Krazy Kioti – the Gene Anderson website - Ecological anthropology and education

More Maya recipes from Yucatan and Quintana RooMEAT

Ajiaco, Yucatan style
A rather spectacular elaboration of a standard Mexican recipe.  This is another dish that stretches the meat with lots of vegetables.  It is thus notably healthy.
1 lb. pork loin
1 lb. pork short ribs
8 allspice berries
2 cloves
1 small cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. coriander seed
1/2 tsp. oregano
3 garlic cloves
6 tsp. vinegar
1 onion
1 plantain
1/2 lb. tomatoes
2 bell peppers
3 xkatik chiles
1 chayote
1/2 lb. potatoes
1/2 lb. sweet potato
2 summer squash
1/3 cup rice
Pinch of saffron
Cut up the meat.  Grind the spices and garlic, mix with vinegar, and rub into the meat.  Cook for a few minutes.  Then add the vegetables, in the order listed.  The rice can be added with them or cooked and served separately.
Add the saffron at the very end (last 5 minutes of cooking).
Ajiaco, Quintana Roo style
2 lb. pork
4 leaves of oregano
4 garlic cloves
1 tbsp. black pepper
1 pinch cumin seeds
2 summer squash
2 carrots
2 chayotes
1 sweet potato
1 plantain
2 potatoes
1 cup rice
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 green chile
4 oz. lard
Juice of 1 bitter orange
1 pinch saffron (optional; rare)
Salt and pepper to taste
One is tempted to add: 1 kitchen sink.
Boil the meat.  Add the spices.  As it cooks, cut up the vegetables and add them in.
Separately, chop up and fry the onion, tomatoes and chile.  Add the rice.  Add enough stock to cook and simmer slowly.  As it cooks, squeeze in the bitter orange juice.  Add the saffron at the very end.
Variant:  This is a typical Quintana Roo dish in that it is delicately spiced.  Most ajiacos use a great deal more chiles than this, with dried chiles being notably evident.  Adjust accordingly.
Balinche Salad
Compare the Chojen Salad of the Chiapas highlands (Chapter 3).
Cold boiled meat—deer preferred, beef common.  It is shredded or chopped, with bitter orange (or lime) juice, chopped radish, cilantro, chile xkatik, and onion.  Half a bitter orange is served on the side to squeeze on it.
Other names are used, and ingredients are mixed and matched according to taste.
This is one of those simple dishes that vary according to the creativity of the maker.
Beef in Broth
2 lb. beef, cut up
3 tomatoes
1 bell pepper
1 xkatik chile
1 onion
Half of 1 bunch cilantro
1 tsp. oregano
3 leaves mint
1 head of garlic
1 tsp. black pepper
4 tbsp. red recado
2 chopped summer squash
2 chayotes, cut up
Relish:
6 radishes
Rest of the cilantro
Juice of bitter orange
Salt
Habanero chile (optional)
Boil the meat.  Chop and fry the tomatoes, bell pepper, chiles and onion.  Add to the meat.  Late in the cooking, add the herbs.
Roast the garlic and add it in.
Dilute the recado in some of the stock, and add in.  Put in the squash and chayote.  Cook till done.
Meanwhile, chop up the radishes, cilantro and chile and marinate in bitter orange juice.  Eat as relish for the meat.
Bistec
In spite of the name (which is, of course, “beefsteak”), this dish is usually made with pork in Yucatan and Quintana Roo.  However, it is made with beef too, especially rather tough cuts like flank steak.
2 lb meat, cut into thin steaks (1/8-1/4″ thick)
Cinnamon stick
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp cloves
1 tbsp peppercorns
3 cloves garlic
Juice from 4 bitter oranges and 2 limes (or just 4-6 limes)
1 carrot
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1-2 potatoes
Salt to taste (traditionally this is an extremely salty dish, to restore salt lost in working in the blazing Yucatan sun)
Grind the spices together, and thin with the citrus juice.  Marinate the pork in this for an hour or two.  Fry in lard till done.
Meanwhile, peel the vegetables.  Boil with salt.  Serve the boiled vegetables separately from the bistec.
For sauce (separate):  Roast the habaneros.  Mash with salt.  Add cilantro and onion, and a bit of lime juice.  Or serve with limes, radishes and k’utbi p’ak.
Variants:  The vegetables can vary according to taste, except that the tomatoes, onion and potatoes must be there.
Bistec (Steak with Potatoes) II:  Urban Form
2 lb. tender beef or pork steak, cut thin
1 cube steak recado
Vinegar
Oil
3 tomatoes, sliced
1 onion, sliced
1 bell pepper, sliced
4 potatoes, sliced (in rounds)
Salt to taste
Dissolve the recado in a little vinegar and rub into the meat, with a lot of salt.  Put a little oil on the bottom of a casserole or saucepan.  Layer meat and vegetable slices.  Cook over low heat.
Variant: with more onion and some garlic, instead of the tomatoes and potatoes, this becomes “steak and onions.”
But’
Maya for “minced meat” (not rump steak!).  But’ is translated into Spanish as relleno, “stuffing,” which is confusing when it is not being used to stuff anything.
1 lb. ground pork (ideally, finely minced meat of fresh leg)
1 tsp. steak recado
1 pinch ground clove
1 pinch ground cinnamon
1/4 cup vinegar
2 tsp. sugar
4 tomatoes
1/2 onion
1 green chile (or bell pepper)
12 or 15 olives
1 tsp. capers
Raisins to taste
Almonds (to taste; optional)
4 hardboiled eggs
Salt to taste
Mix the spices into the meat.  Chop the vegetables.  Chop the whites of the eggs (reserve the yolks for garnish).  Mix all ingredients and cook in a frying pan, stirring.
This is usually used as a topping or stuffing.  It is used to stuff turkey or to make meatballs cooked with cut-up turkey.  Either way, the turkey is often boiled in a richly spiced stock (see turkey recipes).  But’ is also used in tacos or on sopes, etc., and of course for stuffing vegetables.
A very characteristic use:  wrapped around hardboiled eggs and fried, like Scotch eggs.
Traditional village versions leave out some or all of the classic Spanish imports:  olives, capers, raisins, almonds.
In fact, the very traditional, all-local form of it is:
But’ Negro
2 lb. ground pork
1 cube red recado
1 cube black recado
1/2 cup vinegar
4 tomatoes
1/2 onion
1 xkatik chile
Proceed as for previous recipe.  The same comments apply.
Variant:
8 tomatoes
1 xkatik chile
2 lb. ground pork
1/2 cube steak recado
1 cube achiote paste
1 pinch cumin
1 onion
3 garlic cloves
Roast and peel the tomatoes and chile.  Dissolve the spices in water.  Add to meat.    Cook all in a frying pan, stirring.  Chop the onion and garlic and add; they should fry up in the fat from the meat.  Eat with tortilla chips.
Chocolomo
The name is “mestiza Maya”; choko is Maya for “hot,” lomo is Spanish for “loin.”  Supposedly, the name comes not from the heat of the cooked dish, but from the fact that this was, and is, the traditional way to cook a freshly-butchered animal whose meat is still warm.  The purpose of this dish is to use the more delicate parts of the animal—loin and innards—before they spoil.  It is the standard “variety meats” dish in much of the south Mexico.
Pork or beef heart, and small pieces of tripe
1 lb. pork or beef loin
Liver, kidney
Brain (optional)
Soup bones
Cube of steak recado
1 head of garlic
Juice of 1/2 bitter orange
4 tomatoes
1 onion, cut up
Sprig of cilantro
Sprig of mint
Chiles to taste
Clean the various meats well.  Before cooking, the meat of the kidneys has to be trimmed of fat and thoroughly cut away from the tough white tubule system, and then soaked in water for a while.  Discard this water after soaking.  This process makes kidneys taste good instead of gross.
Cook the meat with the recados.  Start with the heart, tripe, bones, and any tough cuts.  Cook for an hour or more.  Add the loin and cook a while longer.  Then add the liver and kidney; cook for a little more.  Add the brain (it is very delicate and cooks fast), vegetables and herbs.  Serve with Basic Relish, lime wedges, xni-pek, and other garnishes; it is traditional to have a fairly full board of relishes and garnishes with this dish.
Variants:  People use whatever mix of “variety meats” is available.  If you don’t like the innards, it is perfectly possible to make this dish with just pork loin (as the name implies).
Cabbage, chayote, xkatik chiles, radishes, and other vegetables are added to this dish, according to taste.
Chorizo
2 lb. pork
1 tsp. pepper
5 allspice berries
1 glass sherry
1 cup vinegar
Nutmeg
1 dried chile, seeded, toasted and ground
Grind the pork twice.  Grind the spices and add.  Mix all ingredients and knead well.  Let stand a while, then stuff into sausage skins.  Smoke over smoldering fire including aromatic leaves such as guava, allspice or avocado.
It is possible to make patties and cook directly, without the sausage skins and the smoking process.  In this case, try forming the patties around some aromatic leaves (bay leaves, herbs, etc.).
Cochinita Pibil
With this, we reach the crowning glory and fame of Yucatecan cuisine.   It goes back to pre-Columbian times; the pit barbecue, a worldwide cooking method, was sacred to the Maya–or at least was used to prepare the sacred foods.
Unfortunately, this is also the easiest Yucatecan dish to ruin.  I confess I have tried it only with pork roast, and only in the oven.  I have ruined a few roasts even with this simplified form.
1 piglet, cleaned (ca. 10 lb., or up to 20), with all its innards, or a large pork roast (plus a pork liver, if you like liver)
3-4 cubes red recado, or mix equivalent amount of achiote with clove, cumin, black pepper, oregano, cinnamon and bitter orange juice to make up a paste.
Juice of 5 bitter oranges
Ground chile
Salt and pepper to taste (traditionally, a lot)
Mint leaves
2 xkatik chiles, cut up
Chives (or green onions)
Salt
Banana leaves, for wrapping
Relish:
2 red onions, finely chopped
Juice of one bitter orange
Chopped chiles
Dilute the recado in the juice of 5 of the oranges.  Rub this well into the meat and let it marinate overnight.  If using a pork roast, slash it and rub the marinade into the cuts.
Now, dig a pit about 4′ by 4′ by 3′ or more.  Heat rocks as hot as you can get them in a fire of very hot-burning wood.  Transfer these into the pit.  Put over them a layer of wet leaves.
Put the pork in a large, high-sided roasting pan and wrap thoroughly with banana leaves.  (If none is available, use any flavorful, safe leaves and wrap the whole thing in aluminum foil.)
Separately wrap the brain (or leave it out).  The liver should be wrapped separately, with chopped-up mint, chives, green chile and salt.  (If liver is not liked, do this with some of the meat.)
For a really thorough job of using all the pig, chop up the fat, mix with the blood and some spices, and pack into the carefully-cleaned small intestines, thus making blood sausage.  Cook with the rest.
Put the pork in the pit.  Cover carefully with a fitting metal cover.  Bury under a good foot of dirt.
Leave overnight.  (Times range from four to twelve hours, but the longer the cooking, the better the result.)
Serve with the raw onions, chopped, marinated with chopped chile (and sometimes tomato) in the juice of the remaining bitter orange.  Naturally, fresh habaneros are the chile of choice, but milder forms can be substituted.
Tomato or chile sauce is also often served.
In the Chetumal market, where many stalls sell cochinita pibil, the accompanying sauce is quite different, and wonderful with the dish: a simple guacamole made by mixing avocado and xkatik chiles, about half and half.  (Some stalls use more avocado, some use more chile.)  These are mashed to a smooth paste.  Some lime juice can be added, to good effect.  This is a really outstanding sauce for cochinita.
Fortunately for apartment-dwellers (and lazy people like me), this dish is perfectly easy to make in a regular oven, though it never tastes quite so good as when made in a pib.  The secret is to wrap it thoroughly and cover it well, so that no liquid or steam escapes, and then cook it VERY SLOWLY–200o–for several hours, until the pork is very thoroughly done.  A lot of liquid should result.
It is possible to wrap it thinly and roast at regular temperature (375o).  Indeed, this is what almost all restaurants do, especially Yucatecan-style ones that are not in Yucatan!  This produces perfectly good roast pork, but it isn’t cochinita pibil, any more than orange soda is Dom Perignon.
The best cochinita pibil is found before dawn in the village marketplaces, where the farmers are getting a quick breakfast before going off to their milpas–cornfields–for a day’s work.  The cochinita, prepared by one of the country folk the night before, is freshly dug up and still hot and juicy.  The cool air, wood smoke scent, and quiet Maya conversation add much to the experience.
Gopher
A traditional Maya dish.  So far, I haven’t tried it.  You are welcome to do the experimenting with this one.
Trap a gopher.  Roast (don’t skin, don’t clean, just roast).  Rub the carbonized hair off.  Take all the meat, innards included, off the bones.  Mix with salt, bitter orange or lime juice, and chile sauce (or use these as a garnish).  Make tacos of this with fresh tortillas.  (The true outback thing to do is to pick the meat off the bones with the tortilla pieces.)
This is sometimes referred to, with more rhyme than reverence, as baj yetel u taj, “gopher with its dung.”
K’ab ik (“Chile Stew”)
2 lb. beef with bones
2 cubes red recado, and a bit of extra achiote paste
1 cube steak recado
Pinch of allspice, or allspice berries
2-4 dried ancho chiles (I hope no one reads that as “24 dried chiles”)
2 sprigs epazote
Bitter oranges
1 head garlic
4 tomatoes
1 onion
Cut up and boil the meat.  Add the recados, with a pinch of allspice powder or a few allspice berries.
Seed, toast and soak the chiles.  Grind and add.
When the meat is soft, add epazote, juice of 1/2 bitter orange (or 1 lime), and a head of roasted garlic (peeled and mashed).
Add the tomatoes and onion, cut up, and finish cooking.
Serve with salsas.
Kibi
This is by far the most popular of the Lebanese contributions to Yucatecan food.  Kibis are sold on every busy street corner.  They have become so thoroughly Yucatecan that they appear on the menus of Yucatecan restaurants in Mexico City and Los Angeles!
The standard street kibi is uninspiring: ground lamb, bulgur, chopped onion and mint, formed into a depth-bomb (fusiform) shape and deep-fried.  It is often served with a relish of chopped cabbage, chile and cilantro in vinegar.
A more authentic Yucatan Lebanese kibi recipe (from a booklet of Lebanese cooking in Yucatan, by Maria Manzur de Borge, that I have lost and that is no longer available) gives a better product:
2 lb. beef
2 lb. leg of lamb meat
1 lb. fine bulgur
Bunch of mint
3 onions
Handful of pine nuts (pinon nuts, pignolias)
Oil
Salt
Black pepper and chile, if wanted
Separate the fatter from the leaner bits of meat.  Mince the meat and the onions.  Soak the bulgur for an hour.
Mix the leaner meat with the bulgur and one of the chopped onions.  Fry the fatter meat with two of the chopped onions.  Add the pine nuts.
When the fat is fried out of the meat, drain and mix with the lean meat.  Form into depth-bomb shapes and deep-fry.  A lower fat alternative (perfectly traditional) is to bake in a baking tray.
Lomitos
2 lb. pork, cut up
1 cube red recado
Juice of 1 bitter orange
1 onion, chopped
2 tbsp. lard
1 lb. tomatoes
2 xkatik chiles (or other fresh chiles, even to habaneros)
1 roasted head of garlic
Rub the pork with the recado mixed with the juice.
Chop and fry the onion in the lard.  Add the tomato and chiles.  Put in the pork.  Add water and simmmer.  Add in the garlic and cook till done.
Old Rags
Ropa vieja–so named from its appearance, like old shredded rags–is a classic dish known throughout Mexico and the Spanish Caribbean.  This is the Yucatan version.
1 lb. leftover stewed pork or beef (if starting from scratch, stew the meat a LONG time, till it is “boiled to rags”)
1 onion
4 cloves garlic
5 tomatoes
1 bell pepper and/or 1 xkatik chile pepper
1-3 sprigs or small branches of epazote
1/2 cup bitter orange juice
1 cube red recado
2 tsp. black pepper
Salt to taste
Shred the meat into small fibres.
Chop up the vegetables and fry, starting with the onion and garlic.  Add the meat and fry all.
Many variants of this recipe exist.  Tomato sauce, other spicing, etc. can be tried.
In much of the Caribbean this dish is served with “Moors and Christians” (cooked black beans mixed with white rice).
The famous Cuban version of this dish is much spicier.  It uses much more garlic, and really hot chiles instead of mild ones.  You can vary this recipe accordingly.  3 dried ancho chiles, ground, is a good start.
Om Sikil (Pipian I)
This is a village recipe, extremely conservative–basically pre-Columbian (note lack of frying and lack of any nonnative ingredient except black pepper).
The Nahuatl word “pipian” has almost displaced the ancient Maya name om sikil, but the latter is still heard.
2 cups sikil
6-8 cups water
1/2 red onion, chopped
1 tomato, chopped
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 tsp. ground pepper
2 achiote cubes dissolved in water
1 tsp. dried oregano leaves
2 red chiles
2 lb. meat or fowl
1 cup sour abal (Yucatan “plum”; substitute sour plums)
1 tbsp. lard
4 oz. masa
Mix the sikil with the water.  Strain.  Bring to boil and add the chopped vegetables.  Cook ten minutes.  Add in the meat and spices.  Cook till meat is tender, about 1 hour.  Toward the end, add the abal or sour plum fruits.
Take out 2 cups stock.  Slowly work into it 1 tbsp. lard and 4 oz. masa.  Return this to the soup to thicken it.
It is perfectly possible to dispense with this thickening step.
Pipian
Compare Om Sikil, above.
4 oz. sikil
3 dried chiles
2 tbsp. achiote
2 garlic cloves
2 lb. meat (any sort), cut up
1 branch epazote
4 tomatillos
1 tbsp. masa
2 tbsp. lard if using lean meat (pan drippings here, definitely not commercial lard)
Salt and pepper to taste
Mix sikil with water and bring to boil.
Seed, toast and soak the chiles.  Grind them with pepper, achiote and garlic.  Add to the sikil.
Add the meat, epazote and salt.  Let boil.  Add the tomatoes, blended up.
Thicken the sauce with the masa.  Add the lard.  Cook till done.
Pok Chuk (Maya for “pork chop,” usually spelled “poc chuc”)
This dish was created by the restaurant Los Almendros of Ticul.  Los Almendros has an old Mérida branch, and now is developing branches elsewhere.  This dish is widely imitated and varied.  What it lacks in complexity, it more than makes up in popularity.  One of the reasons is the beautifully artistic arrangements that can be made with the separate sauces and beans on the plate.
Rub a thin-cut pork chop with steak recado or red recado.  Grill.
Serve with Tomato Sauce, K’utbi Ik, roast onion, cooked black beans, and bitter orange or lime quarters—each served separately in neat piles around the plate.  Avocado slices and other garnishes are often added as well.
Pork and Chaya
2 lb. pork
2 tsp. oregano
4 garlic cloves
1/2 tsp. cumin powder
20 chaya leaves (if no chaya is around, substitute 1 bunch Swiss chard)
1/2 cup rice, pre-soaked
1 pinch saffron
Relish:
1 red onion, chopped
3 tbsp. chopped cilantro
Juice of 2 bitter oranges
Boil the pork.  Add the spices.  When well cooked, add the chaya, rice and saffron.  Simmer till rice is just done, ca. 15 min.
Prepare a relish with the onion, cilantro and bitter orange juice.
This is a very Moorish-style recipe; Moorish cooking often involves cooking the rice or other starch in with the meat (as well as the addition of saffron).  It produces a rather stodgy dish, especially if overcooked.  Thus, you might well want to cook the rice separately and serve the stew over it.
Pork and Beans I (Frijoles con Puerco)
This dish is the local variant of a dish universal in the west Mediterranean world:  south France, Spain, Portugal.  Always, it involves beans of one or another type, with various tough parts of the pig.  This black-bean version is a sacred Yucatecan tradition.  It is often served regularly on a particular day of the week (the day varies from place to place) as the Daily Special.  Whoever said neck bones were low?  They’re among the best parts of the pig.  Also, true Yucatecans are sometimes militant about the tail and ear, but non-Yucatecans can be forgiven for leaving them out!
1 lb. black beans
1 lb. pork meat, cut up
1/2 lb. pork neck bones
1 pig tail, cleaned
1 pig’s ear
1 tbsp. black recado
1 tbsp. red recado
4 chopped tomatoes
1 branch epazote
3 oz. lard
1 tbsp. masa
Cook the beans.  Cut up the pork and add.
Dilute the recados in half a glass of water and add to the above.
Fry the tomatoes and epazote in lard.  Add in the masa and half a glass of water and cook till thick.  Add this to the stew.  Cook a minute more and serve forth.
Serve as is, or remove the pork from the beans and serve them separately.  Either way, a full range of relishes and garnishes should be provided, but must always include chopped radish with onion and cilantro in bitter orange or lime juice; and Tomato Sauce or K’utbi Ik on the side.
Rice is often cooked in the cooking liquid (after initial frying) and served separately.
“Red” variant:  Use more red recado (2-3 tbsp. or even more) and some ground allspice.
Pork and Beans II
This is a Yucatecan variant of a more Peninsular-Spanish version of the same dish.  In Spain the beans would be white–originally fava beans, now white frijoles.  In Yucatan red beans are sometimes used, and are very good in this dish.
1 lb. white or red beans
1 lb. pork
1 lb. pork ribs
6 cubes red recado
Vinegar
1/4 cabbage
1 summer squash
2 plantains
1 lb. potatoes
3 oz. raw ham
2 oz. bacon
2 Spanish chorizos
4 tomatoes
1 onion
1 bell pepper
4 green chiles
1/2 lb. lard
Salt to taste
Cook the beans.
Cut up the pork and ribs.  Add the red recado dissolved in vinegar.
When the pork is mostly done, add the beans, and the squash, cabbage, plantains, and potatoes (all cut up).
Separately, fry the chorizo, bacon and ham.  Add the tomatoes, onion, bell pepper, and chiles.  Fry.  Add a bit of vinegar.  Mix into meat and beans at last minute and simmer a while.
Variation comes by adding or subtracting different sorts of preserved pork products.
Pork and White Beans
By contrast, this is a very traditional, very Maya recipe.  White navy beans, dried limas or black-eyed peas may be used.
2 lb. white beans
2 lb. pork, preferably leg meat and ribs
1 onion, chopped
1 bell pepper, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 tbsp. red recado
Water
1 xkatik chile
1 head garlic, roasted
Salt and pepper to taste
Cook the beans.  When mostly done, add the pork, previously fried in its own fat (i.e. cook, preferably in stickproof pan, till some of its own fat renders out to fry it; you may have to add some water at first).
In this fat, fry the chopped vegetables with red recado dissolved in water or bitter orange juice.
Combine all ingredients and cook till done.
P’uyul de Chicharron K’astak’an (“small pieces of thoroughly-cooked chicharrones”)
A very Maya dish.
Take bits of pork skin attached to fat and meat–i.e. like chicharrones but with the meat attached, not just the skin.  Deep-fry for a very long time, till thoroughly crisp.  Eat in tacos with Basic Relish or similar garnishes.
Low-fat variant: pan-fry or grill bits of pork.
Steak a la Valladolid (Bifstek vallisoletana)
A simple but wonderful recipe.  Valladolid (Yucatan) is the center of the highly traditional maize-growing region of eastern Yucatan state and neighboring Quintana Roo.  It is a homeland of simple, filling, but superb foods.
Rub a thin steak or pork fillet in recado of black pepper, garlic, lime juice and salt.  Then rub on red recado made of one cube achiote paste, lime juice, ground cumin and a little ground clove, dissolved in bitter orange or lime juice.  Marinate an hour or more.  Grill.
Stuffed Chayote (“Chayote Slippers”)
A manifestation of the classic stuffed vegetable dishes of Middle Eastern cooking—another Moorish legacy in Spain; note the distinctive suite of Spanish ingredients, the olives, capers, and raisins, appearing yet again.
Basically a variant of Stuffed Squash, below.
1 lb. ground pork
1 onion
1 bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
1 tomato
4 chayotes
1/2 tsp. oregano
1/2 cup oil
Olives, capers, and raisins (optional)
Salt and pepper to taste
Cook the chayotes.  Cut in half lengthwise, removing the central seed.  (The result looks like a slipper.)
Meanwhile, cook the meat in a frying pan.  In the rendered fat, cook the tomato, onion, and pepper, chopped.  Add the olives, capers and raisins.  Cook this mixture down till dry.
With this, stuff the chayotes.  Bake in a pan for a few minutes till it all holds together.
Stuffed Cheese
A thoroughly Spanish-style dish, with Moorish antecedents, now thoroughly nativized in the Yucatan Peninsula.  Large Dutch Goudas–alas, often of a quality too low to be seen in the home country–are sold everywhere, wrapped in red wax and red plastic wrap.
There may still be a few proper ladies who refer to it as chak chi, Maya for “red edge,” since queso is one of the many, many, many words that have a double meaning in Yucatan.  (The same ladies refer to brown sugar as piloncillo, never panoche, and refer to eggs as blanquillos–”little white things.”)
These large cheeses are often sold by the slice in rural markets.  Only the rich can afford the luxury of using a whole ball for a single dish.
Unlike most Yucatecan specialties, this dish is a cholesterol-avoider’s nightmare.
1 ball of Dutch cheese
2 lb. pork
14 eggs, 12 of them hardboiled
3 cloves garlic
Dried oregano to taste (use a lot)
1 clove (or more)
Oil
Raisins, olives, and capers, to taste (a lot)
Lard
Saffron, to taste (optional)
1 cup flour
2 cups of tomato sauce
Salt and pepper to taste
2 xkatik chiles
2 serrano chiles
1 bell pepper
1 lb. tomato
1 lb. onion
Unwrap the cheese, remove the wax, cut in half and hollow out.
Cook the meat.  Save the stock.
Peel the boiled eggs.  Chop up the whites.
Prepare a recado by grinding together the garlic, oregano, clove and saffron.
Mince the pork.  Mix in the egg whites.  Fry with a bit of the recado.  Add generous amounts of raisins, olives, capers, and 3-4 oz. of the scooped-out part of the cheese.
Take off the fire and mix in the two raw eggs and the saffron.  Stuff the cheese with this mixture.
Seal the cheese shut with the flour (made into paste with a bit of water).
Wrap in a cloth and steam (or boil, but the water coming up only an inch or so) for an hour (adding water if necessary).  Don’t worry if it falls apart.  It often does.
Serve with a sauce, as follows:
Roast the chiles, tomatoes and onion.  Skin.  Chop fine and fry in lard.  Add the meat stock and the rest of the recado.  Add more capers, olives and raisins.  Thicken with a bit of flour.
Cut the cheese in quarters and cover with the sauce.
The flavor of this recipe depends heavily on the use of a lot of recado, capers and olives.  Otherwise, it is bland and greasy to a serious degree.
Variant:  Shrimps and other sea foods are sometimes used for the stuffing.
Stuffed Squash
A dish with Spanish and, ultimately, Moorish roots, adapted to New World squash.  Very similar dishes are prepared by more recent Arab immigrants, especially of the Lebanese community that developed in the late 19^th century in Yucatan; see below.  Moreover, this dish has rebounded to the homeland; stuffed Mexican summer squashes, prepared with recipes very similar to this one but substituting lamb for pork, now universally join the original stuffed eggplants and so on, throughout the Middle East and the Arabic world.
6-8 summer squash
1/2 lb. ground pork
4 cloves
Small stick cinnamon
6 leaves oregano
4 cloves of garlic, roasted
Vinegar
Pinch of saffron
Around 20 raisins
1 tsp. capers
Olives, as desired
Almonds, as desired
4 tomatoes
1 onion
2 xkatik chiles or 1 bell pepper
Lard or oil (olive oil is traditional, and best)
Pork stock
Salt and pepper to taste
Blanch the squash and hollow out.
Fry the ground pork.  If it is fat, enough fat will render out to fry it; if it is lean, add a little lard or oil.
Grind the spices, except the saffron, and make into a recado paste with a little vinegar.  Add to the pork.
Add the vegetables (chopped finely; the onions first), then the saffron (not all of it), raisins, olives, almonds and capers.
Stuff the squash with this mix.  Bake, or cook on stove top in a pan with a little water, until squash is soft.
Prepare a sauce by cooking down the stock with some vinegar, saffron, salt, and, if wanted, a little flour to thicken.  Pour over the squash.  Some form of tomato sauce is often used with or instead of this sauce.
Variants: the raisins, olives, almonds, and capers can be left out.  The sauces can also be dispensed with.
Variant:  A Lebano-Yucatecan version uses lamb, pine nuts, tomato and cinnamon as the basic stuffing.  It can be modified by adding the chiles, etc.
Tablecloth Stainer (manchamanteles)
One Yucatan variant of a very widespread and popular Mexican dish.  The sauce is brilliant red and leaves an almost permanent stain, hence the name.
2 lb. pork loin (or other meat)
Lard for frying
Meat stock
4 dried ancho chiles
2/3 lb. tomato
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
1 stick cinnamon
2 cloves
8 allspice berries
1 tsp. oregano
1 tsp. sugar
1 plantain
1/2 lb. potatoes
1 sweet potato
Cut up the meat.  Fry in lard.  Toast the chiles.  Roast the tomato, onion, and garlic.  Blend these with the chiles.  Grind the spices and mix in.
Add these to the meat.  Add the stock.  Simmer till meat is done.
Separately, boil the plantain, potatoes, and sweet potato.  When done, add to the meat.
In central Mexico this dish would usually have a lot more chiles, of 2, 3 or even 4 varieties.  I prefer that to the Yucatan form.  But the Yucatan form has more subtle, harmonious spicing and more vegetables, and the wonderful roasted tomato-onion flavor.  Nobody says you can’t have it all….
Tasajo with Chaya, I
2 lb. tasajo (salted airdried beef), soaked and cooked for a very long time
3 cubes red recado
1 lb. chaya leaves
2 summer squash
1 bitter orange
1 roasted head of garlic
Juice of 2 limes
3 habanero chiles
Soak the tasajo for a long time in several changes of cold water.  Then wash and cut up.
Boil with the recado for a couple of hours.  Then add the squash (cut up), garlic and chayas.  Cook another 15 minutes.
Take the ingredients out of the stock.  Squeeze the bitter orange (or a couple of limes) over them.  Serve the soup separately.
Seed and roast the chiles.  Mash with salt and lime juice.  Serve on the side.
Variant:  The meat and chaya can be taken out of the stock before quite done, chopped finely and fried with onion or garlic.  I like this better.
This recipe would work with corned beef or even with a tough cut of fresh beef.
Tasajo with Chaya, II
2 lb. tasajo (salted dried beef), soaked and cooked for a very long time
1 lb. chaya leaves
2 oz. bacon
2 oz. chopped ham
4 cloves
4 bay leaves
Salt and pepper to taste
Fry the meat, bacon, ham and flavorings.  Add water and cook 30 minutes.
Boil the chaya leaves and blend.  Fry this in a little oil.  Put over the meat and cook.
Variants:  This sauce is also ideal with fish.  Add any other greens to the chaya.  More or different spicing can be used.
Ts’aanchak (familiar as dzanchac in older spelling)
A traditional way to cook deer, from long before the Europeans came.  Now adapted to Spanish-introduced animals.
1 lb. beef, any cut (this is a good way to use tough or bony cuts, etc.)
3 garlic cloves
1 onion, chopped
6 ears sweet corn (optional)
2 summer squash, cut up (optional)
2 limes
Salt and pepper to taste
Relish:
1 bunch radishes, cut up very finely
1 habanero chile, cut up
1 onion, cut up finely
1/2 cup cilantro, cut up
Juice of 1 bitter orange
Salt to taste
Boil the meat till tender.
When almost done, add the vegetables (if wanted—this is often just a meat dish).
Serve with the relish–the cut-up ingredients marinated in the citrus juice.  Slices of bitter lime can be used as flavorful garnish, if you can get them.
The vegetables are optional; any combination can be used.  The Maya village version is simply boiled deer meat with the relish.
The stock is critical here.  Tough, lean, flavorful meat should be used, and simmered slowly for a long time, to produce a really good stock.  It is eaten as soup, accompanying the meat, like the ancestral peasant form of French bouillon et bouilli.  Naturally, this is also accompanied by a constant stream of fresh-made tortillas from home-grown corn.
There are many variants (see e.g. Conaculta Oceano 2000b:52).
Ts’ik
1 lb. venison, cooked (any other meat can be substituted)
2 tomatoes
1 onion
Several radishes
10-20 sprigs cilantro
1 jalapeño chile
Juice of 4 bitter oranges
Cut up and boil the venison.  Cut up the other ingredients and serve with the cooked meat.
This is better if the venison is marinated before cooking, and better still if it is cooked in an earth oven (pib) rather than boiled.
A very simple standard.  This is the way ordinary Maya prepare the leaner types of meat—traditionally, venison—for a quick lunch.
By shredding the meat and mixing it with the relish, one creates the dish known as “balinche salad,” above, or by other names.
White and Gold Stew
A superb, elegant dish, this stew is thoroughly Spanish in origin, and thus out of place in this book—but too good to leave out!
1 lb. meat (anything will do)
4 cloves
Small cinnamon stick
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
2 packets saffron, dissolved in a little water
1 tsp. ground oregano
1 tsp. ground thyme
1 head garlic, roasted
Salt to taste
2 oz. vinegar
Olive oil (or lard or vegetable oil)
1 bunch green onions, roasted
Green chiles, to taste
Sugar to taste
Grind the spices (or use ground ones to begin with).  Rub into the meat, with the salt.  Brown the meat over low heat.  Add water, vinegar, oil, the sugar (if desired) and the vegetables.
Variants: a little sherry can be added.  Red recado can be used.
Xakan jaanal
Maya for “mixed food,” which this certainly is.  It is a particularly good and easy dish.  A good contrast to the previous; this is a solid village dish.
2 lb. pork ribs
1 10-oz. package frozen lima beans or black-eyed peas
3 garlic cloves
1-2 tsp. oregano
Salt and pepper to taste
Branch of epazote
2 chayotes
1 kohlrabi
1 head cabbage
1 onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
1 xkatik chiles, chopped
1 cup rice
Cook the pork.  When it is nearly done, add the beans, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper and epazote.
Cut up the chayote, kohlrabi and cabbage.  Add into the pork and beans.
Separately, fry the chopped onion.  Add in the tomato and chiles.  Add in the rice and fry a while.  When it begins to stick, add in enough broth from the pork and beans to cover to depth of 1/2 to 3/4 inch.  Simmer over very low heat till the liquid is absorbed.
Serve the pork and vegetables over the rice.
Variants: this dish is infinitely expandable.  It can also be contracted perfectly well by leaving out the chayotes, kohlrabi and cabbage, or replacing them with any appropriate vegetable.  Eggs are sometimes added to hardboil in the stock.
Yucatan Stew
1 lb. meat
1 head of garlic, roasted, mixed with juice of one bitter orange
1/2 tsp. pepper
1-2 cloves
1 pinch cumin seeds
Sprig of fresh oregano or tsp. dried oregano
1 small bunch cilantro
3 tomatoes or 6 tomatillos
1 large green chile
1 onion, chopped; and/or a whole green onion, leaves and all except the tough top ends
Cook the meat.  When it comes to boil, add the spices.  When it is soft, chop or blend up the vegetables, fry, and add.
Eat with Basic Relish.
POULTRY
Chicken Adobo
1 chicken
3 cloves garlic
1 ½ tsp oregano
Large stick of cinnamon
1 tbsp peppercorns
1 oz. red recado
1 lb potatoes
½ onion
2 mild chiles, chopped
1 lb tomatoes, chopped
Cut up the chicken and boil.  Mash the garlic, oregano, cinnamon, and peppercorns together.  Add these and the potatoes, cut up, and cook till chicken is nearly done.  Then mix recado with some of the the stock.  Fry the onion, chiles and tomatoes.  Add these to the mix and finish cooking quickly.
Chicken Asado
This dish is great as is, but is far, far more commonly used as the start of something else.  This is the cooked chicken that is used in panuchos, salbutes, tamales, and a million other “small eats” and made dishes.
It was originally done with turkey, and often still is.
1 chicken
1 oz. red recado mixed with lime juice, lard or chicken stock, and more salt
½ onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, cut up
1 hot chile

1 chicken
1 small xkatik chile (or ½ bell pepper for chile avoiders)
2 cloves
Few cumin seeds
Few allspice berries
1 cinnamon stick
Head of garliic
1 tsp crushed oregano leaves
2 sprigs epazote
Salt
Pepper
Sprig of mint
1 onion, chopped
2 tomatoes, chopped
Roast chicken unitl almost done, on grill.  Boil with xkatik or bell pepper.  Mash the spices and garlic together and add to stew.  Add oregano and epazote.  Add mint at end.
Separately fry the onion and tomato to sofrito.  Add to stew near end of cooking, and cook just to get all mixed.
Mukbipollo
“Mestiza Maya”–Maya for “buried” (mukbij) and Spanish for “chicken.”
John Stephens’ classic account is too wonderful to miss:
“A friendly neighbour…sent us a huge piece of mukbipoyo.  It was as hard as an oak plank, and as thick as six of them;…in a fit of desperation we took it out into the courtyard and buried it.  There it would have remained till this day but for a malicious dog which accompanied them [the friendly neighbours] on their next visit; he passed into the courtyard, rooted it up, and, while we were pointing to the empty platters as our acknowledgment [sic] of their kindness, this villanous [sic] dog sneaked through the sala and out the front door with the pie in his mouth, apparently grown bigger since it was buried.” (Stephens 1843:21-22.)
Alas, all who travel in rural Yucatan today encounter these cement mukbipollos.  Fortunately, this situation is easy to prevent.
The following is an elaborate village version.
1 chicken
2 lb. pork (optional)
1 cube red recado
1-2 tsp. steak recado (or just another half cube of the red)
Branch of epazote
Few oregano leaves
5″ stick of cinnamon
Tsp. ground allspice or several allspice berries
2 cloves
5 roasted garlic cloves
4 tomatoes
3 onions
2 xkatik chiles
8 lb. masa
Salt and pepper to taste
Cut up and boil the meat in a lot of water.  Grind the spices and add.
Separately cook the tomatoes and onions in a very little water with 1 tbsp. lard, and boil 10-15 min. till a sauce is formed.
Take out a cup of stock.  Mix one fourth of the masa into the remaining stock and meat–slowly and carefully, so that lumps do not form.
Work the reserved cup of stock into the rest of the masa.  If the stock isn’t rich and fatty, you will have to add lard or oil, typically about ¼ cup.  Again, work slowly.
With this mix, shape small pie shells like the familiar little chicken or steak pot pies of European and American cooking.  Fill with the meat.  Top with the tomato sauce.  Cover with a top crust of masa.  Rub over with thinned masa to seal.  Wrap in several layers of leaves.  Tie tightly to make a bundle.  Bury these in the pib.
The feast from which this recipe comes was cooked in a pib 3′ by 3′ and 1 1/2′ deep.  My next door neighbors in Quintana Roo, Elsi Ramirez and her family, dug it in their front yard.  Good firewood (the local equivalent of oak or mesquite) was put in, with large cobble-sized rocks on top of it.  The wood was burned till it became ash and the rocks changed color.  Then palm leaves were put over these until they were thoroughly covered.  The mukbipollos, wrapped in banana leaves and then in palm leaves, were then put in.  A metal cover was put over all, and dirt piled over it.  It was left for 3 hours.
In urban realms where you can’t dig up the yard:  Line a baking dish with banana leaves (or, failing that, foil).  Put the pies in, or just make one huge pie by pressing the masa against the banana leaves.  Bake in a slow oven, around 350o, for 3-4 hours.  The exact heat must vary with circumstances.  The idea is to get a soft bottom crust and tougher, somewhat crisped and toasted top crust.
The oak-plank mukbipollos experienced by Stephens, and many others among us, are a result of using water or thin stock instead of fatty stock, and then baking too long.
Variants:
Ch’a-chaak waj (bread for the ceremony of praying for rain)is made as above, or one can fry achiote in the lard used in the recipe.  The sauce should be thick so that the whole thing is more a cornbread than a pie.
The chicken can be shredded off the bones before use in the pie.
Dried chickpeas or lima beans, boiled till tender, can be added.
Spicing changes with the cook’s taste at the moment.
Chekbij waj
Similar to a mukbipollo, but, instead of making yellow corn meal into a solid piecrust, one uses a very soft, wide, round cake of white masa with a lot of lard and stock worked into it (making it quite red).  The chicken is wrapped in this so the result is more like a tamale than a pie.  It is baked or steamed in leaves like the preceding.
Pabixa’ak’ (grilled or roast chicken)
Marinate chicken in red recado dissolved in bitter orange or lime juice, or in the spice mix for Cuban Rice, above.  Marinate for an hour or two, then grill or roast.
Puchero
1 chicken
Lard
Black pepper
1/2 tsp. cumin
2-3 cloves
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. oregano
3 garlic cloves
1 white onion
2 tomatoes
1 small summer squash
2 chayotes
2 carrots
2 small bell peppers
2 potatoes
1 or 2 plantains
Cabbage
1 package (8 oz.) fideo noodles
Salt to taste
Sprig of mint
Cut up the chicken, scrub with lime, and fry in lard.  Add salt, 1/4 of the onion, 2 tomatoes.  When all have colored somewhat, add water.  Make recado of the spices; add.  Then add in the vegetables (the plantains cut up but not peeled).  The cabbage goes in only when the other ingredients are fairly thoroughly cooked.
Saute fideos (thin angel-hair pasta) in a little oil.  Add stock to cook them.
Angel hair pasta may be substituted, but look for Mexican fideos (thin noodles—from Arabic fidaws, old Andalusian pronunciation fideos, meaning “noodle,” singular).  They are thinner, cook faster and have more flavor.
Serve the puchero over these.  Serve with Basic Garnish or close relative thereof.
Variants:  The main one is that puchero is made with meat as often as with chicken.  Pork or beef neck bones are particularly common and good.  Pork ribs and pieces of stewing beef are also excellent.  Pork and chicken, or pork and beef, are routinely combined in pucheros.
The vegetables, of course, are an open set.  Garbanzos, sweet potatoes and other root crops are typically added.  Sometimes turnips and kohlrabi (the latter surprisingly common in the Yucatan) find their way in.
Thai lime, cut up, is very good in this–served in the bowl, not cooked with the chicken.
Rice is also used.  Any meat can be used instead of, or along with, chicken.  Chicken and pork make a good—and frequent—combination.
Garbanzos are sometimes added.
Rice and Beans
A dish native to Belize.  It has spread just across the border, and nativized in the Caribbean city of Chetumal, the capital of Quintana Roo.
1 chicken
Coconut oil
1 cube achiote paste
2 cloves garlic
Salt and pepper
1/2 cup rice
1/2 cup cooked red beans
1 plantain
1 onion
Cut up the chicken.  Make a recado of the spices.  Rub into chicken.  Cut up chicken and roast the pieces or fry them in coconut oil.
Saute rice in coconut oil.  Add coconut cream thinned with some water and cook.  Mix with the beans.  (Excellent canned coconut cream may be found in any Asian-food market.  If you feel compulsive, here’s how to make it:  Grate the meat of a very ripe coconut.  Soak the gratings in warm water.  Pack in a cheesecloth and wring out.  This is great for developing the arm muscles.)
Cut plantain into thin strips and fry.  Serve on the side.
Separately, slice and fry the onion.  Serve over the chicken.  Alternatively, make Marinated Onions (see above) and briefly fry them.
Serve the chicken separately from the rice-bean mix.
Accompany with boiled local vegetables (such as chayote), sliced; chopped cabbage marinated in vinegar, salt and pepper; sliced raw tomatoes; salsa cruda of onion, tomato, cilantro; and xni’pek’ (habanero salsa; see above.  Habaneros are just as popular in Belize as in Yucatan.  In Belize they go by the English Caribbean name of “Scotch Bonnet” peppers.)
Salpimentado (“salted and peppered”)
2 chickens
1 lb. pork, lean, cut up
2 summer squash
2 potatoes
1 chayote
1 plantain
3 cloves
1 stick cinnamon
1 tbsp. oregano
1 red onion
3 bunches of spring onions (scallions)
2 heads of garlic
2 mild chiles
Salt and pepper to taste
2 white onions
1 cup vinegar
Pinch of salt
1 habanero chile
2 Thai limes (bitter limes)
1 bunch cilantro
Cut up the chickens.  Set to boil with the pork.  Skim, then cook for 15 min.  Chop and add the vegetables  Grind the spices and add.  Cook 20 minutes or more, until all are done.  Meanwhile, roast the red onions, spring onions, chiles, and garlic.  Add them into the soup at the end; cook a minute or so.
For the relish:  chop the white onions very fine; add the vinegar
Turkey in Black Sauce
Here follow the traditional dishes of the four sacred colors.  Turkey, the only large domestic animal in pre-Columbian times, was the ritual food, and still is to some extent.  (Chickens usually replace it, being easier to raise.)
1 turkey
1/2 lb. dried chiles
1 tbsp. black pepper
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. oregano
15 cloves
1 1/2 tsp. achiote
4 oz. lard
2 onions, chopped
20 leaves epazote
3 lb. tomatoes, chopped
4 lb. ground pork
2 raw eggs
10 hardboiled eggs
2 limes
Salt and pepper to taste
Seed the chiles.  Then toast them till they burn (literally catch fire).  DO THIS OUTDOORS, STANDING UPWIND; the smoke can seriously damage eyes.  Be sure no one is downwind.  When the chiles begin to burn, stop the fire by throwing water over them; let them just blacken.  Wash and grind with the spices.  Then blend all in water.
Heat the lard.  Then chop the onions and fry.  When they color, add six epazote leaves and a pound of tomatoes (chopped).  When fried, add the ground meat and half the ground chile mix.
Add the raw eggs and the chopped-up whites of the cooked eggs.
Meanwhile, clean the turkey and rub with salt, pepper and lime juice.  Stuff the turkey with the meat sauce and the egg yolks.
Cook in a closed pot over a low fire.  Add the rest of the ground chile, the tomatoes, the rest of the epazote, and some lard.  Cook till turkey is done.
To make sure the chiles aren’t overburned (producing bitter, scorched or sooty tastes), make them a day or two ahead of time, soak them, and discard the water.
Variant:  The village form of this uses a lot of masa (about 6 lb.), stirred into the soup to lengthen it and make it suitable for pib uses.  This makes a pretty stodgy dish, though.
Allspice berries can be added.
Turkey in Red Sauce
1 turkey
1 kg. ground pork
1 tsp. black pepper
Tbsp. oregano
8 cloves
8 peppercorns
2 tbsp. achiote
2 oz. dried chile
10 tomatoes
3 onions (and/or several cloves garlic)
10 leaves mint
1/2 lb. lard
1 lb. masa
Rub the turkey with salt and leave for several minutes.  Soak the dried chile.
Grind the spices (including the soaked chiles and the achiote) in a little water.
Roast the turkey till browned but not fully cooked.  Cut in pieces.  Simmer with the pork in 5 quarts water.  Add the recado.
Chop the tomatoes, onion and mint.  Fry in lard.  Add to the above.
Thicken with masa.  Cook till sauce thickens.
(Conaculta Oceano 2000b:46)
Turkey in Yellow Sauce
The recipe for the brilliant yellow k’ool is about the same, with half the achiote and without the tomatoes and mint.  Or use the very similar chicken stew from the mukbipollo recipe above.
Turkey in White Sauce
1 lb. pork ribs
1 turkey
1 branch oregano
10 peppercorns
3 garlic cloves (or more–up to one or two heads)
1 tsp. steak recado
1 tsp. red recado
Vinegar
Sliced onions
1 cup white corn meal
1 tsp. cumin seeds (optional)
1 tbsp. dried oregano
Boil the pork ribs in a large pot.  Add the turkey, cut up.  Add the spices, dissolving the recados in the vinegar.
Separate a few cups of the stock and dissolve the flour very carefully in it.  Cook slowly till it thickens.  Serve the turkey with this sauce poured over it.
Variants: it is possible to add quartered tomatoes, bay leaves, etc.
A much fancier version uses the classic Spanish combination of olives, capers, almonds, raisins, and a pinch of saffron.
A very interesting, and common, variant uses ground pork.  It is fried, and when the fat has rendered out, the spices are mixed into it.  (Some even chop tomatoes, onion, and chile peppers, and fry them in the mix, adding some of the almonds, capers, etc., but by this time we are dealing with a Spanish pork dish rather than a Maya turkey dish.)
If you can’t find white corn meal, yellow will do.  Some use white flour, but it merely thickens the sauce and makes it gluey, rather than adding the delightful texture and flavor of corn meal.
Turkey in Escabeche I:  Simple Form
In most of the Spanish world, escabeche—from Arabic, and originally Persian, sikbaj, food cooked in vinegar—is something one does with vegetables and sea food.  In Yucatan, it is first and foremost a poultry dish.
Marinate a turkey or chicken in a recado of cloves, cumin seed, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, oregano, and garlic, mixed with a little vinegar (variants:  water, lime juice, bitter orange juice).
Boil with salt and a chile or bell pepper.
Serve with sliced onions (as in recipe following).
Turkey in Escabeche II:  Classic Escabeche Oriental
No one seems to have a conclusive account of what is “oriental” about this dish.  One theory is that the name comes from the fact that the dish is typical of Valladolid in the eastern part of Yucatan state.  However, a similar dish is called “oriental” in Spain, and it seems unlikely that influence from Valladolid (Yucatan) got that far, so I suspect “oriental” means “Moorish” or “Near Eastern” in this case.
1 turkey
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 stick cinnamon
20 oregano leaves
8 cloves
1 tbsp. peppercorns
1 bottle vinegar
1/2 cup lard
8 xkatik chiles
2 lb. red onions
6 habaneros (!! Or fewer—or, if you can’t deal with even one habanero, one bell pepper)
4 roasted heads of garlic
The turkey can be cut up or whole.  For the pib, it should be whole.  Boil the turkey.
Grind up the spices and make a paste with the vinegar.  Rub into the turkey.  Put the turkey in large pot with the lard, garlic, and xkatik chiles (roasted).  Bury in pib, or roast in the oven.
Cut up the onions and habaneros.  Marinate in vinegar or lime juice, salt, cumin powder and toasted oregano leaves.  Add some of the turkey stock.  Serve as garnish.
Turkey Escabeche III
A variant, which I prefer, of the above.
3 lb. turkey parts, or 1 chicken
1/2 stick cinnamon
3 cloves
3 black peppercorns
4 cloves garlic
3 tsp. dried oregano
1 cube achiote paste
1 tbsp. lard
Juice of 6 limes
3 purple onions
Boil the turkey (or chicken) with a little dried oregano.
Grind the spices (including the rest of the oregano).  Add 1/2 of the achiote cube and mix with juice of 1 lime.  Score chicken and rub in this recado.
Slice the onions.  Let sit for a while, then pour boiling water over them.  Leave a few minutes, then drain and add juice of 5 limes and 1/2 tsp. salt.  Or make the full Marinated Onions recipe with them.
Roast the turkey in a hot oven for 15 minutes, till skin is crisping.  Or, if you have a pib, wrap it and cook it in the pib.
Add the rest of the achiote cube to the stock.  Add 3 xkatik chiles (seeded and roasted) and a head of roasted garlic.  Then add an onion, quartered.
To serve, chicken can be cut up and returned to stock.  But, if one is eating it all with tortillas, the method is to take the meat off the bones, return the bones to the stock to boil some more, and eat the meat and soup separately.  The onions are a side dish to add onto the meat.
Serve with jalapenos in escabeche or habanero chile sauce.
Variant:  The above is a village form.  Urban forms are apt to include canned green Spanish olives, capers, tomatoes, bay leaves, etc.
Fanciest of all is to use a turkey stuffed with but’ (ground meat) and garnished with hard-boiled eggs.  Increase spices accordingly.
Turkey San Simon
This dish is Yucatan food history in a nutshell.  The turkey, tomatoes, chiles, and most of the spices are indigenous.  The recado using bitter orange is Caribbean, specifically Cuban (itself a mix, about which I know far too little, of African and Native American elements).  The bread thickening and the rest of the spicing is classic Moorish-Spanish.  The plantains are a solidly African touch.  The peas are a 19^th-century Mexican garnish, derived probably from French usage.  The roasted green peppers are a standard modern central Mexican garnish.  And so on….
Recado:
1 tbsp. black pepper
1 tbsp. cumin seeds
1 tsp. cloves
1 tsp. allspice
1 stick cinnamon
1 head of garlic, peeled
1 tbsp. oregano
Dish:
1 turkey (ca. 10 lb.)
Lard for frying (1-2 tbsp)
2 heads garlic
1-2 tbsp. oregano
1 branch mint
Juice of 5 bitter oranges, or 1 cup vinegar
1 oz. achiote
3 plantains, cut into long thin strips
10 slices French bread
1 10-oz. package of frozen peas
6 tomatoes, roasted and peeled
2 xkatik chiles
2 bell peppers, roasted and peeled
Salt to taste
20 green onions, roasted till beginning to brown
Grind all the recado ingredients together, dissolve in the bitter orange juice, and rub into the turkey.  Marinate in refrigerator overnight.
Then, cut up and brown the turkey in lard with a roasted head of garlic, the oregano, mint and salt.   Add water and cook, covered, till the turkey is almost done.
Separately, fry the plantains till soft; toast the bread; fry the tomatoes (chopped), and the chile and bell peppers (cut up).
Blend the tomatoes with the roasted head of garlic.
Now combine all ingredients except the plaintains and bread.  Cook 10 minutes.  Then take the turkey pieces out of the sauce; serve the pieces and the sauce separately.  Garnish with the peas, cooked and put over the turkey.
Serve with the plantains and toast on the side.  Roast the green onions till soft and serve them on the side also.
(Conaculta Oceano 2000b:47)
VEGETABLES
In general, the vegetable section of a Mexican cookbook is the shortest, if it exists at all.  Yucatan is no exception.  Vegetables are eaten as part of mixed stews, with meat, or they are garnishes.  Still, there are a few vegetable dishes.  Chaya, in particular, has been monographed by Jose Diaz Bolio (see Diaz Bolio 1974, Leon de Gutierrez 1974, and the general introduction to the present book).  Some of the recipes below are inspired by his.
Alboromia
Another Arab dish–using Yucatecan recado! According to legend, Burun was a queen of old Baghdad, the wife of Caliph Al-Ma’mun, and she liked mixed vegetable dishes.  Her name, variously distorted, applies to such, all over the Arab and Spanish worlds. She is especially associated with eggplant.  Alboromia in countless forms is universal in Andalucía and Extremadura, and presumably came to Mexico very early, but one suspects, also, later Lebanese influence in this dish.
Such vegetable recipes as exist in Yucatan frequently turn out to be Lebanese.  They are ideal for a vegetable course in a Yucatecan dinner, because they make an interesting contrast to the Maya and Spanish dishes.
1 eggplant
1 summer squash
1 lb. potatoes
1/2 tbsp. red recado
2 tomatoes
2 onions
2 garlic cloves, roasted
1 bunch parsley
1/2 bell pepper
2 tbsp. vinegar
Oil
Chop and fry the vegetables, starting with the onions, garlic and parsley.  Add in the flavorings.
Variants: More spices and herbs can be added.
In both Spain and Lebanon, the ancestors of this dish lack the recado.  In Lebanon, they usually have more herbs–mint in particular, and sometimes tarragon.  These do not go particularly well with the recado.  However, leaving out the recado and using mint, tarragon and oregano or marjoram makes a good variant, similar to ones found among the Lebanese communities.
Bean Chirmole
1 lb. beans
25 small dried chiles or 4 dried ancho chiles
1/2 onion
1 lb. masa
2 cloves garlic
6 tomatoes
1 tsp. oregano
Cloves, to taste
Allspice, to taste
Lard (optional)
Salt and pepper, to taste
Cook the beans until almost done.
Toast and boil the chiles.  Wash.  Grind them with the spices.  Add to the beans.  Add the other ingredients.
Meat can be added to this, as can abal fruits (sour plumlike fruits; substitute sour plums).  Both improve it quite a bit.
Black Rice
Chop and fry an onion and some leaves of epazote, and chile if wanted.  Fry in a little oil.  Add ½ cup rice and stir-fry.  Then add liquid from cooking k’abax beans (enough to cover the rice to depth of 1 inch), and simmer, covered, over very low heat till done.  This is one of those simple but wonderful recipes.
Chaya basics
Chaya is much like spinach or swiss chard, and these leaves can always be substituted for it or combined with it.  (Incidentally, “spinach” in south Mexico usually turns out to be New Zealand spinach or some other heat-resistant green, not “real” spinach.)
Boil chaya leaves.  Chop and fry with onion.  Salt, bitter orange juice, garlic, etc. can be added.
Variants:  Scrambling eggs in with this mix is wonderful.  Or an omelette can be made thereof.  Adding chorizo, cut-up (previously soaked) salt meat, chopped ham, or comparable flavorings is even more wonderful.
Chaya is also good in any bean dish.  Combining beans and chaya enormously increases the nutritional value of the dish, and tastes better, too.  Chaya can also be put in any soup or stew, especially the ones with mixed vegetables such as puchero.
Chaya and Plantains
1 lb. chaya leaves
1 large plantain
1 bell pepper
2 garlic cloves
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 tsp. cumin
Juice of 1 bitter orange
Salt and pepper to taste
Boil and cut up the chaya.  Peel and boil the plantain and chop it up.
Chop up and fry the onion, garlic, pepper and tomatoes.  Then add the chaya and plantain and the other ingredients and cook till hot.
This is a wonderful dish, very good with tender young Swiss chard or even turnip greens.
Chaya Rice
Fry onion in a bit of oil.  Add the rice and fry.  Add chopped chaya leaves (raw small ones or blanched larger ones), chopped tomatoes, and any other flavorings desired.  Finally, add water to cover to depth of 1/2 “-3/4″ and simmer.
Chaya Seafood Rice:  Add shrimp and/or other seafood to this, along with the chaya.
Chaya Salad
Boil the chaya, chop, and eat with sliced onions and vinagrette dressing.  Other vegetables can be added.
Chaya with Bacon
That old reprobate, Bishop Landa, when he was not torturing Maya to death in the Inquisition, was enjoying their food.  (It is to the credit of the Spanish that Landa’s cruelty earned him formal censure, even in that dreadful age.)  Among other things, he noted that chaya was “good with much fat bacon.” How did he cook it?  History does not record, but here are some worthy possibilities:
1.  Parboil chaya.  Meanwhile, fry chopped-up strips of bacon.  Drain off some of the fat.  Then fry the chaya in the remaining fat, with the bacon bits.
Adding garlic and dried chiles to the frying bacon improves this version.
2.  Boil the chaya with bacon strips, garlic cloves, and dried red chiles.
3.  Boil slab bacon.  Skim off as much of the fat as you can.  Add chaya, garlic and chiles.
Being a Spaniard of his time, Landa probably went much more heavily into the bacon than we would do.
Chaya with Cheese
Boil chaya leaves in chicken stock.  Sprinkle crumbled sharp white Mexican cheese over them.
Chaya with Eggs
1 large bunch chaya
1 onion
2 tomatoes
1 egg
Boil the chaya and cut up.  Cut up the onion and tomato.  Stir-fry the onion; add the tomato; then add the chaya; then add the egg.  Stir-fry all.
K’abax Beans (“Frijoles kabax”)
K’abax implies ordinary food without special seasonings.  This is the everyday bean dish of Mexico.
Put beans in water and bring to boil.  Turn off and soak a few hours.  Then (in the same water) boil till tender, adding salt, an onion, a sprig of epazote and perhaps some achiote.  Eat with a relish of lime or bitter orange juice with chopped onion, cilantro, radishes and habanero chile.
Further manipulations include:
Blended beans:  Cook beans as above.  Blend, with their liquid.  Add lard (Maya lard: see above) to taste.  Or, fry in lard chopped onion, epazote and chile, and add into the beans.  Boil.  (This produces something very like the black bean soup of traditional United States cuisine.)
Refried beans:  Mash the k’abax beans but without the liquid.  Fry in lard.  Add in above ingredients as desired.
Poor People’s Paté
One of the Lebanese contributions to Yucatan’s food.  It is a variant of the “poor man’s caviare” of the Near East and East Europe.
4 small eggplants
2 tbsp. chopped onion
6 chopped garlic cloves
1/2 cup chopped olives
2 bay leaves
3 tomatoes
2 cups cabbage, chopped
1/2 cup vinegar
1 cup yogurt (to serve separately)
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel and slice the eggplants.  If you dislike the bitterness, leave in salted water for 20 minutes and then drain, but you lose some flavor doing this.
Fry the onion and garlic.  Then add the eggplants, olives, pepper and one bay leaf.
Put the tomatoes in boiling water for a minute, to loosen the peels, and skin them.
Blend all the above (discard the bay leaf) with some olive oil.
Separately, make a cabbage salad:  Cook the cabbage.  Add vinegar, pepper and another bay leaf.
Serve, separately, the pate; cabbage salad; and the yogurt.  Eat on pita bread.
Variants:  infinite.  Try leaving out the olives.  The yogurt is optional.
Squash with Squash Flowers
Cook very small summer squash for a very few minutes.  Add squash flowers and then maize kernels cut from fresh sweet corn ears.  Boil for a very short time, until all ingredients are just tender.  Serve with lime wedges.
DESSERTS
Fresh fruit and the universal Latin American flan are the commonest desserts in Yucatan, but they need no recipes here.  Yucatan produces excellent sorbets from local fruit; the best are guanabana, mamey, and chicosapote.  They are just fruit pulp, sugar, and water.  Use any sorbet recipe.
Candied ciricote
The ciricote is a small fruit that has to be cooked to be edible, rather like a small quince.  It grows on a large tree whose wood is among the most beautiful of all tropical woods, but now cannot be legally cut because of the rarity of these important food-producing trees.
4 lb. ciricote
4 limes
2 lb. sugar
Fig leaves
Cook the ciricotes in water with some wood ash (a handful or so, to tenderize them).  When cook, take out and grate.
Mix with lime juice.
Cook down in sugar syrup with some lime juice and the fig leaves.  (The fig leaves produce an enzyme that further tenderizes the fruit.)
Simmer for half an hour.  Take out the fig leaves and bottle.
This recipe will work for any firm, sour fruit.  It is similar to that for orejas de mico (“monkey ears”—preserved wild papaya), etc.
(Conaculta Oceano 2000b:56)
Chayote Pudding
1 chayote
2 eggs
2 oz. butter
2 oz. sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
Cook the chayotes, peel, and blend with the eggs, butter, sugar, vanilla and cinnamon.
Butter a mold.
Cook in the oven till done.  (For a softer texture, some use a bain-marie.  Basically, this is a dish of water in which the custard dish is set high enough so that the water does not come in, but rather steams the custard.)  Doneness is indicated by a generally firm appearance.  Don’t wait till a knife stuck into the center comes out clean–if you do, the pudding is overdone.
In Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean, where apples cannot grow, nostalgic French cooks have found that chayotes make a very good substitute (if you use enough butter and spices).  I have had excellent French apple cake, apple tart, and so on, using chayotes.  There is even a restaurant totally devoted to the chayote.  Admittedly, this is far from Yucatan, but the tip is too good not to pass on.  Yucatan, like Reunion, is a tropical land where apples do not grow.
(Conaculta Oceano 2000b:56)
Cheese Pie (Pie de Queso)
Another very common dish, especially in Merida.  Ancestrally, it is some unsung American’s variation on cheesecake, but is in fact much better than cheesecake.  The English word “pie” is invariably used.  Sometimes the spelling is localized to pay, which just happens to be the Maya word for “skunk.”
1 can condensed milk
4 eggs
1/2 lb. cream cheese or Cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sugar
Vanilla to taste (optional)
Piecrust (see below)
Blend the milk with the egg yolks, sugar and vanilla.  Beat in the cheese.  Beat the egg whites to peaks and add in.  Fill into a regular piecrust and bake till firm.
Low-cholesterol version of the pie filling:  1 ½ cup regular milk, 6 egg whites, 1 package cottage cheese, 1/2 cup sugar, vanilla.  Blend all.  Not very authentic, but good enough.
One might also try Jack cheese in this.
Piecrusts:
Standard version:  1 cup flour, 1 stick butter, tiny bit of sugar, ice-cold water.  Cut the butter into the flour and sugar; rub in a while.  Mix in the water–just enough to moisten–and roll out.
A Yucatan version:  1 cup flour, 1/2 stick butter, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 egg, bit of cold water.  Proceed as above.
Another Yucatan version: 1 cup flour, 1 tsp. baking powder, 1 stick butter, 1 cup condensed milk.
Low-cholesterol version:  1 cup flour, 1/2 stick butter, 1 oz. sugar, cold water.
The other classic Yucatan “pie” is “pie de nuez,” but it is just ordinary American pecan pie, migrant from the American south.
Coconut Flan
1 lb. sugar
1 can coconut cream
8 eggs
1/2 quart milk
1 tbsp. lemon juice (optional)
Vinegar
Simmer 13 oz. sugar with coconut cream (cans of it can be found at any Asian-food market) till slightly thickened.  Cool.  Separately, beat the eggs.  Beat in the milk and lemon.
In a nonstick pan, melt 3 oz. sugar with a small amount of vinegar till the sugar begins to caramelize.  Pour into a buttered flan dish and pour int he ingredients.  Cook in a bain-marie till almost firm (about an hour).  Refrigerate.
Simple way (not to say cheating):  Throw milk, coconut cream, eggs, and sugar into a blender.  Blend for several seconds at high speed.  Line a pan with dark brown sugar (so you don’t have to caramelize it).  Pour the blended liquid into this and bake in the oven at 325o till almost firm.  Take out and cool; it will finish firming up as it cools.  Leaving it in the oven till firm, as most cookbooks advise, overcooks it.
Cocoyoles
An impractical recipe for anyone outside of a Maya village, but ethnographically too interesting to miss.  Cocoyoles—t’uk in Maya—are the fruit of a palm.  They are too hard to eat without treatment.  They are boiled with water and lime—not the citrus, but the result of burning limestone—to soften them.  The outer part becomes soft and sweetish.  It is then boiled down with sugar (traditionally, honey) until candied.  It takes very slow simmering for 12 hours to do this perfectly.
Corn and Squash Sweet
1 cup sweet corn kernels cut from very young ear, cooked very quickly
1 cup cooked meat from butternut or other sweet winter squash
Sugar to taste
Mix all while hot.
Allspice, cinnamon, vanilla and other appropriate flavorings can be added.  Brown sugar gives more flavor.
This very traditional Maya sweet would originally have been made with honey, or simply relied on the sweetness of the young corn.
Fruit Salad with Xtabentun
Cut up tropical fruits.  Melon, mango, papaya, mamey, banana, and citrus make a good combination.  Squeeze lime or orange juice over them and sprinkle liberally with Xtabentun (or any liqueur).
Guava Paste
A universal Latin American delicacy, developed from the quince paste of Spain.  Quinces don’t grow in the tropics, but settlers quickly found that guavas are a perfect substitute.
1 lb. sugar
1 lb. guava juice (cook lemon guavas; strain.  Force some of flesh through sieve)
Cook slowly, stirring constantly, till the mixture forms a paste (soft ball stage).
Mamey Paste
Local version of the above.
1 lb. sugar
1 lb. mamey flesh
Mix sugar and mamey meat.  Simmer, stirring constantly, for several minutes.
This can also be made as in preceding recipe, but-unlike the guava–the mamey does not really need the cooking and straining.
Mamey is quite sweet enough without sugar, so this recipe is for preserving the fruit.
Posole with Coconut
1 lb. nixtamal kernels (corn kernels boiled in lime)
Juice of 2 limes
Meat of 2 small coconuts
½ c sugar (or less, to taste)
Boil the kernels in water with juice of 2 limes added.  Grind these with the meat of the coconuts.  Boil this with sugar, till thoroughly hot and sugar thoroughly dissolved.
Nixtamal kernels are available canned at any Hispanic market.
Queso Napolitano
The “national dessert” of Yucatan–the one you actually see everyone eating.
2 cans of milk
10 eggs
Vanilla extract
3 oz. sugar
Blend all except the sugar.  Caramelize it as in previous recipe.  Turn out into a baking dish and pour in the liquid.  Cook in bain-marie for an hour (or bake till firm–this one you don’t take out early, as with the preceding).
It is possible to use only egg whites in this, and thus keep the cholesterol down to virtually nil.
Ruined Dessert
Atropellado means “totally messed up.”   The name honors the appearance of the dish.  Fortunately, its taste is as good as its looks are messy.
1 lb. sweet potato
Meat of 1 coconut
¼ lb. brown sugar
1 stick cinnamon
1 tsp. ground allspice
Cook the sweet potato.  Peel and mash.
Blend up the coconut.
Mix the sugar with some water and add the cinnamon.  Put on fire.  When it begins to boil, add the sweet potato and mix into the syrup.
Add in the coconut.
Chill.
I’m usually too lazy to grate coconut.  Canned coconut cream works fine!  Store-bought grated coconut is okay too.  Best is to use both.  Standard in Yucatan is to soak grated coconut in a can of condensed milk.
Squash with Honey
The traditional Maya sweet.
1 winter squash
1 lb. honey
Cut small holes in the squash.  Pour in the honey.  Bake in pib or oven for 2 hours.
This dish is sickeningly sweet.  A tiny amount is quite enough.  More than that can produce severe hypoglycemia after a sugar “rush.”
Spanish Cream
1 quart milk
6 eggs
1 lb. sugar
2 oz. cornstarch
1 tbsp. vanilla extract
Blend all.  Cook in a nonstick saucepan over a low fire, stirring constantly.
Low-cholesterol variant:  leave the eggs out.  (Yes, this is traditional.)
Yucatan Marzipan
1 lb. sikil
1 lb. sugar
10 oz. water
Flavorings as wanted
Food coloring
Dissolve the sugar in the water.  Simmer until a syrup forms.  Slowly work in the sikil, stirring constantly.  Add any flavorings.
Cool thoroughly.  Now, model into small animal, fruit and vegetable shapes and paint with the food coloring.
This recipe is of purely ethnographic interest, to show the ingenuity of the Yucatecan culture.  Almonds were far too rare in the old days to waste on marzipan-making.  Thus, this form was evolved.  It finds its chief use in providing pretty things for children–something the ordinary person can buy for practically nothing in the market, to pacify a young child.  This sikil marzipan is only marginally edible, like the flour-and-water marzipan of the rest of Mexico, and is more the equivalent of Play-Doh.
(Conaculta Oceano 2000b:57)
DRINKS
The usual round of licuados (fruit smoothies) and alcoholic drinks occur, but are as elsewhere in Mexico.
Atole nuevo (green corn drink)
Kernels from an ear of fairly well matured sweet corn, soaked a day, then blended with a bit of sikil.  This is often sweetened with honey, or otherwise flavored.
Baalche’
The sacred ritual drink–still as important as in ancient Maya times.
Water
Honey, preferably of native stingless bee (much more flavorful than European bee honey)
Bark of baalche‘ tree (Lonchocarpus longistylus; sometimes closely related spp. are used)
Mix ingredients, bottle, and let stand until honey ferments.
Today, the drink is often made with regular honey cut with sugar, and the bark is reduced to a bare minimum.  The gods are said to be highly annoyed with this, and some would say the results are such events as Hurricane Gilbert.
If you are not given to brewing, but want to put on a Yucatecan dinner, be advised that Ethiopian t’ej is basically the same thing (flavored with Ethiopian hops instead of baalche’ bark, but the difference is not earthshaking) and can be bought in markets carrying Near Eastern or African products.
Chaya Drink
This is a very common, popular drink.  It is made quite sweet.
20 chaya leaves, boiled but not too soft
Juice of 3 limes
Sugar to taste
Water
Blend in a blender till a thick drink is produced.  Serve cold.
Chocolate
2 lb. cacao (chocolate) beans
2 oz. cinnamon sticks
1/2 lb. flour
1 package sweet biscuits
Toast the beans till they begin to color.  Heat the cinnamon stick.   Toast the flour till golden.  Grind up the cacao and cinnamon, and the biscuits.  Form tablets and store.  For drink, beat up in water, with sugar to taste.  Note that commercial Mexican chocolate tablets are mostly sugar, while these tablets are unsweetened.  Moreover, the taste will not be much like commercial chocolate; fermentation is needed to bring out the “chocolate” flavor known to the world outside Mesoamerica.
Coconut Pozole
1 kg. nixtamal kernels
Juice of 2 limes
Fresh meat of 4 small coconuts
1 cup sugar
Water
Cook nixtamal (whole kernels) for one hour with juice of limes.  Grate the meat of the coconuts.  Add this and the sugar to the mixtamal.  Chill.
Tan Chukwaj (“thick chocolate drink”)
The traditional Maya ritual drink, still served at festivals, often with mukbipollos.
Tan Chulwaj is almost certainly what was in those Classic Maya chocolate cups with the owners’ names on the rim, but it would have had chile then—if anything—instead of the modern cinnamon and sugar.
1 tablet Mexican chocolate
1 lb. toasted corn meal, or ground-up sweet corn kernels
1/2 tsp. allspice powder (or more)
Cinnamon stick
Sugar to taste (traditionally, none was used; today there is usually some sweetening)
Mix up the tablet with the corn and spices.  Heat.  Serve hot or cold.

Variants: Other flavorings can be added; anise is traditional and good.  The ancient Aztecs used chile powder, and one supposes the ancient Maya did too.

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 22nd, 2007 at 1:24 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.