Gorditas Velazquez

     Not the healthiest of foods...but OH SO GOOD:)  Gorditas are very popular here, and I can totally understand why.  My mother-in-law has a little gordita stand in the front of her house.  Since our house in top of her house, and we share a courtyard, I smell the gorditas all day, watch her make them, and can have some whenever I want!  I don't have them often, but I do have them.  I just eat them without the grease soaked cheese and the sodium filled meat.
     To start, gorditas are grilled "pockets" made from maize that are filled with cheese and your choice of other filling/s.  The fillings you can get are pretty much the same at any of the little stands.  You can have picadillo, which is ground beef cooked with garlic, onions, and carrots.  You can have deshebrada, which is boiled beef that has been shredded and was flavored while boiling.  There is chicharron, which is fried pork skin, and also eggs which have been scrambled and cooked with a little chili oil.  If you don't want meat (like me, although I do eat the egg) there are a couple options.  Nopales (cactus) with onions and cilantro or by themselves or you can get it with beans.  You can do any combination of the fillers, too.  My favorite is the nopales or the egg. 

     To make the gorditas, my mother-in-law takes a golf ball sized piece of maize and slaps it, pats it, turns it, and flattens it with her hands to make a circle about 5 inches in diameter. Once the gordita is formed, it goes on the flat top grill to cook (it only takes a few minutes per side).  The maize for the gorditas is like what corn tortillas are made from, but gorditas are thick, unlike tortillas.

     Once the maize has cooked, the gorditas are sliced at the top to make an opening and cut in the middle to make a "pocket" for all the filling.  When the gordita has been sliced, grease soaked cheese (queso fresco) is then smeared on the inside and the gordita is set back onto the flat top to heat a little more.

     After the cheese has heated up inside the gordita, it is filled with whatever the customer wants.  All the blue pots on the side of the flat top are the meats, eggs, and beans.  Keeping them on the flat top keeps them warm and accessible.  Extra meats and other fillings are kept in the kitchen inside, and the blue pots on the flat top are refilled as needed.  The nopales are kept on a side table since they do not need to stay hot.  Also on the side table is a HUGE molcajete with homemade spicy salsa that can be added to the gorditas.  My sister-in-law helps at the stand Tuesdays through Fridays, and on Sundays.  On Saturdays and Mondays, it's her gordita stand and my mother-in-law helps her:)

      Most days, there are three tables outside on the sidewalk by the stand for customers to sit at and eat.  That is usually enough, but on the weekends, the living room inside the house is cleared of furniture (pushed into my brother-in-law's room) and a few extra tables and chairs are put out.  The living room is right inside the front door beside the gordita stand.  A lot of the people with little food stands will use their front room as extra space for their customers.  "¡Mi casa es tu casa!"

Las Cazuelas

The town where I live in Mexico (Comonfort, GTO) is pretty small, and I am the only gringa who lives here. There are less than 68,000 people in the 485.90 square kilometers that make up this town.  There are a couple of little restaurants that I like, but one in particular that is my favorite.

This little restaurant only has 8 tables and is run out of the lower half of the owners house.  Elsa.  Elsa is one of the sweetest ladies I have met and Benjamin (my son) always runs in and gives her a huge hug whenever we get there. 

 

You can see her husband sitting at a table in the back right corner.  He is really sweet, too, and always has good conversations with my husband when we are there.  He is the "money" man and always gets the drink orders whenever customers come in.  He just had some health issues having to do with diabetes, but is now on the fast track to recovery:)


Anyway...the inside of the restaurant is quaint and has plastic tables and chairs, as most of the "house" restaurants and stands do.  They have table umbrellas for most of the tables.  Mostly for decor, but also for shade during the earlier part of the day since the ceiling is a Plexiglas type of material and lets in the sun.  All the tables have placemats and two cute little wine bottles on them.  Some have table cloths, others don't.  There is one long table set up for larger groups or families that come in.  It is situated on a level that is a step higher than the rest of the place.

 There are many wonderful dishes on the menu, but Elsa usually has on "off the menu" item that my husband usually gets.  Tonight was chicken mole, one of my husbands favorite dishes.  I think that is what he gets every time she has it.  The mole sauce usually has a pretty good kick to it, and the texture is always mole perfect!  When I ate meat, mole was a nice escape from the usual chicken dishes, and sometimes I miss it.  It is a messy dish, but well worth the it:)

I use to love her Milanesa.  That is a very thin pan fried piece of chicken.  She also makes a wonderful Cordon Bleu that melts in your mouth and has the best aroma.  Since my appetite for land creatures has dwindled significantly in the past 8 months, I only eat meat (only white meat, never red) once every couple of weeks.  I am now absolutely in love with her Camarones Empanizados (fried shrimp).  She makes this wonderful breading that has poppy seeds in it and slowly pan fries the baby shrimp.  The dish is supposed to come with rice and beans, but I get a special plate...because Elsa is so wonderful and caters to my needs and wants.  I get it with rice and shredded lettuce, and vegetables if she has them (most restaurants like this do not have vegetables except for pico de gallo or onions and tomatoes).  She also put some fried potatoes on my plate, which looked amazing, but I did not eat for two reasons.  One, that was just another starch I did not need in addition to the rice, and two, they had pork mixed in with them.  The plate looked gorgeous and the food was delicious!!!

 

My son loves her chicken burritos which are made with shredded chicken and refried beans, but he is also a huge fan of quesadillas.  Especially Sincronizadas.  Sincronizadas are a special kind of quesadilla which has a little bit of mayonnaise on the inside of the tortillas and are layered with ham and queso Oaxaca.  Sometimes he will eat the entire quesadilla, but most of the time he takes them apart and just eats the goodness inside.  Either way, he's always happy when he sees Elsa walking over to the table with his food:)

 

Overall, I give Las Cazuelas a 10 out of 10.  We never all get our food at the same time, and the seating is not the most comfortable, but Elsa makes our visit special every time we go...which is usually every couple of weeks.  My son will also tell us sometimes, "I wanna go see Elsa!"  When you find a little gem like this cozy little restaurant, and your 3 year old likes it, you take advantage of it whenever you can:)  I am so glad we found this place when we first moved here almost 4 years ago.