Cooking despite the heat

Still too hot here - -our May HEAT has come a month early, thanks no doubt to global warming!!—but our nights remain breezy and cool. Last night we had friends come to dinner and went up on our roof terrace for drinks where we were quite comfortable. By the time we came downstairs to eat, it had cooled off enough to be quite pleasant. Our definition of “pleasant” has changed somewhat over time so that even Eva is comfortable at night when the AC is at 25 (77 F). She complains that it is not cool enough but by morning she is also snuggled under a flannel sheet that we use as a blanket.
For dinner, we served a fish soup as the first course. We had been to the big market a few days ago with a friend who had never been and wanted to serve fish as the main course for a dinner party we went to, so we acted as tour guides. Tom bought 3 beautiful huachinango (red snapper) and we took home the heads and spines. First, we made a fish stock and then created a clean-tasting soup with more fish, lime, ginger, carrots, bean sprouts, lemon grass (picked fresh from our kitchen garden) and cilantro at the end as a garnish. Bern was here to swim as we were concocting this so he chopped and helped, too.
The big market (Mercado) is a bit daunting. This is a new building opened within the last two years that some government official thought would be an improvement over the collection of dilapidated and run-down buildings which previously constituted the public market. It is grey industrial concrete, two stories of shopping with parking below, and finally is being used. For months, the locals boycotted this place since “their” mercado had been destroyed, but finally decided it was better to sell inside it and make a living than not to. Now, the whole area is so crowded with people who assume it is still a local market without traffic, that it is difficult to drive or park. There is a fish area with multiple vendors and a meat area and a poultry area (these last ones are just too much for Sandy whose sense of smell could not tolerate all of this) and many flower vendors and of course, vegetables, tortillas, bread, and eggs. In addition, you can buy pretty much ANY thing you think you might need from one of many small shops – clothing, shoes, cooking utensils, machetes, rope, and more plastic crap of every size than you ever knew existed.
We don’t normally go down there except for fish, since it is SO amazingly fresh – from the sea to the market in minutes and hours. We normally do most of our grocery shopping at Costco (our club) and Mega, which is a big grocery store that actually has co-ownership of Costco. Mega is a new market here, with a snazzy new building again with parking underneath (which is actually really nice when it is hot and sunny outside to be under a building where it’s shady). They have everything you’d expect a store to have in the way of items to buy, but are also a super-WalMart type of place with a smattering of TVs, furniture, towels, and gardening things.
There are things that we just cannot get down here – the locals are not asking for them and they are the main consumers. For example, we cannot find Chex cereals, except occasionally one with honey and sugar. There is no chunky peanut butter. Certain spices are hard to find or not here at all. None of this is earth-shattering or problematic, except that it seems when you cannot find it, you want it all the more. When I go north, I usually return with Costco-sized chunky peanut butter in tow, and it is often still in the pantry by the time my next trip comes along, but at least I know it’s there should I happen to crave some! However, there are so many things that we can get here that are unheard of in the states that we do not feel deprived.
Bern and Aidar, our friends from Seattle, were in our kitchen cooking recently – a wonderful Asian-inspired meal of Thai curry over rice with spring rolls first and a lemon, lime, orange curd over shortbread for dessert. Bern has been on sabbatical this term and is living in a small apartment without much of a kitchen in anticipation of their beautiful home here in Merida being completed. Since both Bern and Aidar are such good cooks and love to cook, they was happy to have a chance to be in a kitchen with windows == and plenty of helping hands!

See the pictures at http://picasaweb.google.com/necshs1/CookingWithbernandaidar