MARKETS : Mexico in L.A. : El Super Mercado

El Gallo Giro, 7136 Pacific Blvd., (at Pacific and Florence), Huntington Park, (213) 585-4433. Open 24 hours. Also at 1442 S. Bristol (at Edinger), Santa Ana, (714) 549-2011. Opening soon at 260 S. Broadway, (Third and Broadway across from Grand Central Market).

Behind the long U-shaped counter at the center of El Gallo Giro, a vast open kitchen hums with activity around the clock. Cooks chop vegetables and tend bathtub-sized pots filled with simmering soup while taped Mexican music blares. A few feet away, a team of women at free-standing ranges prepares hearty Mexican stews. At another station, steam hisses from huge copper caldrons.

Meanwhile, across from the kitchen behind a glass partition, a baker fills a paper cone with colored frosting and inscribes a birthday cake for a waiting customer. In the next room, opposite the butcher counter, customers at small booths sample the kitchen’s handiwork.

This is the flagship store of the El Gallo Giro chain (soon there will be three). Although it’s located near two other Latin supermarkets (Tianguis and Viva) in downtown Huntington Park, it isn’t exactly one of their competitors. Owners Ceasare Matar and Charles Bonaparte have created an imaginative ‘90s-style shopping and eating place by combining a deli, a restaurant and a collection of specialty food shops under one roof. The sleek white-tiled interior festooned with red, green and white banners has a fiesta-day feel.

There’s nothing like this store in Mexico, say the owners. There, you’d have to shop at a panaderia (bakery), a carniceria (butcher shop) and a tortilleria (tortilla bakery) and then flag down several mobile street-food vendors to round up the same kind of high-quality specialties you find here. For home-style dishes you’d then have to go to the centro de comida-- the area in Mexican marketplaces where cooks bring their specialties to sell. At El Gallo Giro you can get them all in one place, but as in those markets you can either eat on the spot or bring the foods home.

Everything sold here starts with basic ingredients. Meats are bought unbutchered and prepared in the carniceria for the cooked dishes. The rolls for sandwiches come from the bakery. The masa (corn dough) for tortillas, tamales, sopes and many more items is ground on the premises, and fresh tortillas are made continuously.

To head each department, Matar and Bonaparte have managed to find skilled specialists who learned their oficio (trade) in the traditional Mexican way, by apprenticing as youths. Their years of experience and expertise is evident in the quality of El Gallo Giro’s offerings.

SHOPPING LIST

THE MOLINO AND TORTILLERIA:

For example, Arnulfo Sandoval, who runs the tortilleria and corn milling operation, began apprenticing in his family’s mill in Zamora, Michoacan, when he was 6 years old. He rubs freshly ground masa between his fingers and instantly knows how much pressure to put on the mill’s grindstones to produce the differently textured masas required for tortillas, tostadas and tamales.

The center of the kitchen behind the food-serving area is where the corn is ground and the tortillas are baked. Customers place their order for regular masa or the coarser, seasoned masa preparada for tamale-making with the cashier in front of the tortilla oven. Some cooks buy nixtamal-- soaked, skinned and washed dried corn--to grind their own masa or to use in soups such as pozole.

El Gallo Giro makes good heavy tortillas that weigh in at a full pound per dozen. These are slightly thicker than most supermarket varieties. The deep-fried tortillas made from extra-coarse ground corn for tostadas are made fresh every day.

PANADERIA

El Gallo Giro’s head baker, Don Lupe Maldonado, was 10 when he began as an apprentice panadero or bread maker at a relative’s shop in Guanajuato. Before immigrating here in 1986 He was a baker in various Mexican cities and has worked in local bakeries since then.

Rolls: These days Maldonado oversees the baking of bolillos , or French-style rolls, teleras --rolls used in El Gallo Giro’s tortas (sandwiches)--as well as all the sweets and cakes.

Sweet breads and pastries: In the bakery area you’ll find many kinds of pan dulce or sweet bread. Early in the morning El Gallo Giro sells lots of these, along with strong Mexican coffee or Mexican-style hot-chocolate called champurrado. El Gallo Giro regularly sells more than two dozen varieties of pan dulce, and for the holidays, the bakers prepare special traditional breads.

Conchas , one of the most popular varieties of pan dulce, are slightly sweet yeast buns with a crackly sugar topping that resembles a sea shell design.

Elotes are similar, but shaped like an ear of corn.

Orejas (ears) are flaky pastries with a light syrup glaze.

Cakes: The bakery also turns out layer cakes with fresh fruit fillings. These may be ordered with all sorts of baroque decorations; scenes from Disneyland are especially popular.

CANDIES:

Head dulcero Israel Moya, who prepares the specialty candies, began his training in local Mexican candy-making factories as a teen-ager after he immigrated here from Sinaloa in 1978. He oversees the making of calabasa, which is candied pumpkin, and camote, glazed sweet potatoes--two of Mexico’s favorite sweets. Moya marinates the sweet potatoes and sliced pumpkin in sugar and cooks them twice with a cooling period between, a method that allows an even penetration of sugar leaving the camote and calabasa pliable and moist. Both are especially good here, because they’re freshly made.

You’ll also find coconut candies that look like giant macaroons; I think the ones made from toasted coconut are best.

As you face the kitchen, moving from right to left this is what you will find at each station.

MASA ANTOJITOS:

Mexicans consider antojitos snacks--not really a true cena, or dinner. The term literally means “little whims” and includes tacos and tostadas. But the cooks at the station across from the bakery area, in front of where the masa is ground, prepare only sopes, gorditas and quesadillas. (Tacos are sold at another station, the taqueria. )

The antojito fillings are lined up in full view just behind the counter. You can choose from stewed meats such as machaca (shredded beef), chicharrones in a tomato-chile sauce, the store’s own chorizo sausage with potatoes and picadillo, a minced meat stew with potatoes, carrots and raisins in a sauce seasoned with burgundy colored guajillo chiles.

Other filling choices are tinga (beef braised with chipotle chiles, then shredded), carne asada (grilled thin steak), carnitas and any of the other meats from the taqueria section.

Quesadillas: True central Mexican quesadillas are not the cheese-filled flour tortillas served in many restaurants but rather are similar to empanadas-- the deep-fried turnovers made with wheat-flour dough. Quesadillas differ by being made with a thin corn-dough exterior instead of wheat-flour pastry. After you select a filling, the dough is pressed out, filled and deep fried in front of you. The cook then tops the quesadilla with lettuce, salsa, crema Mexicana (similar to sour cream) and crumbled, Parmesan-like cotija cheese.

Gorditas and sopes: the same fillings used for quesadillas are also what tops sopes. These thin cakes of deep-fried, hand-patted masa with little rims look like a tart shell. Gorditas, also patted out to order, puff up as they grill. The end result is rather like a corn pita bread and the filling goes inside.

Flautas: Often called taquitos in restaurants catering to gringos (true taquitos are simply small tacos), these are tortillas rolled around a filling and deep fried like a large Chinese egg roll. El Gallo Giro’s flautas are stuffed with chicken and potatoes and served with crema Mexicana.

Tamales: The corn dough for tamales has been whipped with lard, seasonings and leavening. Good tamale dough is light and tender and the lard used here has had carnitas cooked in it, giving the dough a rich, meaty flavor. The tamales, filled either with chicken or pork in chile verde (green chile sauce) or in chile rojo (red chile sauce), are wonderful, and on weekends the kitchen makes tamales with rajas-- fresh green chile strips. Sweet tamales are one of El Gallo Giro’s best-selling breakfast items, especially the strawberry tamales and the pineapple tamales with raisins.

Atoles: This is another popular snack and breakfast food, displayed in enormous bowls. Atoles are corn-based hot drinks with a texture that resembles thin, smooth cream of wheat. Champurrado, the chocolate version of atole and possibly the most popular, was borrowed from the Maya and Olmec Indians by the Spaniards who began making it with milk instead of water, leading to what we know as cocoa. El Gallo also makes atoles in strawberry and coconut versions flavored with whole cinnamon sticks and on week ends, a sweet corn atole is available.

Tostadas: Farther to the left, at the tostada area, are pans of authentic toppings: ceviche, pickled pig’s feet and pickled pig skin (cueritos). The not-so-adventurous might want to ask for tostadas of grilled chicken or shredded beef ( machaca ) . Any of the fillings and the tostada base may be packaged separately to go.

Tortas: The next station offers typical Mexican sandwiches made with fresh-made teleras, the traditional flat-ridged rolls that look somewhat like a small baseball glove. The sandwich chef spreads the rolls with a thin layer of beans and another layer of mashed avocado before adding the filling. Marinated roasted pork leg, known as pierna adobada, is my favorite filling. Tortas may also be ordered with milanesa (lightly breaded and fried thin beef steak), carne asada or the antojito fillings ( tinga, machaca, carnitas ) , described above, or with cold cuts: a very lean ham imported from Holland, queso de puerco (head cheese) and mild panela cheese.

COCINA CALIENTE

Here is where you get the soups and hot dishes sold by the quart, the pint or the individual serving. Every day you’ll find the famous tripe soup, menudo, that supposedly cures hangovers, as well as deep russet-colored pozole. This light clean broth, fragrant with guajillo chile, is filled with lean pork and cooked nixtamal corn. The caldos, soup-stews of either beef or chicken with large chunks of meat in a rich herb-filled broth, rotate daily. Just before eating them, you sprinkle on diced white onion, cilantro, crumbled oregano and small, whole red chiles de arbol for a final fillip of flavor.

In addition to soups, tinga and picadillo, a changing array of other hot dishes includes the breakfast mainstay, chilaquiles. It’s a sort of Mexican lasagna: tortillas layered with cheese, chile-tomato sauce and drizzling of crema Mexicana. On Sundays there’s always chicken in mole poblano, a rich and savory nut-based sauce flavored with garlic, chiles and unsweetened chocolate. Friday is the day for chiles rellenos made with fresh ancho chiles. Red and green chile sauces are sold in bulk here as are cooked rice and frijoles de la olla --simple pot-stewed beans.

TAQUERIA AND COOKED MEATS

Next to the cocina caliente area, the traditional taco meats are displayed in trays. They can be purchased by the pound to make antojitos at home, but many customers order tacos on the spot. The taco cook wields a cleaver with a lightning-swift hand, hacking carne asada, carnitas, braised beef tongue or grilled chicken into slivers for the fillings. All the traditional favorites are here: marinated pork cooked on a rotisserie ( carne al pastor ), pork snout ( trompe ), stomach ( buche ), stewed beef head ( cabeza ), pork brains ( sesos ) and fresh-made sausage ( longaniza ) .

El Gallo Giro’s head carnitero, Vicente Hernandez, is responsible for the delicious carnitas and chicharrones. He was only six when he began learning to make these specialties alongside his father at the family’s butcher shop in Uruapan, Michoacan. At his station behind the taqueria , three enormous hand-hammered copper caldrons used for cooking the carnitas and chicharrones sit on free-standing burners.

Hernandez oversees the making of hundreds of pounds of carnitas a week, making sure the lard for frying the pork is heated to just the right temperature so the meat doesn’t absorb too much of it. Chicharrones, the puffy deep-fried pork cracklings, come in two styles: a thin, airy variety and a thicker version used in soups and stewed in sauces.

AGUAS FRESCAS AND LICUADOS

At the end of the hot food line to the left of the front door is a station offering fresh juices mixed with a little sugar and ice. Lined up on the counter in their tall, sparkling glass barrels the aguas frescas create a rainbow effect. Depending on the season, you might find juices of watermelon, cantaloupe, banana (with milk) or tuna (cactus fruit that is a lovely pale shade of green). Jamaica is a juice made by steeping dried hibiscus flowers like tea, then chilling and sweetening the intense, tart red liquid (it’s the original of Red Zinger tea). Horchata, a creamy white drink, is made from rice. Carrot and orange juice are squeezed to order and the red vampira juice, made with beets, carrots, celery and parsley, is a favorite with the health-conscious.

For breakfast you can order licuados-- delicious fresh fruit milk shakes; an egg will be added if you request it.

POSTRES

In front of the bakery area and in deli cases stationed around the store are postres-- Mexican desserts other than cakes. These include Mexican-style caramel custard, rice pudding fragrant with cinnamon and fresh strawberries in thick Mexican cream. Gelatin desserts called gelatinas come in fanciful configurations: A patriotic red, white and green striped gelatina boasts the colors of the Mexican flag. The mosaic-like gelatinas de mosaico consists of multi-colored gelatin squares submerged in white milk gelatin.

CARNICERIA

In El Gallo Giro’s butcher shop, pans of salsa roja and salsa verde sit alongside pickled chiles and cebollitas vinagre (pickled onions). The meat cases hold all the typical Mexican cuts as well as organ meats and goat. The butchers do a wonderful job with the longaniza sausage, made on the premises, which hangs behind the cases in a small glassed-in drying room; it may be purchased fresh or at various stages of dryness.

The carniceria carries several varieties of Mexican-style cheese. These include the fresh white panela, mozzarella-like Oaxaca, aged cotija, ricotta-like requeson and mild, fresh ranchero (also called queso blanco. )