CRAB SEASON

HELLFIRE SAUCE IN YUCATAN’S SISAL BEACH

Until you have tasted a pig right out of the ground, you cannot know the meaning of perfect fat.

At a house in the beach town of Sisal, Yucatan, we did.

I was there to find out how nixtamalization is done at the grandma level. As opposed to in nationalized factories turning out masa (the ground corn paste that makes tortillas). That factory stuff is poisonous and tastes like it. Industrial fat is killing everyone after it first fattens them up.

Now when I walked through the door to bow to grandma there was so much smoke coming across the patio that I thought we were burning down. She shooed aside the huge white turkeys with turquoise wattles, clucked at the dogs asleep and in the way, and led me back to the fire. There on top of a decent pile of flaming logs was an enormous kettle filled with corn and, she said, “cal.” (Cal is short for calcium hydroxide, or dried lime.) Soaked in cal water overnight and then simmered for eight hours, the husk falls right off the kernels of corn.