Now back to lunch. We've had molotes, a salad with nopales, some mushrooms in escabeche, and now, some frijoles:
I should have given them a good stir. They were hot!
Now this steamer might make you think tamales were on the way, but the delicacy inside was mixiotes.
Traditionally, these are maguey leaves with the papery part ripped out and used to hold the food for steaming. Apparently this is very un-P.C. now as greedy foragers are ripping the paper out too soon and plants are dying too young. I bought some of the papers in Mexico City, not fully understanding how bad it was. I've started a cluster of maguey to try this out for myself. Meanwhile, this version was divine and included a piece of chicken, an avocado leaf and chile sauce and it was steamed for about four hours.
The avocado leaf adds a subtle but clear anise flavor that seems to cut through the chile. This was a spectacular dish.
What could you do to top this?
Dessert was perfect. Local prickly pears, cleaned of their nasty glochids and chilled for hours before.
After eating, we toured the rest of the hacienda. The local terrain is beautiful with prickly pear cactus dotting the landscape and big, glorious Mexican skies. Sigh.
Wow, what a pleasure to read this (and see the photos) on a snowy day in New York. Looks phenomenal, especially the chicken (although the whole maguey thing is a bit sad). I’m so curious about the avocado leaf!
We were all so pleased with how easy we got the beans into the US, we started thinking about other things we could import and I immediately wanted the avocado leaves. A regular haas avocado doesn’t have the same anis flavor. I’ll keep you posted but it’s a miracle ingredient. And I’ll be documenting the maguey gardens as well.