Goats and Cactus
Petals: La Tortuga Tortería Offers
Authentic Flavors of Mexico by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
I
queried The Monterey County Weekly
(Circulation: 200,000) with a request to review a restaurant that served
“goat, cactus petals, and killer, organic strawberry shakes.”
The Weekly sent me off to a
Seaside, California location where everyone could get a strawberry shake or
“licuado.” The revised article I wrote
follows:
Goat and Cactus Petals: La Tortuga Tortería Restaurant Review
My
love for Mexican torta sandwiches lured me into La Tortuga Tortería located at
the busy corner of Fremont and Harcourt in Seaside, California.
I
invited my husband, family friend, and daughter Florence there for sandwiches
one Saturday afternoon. We changed our mind
from torta sandwiches to meals when we saw the specials board and ordered every
one of them:
-pescado
a la Veracruzano (Veracruz-style fish)
-chili
pepper relleno (chili peppers stuffed with chicken and raisins)
-carne
asada with cactus petals (charbroiled steak with grilled cactus petals)
-enchiladas
verdes (enchiladas with green sauce)
The
waitress told us that the grilled trout for my pescado would take 20 minutes to
cook.
The
wait gave us time to sample drinks and learn soccer Spanish. (The TV was on a Spanish-language station).
We
tried the following beverages while we waited:
-Imported
Mexican Pepsi. It is more sugary than
its American counterpart and fizzy, but not highly carbonated.
-Mango
licuado or shake for me made with whipped milk and mango pulp and added
vanilla, sugar, and a sprinkle of cinnamon
-Atole
de Maiz – corn gruel made with ground corn and milk whose origins extend back
to the Mayan Empire in the Yucatan Peninsula according to Alan Davidson’s Penguin Guide to Food.
Our
Main dishes were superlative:
-Veracruz-style
fish – a whole trout covered with strips of sweet red peppers, olives, capers,
cilantro, and yellow peppers
-Chile
relleno – stuffed pasilla pepper with chicken and raisin filling
-carne
asada – char grilled steak with onions, sautéed nopalitos, and cactus petals
(nopales) came with this dish
-enchiladas
verdes – tomatillo and green pepper sauce covered enchiladas stuffed with fresh
cheese
If
you have never tried these dishes before, Tortuga is a great place to start.
End
of Article
Note:
My
favorite Mexican cookbooks are by Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy. The books by Rick Bayless are on Kindle.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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