It may have been a slow day, but we still managed to stuff our entire heads into bowls of the best food we've found so far.
The cacahuates seller.
Rachel woke up feeling like she may have temporarily lost a battle to the consumption of a vast and ambitious amount of street eats. Or it could have been the grande jugo verde that she pounded yesterday. When she ordered it, the guy behind the counter's eyes went wide and he gave a little shrug. Maybe people normally drink it for more medicinal reasons? It did seem to have a bizarre amount of raw cactus in it. Well, I never said she was normal.
Regardless, we punted our plans to explore Valladolid until tomorrow. While the lady recouped, I got in some quality work time in the Plaza Grande where all the internets are free, roving nurses ask to take your blood pressure, gentlemen want to sell you stacks of hats and young kissing couples want you to take their picture. *Results may vary.
By lunch time, the wifey was mostly back in action. We headed out with a spring in our step to track down a cocina economica that I had heard about from an old ex-pat. Previously known as The House of the Screws (why you would change that, I simply can't imagine) it is now known as Doña Tere's.
Every day between noon and 3pm they list about three dishes to choose from. Today they had two. And they were out of one. So Pollo en Pebre it was! The place is a tiny rectangle with an equally small kitchen in the back run by two sisters who may or may not be twins. They kept smiling and humming as they made a steady stream of to go orders where people brought in various tupperware, plastic and metal containers to be filled.
When the food arrived, I got all tingly at how (expletive deleted) amazing it looked and smelled. I had been spying on a nearby table, so I copied them by dumping my rice into the pebre and then moving the chicken to a side plate. I stirred in a couple habanero slices and a squeeze of lime to the soup/sauce and then used the ridiculously soft and aromatic corn tortillas to pull bits off the succulent chicken segments. I'm so mad I don't live on that street.
The pebre is made from a very Yucatecan blend of onions, garlic, capers, olives, raisins, and tomato. It's cooked down with wine or sherry and seasoned with epazote. At Doña Tere's they thickened it with calabaza squash (mainly, I'm assuming, because the other dish of the day was calabacitas rellenas and you don't want to just toss all the scooped out squash bits). The end result is mostly pureed with some mashed bits stirred in for texture. Add back to that the braised chicken and top with a pan fried tomato sauce and you'd be hard pressed to do much better.
Art and a bad mafia allusion after the jump...
After we left and I had dried my tears of separation anxiety we clomped our way over to the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo. I am a big fan of contemporary art. I am a big fan of the Yucatan. I am not the biggest fan of contemporary art from the Yucatan. They had some nice pieces, but they also had a lot of piles of various things and stuff hanging from stuff. They also had this little gem.
Art at its finest.
The rest of the afternoon was filled with a bit of strolling and people watching and quite a bit of mundane travel related details and solution finding.
They wanted my pebre.
By dinner it had started to rain and the lady wanted to rest up for some biking tomorrow, so I headed out and triumphantly returned with a pizza vegetariano and some Superior beer from the awesomely named Vito Corleone. What? If you're in Mexico, it still totally counts as Mexican food.
Tomorrow Valladolid by storm, more cenotes and no major biking injuries!
Doña Tere’s: Calle 47 between 68 and 66; M-F Noonish to 3pm (but they run out sooner)
Um, wow. I think I'll spend the day just thinking about pollo en pebre.
Posted by: Crystal | Friday, 25 March 2011 at 09:29
Dude. Just... dude. :-)
Posted by: Boots in the Oven | Monday, 28 March 2011 at 00:39