roastin pigs

I think about kneeling down next to the cinder block oven and blowing and inhaling a lot of smoke, but also seeing the coals glow, and feeling an enormous satisfaction -- seeing fire smolder curling bits of cardboard, and feeling calm. I think about standing next to the outline of bricks and foil that I measured out in the dark, and hearing the murmur of other voices out alive in the Friday night, and the crickets and the rats too -- all of that rustling around me, but the foundations of the smoker standing silent and clean.

I think about Anna bringing the poor dead bastard in the back of a cab. Rather: I think about Anna getting up before first light, hauling ass in a cab over to Eastern Market, waiting, in her brisk way, for her pig. Matter-of-factly lifting it into the trunk. I think about how she did it in a dress. I think about both of us swinging our porky bride over the threshold. Hustling him down the stairs to the backyard. How we set him down together on a table out back and cut him out of his horrible, child-sized cardboard coffin, and rubbed him down with pepper and salt, and poked the bristles left on his nose, but also were like "your ass is ours." 

This was probably not a remarkable thing for some people, or even many people, to do. Cooking a pig I mean. But I think it was for two women who had no history of this intertwined with their upbringings, who had no reason to do this other than a desire to smoke a whole animal and feed someone with it. 

I think about my mom at Home Depot lifting the blocks with me into her van, on her birthday, a couple of weeks before the party. I think about me telling her to take a break, and her telling me, "But I want to."

I think about what feeling powerful means. Is it having the appetites of 50 plus people bent to your will? Is it charring a not-small animal's flesh, is it making fires, is it using two knives at once, is it moving heavy objects. Is it telling men how you want something to be built, and showing them how to do it, and then watching them follow your directions. Is it drinking beer next to meaty puffs of smoke. Is it all some kind of posturing? Is it deciding you want something because you want it, and teaching yourself how to do it, and doing it. 

And this too, sans fire and knives, needs mentioning: the cadre of women, some friends, some strangers, who assembled in the kitchen and began to clean. Relief at the fact that just at the moment when being horizontal on the living room carpet seemed most appealing, then came their silent move in on the wreckage. Feelings of tenderness and bitterness blooming in the chest at seeing certain patterns played out on a small scale. 

I meant it when I said I would do it for a living; I meant it when I said there will be a lamb roasting in that same spot come the crispness of the last days of fall. 

how to cook in a summer kitchen, briefly

When in the kitchen in summer you must make as few movements as possible. It becomes a study in conciseness: you must chop your carrots not using your whole arm as you might do in winter but using a kind of gliding, circular motion with your wrist and some backbone provided by your forearm. You must move from your cutting board to the stovetop with the least number of pivots possible, and when there must stir like an oarswoman: once, twice, three times lifting from the bottom, getting everything as fully churned as you can because anything beyond that will have you sweating. Conciseness. Create as little extra heat as you can. You must remember this as you pluck mint leaves, must slice with forefinger and thumb flush against the stem -- must make a clean cut of the leaf entire.

You have tried to explain this heat many times many times to people not from here. The words always twist coming out of your mouth and you end up saying something like "The heat in the summer gets to you, it gets in your head," or, "People act different in summer." What you really meant to say is that the heat is violent. It mounts a sunup-to-sundown offensive, it descends from above and rises from where it has seeped into the asphalt and it traps you in the middle. It makes everyone move with a languidness that in this East Coast shrine to efficiency they would not otherwise indulge, but it traps that excess energy somewhere else, builds it up like steam in pockets all over your body.

You will find yourself adding more chiles, more hot sauce, more heat to everything you make. Whole jalapenos disappear into otherwise sensible and subtle Spanish tortillas; heaping tablespoons of red pepper flakes into mild carrot and ginger soup. What you reserve in your movements must explode outward in flavor -- to match that slow and stabbing heat.

two perfectly fried eggs are an exquisite thing; or, breakfast nostalgia

I'm careful now to follow all the steps you showed me before. Only a little fat in the pan, low flame (you in your rigid cooking philosophies refuse anything higher, get that obstinate look when I tell you you wouldn't like anything fried done over anything less than a hellfire-hot flame). Eggs cracked in such a way as to evenly fill both halves of the pan. Ying-and-yangs. A lid to nestle them, their whites spitting and hitting the top. The heat turned off just as their great yellow eyes begin to grow cloudy. I must admit that in some things I am too impatient -- I'd rather risk scorching the egg bottoms to have the yolks done faster -- but you tell me this is wrong with a solemnity and offended air generally reserved for priests describing mortal sins. You have to turn off the flame and let them sit you tell me, let the heat that has collected in the pan cook the yolks a little longer because (and this might be the most important part of your egg philosophy) there exists only one correct yolk texture, and that is thick-runny. Thin-runny looks like bile and if you wanted a hard yolk you might as well have boiled it. After two, three minutes you lift the lid and I always had to admit, still do admit when I do it myself, that the eggs are perfect. My pride forces me to say that it's not that I couldn't fry an egg myself before I met you -- of course  I could fry an egg, but they weren't perhaps very visually pleasing specimens or of consistent quality. And so when you tell me you can't cook I always think of the eggs, the unwavering attention you pay them, your engineer's love of process. How you go in every time so sure that following each step to the letter will lead to a perfect egg, and how each time it does. Your kind of structural, analytical vision turns a humble egg into its best self. How could I not love you for that? How could I not miss you terribly when I sit in a cold DC kitchen to eat two perfectly fried eggs by myself.

b-fast

if you find yourself stirring a pot of chocolate and mosh and cinnamon, slow, on a Saturday morning, it means all the American anxiousness over wasted time has finally filtered out of your body. it means you no longer care about morning efficiency, about THINGS you surely have to do and are instead mandando a la mierda by scraping, over and over again (slowly always slowly), the lumps of almost disintegrated cocoa out of the bottom of the pot. it means the dark, 24-year-long era of cereal and instant oats is over.  

it means: you are not just eating in the morning because you’re hungry, because that’s what was in the house, because you have to eat because it’s “time.” (it also means: the fact that you can consider any of these things is because you’re on vacation.) it means you woke up and saw that it was grey and drizzling outside and this focused your hunger down to a desire for something warm and sweet. and this made you think of the wide world of atoles that exist, at once hearty and delicately textured, cinnamon-accented, hot. and something with crunch a la par, a hunk of good bread.

it means you have to eat pan tostado, and drink atol de chocolate con mosh. it means this deliberateness is not extravagant, not wasteful, but honoring the fact that you’re even awake, that you can be hungry, that on one of the last mornings in your home of the past two and a half years, it’s worth it to make something good.

Mexico #2: ahorita is unknowable, but memelitas are now

The bus that was supposed to leave at 9:30 leaves at 9:55, and when I say leave, I mean backs out from one bus station in town and immediately goes and parks at another. The bus does not show signs of prompt departure, as driver disembarks and says we'll be leaving en un ratito, which is a measurement of time spanning five minutes to eternity. The bus is small and rocking a quality bachata playlist. Two of the bus's occupants, Pato and myself, ate crumbly bread and weak coffee for breakfast, and are bemoaning the fact that we did not think to bring anything more substantive with us. Overwhelmed by bachata and a full bladder, I exit the bus; Pato disappears. Coming back from the bathroom, sin ganas de subir al bus, sin ganas de estar encerrada en el micro todo el pinche dia, I see Pato holding out the fruits of his secret labors: memelitas, expertly retrieved from a woman working a small griddle just outside. 

I don't know if this true for everyone, but edible gifts inspire in me an eagerness, giddy anticipation of the shared discovery we're about to have, almost like a dare -- "we're gonna taste this cool new thing together it looks pretty freakin weird hope we like it there's no knowing oops too late it's in our mouths now anyhow" -- and people who come bearing edible gifts earn a kind of gratitude from me that goes beyond any-other-kind-of-present gratitude. Something to do with being fed = being cared for on both the most basic level there is + the level I like best, that is, the level where I'm eating.  

Anyway -- so the memelitas are brought. Two corn masa griddlecakes/tortilla type things, one a black and white check of beans and queso fresco, the other a savory smear of potato and chorizo. Because Pato bought them, they're also doused liberally in chile -- the papa-chorizo with red, the frijol with green. They're both delicious, but for me the frijol wins the day. The color contrast is matched by the contrast of flavors, the salty, sharp cheese cutting through the savory-smoothness of the beans. We eat them and the prospect of a long day of bus hopping disappears; the future shrinks into the seconds it takes us to scrounge up more monedas to buy MORE MEMELITAS. In an incredible stroke of luck we have enough to get another frijol, another chorizo y papa, and a chicharron, which wins by default because it's chicharron. We inhale them before the bus makes it down the street. 

We agree that everyone else is stupid for not buying memelitas from that lady's stand (there was no line! NO line!) and that Pato earns a thousand points for being pilas and sniffing out what was good within a 100 meter radius from the bus. I have enough time to reflect before falling asleep that I'm lucky to be traveling with someone who recognizes the restorative powers of a well-timed memelita, the hope and goodwill that lots of chile and chicharron can bring. 

*The transbordando that began with this memelita-fueled episode was inconvenient but the reason behind it is worth reading more about. Read en español acá or English here.   

Mexico #1: pambazo

A pambazo is a thing where your friend of a friend, after drinks, after tiny street tacos (al pastor, cabeza, chorizo, chorizo, chorizo, so small the taco man has to pinch them to gather up the meat), after more drinks, after ranchero/banda karaoke, drives you up, up into the outskirts of the DF, up past stand after brightly-lit taco and torta and quesadilla stand – so bright, each one a cheery, county-fair white, small clapboard food beacons guiding you in the dark – until you reach one nestled in the corner of a quiet intersection, so high you can see the silent sweep of the city below you, so high there is a possibility the car crashed en route and you’ve in fact died and gone to Mexican food heaven. A pambazo is a thing where your friend asks the owners (an older woman, a younger woman, a middle-aged man) if they have pambazos, and they shake their heads and sigh, perdón, they’re out of bread, and you and your friend and your boyfriend all shake your heads too because boy that is a fucking lástima if I ever heard it, but then the young woman goes and rummages around and finds a surprise sleeve of bread and it’s all back on. They ask you if you want tradicional, your Mexican friend nods. So you also nod.

 A pambazo is, technically:

1-1 large-ish hamburger-type bun

2-Chili oil

3-Generous helping of chorizo and potato, bien picados, fried together

4-Queso fresco

5-Liquefied meat fat

6-Lettuce?? (doubtful)

7-Possibly more meat

A pambazo is ingredients 3-7 piled onto ingredient 1, then doused in 2, then fried on a flattop, then passed to you on a styrofoam plate, then devoured as you ponder why more things in the world aren’t drowned in chili oil and then fried. Or stuffed with potatoes. It is, in a no-nonsense kind of way, all savory, all spice. It is very good. A pambazo is also when your friend orders a horchata, and you and your boyfriend look longingly at the horchata, and the man sees the longing, and hands you a literal liter of horchata in response. And it’s GOOD, creamy in a way the horchata in Guatemala never seems to be, tasting very specifically of vanilla, of cinnamon. A pambazo is when you try to pay for this horchata and the owners refuse. You didn’t know there were people in the world who would give you a liter of horchata for free just because you looked thirsty; it is probable that these people only live in Mexico (later experiences with extreme Mexican hospitality/friendliness/kindness confirm this). A pambazo is about 20 pesos. A pambazo is a red-tinted, meaty wonder; a pambazo is the first line in a culinary love letter from Mexico, to you.

glossary of bebidas

by no means complete, accurate, or unbiased, this is a bullet-point love letter to all things para tomar*. never again will I choose water to accompany a meal with the same apathy I did before coming to Guatemala.

*specific chelas do not make an appearance here because they deserve, and will receive, their own post.

- Atoles: de arroz con leche, de arroz con chocolate (!), de elote (!!!!! think drinkable corn pudding, sometimes they even put little kernels on top), de haba (flatbean), de avena (oatmeal), de corazon de trigo (wheat heart. whart), blanco (with salt and limon. hear it's by turns gross and good for hangovers). atol makes you feel like it's christmas and you're wearing ridiculous slippers and your grandma is spoonfeeding you something straight from a great canela-scented pot, and it's also murder to drink it when it's hot out because you start sudar-ing from your esophagus outwards, pero hay que sufrir un poco por las cosas buenas de la vida.

-Agua de platano: the murky water you get when you boil plantains to make platanos cocidos. it's fucking BUENO for your salud, as I am told every time it's plantain day for breakfast and the agua de platano gets passed around. a silky essence of platano, what a plantain whisky could be like.

-Chela: see the Fine Palates Chela Taste Test post, when it finally exists.

-Chilacayote, fresco de: buhhhhhHHHHHH squash juice. Like caramelized pumpkin in drink form. The seeds are the nutty/best part.

-Crema, fresco de: have only seen this at the pupusa place on la sexta, but it's an unnatural yellow-orange color and tastes like corn syrup and has the mouthfeel of a liquified creamsicle. A favorite of five year-olds, and me.

-Frutas, fresco de: melon, naranja, sandia, pina, papaya, ...fruit blended in water with some sugar. Maybe limon if you're buscando a specific toque. Alternatively can be made with cascaras (peels) of certain fruits by boiling them in water with sugar.

-Horchata: when it's not cripplingly sweet or made from horchata powder, v rico. not my favorite but a popular party drink. can't lie, didn't understand the horchata craze in spain (made from tiger nuts); also don't get it here (made from rice), but va.

-Jamaica, fresco de: made from dried rosehips. they turn water a deep winey color when boiled together. tastes sharp, leaves your breath vaguely floral. like drinking a fragrant jewel.

-Limonada: u already know. with the chia seeds it's damn good, and also just pretty.

-Michelada: tomato juice, Worcestershire sauce, limon. This also will not be elaborated on here because of the great and powerful love to end all loves that I harbor for this soup-beverage. Will be discussed in a separate post. Woe to the person who calls it a bloody mary with beer, it is so much more than that.

-Tamarindo, fresco de: pungent, brownish. even tempered with sugar so much sugar, still tart, bordering on sour. Causes a warheads-like need to keep consuming.