A Venture into a colorful market to learn about local foods.
Adventures Mexico, an inbound tour company in Merida who specializes in culinary tours and cantina tours was our host. Our guide, Thelma Osorio, guided us through a large market where you can get all foods Yucateco. We were on a mission to get ingredients for our cooking class at her colleague’s home.
Aztecan cuisine is heavy in corn, pumpkins, chilies (they love habanero chilies), tamales (their own variety- very different from the ones we see here in So Cal), fruits such as Mamay, Rambutan, Bananas, strawberries, Dragon fruit, Avocados. We went to the huge market in Merida on a mission to get ingredients for our cooking class at her colleague’s home.
Today’s menu Cheese Empanadas, Pork Achiote, Guacamole and Mango Mousse.
I was surprised to see the vendor and his Rambutan pyramid outside the market. I haven’t seen so many of these fruit since I was in Bali 20 years ago. The fruit is spiny outside and once opened it’s a white fruit. You just put the whole thing in your mouth. The fruit is very sweet.
I was intrigued by all the unique spices I tasted after our dinner at Ku’uk Restaurant. We had some foods spiced with recado negro and achiote. What are these? https://spicetrekkers.com/recipes/recado-negro—black-recado explains how to make this spice blend of charred chilies. I’m including this video on how to make a recado.
Ground pumpkin seed to make a pumpkinseed dip.
After touring throughout the market, we headed out to Mercedes’ house, to cook our meal.
Continue to the next story about the group cooking Cheese Empanadas and Pork Achiote.