we're in Michoacan, Mexico and we're here for some crazy good food we can't wait to
get into the street food here and also sample a ton of traditional indigenous
foods the state of Michoacan has a vibrant and varied food culture this is
our first video from Michoacan and we're in the town of Patzcuaro the food
culture here is influenced by its indigenous peoples, its geography and has a unique
identity we eat corundas a local staple fresh fish from picturesque Lake
Patzcuaro stumble onto some killer tacos and eat the local specialty of pasta
flavored ice cream in this huge Mexico series we'll show you some of the
country's tastiest food from rare indigenous recipes to delicious street
food you don't want to miss this series get ready for some mouth-watering food
I'm Thomas and I'm Sheena and we're Chasing a Plate we hope you're hungry
let's eat
Patzcuaro is such a beautiful little town what we're going to be doing today
is just zipping all around the show and eating a bunch of street food as
well as some really traditional dishes of this town and of this state so we're just um
at our first stop for a street food called huchepos we're outside the Basilica
here it's a really lovely part of town and huchepos are a type of tamale which
are indigenous to this region and they're made from fresh corn we're just
um at this stop here and we've got the big pot which usually signifies that
there are tamales cooking
hola buenos dias es esto corundas si and es esto huchepos?
tamales ah si alright so I thought that the lady was
selling huchepos which is the tamal that I was telling you about
but she's actually just got normal tamales and also corundas but corundas
is one thing that we wanted to try while we were here so we're gonna order a
couple of them dos corundas por favor um so corundas are another type of
tamale but they're a triangular tamale again really unique to this region
so she's just got a whole stack of tamales and corundas in there we've ordered a meat
corundas so you can see that it's a triangular shape she's just unwrapping
it right now it's pretty hefty pretty big in size wow delicioso gracias
con crema y salsa, si, si gracias so she just asked me if I wanted salsa and crema on the top I said
yes perfecto gracias
the lady also has some atole cooking up
here atole is, atole con leche, ah si, una gracias so atole is a drink which is
made out of corn dough it's really thick this is um also got milk in it I
believe so corn dough and milk and it's a really thick hearty drink that you
often drink for breakfast or late at night so we've ordered one of those
muy rico gracias got our mug of atole let's go and get into the food this is a really
lovely atmosphere right outside the church sitting under
this tarpaulin and eating communally so this is the corundas and I've
been really excited about trying this so what it is is this corn dough which is
shaped like a triangle you can see and then it's been stuffed with meat what
I'm gonna do is just open it up for you to see whoa look at that
so it's got all sorts of meat in there and cooked in sort of maybe like a
tomato and chili sauce I think it might be pork actually and then what she did
was she doused it in salsa and then also some crema which is sort of like a
Mexican thin sour cream and then to wash it all down we've got this atole
which is that corn-based drink let's just get into this corundas so I'm
gonna make sure that it's coated in all of that salsa
it's really really
good it's very spicy has a really strong chilli kick the meat is beautiful and
tender I didn't really get much of a bite of the corn dough there so I'm gonna
get some more of that
the masa is really really soft because
it's been steaming away it's just melt in your mouth it works
beautifully with the salsa let's give this atole a try
this is another
thing that Patzcuaro is really famous for its atole so it's water
with a corn dough mixed into it so it's really thick and creamy and she
said leche which is milk so maybe it has a bit of milk in it as well it's
so sweet and creamy
mmm so good so this type of food as I was talking about is
traditional indigenous food of the Purepechan people so Purepecha is
the biggest indigenous group here in Patzcuaro and we're gonna be eating a ton
of their traditional dishes today
that was a really good start so tamales are interesting because you generally
find them in the morning and in the evening but not in the middle of the day
so that was a great way to start our day now we're gonna go find a really
unique street food for this region we've gotta find a bus though and we have
no idea where the bus goes from but we've got to find the bus to get to a
lake to get this street food
we managed to find the right collectivo to get us down here so it's
basically a minibus it's a van you just pile in and they take you wherever you
need to go so we're down by the lake so this beautiful lake and what makes the
street food pretty unique that we're gonna eat now is it comes from the lake
to the stand which is right here so this is pretty damn fresh
hola buenos tardes
so oh muchas gracias so these are what we're eating today
so these are charalitos which are the tiny fish from
the lake right there and this lady's got a ton of charalitos cooking up in
the oil as well as some bigger fish so I think we're gonna order these small
ones, una charalitos por favor gracias
she's adding some Valentina hot sauce on top of them perfecto gracias and also
some lime this is a really neat setup because she's got her big frying pan
she's got her fresh fish and she's frying them up muchas gracias Senora
look at these crispy fried fish ohhh they're gonna be really good
the lady has let me come up and have a go at cooking these little fish so we've
got ours covered in the hot sauce look at them just bubbling away in this
really little thin layer of oil she also does these big fish as well which
definitely look like a freshwater fish so they've totally come from the lake as
well and these little guys that we're gonna eat up now muchas gracias
it's a really nice atmosphere down here so all these long boats you can see parked up they go out
on the lake cruises bands jump on there's some lovely music coming from
that one that's just popped out we've got our little snack and while I find
why I find these pretty unique is that fresh seafood cooked right by the sea is
pretty common like you see that all around the world but I don't think I've
ever seen fresh seafood from a lake being cooked right beside the lake so I
think that's pretty neat so got these tiny little fish covered in some hot
sauce let's just get that one because it's nicely covered in hot sauce
yum they were just floured chucked in the shallow oil fried and they're really
well fried so they're they're cooked right through so they're chips basically
oh my god
super crispy nice and salty nice tang from the from the hot
sauce that is one hell of a snack and I love that they come out of this lake and
this region of Mexico is stunning you've got these amazing mountains all around
you there's beautiful birds all around here it is a really neat snack in a
really neat environment
Patzcuaro is a really beautiful colonial town and its really easy to
navigate the central historical district on foot we're just in the zocalo at the
moment there's beautiful music playing from speakers all around us it's a really
lovely atmosphere we're now going to go to a restaurant which is really famous
for traditional dishes Purepechan dishes and as I was saying before
Patzcuaro has a really strong indigenous culture Purepechan people have
been well their civilization has been around for a thousand years so the food
culture here is really strong let's go get some food
we've struck a bit of a
problem this happens sometimes when we're filming that there is the
restaurant so we ain't getting in there the restaurant's closed so this does
happen sometimes because Google results for when places are open are just not
true so that one we cannot do which is a real shame because we really wanted to
eat those super traditional foods but there's plenty more food in this town so
let's go find some more stuff to eat
we've come to the local market to get some food now if you're searching for
something to eat in Mexico the local market is a really great first stop
because there's always going to be a little torta stands and taco
stands and small fondas which are family-run restaurants we've had a
little look around it's not really the indigenous food that we were after but
there's a really busy tacos stand up ahead so we're going to go there, one thing
if you're after food just from any random street stall and you're not sure
where to go always go where the people are this place is really busy so let's
get some tacos
two seats have just opened up at this taco stand
oh sorry disculpe so we're just going to grab a seat in front of this
huge pot of meat which is just frying up I can see chorizo and there's
some onions on the side there's intestines all sorts I don't study
dos chorizo dos tripa por favor gracias
con todo? Si con todo so what I've done is ordered two
intestine tacos and two chorizo tacos with everything which is con todo so
you've got this big pot which is just filled with lard and what not and they're just
the meat is just bubbling away what you do is you sort of eat a couple then order some more eat
a couple order some more
okay so look at these tacos so we've got two
chorizo so two of the spicy sausage and then two of the tripa which are the
intestines and we got them with con todo so everything on top there's
onions you can see coriander or cilantro and then a red salsa to go with it
on the side there these slow sort of roasted onions they're really really
tender and then a squeeze of lime and what's really awesome is that the
tortillas have been bathed just bathing in that lard so you can see them bubbling
away there and they're just soaking up all of the meat juices and fat so what I'm
going to do is just grab some of this lime and stick it over the top give it a
good squeeze and then this this onion here is my favorite so I'm just gonna
add that to my taco so this is the chorizo taco okay
that is so good muy rico amigos muchas gracias so good
the tortilla is a little bit crispy it's got so much flavor because of that
fat and then the chorizo is really spicy the onion is tender this is a perfect
mouthful
look at this tripa one so this is the intestine so I love how it's all
covered in the salsa already
oh man
oh that is killer good love how those tortillas have got the fat on them so they're nice
and juicy the intestine is cooked perfectly this is a
brilliant stand I love these types of places because the
environment is great you've got it all going on in front of you the smells of
this cooking right here the sounds of it cooking the smells of it cooking
you order chucked in front of you dive in whilst it's hot, perfect
it's turned a bit cold and rainy in Patzcuaro at the moment but that's not gonna deter
us from our next street food and that is nieves, nieves is a hand churned
water-based ice cream and Patzcuaro is really famous for a certain flavor of
nieves and that's pasta flavour this next spot has been around since 1905 so
let's go and get a pasta flavoured nieves
dos nieves por favor, una pasta
y una chongos, si, gracias, dos
chongos y perfecto muchas gracias
these nieves flavours look really good we actually ordered two
muchas gracias
so the pasta flavored and also chongos
I can't wait to get into
these two giant cups of nieves so we got the pasta flavor now the pasta flavour
nieves is famous in Patzcuaro people come from all round Michoacan to
eat this flavor nieves so the pasta flavor is actually almonds vanilla and
cinnamon so really looking forward to sampling that and then this one here is
the chongos and chongos is a dessert made up of curdled milk and
cinnamon you can see all those bits of curdled milk in there so I'm just gonna
put the chongos one down and then get into this pasta nieves you can see
the consistency is so soft and almost icy alright
whoa that is super super creamy
ohhh the vanilla flavor is the overwhelming flavor it's very creamy
sort of a little bit sticky almost this is good
I have just tried that pasta
flavor as well it's unreal it tastes just like condensed milk it's
very very sweet but very good now time for this chongos and this looks crazy
look at all those chunks in there so this is a dessert a regional dessert but
this has been made whoa it's so hard this has been made into Nieves and I
really like the little stand it's been really busy every time we've walked past
it today and when they're scooping the nieves you can see that the the
stainless steel cylinders that it's in are sitting in a bucket of what will
probably be iced salt water so keep them really chilled and you see the buckets
bobbing up and down as they scoop it out let's get this down
whoa, whoa
that's amazing, ohhh
oh a bit of an ice cream headache whoa that's incredible so that that sits more
on the dessert side than the ice cream side it's texturally super chunky so the
curdled milk element has that cheesy element it's got a little bit of bounce
in it and it's thick so a lot of it is that I was expecting a little bit of
that with a lot of the ice cream but it's not it's a lot of that curdled milk
the cinnamon flavor is very strong on the sweetness side this compared to the
one Sheena had not even similar this tastes like there's no sugar in it
compared to that there is a quite a lot of sugar in it but it's much less sweet
super interesting let's get some more
hmm oh there's big chunks of cinnamon
bark in there look at that I'll just get a bit with the cinnamon
whoa and that's gone all soft this is absolutely utterly amazing it's
very very good