My yahoo email account got hacked into last night. I got everything sorted out in a few hours, but by that time I was dying for a beer, and something comforting and horrible for me.
First we tried Chili’s for American brews and queso. (For all the non-Texans out there: Queso is a processed cheese sauce made with Velveeta and Rotel. It’s several notches above Cheese Whiz on the taste hierarchy, but below queso fundido.) Unfortunately, as soon as we sat down, we were informed that Chili’s no longer carries queso. So instead I suggested we go Cantina Belmont, a place I’ve read about in my guidebook.
It’s supposed to be popular with local politicians, and I was expecting a dive-ish place with cheap beer and tacos. Oh no — this place had white tablecloths, and waiters who draped linen napkins on our laps. And… cue the drums… an item called salsa en molcajete, which involved the chef making salsa tableside. Like they do with guacamole in the States. Except, it’s freaking salsa.
So of course we had to order it, and the chef showed up at our table with about a dozen chilies and condiments in separate earthenware bowls.
Among them were charales, tiny fish often served in Patzcuaro; pine-nut sized chilies called pico de pajaro, and dried, fried grasshoppers, among other things. The chef described everything and then asked what I wanted.
I turned to Crayton. “Do you want grasshoppers?” I used the Spanish word, chapulines.
“Sure,” he said.
Surprised at his adventurousness, I nodded at the chef, and he ground up some grasshoppers in the molcajete. Then he added cascabel chilies, chiles de arbol, the pico de pajaros, a good helping of chopped garlic and onion, a few stewed tomatoes, a toss of sea salt and a glug of bottled water. It looked soo good.
He drizzled a bit onto two tortilla chips, and offered them to us. We tasted.
Ooooh. Smoky. Garlicky. Picoso, but not too much. And just a little sweet. I think it was the best salsa I’ve ever had. I told the chef it was perfect, and he nodded and walked back into the kitchen.
“So, can you believe there are grasshoppers in here?” I asked Crayton.
“What?”
“Grasshoppers. I asked and you said you didn’t mind.”
“Ohhh… I thought you said champiñones,” he said. Champiñones means mushrooms.
However, since he’d already tried the grasshoppers, which you really couldn’t taste anyway since they were ground into bits, he let me order a round of quesadillas — one with squash flowers, one with huitlacoche, or corn fungus; one with brains, and one plain. I thought he’d love the brains, since they were meaty and kind of gamey tasting. He pronounced them “an acquired taste.”
For his main dish, he was much more his meat-and-potatoes self. He ordered prime rib tacos. I had a shrimp and octopus cocktail.
A lonely, leftover flor de calabaza quesadilla:
We left happy and stuffed, and got our leftover salsa to go. I might go have some right now. 10 a.m. isn’t too early, right?
