
"This is one of the most sophisticated food towns in Mexico outside of Mexico City," says Dianne Kushner, a former San Anselmo resident whose festively decorated bed-and-breakfast, Casa Luna, is one of the city's top-rated inns.
There's only one Chinese, one Thai, and one Japanese restaurant in town, but scores of other places feature Continental, French, Italian, Spanish, Argentinean and Brazilian dishes, and, of course, a thousand takes on Mexican food.
San Miguel de Allende, named for a Spanish missionary named Brother Juan de San Miguel, is a highland town bang in the center of Mexico. Built at 5,000 feet above sea level, it's a bumpy city, all uneven cobblestone streets worn shiny thanks to 400 years of polishing by hooves, human feet and now rubber tires.
It's secretive. On my first day, I explored the narrow, steep streets, and took in nothing but intriguing doorways and walls, with maybe the odd glimpse of a roof garden or two. Sneering gargoyles overhead disguised some the town's omnipresent water drains. Car exhaust tainted the air, and I felt weighted down by all the stone. But whenever one of those massive wooden iron-clasped doors swung open, visual and culinary delights were just inside: Sexy little restaurants overgrown with flowering plants and centered with fountains. Shops dense with art, artifacts and jewelry. Galleries packed with paintings and sculpture. Boutique hotel lobbies that were poems of tile and stone.
"I love the color, the vibrancy, the good-naturedness of the people, their generosity, their big spirit and heart," says Kushner. "It's my idea of the romance of old Mexico. Everything here is custom-made. I love the stone work, the brickwork - you can see the work of the hands. There's no particle board here. It's not a stamped-out, mass-produced place."
With a climate that, almost year-round, is like a perfect 80-degree Marin day, San Miguel has become one of the hottest destinations for both tourists and expatriates, south of the Rio Grande. So seductive is this oasis of culture, colonial architecture and siesta-flavored pace of life, it seemed every other person on the street was a gringo. Depending on whom you talk to, there are anywhere from 4,000 to 12,000 Americans owning property and living in San Miguel full-time.
Kushner, 57, explains her own relocation to San Miguel, where she has lived and worked since 1995, simply: "Marin got so crowded, so competitive, and too expensive. I felt like I needed a dictionary to read a menu. I wanted to get back to something more basic, more down to earth. More affordable. I thought this would be it."
She gave up her career in the nonprofit sector and sold her San Anselmo house to buy a small, 300-year-old building, four blocks from the Jardin, that she renovated, decorated and opened as a four-bedroom inn. Within 10 years, she had purchased five adjacent buildings to expand that first hotel, plus a second building a block away. Her hotel business now encompasses 24 rooms. Kushner decorated both properties herself, discovering she had a natural talent for art and interior design. Both Casa Lunas are so dramatic, they have been featured in numerous books about Mexican style.
Many Americans come down here and remake their lives, says former Texas resident Preston Pillsbury. In my six days in San Miguel, it seemed like I met a former Bay Area or Marin resident every day.
There was Patrice Wynne, founder of Gaia bookstore in Berkeley, which she ran for 20 years. She retired to San Miguel to launch a business designing aprons and housewares with Mexican motifs, and to write her memoirs.
Anado McLachlin, who lived in Mill Valley with his partner for many years, came to San Miguel in 2000 and fell in love with it; six months later, he said, they bought a house. They live just outside of the city, a few hundred yards from one of the region's scores of natural hot springs. Inside, McLachlin's home is a celebration of vibrant colors, Mexican textiles and the shrine-based art for which he's famous.
Longtime Mill Valley residents Bill Reiner and Stan Gray moved to San Miguel in 1996. "We bought land here 15 years ago, which sucked us into a very early retirement. It's the best move we ever made," says Reiner.
Cuisine and the more relaxed way of life drew Kathleen Mulligan to San Miguel. She grew up in Sonoma and Napa Valley, and moved to this heartland Mexican city three years ago. Property values are now soaring so high, she says, that even though she bought a home only three years ago, "It will take care of me for life." She also founded a business called Epicurean Escapes, setting up high-end culinary tours of Mexico and Ireland for visitors from around the world.
"Living here is a quick line back to solid priorities," she said over dinner in Ristorante Da Andrea, a chef-owned Italian restaurant in a 300-year old stone estate with lush, landscaped gardens for outdoor dining, called Hacienda de Landeta. I ate exquisitely juicy grilled quail while I watched a Mexican woman hand-roll the tenderest of pastas in a corner of the brick-vaulted dining room.
"Things happen here," says Mulligan. "Life is about family, and community. There's an astonishing synchronicity, in the people you meet, and what happens and the connections you make. You can talk to people in all walks of life. Something about this place, people open up."
Part of the attraction is the intense, luminous light that has lured foreign artists to the region since the 1940s. Two of Mexico's top art schools are based in San Miguel: Bellas Artes and the Instituto Allende. Both offer a multitude of classes in English as well as Spanish.
English-language flyers on bulletin boards near the Jardin advertised hundreds of New Age-oriented pursuits, from assorted massages to art therapies to a Sweat Your Prayers class inspired by Mill Valley's Moving Center School. One person I spoke with over a margarita told me that San Miguel is believed to be at the epicenter of all the ley lines - alignments of ancient sites stretching across the landscape - of the Earth.
Some people come to San Miguel for the rustic, no-frills spas. Two of the finest natural hot spring resorts I've ever experienced, La Gruta and Escondido, are a 15-minute taxi ride from downtown San Miguel. Both cost no more than $8 for an entire day.
Food in San Miguel was uniformly good, sometimes delicious. I became fascinated by Mexican chef Erriberto Ramirez. He has owned and run a tiny four-table restaurant called Bouquet, half a block from Casa Luna, for five years. Serving two types of hand-made pasta with a choice of four toppings from a list of 20, along with crepes, salads and shrimp dishes, he was the entire operation. He took the orders, ran to the kitchen, cooked the food, brought it to the tables and served it with a flourish, did the dishes, took someone else's order and went through the whole process all over again. His yellow Vespa sat in the hall, just beyond the tables, waiting patiently for its exhausted owner to ride it home.
At Petit Four, a bakery/cafe and bar three blocks from the Jardin on Mesones, the quality of the sweets was equal to anything I've had in the best Bay Area bakeries. There were fat chocolate custard-filled eclairs frosted with chocolate ganache; fresh fruits glazed atop classic vanilla custard in shortbread tart shells; coffeecake squares dense with plums and buttery streusel; hand-made chocolate truffles. For traditional Mexican pastries, one of the town's best bakeries was a short walk from the Jardin down Calle Relox. La Colmena Panaderia (The Blue Door) turned out classic Mexican sweet and savory rolls, jam-filled turnovers, buttercream-filled horns, crusty loaves of just-baked bread, all for a couple of pesos apiece.
San Miguel even has its own Slow Food chapter. With only four members, it's already gotten media attention throughout Mexico. It was launched in November 2004 by Silvia Bernardini, a former Milan resident whose mother was one of the founders of the International Slow Food Movement.
Bernardini is the chef/owner of one of San Miguel's busiest Italian restaurants, L'Invito, located in the Instituto Allende. Most of what she serves, she says, is produced by local artisans who are starting to raise organic meats, vegetables, and cheeses. "I began working with people who owned small ranches near town. I started pushing them to grow more organic foods for restaurants and farmers markets."
As Bernardini put it, "At least 50 percent of Mexico's population is under 20 years old. We want to help them learn how to eat well. We need to educate them about Mexico's artisan food traditions."
Ultimately, what makes life in San Miguel so alluring is the fact that, as former San Anselmo resident Sally Reid puts it, "Life itself is free entertainment."
Reid lived in San Anselmo for 15 years before renting it out and, just six months ago, moving to San Miguel de Allende. Now she works closely with an orphanage for 28 teenage girls, called Casa Hogar don Bosco.
"Every night, it's free entertainment. Everyone comes out. Rich and poor alike, we're in the streets, talking, watching each other," says Reid. "Last week, a man came by riding a bicycle with a washing machine attached to it on a cart. He rents it to you for 10 pesos an hour. He rolls the machine into your house, you plug it in, do your washing and he takes it away. They're so creative here in how to live. What I love most is that you never have to plan a day. Life just takes you."
And whatever the hour of the day or night, the bells sing you home.
Recipes
Chilaquiles Verdes
Serves 4-6
For the salsa (sauce):
4 serrano chilies, stems removed
6-8 medium tomatillos, husks removed
1 garlic clove, peeled
1/2 small white onion
1 handful cilantro (1/2 to 1 cup, or to taste)
1 sprig epazote (see note)
Kosher or sea salt, to taste
Place chilies and tomatillos in a small saucepan. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Cook 5 to 8 minutes, until soft. Drain and transfer to blender, adding garlic, onion, cilantro, epazote and salt. Pure.
For the tortillas:
6-8 corn torillas, cut into 1-inch squares
1/2 to 3/4 cup vegetable oil
Heat oil in a frying pan to the depth of 1/4-inch. Fry tortilla pieces lightly - do not let them become too crisp. Remove from the oil and drain on paper towels.
To assemble:
1/2 pound Oaxacan or any good melting cheese
3/4 cup cooked shredded chicken breast (optional)
1/2 cup crema (or sour cream thinned with a little cream or buttermilk)
1/2 to 3/4 cups queso ranchero or farmers cheese, crumbled
1 small white onion, sliced into rings or lengthwise into slivers
Heat salsa in a large skillet. When bubbling, mix the tortilla pieces with the salsa and cook for a couple of minutes. Add the melting cheese, and chicken if using. Pour chilaquiles into a serving dish and drizzle with crema and crumbled queso ranchero.
Note: This dish is equally delicious cooked with a red chili sauce, made with chorizo or nopales (sliced cactus), or topped with eggs. A favorite variation at Casa Luna is to assemble and bake in the oven for 20 minutes before topping with queso ranchero and onion. You can find epazote at any of the Mexican markets in Marin.
Pan de Platano (Banana Bread)
This is a staple on Casa Luna's breakfast table. Sometimes Isabella, the chef, adds mango chunks or chocolate chips to vary the texture.
Makes 2 loaves
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup brown sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup yogurt or buttermilk
6 large, very ripe bananas, mashed
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 cups whole wheat flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
4 teaspoons cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup chocolate chips (optional)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream butter and sugar together in a large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, then bananas.
In a separate bowl, sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda and spices. Mix dry ingredients gently into egg and banana mixture, alternating with the yogurt or buttermilk. Do not overmix. Add chocolate chips if using.
Bake about one hour, or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Texture should be moist and cakelike.
Savory Shortbread with Manchego Cheese and Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
A perfect snack with a glass of wine
Yields about 3 dozen
1 3/4 cups flour
1 1/2 cups cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/2 pound Manchego cheese (cheddar is a fine substitute)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1-2 teaspoons paprika
1 egg yolk, beaten with 1 tablespoon cold water
1/2 cup roasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas)
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place flour, butter, cheese, cayenne and paprika in a food processor; pulse until the mixture forms a pastry. Add the egg yolk, blended in a little cold water, just to form a ball.
Roll out pastry on a floured surface to about 1/4-inch thickness. Sprinkle the "pepitas" over the dough and roll into the dough so they stick. Cut into decorative shapes with pastry cutters. Place about 1/2-inch apart on parchment or foil-lined baking sheets. Refrigerate cut pastry shapes until firm, about 30 minutes.
Bake in preheated oven until golden brown, about 30 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.
- All recipes courtesy of Dianne Kushner, proprietor, Casa Luna B & B
