Chances are, if you’re planning a trip to Mexico City, the most universal recommendation you’ll get is to have lunch at Contramar. Heed the call. The celebrated restaurant in the Roma Norte neighborhood is most famous for its whole red snapper painted in vibrant swaths of red chile and green parsley sauces, but the menu is filled with must-try seafood (like the impeccable tuna tostadas). The mastermind behind it, and several other decorated restaurants across the city, is chef Gabriela Cámara.
Cámara is one of the busiest chefs I know and she’s still tackling new projects, like Cantina Contramar in Las Vegas, so she cherishes time at home. In a kitchen warmed by sunlight streaming in from glass doors, you’ll find stacks of cookbooks, walls lined with her grandmother’s copper baking pans, and bowls overflowing with produce from her garden. Here, Cámara shares how she stays inspired and well-fed between shifts.
Once a week Cámara meal preps breakfasts by making a large pot of beans and a batch of tortillas on the infrared dual griddle built into her stove. For dinner, it’s a feast inspired by her Italian mother’s home cooking. Cámara cranks one burner to 20,000 BTU to quickly boil fresh pasta and lowers the next to a gentler 300 BTU to simmer sauces whipped up with leftover garden vegetables. She takes advantage of the spacious and precise convection oven when she’s entertaining a crowd. Her favorite dish to serve? A salt-covered baked fish (she recommends starting with a large fatty fillet or even a whole side). “It’s the foolproof method for baking fish without overcooking it,” she says.
Cámara uses a HexClad grill pan, evenly perforated with small round holes, to char her homegrown chiles, tomatoes, and aromatics for salsas. The pan is wide and shallow enough to fit a large portion of veg, and its ceramic nonstick coating makes for easy cleanup.
After charring ingredients for salsa, Cámara grabs her Vitamix or her molcajete and tejolote, a traditional Mexican mortar and pestle made of volcanic rock from Puebla, depending on the texture she’s going for. The Vita-Prep model effortlessly blends a smooth, uniform salsa. The molcajete maintains a more rustic bite, leaving behind juicy chunks of tomato and tender bits of onion.
Even on her busiest day, Cámara always makes herself coffee. If it’s just for her, she’ll brew it on the stovetop. When she’s entertaining, she turns to the La Marzocco Linea Micra. A compact format of the machines at her restaurants, it produces café-worthy espresso.
