Homemade chicharrón, and puebleando

A few weeks ago, Crayton and I went puebleando for the first time. “Pueblear” is a Mexican word meaning “to travel to little towns and hang out.” There isn’t really an intinerary with you’re puebleando — you just get in the car and go. When you get to a town, you sit and hang out. Maybe buy an ice cream and people-watch in the square. There is absolutely no pressure to do anything.

We ended up in Zacatlán de las Manzanas, a pleasant, colonial-style town in the northern part of Puebla state. Accompanying us were our friends Jesica and Erik, and Jesica’s parents. They’d been to Zacatlán several times before, and so our first stop was at a panadería to buy some special pan de Zacatlán. They’re soft white rolls or empanadas stuffed with a crumbly, savory, almost cottage-y cheese. (This is also one of my new favorite phrases, because it has so much rhythm. Try saying it: PAHN de zah-caht-LAHN.)

I loved trying the bread — and to be honest, we bought a wee bit more than the local bread; also donuts and conchas and a muffin stuffed with cream — but the best part of the trip happened while we were walking to the church. On a little side street, a man stood in front of a huge cauldron of bubbling pork fat, making homemade chicharrón.

Have you ever seen this before? I hadn’t. Now of course I’d seen chicharrón at the tianguis — a bunch of golden sheets with curled edges piled high on a table, in the meat vendors’ section. But I’d never known exactly how it got to be that way. How did it go from regular old pork skin to fried, fluffy, crunchy pork skin?

We watched as the chicharrón-maker, who was probably 20 or so, grabbed a piece of leathery pigskin off the butcher shelf. It was rough-looking, a deep maroon color, like a big piece of beef jerky. He tossed it into the cauldron and it bubbled and crackled.

Working quickly, and somehow withstanding the heat (the man was standing directly in front of a vat of boiling-hot pork fat!) he used two sticks to stretch out the skin into an oblong shape.

After about 10 seconds of being submerged and stretched in the hot oil, the chicharrón had become exactly the puffy, beige sheet you’d find in the tianguis. We tried to ask the guy a few more questions, but the place was busy. So I took a few pictures. Didn’t have the nice camera, so I used my iPhone instead. It was really fascinating to watch.

The butcher shop also had several luscious-looking chorizos…

And the obligatory photo of a half-naked woman, standing next to various cuts of beef:

On an unrelated note, I’m sorry I’ve been kind of MIA lately. We haven’t had Internet since we’ve moved — Telmex is supposedly installing it this week — and we’re dealing with a few new-apartment issues. Nothing major, just things that need my attention, and prevent me from blogging as much as I’d like. I promise things will be back to normal soon.