"Please sir, I want some more"
--- Charles Dickens as Oliver Twist (Writer; 1812 - 1870)
Nothing brings people together like good food. It's one thing to take a recipe and try to replicate it elsewhere, but there's nothing like local food cooked by the locals. There is some innate magic in keeping meals authentic. Americanized versions of Mexican food pale in comparison to the real deal. There's nothing bad I could say about real fresh Mexican food. People sometimes say they could eat the same thing every day if they could, in my case, that was pretty much true for the nearly 2 years that I lived in Mexico. This blog post mainly focuses on food while the next post focuses on drink.
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I could go on forever about my intense love of authentic Mexican cuisine! Take notes!
Lunch was the main meal of the day. Families took turns providing daily lunch for the missionaries which was a wonderful convenience for which I was always grateful. Sometimes they would ask us what we wanted to eat but most of the time we were satisfied with whatever could be afforded. We never complained. The food was usually delicious and even if it wasn’t, you could trick your brain into enjoying it. When you're hungry, you'll eat just about anything.
Authentic Mexican food is hard to replicate outside of Mexico. There is just something that makes it different; I don’t know if it’s the soil or the species of plants and animals or what the animals ate but everything is just so distinct in taste. I liked Café Rio and homemade tacos and burritos from restaurants back home but it was NOTHING like actual Mexican food. Good food, but unauthentic.
SPICY SURPRISES
Spicy food was so common that they had a word for it that doesn’t translate directly into English. Picar (pea-kahr) has many meanings: to chop, to sting, to itch, to nibble, to prod, or to bite. But to ask, “Pica mucho?” (Pee-kah Moo-choh) is in essence asking, “Is it really spicy?”. Spiciness became a verb it was so prevalent! To say, “Pica Rico” was to give the spicy food the thumbs up. If you were to try and translate it, I suppose picar meant, "to be spicy" even though that would technically be an adjective still.
One of my first authentic Mexican meals was tostadas, flat hard-shell tortillas topped with anything you would put in a taco like shredded chicken (Tinga chicken), lettuce, fresh cheese (queso fresco), diced tomatoes, salsa, sometimes fried potato, and drizzled with fresh cream. They quickly became one of my favorite easy-to-make dishes. But when I dropped a bit of salsa made from Chile de Monte (Chee-leh Deh Mohn-teh) on mine the first time I tried them, I about died. Not like a screaming death, but a slow death by degrees (Alma 47:18). The salsa was so spicy that first, my tongue burned and then my nose started dripping and the eyes started watering and finally, my lips felt like they were slathered with icy hot ointment, like that feeling when the dentist numbs you with Novocaine. I could only eat three tostadas washed down with a lot of sugary Mexican coke that I had hoped would soothe the pain but just fueled my stomach with carbonation-induced spicy burps. Every breath was like exhaling fire.
I don't think I ate very much in that first meal, probably just because of the nerves brought on by being a new missionary. Or maybe it was a combination of the heat of the day with the heat of the meal. But by the end of my time in Monterreal, I could eat a dozen tostadas in one sitting I had such an appetite. It was just a matter of time that I adapted to the salsa or learned to appreciate the cream that went with it.
Elder Howard introduced me to Chile de Monte (meaning “Bush pepper”, as opposed to the long Chile de Arbol, "Tree pepper") with a bargaining deal. A sort of informal initiation to Mexico if you will. If I tried one, he would eat two. Right off the bat, the level of suspicion I had was off the charts but I chose to indulge him. This was an opportunity to bond.
They looked rather innocent—like a hard green or red pea with a stem. It couldn’t be that bad for how big it was, right? I was suspicious why Elder Howard had to compromise for me to try one. But I did for the sake of leaving my comfort zone. It had a crunch like a nut. It didn’t taste good at all! I’m not even sure it had a flavor! As soon as I swallowed, it felt as though my throat was collapsing in on itself. It hit my stomach like a rock.
Well, I didn’t learn my lesson because Elder Howard got me to eat another one with the same painful end. You might have guessed already but if you can’t handle spice, don’t chew! Just swallow it whole! That’s what he did so he wasn’t affected at all while I hurt so much. Fool me once shame on me, but I was a fool to do it to myself a second time! It was the last time I ate Chile de Monte. I’m not sure what Chile de Monte is in English, but the closest thing I can find is called the Piquin Pepper. If this really is the same pepper, it ranks between 40,000 to 60,000 on the Scoville Scale. To give you an idea of intensity, it’s anywhere between five to twenty-four times hotter than a jalapeño. It ranks around the middle of the scale, near the Tabasco or Cayenne Pepper but felt worse.
Capsaicin is the chemical that causes that familiar spicy sensation. Pepper seeds are commonly thought to be the spiciest part of pepper but that’s actually a myth. The hottest part of the pepper is the placental material surrounding the seeds. The seeds themselves aren't hot, although capsaicin typically gets on the surface of the seeds from contact with the surrounding tissue. Capsaicin is used as an analgesic (pain reliever), which I find ironic, but it’s found in various topical ointments (not icy hot), nasal sprays, and dermal patches to soothe muscle pain though I wouldn’t try rubbing peppers on yourself. Capsaicin can also be an irritant which is why it’s the active ingredient in Pepper Spray (also called capsicum spray) and why you don’t rub your eyes after handling hot peppers. And because capsaicin is hydrophobic, you need to use soap when you wash your hands.
Virtually everyone assured me that spicy food warms you up in cold weather and was good for your health but there seems to be inefficient medical research to either support or refute such claims. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some placebo effect going on behind all the alleged benefits. However, a recent medical study in China has demonstrated that spicy foods satiate the brain’s craving for salt which is a plus. But I find that ironic too because I find salt helps neutralize spice and Mexican food is very salty. Sometimes they'd have a dish of salt on the table to go with the meal for such reasons.
While I’m on the matter of spicy food, one of the other guys in my Zone, Elder Stohel told me that if I wanted to learn Spanish well that I had to eat a lot of salsa. I had nothing to lose so I took his advice and then and there committed to eating salsa whenever given the chance—like the documentary Supersize Me. I followed through with my commitment and had salsa every day of my mission (as far as I can recall). I learned to like it, and then I craved it. I started putting crushed red peppers on my pizza which was actually really good. The pizza even came with delicious salsa packets like the ketchup packets you might find at restaurants. I had to put that on the pizza! I built up a tolerance to medium spice. I doubt the salsa had anything to do with it but my Spanish did get really good.
Salsa gave flavor to otherwise bland foods like rice, beans, chicken, and tortillas. They were generally not sweet like the fruity varieties sold here; no mango salsas or things like that. Any sauce was considered a salsa, including ketchup, but they generally had two kinds of salsas, the red ones, and the green ones. Traditionally, red salsa is spicier but the green salsa tasted better to me because it was tomatillo-based. Some restaurants tied salsa in plastic bags. To open the salsa baggie, you could either tear the corner off with your teeth or you could trim it. Then you’d use it like you’d use an icing bag to squeeze out however much salsa you wanted then you could tie it back up. This method saved us having to use dishes and was just easier to use.
It wasn’t uncommon for locals to prepare their own salsas with a mortar and pestle. The traditional round three-legged mortar is called a molcajete (Mohl-kah-heh-teh). It’s typically carved out of a single block of vesicular basalt. The pestle is called a temolote (Teh-moh-loh-teh). The molcajete and temolote have been in use since the pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican days thousands of years ago. In addition to salsas, they can be used to grind up spices. A new molcajete needs to be worn in, usually by grinding uncooked white rice into it a handful at a time until the consequent flour doesn’t have any basalt grains in it. It’s such a simple cooking tool but it makes magic. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Many Mexican candies incorporate chili powder, the texture being like sandpaper. I couldn’t begin to describe or name all of the Mexican candies. A Mexican “dulcería” (Dool-seh-ree-ah) is the closest thing to a real-life Willy Wonka factory. In general, being on the Texas border, they had many of the same candies as the United States as well.
COMMON DISHES
Other than salsas, Mexicans didn’t really flavor their food except with occasional salt and pepper (or at least that I could taste). They didn’t put ketchup or BBQ sauce on all their foods as we do. Sometimes they would cook spaghetti with a side of mashed potatoes or breaded fish, whatever was available and cheap. There was no sour cream to be found in any store but they poured regular cream or “crema” (Creh-mah) over a lot of foods. I think it may have been to counter the spice.
The National Dish of Mexico is Mole (Moh-leh) which is a spicy bittersweet gravy-like sauce that they usually poured over meats or tortillas but could be mixed with anything. It could have been green but most of the time we had the brown kind although the green is generally better tasting. We ate it a few times per week but I never got used to the distinct taste because it was so packed with opposing flavors that in the end it just tasted like sweet dirt to me. But I never complained to the “chef” when I ate it because it was better than nothing. Beggars can’t be choosers. It was usually served with a side of pink Mexican rice that helped level out the flavor.
Another interesting dish was green spaghetti, supposedly made green by cooked jalapeños although it was never spicy. It was more creamy, almost like an alfredo sauce to me. I’d never heard of green spaghetti before but it was about the only kind of spaghetti I ate in Mexico. It was delicious and was usually served with milanesa which is similar to country fried steak without the gravy. We had it so often that I almost forgot what normal spaghetti tasted like.
There were other authentic Mexican foods which are not common back home. They had things called “chicharrones” (Chee-chah-rroh-nehs) which are their version of pork rinds and about as popular to them as Doritos are to Americans. They were usually hard and crunchy and you could eat them with salsa drizzled over them or you could cook them like any other meat.
They had special meat that they would put in tacos called “al pastor” (shepherd style) which is their version of Shawarma except it's pork (if you even know what Shawarma is). It was brought over and adapted by Lebanese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century largely due to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t until the 1960s that restaurants began opening with this new combination of cuisine. “Al Pastor” is tender pork marinated with spices and pineapple juices (usually with an onion and pineapple stuck on the top) rotated around a vertical rotisserie called a “trompo” (spinning top— named for its shape) over a gas flame. They’d take a long sharp blade about the size of a small sword and just shave the majestic meat onto the taco like it was butter; it was artistic. The preparation technique was developed in nineteenth-century Ottoman Turkey. Street vendors always ran a risk because you didn’t know how fresh or hygienic the food was, but it was so good sometimes it was worth the risk to eat and I can’t recall ever getting sick from them. But honestly, some of the best food in Mexico comes from street vendors.
THE OTHER KIND OF "PICA"
Those first three months in Mexico were the hardest. I quickly developed blisters on the back arch of my heel where smelly sweat-soaked shoe rubbed against it. I wore holes through many socks else the fabric turned thin, particularly in that city. I learned what “picar” meant in the spicy sense but it didn’t take long to thoroughly experience the other sense, “to bite”. As the season pressed on and autumn came nigh, the gradually cooler humidity begged mosquitoes to come out and play. I would get home every night to discover dozens of new mosquito bites grouped at the immobile parts of the body including the elbows, the armpits, and even penetrating the socks on the feet. How the mosquitoes managed to bypass my shoes was a mystery but I'd get bitten on top of my feet. They would appear almost out of thin air and without my immediate notice of them. Other times I would feel a tickle or a sharp prick which was a sign I was already too late and I would dance my best full-body jig to scare them off. The kind of maneuver you might do to swat a cobweb out of your face. It looked like I was doing the Macarena because I was always slapping myself. Or maybe it was an angry haka.
Before retiring to bed, involuntarily scratching myself silly, I would smother my body in hydrocortisone ointment to soothe the bites only to find more the next night. Just another excuse to be by the breeze of the fan I suppose (See "Monterreal, Rio Bravo"). I woke up more than once with a new itch I didn’t have when I went to bed. That’s why despite the heat, it was best to cover up under a sheet but sometimes even that wasn’t enough. Until late November, I preferred to sleep with only a light sheet on me. The cool night air that came through the screen bedroom window was pleasurable compared to the heat of the day.
When we taught outside in Rio Bravo, more often than not, the family we were teaching had a synthetic coil that smoldered calmly and released enough non-toxic fumes to keep mosquitoes at bay. It was a good long-term solution for an outdoor problem. When all else failed, I kept bug spray in my backpack for the road. (See "Chikungunya & Other Trials")
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