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Mayan Recipes & Cooking Classes
Want to learn how to cook Yucatecan food?
If you're coming to Playa del
Carmen, consider taking a cooking class at Ajua Maya Restaurant through the
Hacienda Maya School of Culinary Arts.
A Touch of History of the Yucatecan Cuisine
The culinary delights of a typical Yucatecan kitchen come from a mouth
watering mixture of European and Mexican flavors (Mestizo Cuisine). A
bit of history will explain this strong European influence.
Once upon a time the Yucatecan peninsula was considered to be too far
away and too difficult to reach from the rest of Mexico . Mountainous
terrain and very poor roads kept the peninsula isolated. Having ports
with commercial and cultural contacts with Europe, (especially France),
New Orleans Cuba and Arab immigrants, the Yucatecans were easily influenced
by many aspects of these countries and cultures, such as dress, architecture
and cooking, which explains why there is a lot of European flare in its
cuisine.
POLLO PIBIL
Chicken marinated in achiote (annatto), sour orange juice, peppercorns,
garlic, cumin, salt, and then wrapped in banana leaves and baked. This
dish can also be made with pork (cochinita pibil). A dish you should definitely
try for lunch or dinner. Not spicy.
LIME SOUP
A delicious soup made with shredded chicken, bits of fried tortilla, and
lime juice. Exquisite! And very good for you if you aren't feeling well.
MOTUL-STYLE EGGS
A scrumptious breakfast of tortilla, covered with refried beans and a
fried egg and then smothered with tomato sauce, peas, chopped ham and
shredded cheese. Usually served with some fried banana slices.
POC CHUC
Tender slices of pork marinated in sour orange juice and served with a
tangy sauce and pickled onions.
PAPADZULES
Chopped hard boiled egg rolled up in tortilla and covered with pumpkin
seed sauce.
FRIJOL CON PUERCO
The Yucatecan version of pork and beans. Chunks of pork cooked with black
beans, served with rice, and garnished with radish, cilantro and onion.
A regular Monday dish in most Yucatecan homes.
PANUCHOS AND SALBUTES
Pre-cooked tortilla with shredded chicken and garnished with lettuce and
onion. The difference between panuchos and salbutes is that the first
has refried beans inside the tortilla.
Mexican Ceremonial Drinks
Part of its Rich History and Cultural Development
Below is an excerpt from this web site from a wonderful web site to link
into and see what Mexico as to offer. I hope you enjoy. Brenda Alfaro
http://www.uv.mx/popularte/idiomas.htm
PULQUE
CURINGS
Ingredients
1 liter first quality pulque
(the one from Apan, Hidalgo
is very famous)
½ cup condensed milk
For celery curing
3 Celery stalks
For oat curing
½ cup oat flakes
For strawberry curing
½ cup strawberries
For pecan curing
¼ cup pecans
Elaboration
Blend 1 cup of pulque
with any of the ingredients you want and the condensed milk.
Strain and mix with the rest of the pulque
. Serve it in a jicara (a small gourd bowl).
Tepache. (From Nahuatl tepíatl or tepiatan
).
A drink
made with corn
with many varieties. The most popular is the one made with pineapple
skin, but it is no longer made with corn
.
Wash carefully the skin of one pineapple. Put in a jar or clay
pot
10 cups of water
and one cone of piloncillo (not-refined sugar), 2 whole
cloves, 2 pepper balls and four cinnamon sticks. Cover and leave to be
fermented in a fresh place for two days. Strain and serve it cold. In
Guerrero it is called chicha .
Tikeri kamata or tokore and mach´estolata
(cooked corn
) are two kinds of drinks
from Michoacan. The first one is drank in cultivation seasons; the
other one is special for parties, made with cooked corn
, water
and corn
cane juice. It rests for two weeks and then it is drunk. There are
also drinks
that have pulque
(fermented juice of the maguey), like Charapan . It
is pure pulque
boiled with water
and fermented. It is intoxicating. With sour pulque
, honey and red chilies, charagua or charanga is made.
Colonche is gotten by the fermentation of the juice
of tuna (the fruit of the nopal plant), it was also
called nochoctli . It is drunk among native and mestizo groups
of Sonora
, Chihuahua
, Durango
, Zacatecas
, San Luis Potosi and Guanajuato
.
Colonche has its varieties, like the one drank in Sonora
by Seris
and Papagos which is made with sweet and sour pitaya which
is the fruit of the cactus plant sahuaro .
Papagos in the Altar
desert, Sonora
prepare it with the same fruit and add sahuaro seeds, it
is fermented in jars with honey, sugar, brown sugar and water
. They call it Navait .
Maguey wine . It is a drink
which is between pulque
and mezcal . Leaves are removed from maguey ,
burned and fermented.
Balche (from the Mayan balche, hidden tree). It was
originally a ceremonial
drink
of Mayans and it was prepared with tree barks. They were mixed with
wild bee-honey and water
. The fermentation lasted between four and six days. For Mayan
groups of the South it is a sacred drink
and is only used in religious ceremonies and ritual
festivities. Lacandones make, besides the fermentation,
offering and drinking of the beverage, prayers. It is a stimulant also
used with medicinal purposes. Ritual
balche must be drank the same day it is prepared. Nowadays,
its use is more general, sugar cane juice or any kind of syrup can be
used.
Teshuino , Sugi or Tesgüino
( Náhuatl
tecuin , heart beat). It is drank by native groups of the
Occidental Sierra Madre and each one has its own modality. The base is
to use germinal corn
which is ground, cooked and put in special clay
pots
used for making Teshuino . It is fermented for 24 hours.
Beer elaboration has a similar process. The ones who
talk about it describe it as a thick, opaque corn
beer. Among Tarahumaras or Raramuris a spike
is added before drinking it called basia´wi , which gives
it an alcoholic content. That way teshuino turns into batari
and if it is drunk without the spike it is called sequiki. For this native
group, this drink
has a sacred category and is involved in their social and economic
life. They drink
it in their religious or ritual
ceremonies, in sports during the festivities called teshuinadas
. It is also drunk in parties and cooperation jobs ( tequio )
or when there is lack of corn
and during burials for the dead to be in peace.
Teshuino is sometimes made with corn
cane, it is stronger, and agave pineapples can be added or hikuri
; as well as other flowers, barks or regional herbs.
It is used in curative rituals “it is used in the outside and in the inside
as a remedy for all the diseases one may have”.
Among Huicholes
, it is prepared the same and is given as a pay to the ones that
help in the clearing of trees ( tequio ). It is drank in every
ceremony or town party. It is used as an offering, it is blessed and reverenced.
Ii is not drank in burials, it is prepared and put in a guaje (bottle
gourd) which is offered pointing west, the direction of the dead.
Yaquis, Pimas, Guarijíos of Sonora
, Tepehuanes of Durango
and Nayarit
prepare and drink
it in a similar way and it appears even among the of Oaxaca
.
All about Chaya
Tree Spinach ( Cnidoscolus chayamansa McVaughn,
Euphorbiaceae),
Sopa De Chaya
6 slices bacon -- chopped
1 medium onion -- chopped
1-3 inch chorizo sausage -- in 1/4" slices
2 cloves garlic -- chopped
1/4 pound ham -- in 1/2" cubes
1- 16 oz can whole tomatoes -- chopped
6 cups water
1- 16 oz can garbanzo beans -- drained
1 pound chaya * -- coarsely chopped
• Sauté the bacon, onion, chorizo, garlic, and ham
at medium heat until the onion is soft.
• Add the tomatoes and simmer for 5 minutes.
• Add the water, garbanzos, and chaya and bring to a boil.
• Reduce heat and simmer, covered, for 1 hour.
* Chaya is a leafy plant with a cabbage-like taste
that has been used in Yucatan since pre-Hispanic times.
Fresh spinach is an acceptable substitute.
Links on Chaya
http://www.hort.purdue.edu/newcrop/proceedings1996/v3-516.html
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