Hispanic quesos: A must for Mexican menus

The way 16th century Spanish chroniclers described Mexican markets paints a picture strikingly similar to that of outdoor markets of today. Called tianguis, from the Nahuatl word for awning, these markets feature many of the same foods they did centuries ago, with the exception of animal products.

Today's cheese stalls, with quesos packed into baskets and wooden hoops, rolled like twine, or wrapped in cornhusks, are the legacy of the milk-producing animals that arrived with the Spaniards and changed Mexico's diet forever.

Cheesemaking, although introduced by another continent's conquerors, evolved into a regional occupation, producing distinctly Mexican varieties. Nowhere is cheese's importance more evident than in the antojitos and botanas sold in Mexico's restaurants and food stands. Add the innovative ways it is used in soups, salads, entrees and desserts, and it is easy to see why cheese — especially fresh queso — is an indispensable ingredient in Mexican cuisine.

Fresh Cheeses

The fresh cheeses include queso fresco, a spongy, white cheese most commonly used crumbled and sprinkled over enchiladas, taquitos, gorditas and memelas. Often made with a combination of cow's and goat's milk, it is also a popular ingredient in salads, such as the cherry tomato, mushroom and ses-ame seed salad served at Dos Santos in Puerta Vallarta.

Panela, another fresh cheese, is firmer than queso fresco. Because it keeps its shape when sliced, it is commonly used for frying and grilling, especially as part of a parillada mixta, or mixed grill. The appetizer plate at Las Cazuelas de Tlaxcala consists of a grilled round of panela, grilled nopales and grilled chorizo. At Puerto Viejo in Cabo San Lucas, the grilled panela is served with grilled pineapple. And at Mexico City's Fonda El Refugio, it is cut into bite-sized cubes, flash-fried, and topped with salsa verde and cilantro chiffonade in a dish called queso Ruben Romero. Mexico City's Los Girasoles uses panela to stuff the batter-dipped, fried huazontle (the flower buds of this long-stemmed green taste similar to broccoli).

A third type of fresh cheese, the ricotta-like requesón, is used to make cheese spreads and to fill enchiladas and tacos such as the tacos de requesón at Puerto Vallarta's River Café. At Los Girasoles, rollitos de berenjena are thin slices of sautéed eggplant rolled around a filling of requesón flavored with chipotle and epazote.

Requesón is often produced on small ranches and sold in the markets wrapped in fresh cornhusks. There is also a more densely textured, saltier version served as a dessert, sliced and plated with a contrasting sweet topping. At Las Cazuelas de Tlaxcala, this type of requesón is served with miel de piloncillo (a spiced, brown sugar syrup) or ate (the fruit paste most frequently made with quince). Pay de queso (cheese pie) is also a well-known dessert, called tarta de requesón at La Noria, where it is made with the soft, non-salty version of requesón.

La Plazuela restarant at La Fonda in Santa Fe, N.M., features Quezo Español, a plate of Spanish cheeses served as an appetizer or dessert. It includes Queso Grande, a semi-hard cow's milk Manchego accompanied by a date-walnut loaf; La Leyenda, a hard sheep's milk cheese with a nutty finish served with smoked grape relish; Garrotxa, a semi-hard goat's milk cheese with a smooth, herby finish accompanied by white-truffle-shiitake mushroom compote; and La Peral Blue, a mild, creamy, buttery cow's milk blue served with honey-chile-roasted Marcona almonds.

Soft Quesos

The next category of Mexican cheese is soft cheese, which inclues Oaxaca cheese (often called quesillo) and queso añejo (the aged version of queso fresco).

Oaxaca cheese is a stretched curd cheese, kneaded and wound into balls. It is usually pulled apart into strings before being used to fill tortillas or melted onto cooked food. At La Gula in Zihuatanejo, for example, Oaxaca cheese with shrimp and vegetables fills the empanadas criollas served with pineapple and ginger salsa. At La Noria in Puebla, however, Oaxaca cheese is sliced, breaded and fried until the outside is crisp and the cheese is soft, and served with salsa verde.

Oaxaca cheese is most often used to fill more traditional quesadillas like Los Girasoles' quesadillas azules — blue corn tortillas made with epazote-flavored masa and filled with Oaxaca cheese and squash blossoms.

Yet there is a seemingly endless array of new and non-traditional quesadilla fillings, especially those using the popular cheese-and-shrimp combination. The shrimp and shiitake quesadillas at The Inn at Manzanilla Bay in Playa Troncones; the shrimp and pine-apple quesadillas at River Café; and the shrimp, black bean and guacamole quesadillas at Yaxche Maya Restaurant in Playa del Carmen are all examples of this pairing. At Punta Morro in Ensenada, quesadillas are made with lobster chorizo, and at D.F.'s Solea, upscale quesadillas feature brie instead of quesillo, with sautéed mixed mushrooms in epazote butter.

Queso añejo, while categorized as soft, can become firm and salty as it ages. Primarily grated over a variety of dishes as a garnish, it is also used as a main ingredient in other dishes such as the botana ranchera with queso añejo, chicharrones and avocado at Puebla's Fonda de Santa Clara. When coated with a spicy red chile mixture, the cheese is called queso enchilado and is often served on an artisanal cheese plate such as the handmade Mexican cheese platter at Solea.

Semi-soft varieties

Mexico's semi-soft cheeses are primarily used for melting. That is especially true of the queso asadero, the one most frequently used to make the Mexican fondue called queso fundido — one of the most popular menu items throughout the country. It is nearly always featured at steak houses and ranchero-style restaurants that offer several cuts of beef.

Diners at La Mansion in D.F. and Acapulco, and at La Silla, Emiliano and El Zapato in Puebla, for example, can order queso fundido with chorizo, bacon, ham or a combination. At Casa Fuerte in Tlaquepaque, the queso fundido is made with green chiles, cebollitas and cilantro, while Puebla's Casita Poblana serves it with mushrooms and strips of roasted poblano chiles.

Other semi-soft cheeses are Chihuahua*, also called queso menonita after the Mennonite communities of Northern Mexico that first produced it, and the lesser-known queso jalapeño. The latter is a smooth, soft, white cow's milk cheese with bits of jalapeño chile, usually served alone as a snack, but also used to make quesadillas. Both are typically used as melting cheeses to accent a main dish, to stuff chiles, or to make crepes or cheese soup.

At Yaxche Maya, chaya crepes with buttery yellow manchego cheese are a house specialty,

Semi-firm and Firm Quesos

Gouda, along with the semi-firm Edam, is so common and widely produced in Mexico that it is hardly considered a foreign cheese. The famous Yucatán specialty queso relleno served at Los Almendros in Merida and several other regional restaurants on the peninsula, is a round of gouda cheese, hollowed out and filled with a stuffing of ground pork, onions, almonds, raisins and capers.

The firm cheeses queso cotija and manchego viejo are usually used as garnishes. Manchego viejo has an intense flavor and is often shaved over botanas. Cotija, a crumbly goat cheese named after the town in Michoacán where it originated, is served over beans and salads.

Goat cheese, as well as fairly recent arrivals such as brie, camembert, roquefort, mozzarella and gorgonzola, are being increasingly used in traditional Mexican dishes, an example of the way Mexican chefs are adopting new ingredients to use with the traditional chiles and herbs, much the way their forbears made cheese an essential part of the national menu.

See recipes for Graber's Crema de Queso, Rajas con Queso, Queso Rellano and Flan de Queso; and for Wisconsin Queso Blanco.

*Chihuahua Cheese is a registered trademark in the U.S. of V&V Supremo.