Liquors often have roots in religious communities, which sounds peculiar until you consider the medicinal history of booze, the traditional mercantile focus of these mini-societies, and the fact that alcohol prohibition within the church is a pretty recent development. Monks are responsible for myriad varieties of beer, as well as Benedictine and Chartreuse among other liqueurs. Nuns, as far as I can tell, are responsible only for rompope, the thick yellow beverage known as Mexican eggnog, which reputedly originated in a Pueblan convent during the 17th century. This story probably has some truth to it, although the drink has roots which stretch back to the Old World, specifically Spanish ‘egg punches’, Dutch advocaat and English posset.
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Southern Mexico is a land of bountiful produce, overflowing with tropical fruits and the vivid juices which flow freely from these splendid orbs. Yet it’s also industrializing at the same general rate as the rest of the country, which means that it’s sweet tooth is being adjusted to suit the of desires the global economy and the corporations which service it. Corn and soy form the backbone of United States farm production. Corn is also Mexico’s #1 crop, and while much of it is put to traditional use, the rising price of cane sugar is causing that sweetener to be replaced with corn syrup in many sodas, with the odd consequence that so-called ‘Mexican Coke’ made with cane sugar is exported to the U.S. as a boutique product, while the Mexican version now often uses syrup.
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.
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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