THE FOODS & INGREDIENTS OF THE YUCATAN

Photo Credit Patricia Robert

A local market with the usual and, in the foreground, a bowl of fresh Ibes.

One of the reasons I live in the Yucatan. And live for these seasonal fresh beans that are like a cross between a lima and a Navy bean. When ex-Stars cook Steve Ells (founder of Chipotle) was in Merida I cooked them my favorite way. I thought he would pass out after tasting their perfect and complex simplicity.

Ibes in Olive Oil

Or use fresh baby lima, fresh Cannellini, or small Navy.

Put the beans in cold water and bring to the boil. As soon as the eater boils, drain and put them again in cold salted water and cook until tender. Drain and immediately toss with extra virgin olive oil and some chopped fresh garlic. Reheat with a little water, more oil, salt, and pepper. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Lydia Bastianich served them to me with caviar.

Absolutely sublime.

Open Fire Cooking

Is it just nostalgia?

Or the kitchen cooking of poverty? Originally all the Yucatecan kitchens were at the back of the house, even in the mansions, keeping the heat and smoke away from the rest of the house.

At a fisherman’s house on the coast recently, I asked the fisherman why he was using the kitchen in the back and an open wood fire to cook the fish and crabs when he had a ‘modern’ kitchen as well?

It's gentle, he said. No violence.

The fish was as crisp exterior and yet tender flesh inside as I ever ate. And that is the marriage one strives to achieve.

And the fire is for cooking on a comal, or smooth, flat griddle to make flatbread and tortillas and griddle chilies, onions, and tomatoes for salsas.

Relleno Negro

Another of the main reasons I stayed in the Yucatan.

A Mayan gastronomic heritage, made from burnt red dried chili peppers, spices such as achiote, pepper, cumin, tomato, hard-boiled egg and meat originally from turkey, but can also be made from duck or chicken.

This is the “recado” or paste made from charring the arbol or guajillo chilies. Then soaked and ground up with spices and charred corn tortillas, garlic and onions.

Sounds horrible, but the final result made me almost fall off my beer-company plastic chair.

Photo Courtesy of Etsy

Photo Courtesy of De Yucatan

Recado Rojo

Photo Courtesy of Mexico Desconocido

Or the red past made from achiote seeds that with the sour Seville oranges that grow in everyone’s back yard is the basis for the complete magic of cochinita.

Marinated and then the pig cooked in a pit as with a clam bake.

Or as I cooked it for PBS.

Just scoop up some of that meltingly tender pig in a fresh cooked tortilla

and it makes the margaritas you just had with little Key Limes off the tree outside, seem almost pale in comparison.

Or a similar effect with open tacos.

Recado Blanco

Made from pumpkin seeds.

And the basis for that other Yucatecan haunting marvel, papadzules.

And green pozole.

Other images.

Dried “Ancho” chilies.

Habanero chilies

Jicama, peeled and eaten with lime juice and salted ground dry chilies or “chili seco molido.”

My barbecued lamb shoulder.

And chicken in the Yucatecan version of a mole.

The dessert for my PBS shoot.

Grilled watermelon, pineapple, and papaya.

No need for Yucatan’s famous honey but who needs need?

When it is the Melipona (stingless bees) honey perfection.

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