There are a few essential ingredients to Yucatan cooking, each of which seems to factor into a vast number of different meal preparations: sour orange (naranja agria), epazote, banana leaves, green habanero salsa, pickled red onions, strained, soupy black beans. Chief among these is achiote (known in some forms as annatto), the pebbly red seed which shows up as the primary ingredient in one of the region’s main spice blends (recado rojo) and plays an important role in another (recado negro, a.k.a. chilmole). Used both for its coloring properties and its nutty, earthy flavor, achiote (along with many of the aforementioned ingredients) figures prominently into four Mayan mainstays of Mayan Barbecue, a category I may be inventing for the purposes of this post.
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I arrived in Isla Mujeres, Quintana Roo two Tuesdays ago, wearing sandals for the first time in my adult life, looking for all intents and purposes like the standard-issue beach bum tourist. I was not, however, here for relaxation alone, armed with a healthy list of eating goals culled from hours of internet research, determined to gain at least some familiarity with the basics of Yucatan cooking. This project was mostly successful, despite the sweltering heat, weak tropical cocktails and hordes of daytrippers clad in hot pink ‘I’m In Cancun/Cozumel/Playa del Carmen, Bitch’ tanktops; even in the island’s northern resort district, the dining opportunities are bountiful, cheap and varied enough that it was easy to stumble through a ramshackle introductory primer, hiding from the seemingly constant sun in a series of loncherias, coctelerias and cocinas economicas. This former fishing village and current sometimes tourist mecca maintains a dual identity - as overtly commercialized as much of the Mayan Riviera but retaining a heavy base of family-run restaurants cooking in traditional style - and remains a place where it’s difficult to have a bad meal, excepting the usual, very obvious tourist traps located along the two main drags.
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The coded language of snacks, sandwiches and seasonings, in NYC and beyond.
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