There are quite a few foodie pilgrimages on my bucket list. One dream is to go to the white truffle festival in Le Marche in Italy. It’s held every November and you can do some serious inhaling and buying of these prized fungi. Then there is the lemon festival on the French Riveria, where you can sample anything lemon-scented on the local restaurant menus.

Just the mention of lemons reminds me to put Tessa Kiros’s new book Limoncello and Linen Water on my list. What a great name for a cookbook! I adore her and her love affair with food, which is so well narrated in all her books. I can’t wait to delve into this new one, which is, as the name suggests, inspired by something Italian.

I also imagine seeing the cherry blossoms falling in Japan in March, but one of the most alluring festivals, which happens this week, is the celebration of the dead in Oaxaca in Mexico.

It’s all about a ritual meal, ‘a drink of the gods’, made from chocolate beans that have been aged under the earth, mixed together with rice and cinnamon. This is eaten with black beans cooked in clay pots, and tamales (delicious corn dough tied up in bundles of corn leaves and steamed). The closest I got to tamales made with blue corn was at a restaurant in New York with the chef Bobby Flay. I still fondly remember his spicy tomatillo soup with smoky chipotle chillies.

I wish we could get our hands on these authentic ingredients in South Africa; I suppose that’s why we just don’t have the real deal Mexican restaurants in this country.

Although, one place serves the closest you’ll get to traditional Mexican food: San Julian in Rose Street, Cape Town. At least there isn’t a battered chilli popper in sight! Here you will eat handmade corn tortillas, barbequed pork with fried beans, and a fiery salsa verde – and the grapefruit tequila is a perfect match.

Years ago there was a restaurant in Bloem Street run by a Mexican couple, called Mexicasa. I loved it. Every time the couple went back to Mexico to stock up, they would bring back discs of cocoa, hibiscus water, cans of corn with fungi growing on it (not old; just a delicacy), skulls made from sugar, chillies in all forms, and tortilla pans. They would stand in the courtyard and lovingly make heaps of deep-fried empanadas to serve as a starter to their menu.

The owners are no longer part of the restaurant, but the restaurant is still there, called The Mexican Kitchen. They do have chilli poppers on the menu, and they aren’t half bad! Try the chimichangas, too.

Happy Halloween-ing and pumpkin carving, and enjoy this fun food festival!

Abigail