Subject: Re: Pre-Columbian Mexican Delights

From: [email-masked] (David Adams)
Date: 7 Jun 93 12:23:23 CDT

I wonder why this article wasn't posted to rec.food.historic in the first
place.  ;^)  

In article [email-masked], L M Boutwell <[email-masked]> () writes:
| Came across this excerpt in Raymond Sokolov's _Why We Eat What We Eat_
|(now out in paperback) and knew I had to share it with rec.food.cooking.
|This makes anything in _Like Water for Chocolate_ look like Wonder Bread -
|skip to the last paragraph for the good stuff.  Bon Apetit!
|
|
|"...To cook worms, people sometimes just put a whole gusano-filled mixiote
|over coals or hot ashes, or theymight just put the worms directly on a
|bakestone until they swell and stiffen, turning golden brown and cruchy.
|....these delicacies can be obtained in April in the market of San Juan
|in Mexico City, on Wednesdays in Actopan, or in farm hamlets around Mexico
|City.
|
|Gusanos de maguey (worms) are one of a long list of Pre-Hispanic oddments,
|mostly what we would call vermin.  Even more primitive survivals include
|various algae and pond scum, gathered in baskets, mixed with the herb
|epazote, dried chiles, and salt; the "dough" is then spread over a corn
|leaf, steamed like a tamal, and eaten by itself or in stews...
|
|The story of another edible aga - platensis - is even more exotic and
|inspiring.  In 1582, Jan Buatista Pomar described a kind of food called
|tecuitalatl made into cakes from pond slime, dark green in color and called
|cheese of earth by the Spaniards...
|
|The list of insects eaten in Mexico then and now is awesomely long. Water
|bugs (axayacatl) whose eggs are still gathered in the same manner,
|described by Sahagun:  Bundles of reeds that are stuck upright in the
|muck in shallow water attract the bugs, which lay eggs on them.  After
|a month, people "harvest" the bundles, dry them out, and shake them onto
|cotton sheets, later eaten in tamales and tortillas.  Today, they are
|toasted, ground up,  and made into little cakes held together with
|turkey eggs...
|
|Mexicans also continue to eat locusts (chapulines) by toasting them and eating
|them with tortillas and a suace of chile pasilla; mountain chinch
|bugs, wich are eaten toasted or living; oak-boring beetles, which are
|popular as snacks amoung Mixtec peasants; red ant eggs (escamoles),
|actually pupas and larvae, which are eaten in a special mole with nopal
|catus or in a turkey-bound fritter; and wasps, at Jungapeo.  Some other
|out of the way vestiges of pre-Hispanic cookery include corn-leaf-wrapped
|salamander, or salamader broth, served to frail children; frogs and
|tadpoles; iguanas, which are sold live in Acapulco and stewed in tomato-
|chile broth thickened with corn flour; rattlesnake, served with hot
|sauce in  Chihuahua and added to the still during the preparation of
|local rotgut made from the false palm called sotole; cayman; monkeys,
|which are roasted like suckling pigs; opossum; aramdillo; and rodents
|too numerous to mention."

---
--David C. Adams  Statistician  Cray Research Inc.  [email-masked]
              -Sourdough and Ham-  N0WWN

      - Minnesotans for Global Warming!

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: 11 Jun 93 02:09:33 GMT

Regarding the Rayomond Sokolov quote offered by David Adams - 
|

I was in a small market town (Ozumba, Estado de Mexico, Mexico) recently and
there, tucked among the frond sellers, tamale pedlars, and a hundred others,
was a man selling wee, crawling beetles for munching. They were dolled out of
a large plate and wrapped in a paper cone. Looked a little like hulled
sunflower seeds, with legs. I've tried many an odd thing in my life but didn't
quite have the gumption for this. Many thanks for digging up the information,
David. I will look for the book. There are times when food for thought is more
palatable than food itself.
- Barry

- Barry