First order of business: a Cornish pasty is not just a cold-weather empanada. Yes, it’s a stuffed pastry like empanadas are, but pastes have their own crimping and filling conventions, and their own type of dough. They’re different enough that a lot of pastes shops have both pastes and empanadas listed on the menu. Pasty fillings divide into savory and sweet: fibrous, stewy tinga de pollo and beans-and-chorizo seem to be the most popular meal selections, with hearty potato and onion a close runner-up, while dessert or breakfast sweet pastes come with pineapple, apple, creamy nuez (a sweet nut butter) or arroz con crema. People in Real del Monte and Pachuca, where the highway is lined with mom-and-pop pastes shops as well as corporatized fast-food-style chains like Pastes Kiko’s, seem like they could survive on these baked goods alone. It’s really not so strange. Foreigners think of Mexico as a hot country, but just as often the mountains are cool, and at the high altitude, summer tropical storms aren’t sultry. They’re as cold as a Cornwall early spring. The day my girlfriend and I arrived, we were madly underdressed and had to impulse-buy flap caps and, in a great humiliation to us capitalinos, tourist-corny jergas (the rough, hooded sweatshirts your cousin might have come back from Tijuana in). At sundown as we returned to the centro, it started to rain. I had eaten my first Cornish pasty when I was an expat teenager in Buckinghamshire twenty-five years ago, but I still knew exactly what it was for. No matter that the filling is Mexican chicken in red sauce; the feeling of refuge, of a warm pastry to fend off a chilling rain, that is as English as, well… you know the rest. More from Grant Cogswell on the baked good that the Cornish miners of Hidalgo left behind
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First order of business: a Cornish pasty is not just a cold-weather empanada. Yes, it’s a stuffed pastry like empanadas are, but pastes have their own crimping and filling conventions, and their own type of dough. They’re different enough that a lot of pastes shops have both pastes and empanadas listed on the menu.

Pasty fillings divide into savory and sweet: fibrous, stewy tinga de pollo and beans-and-chorizo seem to be the most popular meal selections, with hearty potato and onion a close runner-up, while dessert or breakfast sweet pastes come with pineapple, apple, creamy nuez (a sweet nut butter) or arroz con crema. People in Real del Monte and Pachuca, where the highway is lined with mom-and-pop pastes shops as well as corporatized fast-food-style chains like Pastes Kiko’s, seem like they could survive on these baked goods alone.

It’s really not so strange. Foreigners think of Mexico as a hot country, but just as often the mountains are cool, and at the high altitude, summer tropical storms aren’t sultry. They’re as cold as a Cornwall early spring. The day my girlfriend and I arrived, we were madly underdressed and had to impulse-buy flap caps and, in a great humiliation to us capitalinos, tourist-corny jergas (the rough, hooded sweatshirts your cousin might have come back from Tijuana in). At sundown as we returned to the centro, it started to rain. I had eaten my first Cornish pasty when I was an expat teenager in Buckinghamshire twenty-five years ago, but I still knew exactly what it was for. No matter that the filling is Mexican chicken in red sauce; the feeling of refuge, of a warm pastry to fend off a chilling rain, that is as English as, well… you know the rest.

More from Grant Cogswell on the baked good that the Cornish miners of Hidalgo left behind

Source: roadsandkingdoms.com

Tacos aren’t something Mom makes on Wednesday night with the help of the Old El Paso Express Kit. They don’t come covered in pre-shredded four-cheese blends and they don’t crunch when you bite down. The taco is a union of warm crushed corn, savory filling, and spice-charged condiment. They are soft and drippy and four-bites big, a love letter waiting for you on every street corner in Mexico. Few fillings escape the tortilla’s grasp: rosy char-grilled chunks of carne asada, crispy curls of fried pork skin, spicy tangles of roasted peppers and cooked cream, squishy mounds of slow-simmered eyeballs. But no tortilla has ever known a better friend than the spit-carved, chile-rubbed pork at the heart of the al pastor taco, perhaps Mexico’s most heroic hand-held food. Read more about these warm, succulent, tacos. From the R&K backfiles 
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Tacos aren’t something Mom makes on Wednesday night with the help of the Old El Paso Express Kit. They don’t come covered in pre-shredded four-cheese blends and they don’t crunch when you bite down. The taco is a union of warm crushed corn, savory filling, and spice-charged condiment. They are soft and drippy and four-bites big, a love letter waiting for you on every street corner in Mexico. Few fillings escape the tortilla’s grasp: rosy char-grilled chunks of carne asada, crispy curls of fried pork skin, spicy tangles of roasted peppers and cooked cream, squishy mounds of slow-simmered eyeballs. But no tortilla has ever known a better friend than the spit-carved, chile-rubbed pork at the heart of the al pastor taco, perhaps Mexico’s most heroic hand-held food.

Read more about these warm, succulent, tacos. From the R&K backfiles 

Source: roadsandkingdoms.com

Powerful video (in Spanish) from Mexico del Futuro. All of the venal, violent archetypes bedeviling Mexico today—kidnappers, beggars, corrupt cops, narcos, coyotes—played by children. Compártelo #NiñosIncómodos

Foreplay: Food Porn Just Before the Lunch Hour Tacos al pastor, Mexico DF Tacos aren’t something Mom makes on Wednesday night with the help of the Old El Paso Express Kit. They don’t come covered in pre-shredded four-cheese blends and they don’t crunch when you bite down. The taco is a union of warm crushed corn, savory filling, and spice-charged condiment. They are soft and drippy and four-bites big, a love letter waiting for you on every street corner in Mexico. Few fillings escape the tortilla’s grasp: rosy char-grilled chunks of carne asada, crispy curls of fried pork skin, spicy tangles of roasted peppers and cooked cream, squishy mounds of slow-simmered eyeballs. But no tortilla has ever known a better friend than the spit-carved, chile-rubbed pork at the heart of the al pastor taco, perhaps Mexico’s most heroic hand-held food.  The al pastor taco is Mexico’s take on the spinning-meat traditions of the Middle East, brought over by Lebanese immigrants who fused their penchant for vertical meat cookery with Mexico’s generous pantry of spices and condiments. All throughout Mexico City you’ll find late-night taquerias outfitted with giant spits of stratified pork turning slowly around an open flame. Most wear a pineapple crown, the warm fruit juices dripping down to commingle with the rendered pork fat—a glorious union of smoke and spice and sweet. A talented taquero can construct a perfect taco in a single sweeping movement, using his right hand to shower thin slices of the pork onto the griddle-warmed tortilla he cradles in his left. It’s an economy of motion used to bang out hundreds of tacos a night to crowds of taxi drivers and cops and pulque-soaked revelers. Each taco is then anointed with a slice of pineapple and a sprinkling of raw onions and cilantro, and served with a battery of different salsas and a few wedges of lime—that DIY element that makes Mexican cuisine so damn sexy.  -MG
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Foreplay: Food Porn Just Before the Lunch Hour

Tacos al pastor, Mexico DF

Tacos aren’t something Mom makes on Wednesday night with the help of the Old El Paso Express Kit. They don’t come covered in pre-shredded four-cheese blends and they don’t crunch when you bite down. The taco is a union of warm crushed corn, savory filling, and spice-charged condiment. They are soft and drippy and four-bites big, a love letter waiting for you on every street corner in Mexico. Few fillings escape the tortilla’s grasp: rosy char-grilled chunks of carne asada, crispy curls of fried pork skin, spicy tangles of roasted peppers and cooked cream, squishy mounds of slow-simmered eyeballs. But no tortilla has ever known a better friend than the spit-carved, chile-rubbed pork at the heart of the al pastor taco, perhaps Mexico’s most heroic hand-held food. 

The al pastor taco is Mexico’s take on the spinning-meat traditions of the Middle East, brought over by Lebanese immigrants who fused their penchant for vertical meat cookery with Mexico’s generous pantry of spices and condiments. All throughout Mexico City you’ll find late-night taquerias outfitted with giant spits of stratified pork turning slowly around an open flame. Most wear a pineapple crown, the warm fruit juices dripping down to commingle with the rendered pork fat—a glorious union of smoke and spice and sweet.

A talented taquero can construct a perfect taco in a single sweeping movement, using his right hand to shower thin slices of the pork onto the griddle-warmed tortilla he cradles in his left. It’s an economy of motion used to bang out hundreds of tacos a night to crowds of taxi drivers and cops and pulque-soaked revelers. Each taco is then anointed with a slice of pineapple and a sprinkling of raw onions and cilantro, and served with a battery of different salsas and a few wedges of lime—that DIY element that makes Mexican cuisine so damn sexy.  -MG

Jesus & the Bracelets: a Christmas dispatch as only Kadir Van Lohuizen can deliver it. He’s in northern Mexico now, perhaps the most dangerous part of his 40-week journey along the spine of the western hemisphere, from Patagonia to Alaska, for his Via PanAm project. His report from Sonora: In the evening I am back in Nogales. I visit one of the shelters where migrants who have been deported that day from US stay for the night. Vincent Ortiz is mopping the floor; it has rained a lot and the roof is leaking. He was deported two days before and he is very upset. He is an American citizen. Moreover, he is a Native American and by no means a migrant. He shows me his Native American ID card. And still, his own government sent him to Mexico. Another man, Marco Antonia Lopez, sits on a bench. He tells me he came to the US when he was two years old. He has two children born and raised in the US. He doesn`t speak Spanish and looks lost. These two cases are illustrative for the great deficiencies in the US immigration system. In the corner stands a Jesus statue, around his arms and legs are bracelets. They are identification bracelets that the migrants wore around their wrists from the US migrant detention centers. I love Via PanAm not just for the reporting and photography, but for the way Kadir is doing it: on his own. He’s one of the top photojournalists in the world, co-founder of the NOOR agency, winner of the Visa d’Or. But he saw the story as something epic, forty weeks long—about twenty times longer than most publications will send a photographer on assignment. He has a couple of smaller media partners from the Netherlands, but he’s largely doing it on his own. One thing is certain: the stories he’s doing would never have happened if he had waited for permission. Support him any way you can. You can start by downloading his beautiful iPad app. Make it a stocking stuffer. Do it for yourself. Do it for Jesus of the Bracelets. —NT [credit: Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR]
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Jesus & the Bracelets: a Christmas dispatch as only Kadir Van Lohuizen can deliver it. He’s in northern Mexico now, perhaps the most dangerous part of his 40-week journey along the spine of the western hemisphere, from Patagonia to Alaska, for his Via PanAm project. His report from Sonora:

In the evening I am back in Nogales. I visit one of the shelters where migrants who have been deported that day from US stay for the night. Vincent Ortiz is mopping the floor; it has rained a lot and the roof is leaking. He was deported two days before and he is very upset. He is an American citizen. Moreover, he is a Native American and by no means a migrant. He shows me his Native American ID card. And still, his own government sent him to Mexico. Another man, Marco Antonia Lopez, sits on a bench. He tells me he came to the US when he was two years old. He has two children born and raised in the US. He doesn`t speak Spanish and looks lost. These two cases are illustrative for the great deficiencies in the US immigration system.

In the corner stands a Jesus statue, around his arms and legs are bracelets. They are identification bracelets that the migrants wore around their wrists from the US migrant detention centers.

I love Via PanAm not just for the reporting and photography, but for the way Kadir is doing it: on his own. He’s one of the top photojournalists in the world, co-founder of the NOOR agency, winner of the Visa d’Or. But he saw the story as something epic, forty weeks long—about twenty times longer than most publications will send a photographer on assignment. He has a couple of smaller media partners from the Netherlands, but he’s largely doing it on his own. One thing is certain: the stories he’s doing would never have happened if he had waited for permission.

Support him any way you can. You can start by downloading his beautiful iPad app. Make it a stocking stuffer. Do it for yourself. Do it for Jesus of the Bracelets. —NT

[credit: Kadir van Lohuizen / NOOR]

Proof that it happened: my Fox News interview, via Skype from the bedroom where I’m staying in Colorado (dig the drapes, people). Media Matters, the unblinking eye of Sauron that watches over all of Roger Ailes’ hobbits, lauded me for having “shot down every attempt by Van Susteren to inflame her viewers”. But I think that criticism misses a couple points: 1) Greta knows me, and continues to have me on her show, which is a sign that she actually is looking for someone to present a more diverse perspective. We’ve done this before, whether about Sarah Palin or the Mexican border, and she’s always been fair to me. 2) Forget politics: just look at that big beautiful Roads and Kingdoms chyron under my picture. I could just kiss the producer who made that banner. Now, perhaps there’s not much overlap between what we’re doing and what average Fox News viewers are interested in (they tend to be a bit older, angrier at Washington, and more interested in things like Congressional elections). But if Fox News viewers are angry about the War on Christmas, they might be intrigued by the fact that there is in fact a REAL war happening, against Christians as it happens, in the north of Burma. We’ll be reporting on it, fair and balanced, in the weeks to come. The chyron wasn’t the only shout-out to Roads and Kingdoms. Astute viewers will notice that I look noticeably gaunter than the last time I was on Greta’s show, thanks to the multiple wasting diseases I picked up during my time in Burma. Third world disease-diet: that, too, is Roads and Kingdoms.
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Proof that it happened: my Fox News interview, via Skype from the bedroom where I’m staying in Colorado (dig the drapes, people).

Media Matters, the unblinking eye of Sauron that watches over all of Roger Ailes’ hobbits, lauded me for having “shot down every attempt by Van Susteren to inflame her viewers”. But I think that criticism misses a couple points:

1) Greta knows me, and continues to have me on her show, which is a sign that she actually is looking for someone to present a more diverse perspective. We’ve done this before, whether about Sarah Palin or the Mexican border, and she’s always been fair to me.

2) Forget politics: just look at that big beautiful Roads and Kingdoms chyron under my picture. I could just kiss the producer who made that banner. Now, perhaps there’s not much overlap between what we’re doing and what average Fox News viewers are interested in (they tend to be a bit older, angrier at Washington, and more interested in things like Congressional elections). But if Fox News viewers are angry about the War on Christmas, they might be intrigued by the fact that there is in fact a REAL war happening, against Christians as it happens, in the north of Burma. We’ll be reporting on it, fair and balanced, in the weeks to come.

The chyron wasn’t the only shout-out to Roads and Kingdoms. Astute viewers will notice that I look noticeably gaunter than the last time I was on Greta’s show, thanks to the multiple wasting diseases I picked up during my time in Burma. Third world disease-diet: that, too, is Roads and Kingdoms.

Roads and Kingdoms is going on Fox News tonight. I’m an occasional guest of Off the Record On the Record with Greta van Susteren (she and I share an unexpected love of Wasilla, Alaska), and I’ll be going on tonight (at 10:40 EST for you night owls) to talk about the proposed unmanned border crossing in Big Bend National Park in rural Texas. Roads and Kingdoms will be going to Mexico in the near future, because it’s an important story, and one we know well. This picture is from the lovely tourist town of Juárez, Mex., where I spent Spring Break this year visiting murder scenes and trying to get a drink at the famous old Kentucky Club. Not able to make it to the television? Here’s a summary of my thoughts about this border crossing (and any others like it in future): what makes sense in Washington doesn’t always make sense on the ground. We learned as much in Burma—where the U.S. State Department saw glasnost and I saw an ongoing, brutal civil war—and it’s just as true in the Rio Grande Valley.  So if the border crossing helps Big Bend and the communities it serves, then it is by definition the right thing. Calling for a complete lockdown of the southern border may be good politics, but it won’t help the park or the townspeople on either side of the river. That’s the idea. I’ll be On the Record with it shortly. —NT
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Roads and Kingdoms is going on Fox News tonight.

I’m an occasional guest of Off the Record On the Record with Greta van Susteren (she and I share an unexpected love of Wasilla, Alaska), and I’ll be going on tonight (at 10:40 EST for you night owls) to talk about the proposed unmanned border crossing in Big Bend National Park in rural Texas.

Roads and Kingdoms will be going to Mexico in the near future, because it’s an important story, and one we know well. This picture is from the lovely tourist town of Juárez, Mex., where I spent Spring Break this year visiting murder scenes and trying to get a drink at the famous old Kentucky Club.

Not able to make it to the television? Here’s a summary of my thoughts about this border crossing (and any others like it in future): what makes sense in Washington doesn’t always make sense on the ground. We learned as much in Burma—where the U.S. State Department saw glasnost and I saw an ongoing, brutal civil war—and it’s just as true in the Rio Grande Valley. 

So if the border crossing helps Big Bend and the communities it serves, then it is by definition the right thing. Calling for a complete lockdown of the southern border may be good politics, but it won’t help the park or the townspeople on either side of the river. That’s the idea. I’ll be On the Record with it shortly. —NT