To be completely honest, I don’t know if Cilantro Rice is a Yucatecan dish or not! I just thought it would go well with some Black Beans and another Yucatecan dish that I was making. The lovely part of Yucatecan cooking is that the region has been influenced by so many cultures, that creating something [...]
Xni-Pek
Xni-Pek – I’ve also seen it written Xnipec, Xni’Pek – is a fresh salsa made from white onion, tomatoes, cilantro, habanero chile, sour orange, and salt. In Mayan, Xni-Pek means dog’s nose, and while there are no dogs in the recipe, and a dog would not even want to eat this, the term dog’s nose [...]
Coriander And Coriander
Or, wait, is it Cilantro? In the States, we know the green leafy plant as Cilantro and the earthy brown powder made from the seeds of the Cilantro plant as Ground Coriander, but in most of the rest of the world the green leafy plant and the brown powder, as well as the seeds they [...]
Guacamole
Guacamole was always a mystery to me when I was younger. I did not grow up in a place that had such exotic fruit as the avocado. Nor did we have any Mexican restaurants in our world. The first time I had heard about avocados and Guacamole was in art school, when my pal Keith [...]
Panuchos And Salbutes
Before I give you this recipe for Panuchos – a simple tortilla topped with yummy stuff – I honestly have to say that this is my version of Panuchos, pictured at left. The Recipe Panuchos are made with fresh tortillas stuffed with black refried beans, and then topped with lettuce, sliced or shredded chicken that [...]
Sopa de Lima
Sopa de Lima is a Chicken Lime Soup that can be both warm in the winter as well as refreshing in the summer. This recipe has tomato in it, which gives it its color, although most photographs you see of this soup it has a clear chicken broth. The recipe below will serve two people. [...]
Photo Of The Day: Sour Orange Still Life
Many recipes from The Yucatan call for Naranja Agria, Sour Oranges. While writing up a few recipe posts, I wrote that: You might think that an orange is an orange, but that’s not so, at least in this case anyway. The oranges that we eat as fruit and make orange juice from are a sweeter, [...]
Pickled Red Onion
This little pickle is found everywhere in The Yucatan – on Tacos, Salbuches, Panuchos, on the side of Pibil, or sitting by itself on the plate next to the main course. Easy to make, although the second ingredient may be difficult to find, the recipe uses only red onion, sour oranges, boiling water, and salt. [...]
Conversation With Chef David Sterling
David Sterling is a chef living and working in Mérida, Yucatán, Mexico. He is the owner and instructor of Los Dos Cooking School where he not only teaches, he also experiments in and researches the cuisine of the Yucatán. Chef Sterling and I met up over email – I at my laptop in California and [...]
Mayan *Tsikbal
Using the words Maya and Mayan and knowing the difference between the two is not a simple concept for an English speaking brain. These two words are not interchangeable, nor are they singular words describing a broad culture, like the more familiar word French that means *anything* of French culture or of France. Where did [...]
